Deus_Otiosus

Depends largely on the secondary.

But generally, I build for defenses first and recharge second.

The amount of defense I plan to build for is, again, dependent on the secondary.

Even on resistance sets that rely heavily on their self heals, and any other utility powers they might get - I will plan for at least something like 20-30% defense if I can get it.


My reasoning is that recharge is no good to you if you're dead.

With that out of the way, I see no reason to neglect one or the other and tend to strike a balance point between the two of those build needs.


Yes you do get your attacks/powers/hasten up quicker - but I always look at the fine details to see if that handful of seconds I might have shaved off of a recharge time was worth a sacrifice in survivability.

The combination of "enough defense to survive" and "as much recharge as I can fit after" is generally what I build for.

I'd be curious to see what the ST Chain with Punch and Gloom would be capable of. I've toyed with the idea of building one myself, but that's a long way to go just for a test.


Fair enough.

That's a completely valid perspective.

WP as a set does well overall, but it does suffer sometimes when faced with spike damage or debuffs of pretty much any kind.

You do want to, imo, pair WP with a set that grants mitigation - SS, WM, SM, for example.

And even without a major investment in IOs, if you still have any WP brutes laying around, try to get them high enough to grab Darkest Night.

It's something you will either like or dislike, but the power itself will do amazing things for your survivability.

Interesting build, very different from how I would build one.

Then again, I don't build many Tankers in mids.

Definitely.

If my goal was a ST attack chain, I'd switch to Soul mastery for Gloom, remove the slots from Boxing and use one of the free power picks for Punch and put the slots there.

I'm sure you've already got something similar planned out already.


I agree, but in this specific case - SS/SD - I'm not convinced the gap is as far between the Tanker & Brute damage capabilities as the difference in their survivability levels is.

I'm not sure what you're doing differently, I lost no more than 10s on the handful of Brutes that I have built to do things like solo pylons.


Have you surrounded yourself with enemies to keep fury pumped? That along with the bonus fury you get for fighting a pylon (as you would also get for say, AVs) should see you very near the Fury levels you had prior to i18.




I think you're referring to these:

159 Shield/Superstrength Tanker - Iggy Kamakaze
152 Willpower/Superstrength Tanker - Iceboxer


I have a both SS/WP & SS/SD Brutes, and both of them have finished the pylon with significantly higher numbers than that.

That's with gloom however, which is now available to tankers and should provide a significant DPS boost, especially on those two builds - but it wouldn't close the gap all the way.

I'd be curious to see the Gloom versions of those builds and their DPS times, I imagine they'd be quite good - so good I'd consider rolling one.

For all of the nonsense that gets constantly thrown around about how much tougher brutes are than scrappers, and how they were going to steal the tanker's role - Brutes are no where near as tough as Tankers, not even with IOs.


On the flip side my FM/SD Brute with fully saturated AAO, running seamless GFS > Incinerate > Gloom, all slotted with procs and BU on 26s recharge fell way, way lower than the vast majority of the FM/SD Scrappers.

My first guess would be AAO, it's just that much better for Scrappers.

My second guess is that you'll notice DM at the upper top end stands above FM in DPS. Again, you're seeing what happens when a Scrapper gets ahold of a near permanent, extreme, damage bonus. I'm willing to be most of those top DM/SD builds have soul drain within 4-6s of perma.

Now you've got both Soul Drain & AAO, both fully saturated, working on the Scrapper Melee damage Scalar.




This I think can be attributed to less overall forum investment in Brute builds, Brute attack chains and Brute players in general representing the AT in that thread.

Basically, I think there's a lot less interest from the forums and probably the playerbase at large in terms of optimizing Brute ST attack chains.

I also think Bill did his calculations using crits at 5% or 7.5% (at the request of most of the posters iirc) instead of 10%.

This wouldn't really be a huge difference, but 10% would have made more sense, since DPS is only even remotely relevant vs. above minion level anyway. (not Bill's fault, I'm pretty sure that was an issue of contention, just can't find it at the moment in the thread).

I often wonder what the DPS for those chains would look like, even claws, if saturated AAO was taken into consideration for both Brutes & Scrappers.

Luckily my post will be read by people who don't selectively ignore reality the way that you do.

Fly is faster.

Fly doesn't clip with wings/capes.

Fly/Hover never suddenly run out in the middle of the LGTF when your killing mitos...

Hover isn't affected by movement suppression like Jet/Raptor Packs are.

