FromBelow

Superspeed helps mobility more than swift. Yeah it suppresses once you're already there, but then you're already there. Make sure you have them taunted when you're in the fight and it's not a problem. So now that you don't need stamina or swift, is hurdle worth taking all by itself? And people who think health is really helpful to a brute who is moving through mobs at the pace he should be are smoking crack. If you want to stand around and wait for your green bar to slowly creep up while your fury quickly drops to nothign,t hat's on you. If you are going to move like you should, you'll either eat greens, take aid self, or team with a corruptor. Health has no time to be helpful.

Fitness is pretty worthless in my opinion. Yeah, without stamina you do have to watch your blue bar. That's the only thing. But you have a billion other toons on your account right? Every last oneo f them has fitness, right? They all are built pretty much the same way, right? Now you have a chance to have one that you can build in all kinds of crazy ways that you never could with your other ones because you had to take fitness with all of them. You can do that with this one because this is just about the only one you will ever have that will do just fine without stamina. As long as you watch the blue bar. And trust me, with DC, ED, CP, and overload, you just about can't go wrong.

OK, so are there any SFs and TFs or any more game content that can be played using the new difficulty settings? I logged back in for the first time in a couple of months with the hopes of soloing the LRSF with no AVs. It still says that I need a team of 8 to do it even when set to 8 people on my difficulty. I tried the Tarikoss SF too, same thing. So really, the new difficulty settings only let us put more bad guys in the normal missions and MA stuff? Is that right?

I wouldn't pick an EA brute for tanking. Your build would be able to do it, as I do it on my EA with teams (sadly quite common) with brutes that won't take taunt and have no idea how to control aggro. But why take a set not made for tanking and make a tank out of it? EAs are great for stealtihng and soloing maps and TPing friends around, and provind stalker utility with brute damage. They can be made to hold their own in just aobut any arena, but why do that? Why not just play to its strengths?

You're wasting your time on the melee defense. The only thing oyu need positional defense for is psi. Psi is basically all ranged. Get rid of the melee defense and go with more ranged.

Get a stealth IO and get to the brute stealth cap (570) and use the brute like it is meant to be used.

Otherwise, your brute looks good, though it's prohibitively expensive, and all you are getting is what you could get with SR for a fraction of the price. EA only has a click taunt aura. You really aren't going to want to tank with it. It's really only good for helping to get fury on teams with other brutes and MMs. Seriously, with an EA brute you can get yourself a serious scrapper that can zip through paper missions in a couple of minutes per mission or stealth teams through SFs, but that can put stalkers to shame when it comes time to do damage. That is where the set shines. They make an ideal brute as an off-tank damage dealer type. And they can be made tough. And they can tank. But if I were wanting to make a team oriented tank for farming, I would not dream of EA. I wouldn't want you to be one of the billions who keep calling the set lousy because they basically just can't see the set for what it is. You're still only going to get 50% defense debuff resistance. You're still going to have a psi hole. AVs will still generally flatten you without a bunch of temp powers and inspis.

If you're one of those guys who like to play the same bloddy slammer mission day after day, then you will be fine with a couple kinetic combats. Otherwise, you're going to be a second-rate tank with a psi hole and no aggro control, even after putting billions into your build.

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I'm curious how to make Electric Armor as durable and strong as possible. I'm probably going to make a Claws/Electric Brute when they come out for Brutes.

I'm trying to make him as tough as possible. With an all resist set that can be pretty hard. There is a little mitigation in Claws, but not a lot and I want to make my toon as tough as possible.

What suggestions do you all have?

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Basically, the resistance sets did not gain as much with IOs as the defense sets did. This is elec's primary downfall. You can't up the resistance like a defense brute can with defense set bonuses.

Trying to toughen a resistance brute with IO defense set bonuses is not going to be very effective. You get more bang for your bonus when you already have defense and you are just working on making a small hole between your stats and the cap even smaller. Going from 0% defense to 10% is going to give you paltry results. Going from 30% defense to 40% is going to give you phenomenal results. Unfortunately, you are in the former type. I have heard of some, mostly blasters, getting up to very high levels of defense with nothing but bonuses. But this will trash your build and cost a ton. I would not recommend it. The same can be said for going for regen and HP. Yeah, if you can get those bonuses, go ahead and take them, but don't pay billions for them because they are not going to get you to a point of uberness that will really affect your playstyle. That's pretty much why elec has fallen to the bottom of the barrel in terms of favored secondaries.

I recommend the following. Pretty much just old school thinking.

1 - Get tough and/or aid self. Really, you need both, but I am working on a build with just tough.

2 - Take a primary with mitigation. Stone, SS, Elec, etc.

3 - Learn to use inspis. Orange ones can get you a ton of mileage. If you take tough, a couple of small oranges will make you practically inviulnerable to most damage.

