Exxar

And at the other end of the spectrum, I for example don't have any problems with executing combos while raging around as a brute. Those orange circles that appear are great helpers, and after some time I learned to quickly chain together combos without even looking at them.

Nah, that's not very toxic-heavy. TTs have a significant toxic component to their attacks IIRC, yes, but Banes mostly do S/L with just a smattering of toxic so that it's not really a problem. And TTs you can blow up at the start of the fight rather quickly, so no fuss there.

Arachnoids and snakes are the only really toxic-heavy mobs in the game. Most of their damage is toxic, and while they do have a few S/L-only attacks, those are in the minority. Thankfully, they are not encountered regularly.

Yeah, toxic heavy foes are a pain, I have to be extra careful with my Energize and be sure not to aggro two spawns at once (I play at +0/x8). But if I pay attention, the good old smash them to bits RIGHT NAO tactic always works, especially if they're constantly on their backs due to FS or Tremor. Permahaste FTW! 20% defense also helps greatly too, as well as their zeroed endurance in case of my SM/ElA/Mu.

Anyway, that little bit of toxic resistance from Healing Flames doesn't make a huge difference, especially since you cannot usually afford to slot it for resistance. And even then, toxic-heavy foes are much rarer than psi-heavy ones.

For farming and other end-game activities, you won't notice any difference at all. Energize will be up every time you need it. /FA has a smoother start since it both gets Healing Flames earlier and it recharges more often, but in the 30+ game /ElA is much more formidable.

Damn, I like those numbers. I should roll one myself sometime.

Any combination of Claws, ElM, FM, SM, SS or WM with most of the secondaries fits your bill for PvE. For PvP, I have no clue besides that brutes suck at it (unless vs other brutes).

DB is usually considered a "mediocre" set because it doesn't have any individual spectacular powers like some other sets and gets easily thrown into the S/L-only bin. If you take a look at this thread you can see that it falls right in the middle of single-target damage potential without considering secondaries and extreme slotting (also notice that it doesn't lag by much from the top contenders except fire), and if you take a look at the pylon times discussion you could see that specific DB builds can juice out extreme single-target DPS in the right circumstances. Many people have also proven time and time again that DB/ toons can be successful AV soloers, so from the high-end perspective, DB is not lacking anywhere.

But that's probably not very useful info for you because you'd already know all of it if you were into that kind of thing. So what do Dual Blades offer? From personal experience I can attest that a DB/WP brute is great fun to play. DB has the perhaps most fun animations of all sets, if you're into that kind of thing. All that twirling around really makes you feel that you're constantly doing something and ensures a fluid attack chain experience (for example, I get bored to death with Dark Melee's attack chains).

From the functional perspective, DB don't excel in any single area but are good across the whole board. While they don't have any "big hitters", there aren't any throwaway attacks either as all of them do good damage (except perhaps the first one in post lvl 30 play, but it's like that with all sets). The set offers a nice mix of AoE and ST attacks and performs quite well in both fields. Also, you always have something shiny to pick while leveling up, unlike for example Super Strength where you get Knockout Blow at 8, Rage at 18 and then grind to Foot Stomp at 32. Your first AoE attack opens up at lvl 6.

Next up, DB offers good mitigation in the form of knockdown. Vengeful Slice, available at 18, has a guaranteed knockdown effect on its target, as well as One Thousand Cuts (available at 32) on all of its targets.

Instead of Build Up, you have Blinding Feint. With a proper build, you can perma-doublestack it for a 60% bonus to all damage and 20% to hit bonus.