Fly/Hover can be used on Master of Task/Strike Forces.


They didn't. See above.



http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Inherent_Powers#Jump_Pack

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Ninja_Run#Ninja_Run





They have that in game, it's called "Teleport".


They gave it several effects you can't get from Jet Packs.

1) Speed.

2) Ability to slot IO sets.

3) See the top of the post for more.

It really depends on your build.

But here are my preferences:

1. Soul - Favorite for "All purpose" builds looking to add more ST (Gloom) damage, AoE damage and possibly more resilience/tanking ability (Darkest Night) - My single favorite Brute PPP.
2. Mu - Favorite for adding more AoE, usually for farming builds or builds that already have excellent ST damage but are weak in AoE.
3. Energy - For builds that have severe endurance issues (rare after IOs) or for weapon builds where I don't want to deal with redraw.

/Fire has very little to grant you in terms of keeping rage, or fury up.

The heal is nice, but it's a heal you pretty much require to survive.

The mini-build up is no longer a mini-build up, and is now better than it was.

/Fire is a very special Brute build, you put out fantastic damage but you are extremely squishy compared to most other Brute secondaries. I would not recommend SS/Fire if your goal is lots of TFs, or taking alpha strikes for teams and being the main aggro hog.



You can softcap SD relatively easily, and when you do you will be far more survivable in the vast majority of game situations than you would on the /Fire build.


The main disadvantage of SS/SD is the endurance issue. It will always be there, you will always deal with rage crahses and not even physical perfection will always cushion the blow.

Other than that, it's extremely powerful. it has it's foils, but all builds do.

Out of curiosity, what is it you disliked about the combo?


@lmt1979,

I forgot to ask, are you looking for an i19 build with fitness as an inherent or are you looking for a build based on the current game?

Would you happen to have those builds? I'm reworking my NW & Bane for i19 and I'm looking for some ideas.



That's my main problem with pets in general, and using them as a DPS source.

My playstyle is just too fast to allow for pets to add their, largely, uncontrolled and unfocused damage to the final package.

The situations where it does all come together, it is pretty nuts.



Have you thought about bringing a friend along on a support character to try and keep the pets alive?

While it's not exactly a "solo" pylon result, as long as they don't add any buffs or debuffs that will affect the DPS outcome - I really don't see a problem with it to use that as a guage for damage output.

After all, most of the test results in that thread are pretty unrealistic, vacuum situations to begin with - like near perma fully saturated Soul Drain.

It's good, but my problem is your slotting.

Just go whole hog.

Get 5x Armageddon's including the proc, + FF Proc.

If that's too much for you, then just frankenslot the other four pieces.

For example:
Oblit quad & triple +
Scirocco Acc/Dam/End +
Multi-Strik Dam/End/Rech
Armageddon Proc
FF Proc

Better slotting across the board, suffering only -19% rech from your slotting - which costs you 0.7 s rech on footstomp itself.

But now it hits a bit harder and costs 4.5 end less per activation.


A few other points, your build has no room in it for slotting Health. Not only does this deprive you of valuable regen, it also deprives you of slotting both the miracle & numi procs at the same time - invaluable for an SS build of any stripe.


As SR you should have gone for Gaussian's in Rage to cut down on needing sets with defense bonuses.

You can take 2 slots out of Super Speed, droping BoTZ, and add those to Rage and now you only need 1 slot to get gaussian's in there (and you gained more def than you had in both ranged and AoE and moved melee up another 2.5%)

Neither Weave nor dodge need 4 slots each, that +ACC bonus is uneeded with Rage and your overall slotting. So that's two more slots, which means you can 6 slot rage with Gaussian's now.

That means you can drop ToD from Haymaker and add another 5 piece crushing impact set for more rech.

You should drop the Def/Rech Kismet from CJ for a 5th LoTG 7.5. That 0.03% recovery really is not doing very much (if you're curious, it adds 0.02 EPS recovery)


Pull 1 Rech out of Practiced Brawler since it's already perma, add that slot to hasten.


Just some ideas.

Support > Melee



Except for when Brutes (who will be sharing - if not dominating - aggro, contrary to the picture you keep trying to paint), Scrappers or Stalkers are standing right next to them.

Or Melee range doms & blasters.

Or melee range VEATs.

Or anyone trying to make optimal use of character centered powers that do damage, buff or heal...



I will say that your tales of fiction do help pass the day at work.

My reasons:

1) SS & SJ are faster, and both belong to power pools I often want other stuff from anyway.