4 - Team. Particularly with thermals and pains. Some brutes, namely SR and EA, are great for soloing. Some are better for teams. Stones like to pair with kins. You like to pair with thermals. Elecs are great for taking alphas and holding aggro. They can be very tanky, and they are very team oriented. You just have to play within the limitations of the set.

When picking set bonuses, I would prioritize HP and then regen. Recharge is always impotant no matter who you are, and if you learn to develop survivability from the primary, then recharge can go to the top of the list. But I really would not try to build the toon on bonuses. Pool powers, teaming, and playstyle are the way to have fun with an elec brute.

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Many dominator prim//sec's have a valid, contributing factor on a LRSF outside of mind//whatever. If your primary goal is sleeping the AV's than by all means do follow the advice laid out by the 2 previous posters.Please overlook all the good you could do in the other missions with a totally different primary than mind//.

Want to add the cost of perma anything has increased to about 5 bill if you dont gimp your character.

I never played a dom I felt useless on after the team buffs in whatever issue it was,Ail. NEVER.

Op? Talk to your vg mates and see what they think will be beneficial for a dom as far as team synergy. You obviously have a group you play with regularly. Ask their input. There is alot more to the RSF than sleeping the FP. If there are already 2 sleeper domi's maybe you would fill another role. There are also alot of different ways to skin a cat and sleepig the FP is just one that will net a 30 minute LRSF.

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What's another way to do it with no temp powers? The only ways I know are the shivan/nuke/veng method and the AV sleep method. So the AV sleep way is the only way I know that does not use temp powers. What other ways can you think of?

OK got it. Thanks. Last question. Does sleeping the AVs in LRSF require power boost? Like if I made a mind/fire, would I be able to do the same job as the mind/nrgs already in the group?

Ice notifies because it does damage but plant does no damage and notifies as well? Why? Can you explain?

I never got a dom to any level. I want to make one. We do the LRSF all the time and there are two perma-dom mind/nrg doms in our VG that can sleep all 8 AVs pretty easily and regularly. We don't really bother with nukes or shivs at this point.

Now I want to make a dom. I am ignorant of what doms were before, and I am ignorant of all these changes. I want a dom that can jack up multiple AVs too. But I don't want to be the third mind/nrg in the group. Is there any other dom that can control a bunch of AVs? I'm not really sure how they do it, if they need power boost on top of domination. If not, I'd like to look at a different secondary. If there is another primary than can perma-sleep 8 AVs, or screw them up some other way, I would like to even have another primary. Is it possible?

My LRSF build is hardly IO'd at all. It is an aid self build, but that does play into EA's strengths (skippable powers and no stamina allows for more pool powers to plus it up). But my point here is that you think an EA brute needs to be IO'd out to be tough. I'll take you for a spin on my minimally IO'd LRSF teleporter build and show you a thing or two.

I got an elec/elec brute that I am having fun with, but not really sure about slotting. Now I also want to avoid aid self. Does en /elec brute without aid self have a chance of being uber? My EA brute is just a god now that he's got most of his defense types are capped and his recharge is faster than light. Thanks to IOs. But the elec brute is a unique scenario. Pure resistance. Other sets are defense, and easily capped, or they have some mixture of resistance, defense, heals, regen, etc. But elec is just pure resist. The IO sets give paltry levels of resist to one or the other damage types. Slotting for resist on this elec just doesn't seem like I am going to get enough bang for my buck. There doesn't even seem to be enough bang out there. I got tough already, and my shields are not slotted up yet, but I just don't see them, even when slotted up, as being enough to really make a tank out of him.

Is it possible to slot enough regen so that with as much resist as possible, the natural regen will keep his health high with the occasional orange and green inspi to keep things in check? I thought that maybe if I play him as an end drainer, I can take the alpha and lose some health, and then have everything shut down at zero endurance, and then just naturally regen my health back up (with the occasional inspi to speed the process). Does this seem workable? Basically just cut down incoming damage with endurance drain and mezzes and then regen what little damage does get through.

Anyway, I was wondering what slotting and playstyles people have come up with to make their /elec brutes into the uber type toons that we get when we have billion-dollar IO builds. It seems like the sets are good at giving us insane levels of defense and recharge, but slotting for other areas just doesn't get very far.

So what do people think?

Thanks for the heads up guys.

I looked at cohplanner.com and it is saying Mids is up to date to issue 13. Is nobody updating it anymore? Is there a more up to date planner out there?

Sorry, but an EA brute with EC and stealth IO has over 500 stealth (=stalker level) unsupressed. SS and a stealth IO will not give stalker level, and not unsupressed.

