GeminiProject

Yeah I think the damage badge in the accolade and the way +HP works against it is a big problem for brutes trying to get the accolade. Although, I have to say on all my brutes, even the WP ones, I had to rest in front of two +1 minions to get the badge.

Usually I like CoT Guides too, but crey medical units (medics, radiation guys etc, the ones wearing the mask and apron) work well too. Just dont try it with an LT, as most have a % chance to mez you and take you out of rest.

Two orange minions work very well for me, one usually closes in and whacks you with melee while the other one shoots at you from melee (the case with CoT Guides and Crey medics). You can go down to 15-20% HP and heal back up.

Having other accolades, and +HP powers works against the damage taken but is still manageable when you get your HP down to 20% at each round of damage/healing.

Alternate builds, if you wont use them for any other purpose, can work well with this and +HP powers/set bonuses. However +HP accolades will still be active.

Having a heal SO in rest makes a huge difference for me.

All Brutes are 'good' and you can't go wrong with with any brute (albeit some may be a little toughter to play than others).

If you are new to the game, I would not worry about what is better than the other since there really isnt and end all be all combo, everything as upsides and downsides. The game is fun enough for most people to play different alts over and over again.

I would suggest going with that fits your imagined hero's theme at first. It is really important to have a toon you really enjoy playing as your frist brute. And you will enjoy playing something that looks and feels like the super you had in your imagination more than playing a toon that has this or that power because someone said it was good.

Fitz gave you very very sound advice.

My SS/Fire took Mu and never looked back. I actually respecced into MU from mace when the respec became possible.

Mu's Targetted AoE immobilize is THE power I need on my SS Fire. Ball lightning is a plus.

Ball Lightning>Footstomp>Elec Fences>BURN

Burn does amazing aoe damage once you max out it's damage and recharge. The only problem is, it scatters mobs all over the place. Things stay right where they are with fences, and eveything melts away.

They are just about the same if you look at armors alone, however while WP gives you recovery and regen, SR and ELA will give you +Rech, which considering super builds is basically all that matters. All super builds have 40% or soft capped defense, it is a given now, nothing to be surprised at. All that matters is what you dont have to sacrifice when you get there, what exotics you are immune to, what keeps you alive when the RNG freaks out on you, and basically, most importantly how much +recharge you have so your atack chain goes into the 170+ DPS.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying a 40% def WP is going to be weak, far far far from it, great survivability, but it gives up so much in the other categories.

There's been talk about the damage/activation time of blaze/Bitter Ice blast, but nothing done in game. I would expect activation time/damage normalization to hit corrs and blasters soon™ however, since some melee powers have already been smacked in the once a year nerf.

Hehe, I sympathise tea leaf. That 6 man setup was from Robotech Master's now outdated guide I believe. It was true when radio missions were what people were running non stop (a la AE) back when they were introduced, and people were crying that radio mishes were killing the game.

EDIT: I also think this was pre IO days too since those made bosses, and a lot of them, a relatively insignificant obstacle.

On topic, the correct combo, on the correct 54 boss mob, will wipe them out like nothing. At that point, spawn to spawn time and reset time is the only thing cutting into xp/time. If you are not at that point though, using Lts or other means may indeed be much better xp/time.

ElA getting a self heal/+HP seriously imbalances things. If you want a heal in ElA, you have to forgo a pool and at lest two powers to get aid self and slot it to your needs (usually more than just four slots go into aid self for a +res set). If you give Ela a heal, I can come up with some pretty amazing builds that would outperform anything else out there, bar none.

ElA's sole weakness is a lack of +HP or Heal, it has NO other weaknesses. You can't just remove the sets weakness. And no, I don't agree the sets resistance numbers are subpar, I think they are right where they should be.

Every Brute (come to think of it every AT) will have a weakness, it's built into the game and thanks for that, you can roll different flavors of brutes and enjoy them all. Most brutes will perform exceptionally once you get past the level 22 hurdle and start to SO or IO them.

DB/WP is a great combo, keep in mind -recov and drains/slows will kill you, and longbow eagles will be the most annoying enemy you will face, albeit not a challenge.

You really can't go wrong with brutes and playing to their strenghts, all primaries are fun and bring something to the table. DB and ElM have been my two 'least favorite' sets but that does not mean much since they are very popular and perform pretty well anyways.

On secondaries, WP is by far the easiest and cheapest brute you can have. The bang per buck you get out of WP is phenomenal from the get go. If you really, really plan to push your brute to the edges of performance and IO the crap out of him though, WP's pushable limit (consideing everything the market has to offer and going all out expense wise) is considerably behind other pimped out armor powers. You won't notice this at all unless you are comparing ultimate builds. If you like rolling alts and trying new things though looking at ultimate builds is irrelevant, due to the sheer amount of time and dedication it takes to get one toon geared up like that, redside, under current market conditions.