2) Hover is too slow and too "floaty" for me, and costs almost as much endurance to run as a jet/raptor pack.



I have fly on a couple of builds, due to concept. Everything else gets SS or SJ + a jet pack.

I think they're both exceptionally strong survivalist combinations.

I think Nalrok made some great points for the synnergy between DM/Invuln, and why it's such an excellent pairing.

I will say that if I were to run darkest night with one of those combos, I might lean more heavily towards WP.

I believe the top ST chain for Stone Melee runs about 0.61 EPS higher than the top chain for SS (not including Rage) , but yes overall they will feel similar in terms of endurance.



Well, you can pop a small blue to mitigate it. Or have endurance recovery tools.

The thing that's important to keep in mind is that Rage boosts all of your attacks including secondary damage auras & attacks (if available) as well as PPP/APP attacks.

So that sudden chunk loss of endurance, while dramatic when it happens, powers everything you have available.


The endurance consumption of Stone Melee only works towards the attacks in Stone Melee.


So:

SS if you want greater AoE & Damage potential, with good mitigation.

SM if you want harder hitting single target attacks and extreme mitigation.

SS = Better AoE damage output through Foot Stomp, as well as Rage boost to damage sources in Secondary or from Pool attacks. Con: Rage crashes

SM = Much Better Mitigation with overall higher ST DPA attacks and slightly better ST DPS at both the SO level as well as the extreme top end.
Con: Extremely END heavy ST attacks

1) When I play my squishies, any aggro I draw is my fault and my problem to deal with.

2) What are you doing across the room aggroing things that you obviously can't handle on your own?

3) When I play my Brutes, Dark Obliteration from across the room works nearly as well as a Taunt does.


I'll be taking taunt, but not because some squishies can't handle their aggro.


1) You should probably have hasten already anyway.

2) I think you should re-think about how to utilize taunt, and how it will allow you on a team with other Brutes and Tankers to maintain an even larger slice of the aggro=fury pie.

3) I agree, Brutes are not Tankers. That has nothing to do with generating and maintaining aggro, and the fact that a Brute that is capable of maintaining constant aggro at cap does more for a team than one that tries to play like a Scrapper.


Brutes get a taunt component in every single attack and Scrappers do not.

More Brute secondaries get taunt auras than Scrapper secondaries do, even when they share the same secondaries.

Ex:

• Firey Aura
• Electric Armor
• Dark Armor
• Super Reflexes

Brutes get TAUNT, a multitarget power. Scrappers get CONFRONT, a single target power.


Brutes, even unbuffed, have more Hit Points, and higher resistance caps (which means more resistance to each resistance armor's particular strength - even unbuffed. See: Invuln, Firey Aura, Electric Armor, Dark Armor.)


Brutes are designed to generate massive amounts of aggro, and the role they often fill on teams is to take alpha strikes and hold aggro while pounding stuff.

If you're only goal is to "...beat the everliving crap out of things, and be tough enough to survive doing so..."

You can do exactly that while playing a Scrapper.

It's the combination of high damage dealing combined with threat generation that is particular to the Brute AT.



I'll be taking Taunt in i19 because it's basically free, does not require more than the basic slot, is useful for multi-AV fights on teams, useful for gathering ranged mobs into a tight pack when solo and because it means I will always be nearly guaranteed to have fury fuel regardless of team composition.

This sums up my opinion on Taunt for Brutes.

It's a great skill but I wasn't able to fit it in on most builds, and was able to make due without it.

Brute taunt auras, and taunting through aggressive use of AoEs are generally sufficient with Brute damage output to handle most aggro control needs.

However, with fitness going inherent, and Taunt being good with just the base slot, I will be taking Taunt on nearly every Brute I have.

Only the few "solo-only" Brutes that have a particular concept I want to stick to will not be taking Taunt.

No it's mostly jokes.

But you would be a card carrying member of the WM/EA Club.


In all seriousness Gilia gave you all of the reasons I don't play EA or have any reason to spend INF on it.

I take those in addition to the fighting pool, though I don't take darkest night on DEF based sets, or sets with no recovery boost/tool.



Darkest Night alone represents why you're probably not noticing a difference with or without Tough or Weave.

Seeing as most of the power combos you listed have some form of a recovery tool, it's a great combo for enhanced survivability.

While I would still take Tough/Weave on any Brute I build, next time someone asks why you didn't - tell them you took Darkest Night.