And your point was that a stealthy brute has nothing significant to add. My answer was that there are things that only a stealthy brute can get you. No corruptor with SS and stealth IO can get you that passkey. A stalker can do it with great difficulty. But a stealth brute, who can manage aggro, can do it easily. That's a use. And my general point is that while any toon can be built to stealth, a stealth brute gives you a stealthy toon with a 750 damage cap and one with it in the set can give you stealth not lsoing anything. You have to waste slots to make a stealth corruptor, for example. If you want stealth on a toon that can give you stealth without sacrificing anything else, then you need a stalker or a toon with stealth in the set. EA is one of the few toons that can give you that. And it's valuable.

It's a great solo toon.

It offers superior utility and flexibility.

And its weaknesses can be built around with pool powers and IOs. (easier than with other sets.)

Is CoH looking to win the "Buggiest Game Out There" award? I got the new booster pack, and my toon's wings don't show up in the login screen. Between that and the 'cannot enter' message that comes up every time I enter the AE, I think they are shooting for more noticeable and annoying bugs.

And it seemed like they left a ton of bugs in place from I14. I mean I know they are steaming ahead to update the game to compete with Champions and DC, but taking care of the bugs, particularly the obvious ones that everyone sees, makes the game look like 'not a piece of crap' and will help people to want to buy and play it.

Stealth not useful for a brute? LOL.

Try MoLRSF. I get the passkey in a matter of minutes every time without dying. I stealth/SS to it, pop overload, aggro the room and lead them away, SS to the passkey, click it, and SS back to my compadres with unsupressed stealth. A stalker cannot control the aggro and has to resort to some risky scheme to have his buddy TP him away before he dies.

In general, an EA brute is the ultimate stealth/TP toon on a SF, where he has all the advantages of a stalker, even more so with unsupressable stealth, yet puts a stalker to shame in damage output when it comes to fighting the AVs at the end. Did Lady Grey in 25 mins last night.

This kind of thinking, that there is absolutely no use for a stealthy brute in this game, just goes to show you how many forum experts haven't explored all the possibilities.

Also, I get mayhems in minutes by clicking on glowie click and defeat boss paper missions until the mayhem is available. Yeah, a stalker can do that too, but EA is a superior, if not the superior stealth brute. It's the best solo brute. Not to mention that an EA brute is superior to a stalker in that he can speed up and control fights better by using taunt when he wants more opponents and unsupressed stealth to fight fewer opponents while neighboring mobs stand there unaware, for cases where he wants fewer opponents. An EA brute has the best aggro control in the game in terms of precision aggro control. It's hard to make a tank out of them, but that's blunt aggro control. But for surgical aggro control you cannot beat an EA brute in their ability to attract and rid themselves of aggro.

And now that I have my defenses up, I can and often do tank on teams without other brutes or where other brutes are played by incompetent players. So I am a tank, a stalker, and a scrapper all in one. Not many sets can pull that off.

Is it the toughest? No. But being the toughest is not what it's all about. EA is the most flexible secondary a brute can get, and can be built mighty tough and has other unique advantages.

EA doesn't suck. You just don't build EA toons like other toons.

When starting out, just think of yourself as pure scrapper. No tanker. Only take the aggro you need for fury building. Think about tanking once you are at higher level.

It's the best stealth toon in the game. Great for solo missions right out of the box.

It has the most flexible build in the game. You can skip stamina and the fitness pool if you want. You can skip conserve power and the passives if you want. This lets you get more out of pool powers that any other set. You can get 40% defense without IOs with an EA brute.

All this only gets better once you get IOs and set bonuses. I have over 500 stealth and am capped against S/L and NRG and have high enough defenses to pretty much everything except psi (and I have 20% ranged defense)

Builds tend to be built around the fighting pool or the medicine pool.

People tihnk it sucks because there's a set, standard way people build toons and play toons, and most players suck, so they build and play their EAs like their invulns and are disaappointed. Not EA's fault.

I just got an ice/kin to 50 last night. That's just about my favorite toon out of all of them. I have had earth controllers before, but never got one to 50 or IO'd it out or anything. So I'll just talk about ice and not so specifically about ice vs. earth.

For one, I will say that artic air really ain't all that. It's nice and helps, but it seems to take a little while to activate, so bad guys often get a shot of, and it just doesn't seem to work all the time. It helps, but it is meant to be used in conjunction with other controls to keep you safe. It's not complete lockdown melee armor like some would think. However, I actually took repel from the kin set, and run it with arctic air and rely on transferrence to help my blue bar. That truly does amount to melee armor.

Soloing pre-Jack was so bad I just didn't do it. We have the AE these days, and as a kin, you will always get a team.

Now earth does have the -def, and this will definitely help the use of vet powers, but the kin powers will hit often enough that the -def isn't going to seriously help in most circumstances. You'll just want to make some adjustments to your playstyle. Instead of targeting off the EB for your heals, maybe off the LT. But really, I play like a standard controller, locking fown the bosses first, and my heals generally hit. I really would not make the -def into the reason that you take earth. Ice's slows are far superior as a secondary effect, if you ask me. Earth does have some better controls with the longer-lasting hold and whatnot, but trust me, ice can lock down anything.

