Deus_Otiosus

This is the Brute forums. I think we can assume we are discussing Brutes.

The "extra" defense, while overkill, is enough to bring you from negative defense back to the (incarnate) softcap - if you aren't already dead - it's also amazing for your squishes (a lot of whom seem to be packing rebirth).


And multiple Barriers has not yet seemed to be a problem on any league I am on.

6 smart players with this power can effectively make the entire team invincible for one full minute.


I'm not hating on Rebirth, Rebirth is amazing - and is my first choice for several secondaries and my second choice for others.

But Barrier is insane, it will allow almost any well-built Brute to run wild in incarnate content without fear of any kind for a full 30s.

I'm not convinced that the 20s of 600% Regen is equally as powerful as 20s of 32% DEF/RES.


Now to answer the OP's question.

We would need to see the build, but if you're asking if you should go Cardiac on an Ela Brute over Spiritual - my gut reaction is no.

Claws/WP is a good combo.

Ela does not get its endurance recovery tool, nor its heal, until post L20.


Mind/Fire Dominator.

Maybe you mean Nerve?

Cardiac does not boost DEF in anyway.



Can anyone confirm that all of the mobs on BAF & Lambda (not worried about the AVs) have +14% to hit even against +3 Level shifted Incarnate players?



And I find it insufficient for my SD Brute who feels as if he has no mitigation at all.

It can only be worse for SR Brutes.

BAF is generally not as bad, as you are surrounded by 7-23 other people.

But trying to hold aggro for randomly comprised PUG trials, running around looking for crates/containers with 45% defense is an exercise in frustration.

While true, I have found on average that my final reward on Lambda is generally better than on BAF.

My Brutes usually end up with uncommons on BAF, and Rares on Lambda.

I haven't taken any of my Scrappers through yet, so YMMV.

Now that one of my Brutes has T4 Destiny, Interface & Judgement - I will be running Lambda's repeatedly to try for the only thing I need at this point - Very Rares.

I need 1 for T4 pets, and I would like 2 more VR iSalvage so I can craft alternate T4 Destiny & Interface powers.

Sorry for the off-topic post.

It's not the AVs that will kill you (well, they can) on the iTrials.

For the AV fights, you generally have an entire team, if not the entire league, at your back.

It's when you are running off on small teams that I think the -To Hit would be valuable, to help you hit a 'false softcap' against large groups with enemies.

I'm not advocating it, I'd prefer to just use Barrier and any insps I have on hand.

But it's a thought I suppose.

Depends on your playstyle.

As a Scrapper, you have the luxury of allowing someone else to take aggro and alpha's - even if that's not really fun (to me anyway).


Unfortunately as BS, one of your best tricks (Parry) is useless for the most part as the worst the iTrials have to offer is all Ranged, Energy & Psi (all of which also pack debuffs).

If you really must have the survivability, then Diamagnetic is the best option, but unless you can frequently apply it with AoEs - I'm not sure there is much point. You might almost be better off with shadow meld, as crazy as that sounds.

The devs have gone out of their way to crush the power of normal softcapped DEF without added buffs/debuffs/insps/resistance, etc in the iTrials.

It's still useful, but unless you have something to back it up, its not going to provide the kind of protection you've been used to at regular game softcap.

Will the speed of the attacks in the power-set affect it at all?

For example, Claws vs. Warmace.

That's exactly what happened with me.

Vicky ran in and died in seconds, ACU stayed for the entire fight.

Then I tried with my Clockwork and they lived the entire time.

Their range is huge, my Brute's Taunt has a range of 96ft, and they can still target and fire at him when they are out of Taunt range.

I have both T3 Warworks and T3 Clockwork.

I'm not sure which does more damage yet, most likely Warworks.


Rebirth might help, but in any real combat situation I've been in Victoria is dead way before the ACU - even though she has 3x as many hit points.

The ACU is often still alive at the ends of fights. I have the same experience with the Clockwork, they just hang back and fire.

In any situation where Victoria can be kept alive, she does a tremendous amount of ST damage - but she is very often dead. I use her for the prisoner escape because she puts runners down faster than a lot of players. But I use the Clockwork for other real fights.

I turned on musculature core paragon in your build, it can get up to 1639.

Correct, the Core side is perma. The Radial side of each Destiny tree is not. Barrier Radial Epiphany gets a 2x Ally res. Whatever that means.

"Lowish" number? Well, compared to the burst of godlike invincibility, yeah I guess it's lowish.