And finally, there are the combos. You don't have to use them, but their effects are very nice. The first two, Weaken and Empower, have a bad rep. Weaken is ok when you get it, but nothing to write home about - it gives your opponents a slight defense debuff which is nothing special if you slot properly for acc. Empower is nice with that bit of extra damage and to hit beyond a regular Blinding Feint, but when it becomes available you don't have much attacks besides the ones needed for it, limiting its usefulness, and later on Attack Vitals and Sweep are more attractive. You'll get the most mileage out of it between levels 18 (when you get Vengeful Slice) and 26 (when you get Sweeping Strike for Attack Vitals). Speaking of Attack Vitals and Sweep - they rock. Attack Vitals does extra damage, and an attack chain of BF+AV is the highest single-target DPS chain for DB IIRC. Sweep keeps your opponents on their *****, with the initial attack (One Thousand Cuts) causing guaranteed knockdown, and the finishing attack (Typhoon's Edge) causing more guaranteed knockdown as the combo special effect.

So, I'd say the only real downsides of DB are the following: redraw, trickiness of combos and the animation time of One Thousand Cuts. If you hate redraw, you probably won't like DB. If you aren't bothered by it, you won't even notice it. The combos require all three attacks to hit, so you need good accuracy slotting (which should be a given for brutes in general because of fury building) and it's irritating when one of them misses. One Thousand Cuts has an animation time of 3.3 seconds which is a lot, but as with redraw you'll either hate it or won't have any issues with it at all.

Last I checked, using non-attack powers in the middle of combos doesn't disrupt them, but since you intend to play /WP you shouldn't have problems with that anyway.

Sorry for the confusion. I have my game located in C:\Games\City of Heroes. I do not have the folder C:\Program Files\City of Heroes, I wrote that by mistake when I was meaning to write C:\Games\City of Heroes instead. The only other installation of CoH besides that in C:\Games\City of Heroes is my test installation in C:\Games\CoHtest but I haven't touched that one at all.

I have checked the shortcut I'm using to run the game, it points to C:\Games\City of Heroes\cohupdater.eu.exe.

When firing up the mappack installer, it doesn't detect the game folder at all.

New maps still not working. I deleted my C:\Games\City of Heroes\data\texture_library\maps and \v_maps folders and installed the mappack to C:\Games\City of Heroes several times again, and still no luck.

Erm, I do have a C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\Data, and that's where I've put the new map files (\textures\maps and vmaps). C:\Program Files\City of Heroes is where my game is.

That I am sure of, since I was testing the new map pack on Live.

You don't use stuff like Kinetic Combat and Obliteration in cheap builds, you use Smashing Haymaker and Multi Strike. Sorry to break this to you, but a cheap build means a lot lower performance than an expensive build. For example, my budget build BS/SD is softcapped with one application of Parry, but doesn't have much in the way of recharge (which an expensive build would have, as well as soft cap without Parry).

Cheap IO builds are definitively possible, but today "cheap" is 150 M for example. And most of that cost is taken up by salvage. I'd wager you could save some if you have more patience with the auction house than I had when I was making mine.

/Stone is not the best pick for a first time brute IMO. As you say the -dmg is easily overcome by fury, but -rech is not that easy. At best, you'll have it at about zero with your endgame build, and before that... well, you won't attack much in Granite.

I'd really recommend Willpower, you'll have the least hassle with it. If you'd like a more active playstyle (WP is fire and forget, turn your toggles on and that's it), I'd recommend Electric Armor as it's rather friendly to play with a self heal, good resistances across the board and absolutely no endurance problems. It's only real weakness is that it's somewhat squishy vs S/L, but get Tough early and you'll be fine. However, a SS/ElA can be tiresome to play sometimes because you need to closely watch both your green and blue bar, as well as for rage crashes. It's a very powerful combo otherwise.

If you're not fussed about playing an "easy" set for your first time as a brute, pick any secondary, really. Perhaps be wary of Dark Armor since it can be a bit tricky to manage (very endurance intensive if you don't slot and play it properly) and Energy Aura since it has somewhat lowish numbers.

Not.

On a DB, I'd go for Fighting over the patron pools anytime - patron powers will cause redraw, and they don't bring much to a DB/WP since it already has good AoE capabilities, and Gloom's DPA is ruined because of redraw. Maaaybe take Darkest Night, but Tough and Weave are much more reliable.