The chief problem with ice is that the immob powers of other controllers often nullify the effect of ice's cornerstone power, ice slick. I know dark actually doesn't, and perhaps other AoE immobs do not, but fire cages for sure prevents ice slick from working. I hate fire/kins with a passion. Those players are about the dumbest in the bunch, as a general rule. But in situations where other controllers are mucking things up, I pretty much just play kin and spam shiver. Shiver is completely awesome and can shut just about group down.

Someone really did hit on the fact that ice/kin is a close in and personal controller. You will want to move in close so that the melee teammates get the benefit of siphon power, and to get the double potency of fulcrum shift. So ice does synergize really well with kin. Don't buy into the hype about kin missing too much with ice. It doesn't happen.

But to the other part of your question, if you want to solo from the early levels, you have to go fire/kin.

I will keep a lookout for everyone's global. The MoLRSF runs will be every Tuesday at 6 PM Pacific time. I will be on my toon From Below (my global is also @From Below). I do indeed have a perma- Mind Dom. Ro Black is the toon's name. The team so far is:

From Below (Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute - for stealth/TP - getting the passkey and the orestes rifle very quick as well as anti-AV DPS).

Ro Black (mind-energy dominator - for sleeping multiple AVs)

Draknok (dark/dark corruptor - good against flyers. otherwise nothing especially great for the team other than that this toon is played by one of the best corruptor players in the game. Also has TP and vengeance).

@Skandalla (bringing some kind of kin - I know her from being a super awesome stalker player.)

Harry Hood (ice/rad corr - debuffs)

All of these players are really good. As much as the toons, it's important to have players that won't die. We have a ventrilo server and anyone on the team can have an account. We will want the team to be on voice for the most part. We really need a tank, and a good DPS brute would also be cool. Another kin would be nice. But basically, I want to have a fairly balanced team of 6 really good players that won't do stupid stuff. First, we get it so we can knock out an LRSF in under an hour without any temp powers. Then we get to where we never die. Then we can bring along any given 7th or 8th toon that wants the badge.

I was hoping that with this post I would find someone who already has a good team and is making runs. But if nobody does, then yeah, I am indeed trying to put together a team. Anyone interested in doing LRSF runs every tuesday for several months that has a good brute or corr, please send From Below a tell any given Tuesday at 6 PM Pacific.

I'd like ot know how to get te MoLRSF badge on virtue. I am having trouble putting together a team. Is anyone making runs? I have a few SG members who have been trying to do runs Tuesdays at 6 PM Pacific. Is anyone interested in join ing us? Is anyone out there making runs that we could join on with?

Yeah, whatever. Another person who is bringing a ton of preconceptions to EA so the set won't stand a chance. Just play one.

In answering yout first question, relying on attacking is absolutely not a good way to build fury. Get taunt.

Controling threat levels with stealth comes more into play when stealthing missions or breaking contact. Since the stealth is unsupressed, enemies will de-aggro fairly quickly. Yeah, you will find situations where you are whipping up on a group and a nearby group is standing there clueless. But most of the time it's a novelty. Situations where that is really helpful are pretty rare. You will do fine on teams. But on teams, try to think of yourself as a scrapper more than a tank. Once you get higher defenses via IOs, you can tank. Until then you are like a stalker/scrapper hybrid.

As above, EA holds aggro well, especially since a taunt was recently added to energy drain. You can tank.

EA is not weak. It has a ton of utility. You can skip stamina and/or skip the passives and/or conserve power and pretty much build any kind of set up you want. Look to the medicine and fighting pools to toughen your toon.

EA works well with just about all primaries except maybe fire. Something with some mitigation helps. But that is mostly everything.

I was just wondering. I have not found any great secondary effect or cornerstone power or feature of damage or recharge or magnitude that makes the set really stand out. I am also not able to find a particular secondary that will synergize the best with it.

Just wondering if someone could point me in the right direction. Thanks.

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recharge for ice/kins...nothing better...quicker ice slicks...quicker fulcrum shifts..faster transference

all good then

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This makes a lot of sense. I am going to start playing with mids.

I'm having a tough time trying to figure out how I will want to slot my controller. I have an ice/kin. With this toon I don't see any need or reason to get to absolutely high values in any area. There's really nothing that I will be able to get perma. Nothing I will be able to softcap, and no way to get levels of regen or hitpoints that will really change the way I play. I never really find myself motivated to slot for anything in particular. Can someone give me some ideas of good philsophies for slotting a ctonroller? SPecifically my ice/kin?

How would you guys softcap melee defense on a claws/SR stalker without the fighting pool? I'm having a time picking up enough melee defense set bonuses.