But Barrier Core Epiphany will provide at the "Lowish" level tail end of the buff:

30s of 7.5% Resistance and Defense, followed by
60s of 5% Resistance and Defense

Or, 50% or more Defense and Resistance than the Gladiator Unique and Shield Wall Unique combined.


I hadn't actually considered that. I have the T4 Barrier in game on my SS/WP Brute. I'll check and report back.



It is a bit less overall useful than Barrier, but I find when we do get hit with debuffs they are usually so heavy as to suddenly cripple a character.

Also, the Ageless Core Epiphany does grant, at the tail end of the buff,

+200% Recovery for 30s, followed by
+100% Recovery for 60s

Basically ageless is a godsend for builds that either went out of their way to squeeze in as much recovery as possible or still suffer from endurance issues.

Considering that it refills your blue-bar to full once every 2 minutes, and then provides a steady recovery boost over the next 2 minutes until it recharges, it also gives some builds the option of dropping cardiac and grabbing say, musculature or spiritual.

I'm singing its virtues, even though I agree with you on Barrier.

Ageless is a bit of an unsung power, I doubt many will be taking at. It certainly will be less poplar than Barrier or Rebirth, but it is still amazing all things considered.


For Judgement, if you are a melee character intensely focused on survivability, I think Void is the way to go.

Void Radial Final Judgement: -50% DMG for 30s, 32 targets (50ft radius)

-50% damage in a 50ft radius??

I'm already using the T4 Void Radial Final Judgement on live, and this debuff is as useful as it looks on paper. It's not going to save you permanently, but the debuff is strong enough that I sometimes save Void for when I know I will be between castings of Barrier and SoW on the iTrials and I'm about to hit a rough spot.

One more tool for survivability - Oh yeah and its also an excellent nuke.


I was disappointed at first when I took void, it doesn't look as impressive as Pyronic or Ion.

I think it could still use some love in the looks department, but at 50ft it starts to look better because a 50ft radius is insanely huge.


Great info to know.

Here is Dispari's guide.

Outside of the pets, for which the real numbers aren't listed there, everything else you need is.

Recharge does not boost any Incarnate power, not global recharge nor the Recharge from the Spiritual Alpha slot.

Other alpha enhancements do affect their respective abilities for the new incarnate powers. (so the heal portion of spiritual, or is supposed to boost Rebirth - but the recharge portion of spiritual does not)

Yes, you actually use the lower tier as a component and it disappears after use.

I've been keeping my teams together through a combination of:

• Instructions in /team before we hit the lab/warehouse, including telling players they can click my/team leader's arrow on the map to keep track of us and telling everyone to switch their chat from /league to /team.
• Using a targeting macro (in team) to let everyone know when I have a crate/container in sight.
• Using a "barrier buff in 3s" macro (which people will hug you dearly for, even though it has a 60ft radius ) at the start, and throughout.

For the most part, that keeps any halfway decent team together. Only the few truly hopeless will straggle behind and get lost.

As more and more people have +3 level shifts and are packing the higher Tier buffs - this will become less needed.

If you're agonizing over it this much, it means you really love this character.

Pick up a couple of T3s, I promise it won't take nearly as long as it seems like it might.

On a more serious note, if you plan to pick up the powers you want and not run trials all the time, I would actually pick up multiple T3 Destiny powers before I even chose a T3 lore or a T3 Judgement.

In those MMOs (like Everquest 1) fighting through general content to gain XP was several orders magnitude more time consuming than it is in CoH.

This was also the time before instanced quests were common.

Mostly it was open zone camp spawning and handing in 500 mammoth tusks or something to complete quest.

So the durations were in some ways appropriate.

Although, actual combat was not nearly as busy as it can be in CoH.

Well, except for my Bard anyway.

My quick and dirty method, especially for rares and ultra-rares, is to look at the Tier & Power you want to slot.

The tiers of powers correspond to the tiers of salvage (Uncommon Tier, Rare Tier, Ultra Rare Tier)

Example (ignoring the lower Tier power(s) that is also needed):

Tier 4 (Ultra Rare Power)

This will require common components and 1 ultra rare salvage.
The ultra rare salvage is listed at the bottom.

Tier 3 (Rare Power)

This will require common components and 1 rare salvage.
The rare salvage is listed at the bottom.

Tier 2 (Uncommon Power)

This will require common components and 1 uncommon salvage.
The uncommon salvage is listed at the bottom.



And IIRC, there are only 4 named salvage for each Tier from Uncommon to Ultra Rare.