Petless thug/traps or ninja/traps MM must be a very painful experience. Or you could just go ahead and roll a toggle man if you are really suicidal. toggle man = spine/dark scrapper with only one click power and the rest being toggels.

First thing you need to decide is weather you want a tank or a brute. If you are looknig for a WP/DM tank the tank forums are that way >>>>

If you are looking for a Brute, you have to realize you will not be a tank but a melee damage dealer with survival tools to keep yourself alive, and not everyone else. So you will not be taking a taunt unless you want to IO it out for set bonuses, period. Your taunt power is like the scrappers taunt power, only there for IO set bonus purposes.

DM and WP go quite well together and provide for a fairly solid and fun brute. For the powers you specifically asked, the answer is, it depends.

ToF is excellent mitigation against a single enemy and can be easily double stacked to fear bosses/EBs. However, you have to think that WP is a very survivable set, and if you are dealing with multiple enemies anyway one boss or EB is not going to pose enough threat for you to stop pounding and start fearing. I rarely find myself using it as any situation that kills me on WP is not a situation that can be fixed by simply putting one enemy out of the combat.

Dark consumption, on a well Enhanced WP brute is reduntant. It recycles too slow and needs accuracy to be able to use in a levelling build but I guess if you are reallly hurting on endurance in your 20 to 30 levels, you could potentially use it ever so often. In the endgame the only use it really has is againt -recov and drainers.

My Ela shines when I layer 30% def on top of tough+Armors. If you can afford the IOs, layering 30% def on top of the solid resists that the set provides, along with the infinite blue bar, end drain protect and slow resist ela offers, gives a very mean brute.

Especially when facing large spawns the def+resist combo outlives and out performs any Air Sup and/or Aid Self based mitigation. I went from exactly the type of build you wanted (Air Sup + Aid Self) to none of those but 30% def, it was day and night. The only problem that remains will be def debuffs and accuracy buffs on enemies, which will basically put you on a fairly solid ground zero which is ElA Resists + Tough.

Tough + scaling resistance + -dmg from darkest night = the sexy

especially when fighting a closely packed mob of bosses (or mobs of mobs), that "random number generator hates you!" streak can end up not killing you outright.

I don't think you want someone to blindly put up a build. A build is like clothes, highly personal and dependent on what you want to do. You would not want to go climb everest in a bathing suit.

What do you like doing with your toon? DM is a bag of tricks and you can go many ways with your build.

Do you want to layer defense?
Do you want to stack HP and regen?
Do you want to stack recharge so all you do is MG>Smite>SL>Smite>MG? (or insert gloom instead of SL if you go that way)
How unbelievably expensive do you want the build to be?
Do you want to grab AoE's from your patrons and use Maul to bring more AoE to your DM st damage?
Do you want to include Aid Self for ridiculous survivability on top of SL?

All these take a build a different way and ultimately affect how you play your toon, so it really is up to you.

Good to know. I thought -dmg was unresistable. Definitely explains the lack of survivability. =)

I guess damage debuff resistance should be added to:
paragonwiki

I've loved using Darkest night on my DM/SR if only for the -DMG, which is 21% (!!!)

The only time it is useful is against an AV, or when messing around with the AE seeing how many tough guys I can take on at one and fell like I'm the AV and the game is trying to take ME down as with a team.

However, statistically speaking, even the 21% damage reduction it offers (unresistable as far as I know) still does not match the survivability that aid self gives me on my alt build.

Just my 2 cents. Oh and gloom is just plain awesome single target damage against bags of hp.

[ QUOTE ]
As a pretty experience player, and I played my fair share of /Electrical Armor when I was soloing Arch Villains with my Brute with SS/Elec and EM/Elec when I made them FOTM...

[/ QUOTE ]

"Hello, you may remember me from such movies as:

'I soloed the AV'
'The AV Soloed Me'
'AVs, AVs, Everywhere AVs'

You may wonder how I keep my smooth and silky complexion throughout the years... I tell you an ancient secret, PEARL CREAM!"

Stone Fist + Mallet + H Mallet + S. Smash + Fault
Everything in WP except the last two powers

Extremely fun set to play, very high single target dps, lots of knockdown to mitigate incoming damage and allow you to regen, can be IOd up to solid performance for dirt cheap.

SM/WP is a very safe, solid, inexpensive build with fast attacks and high damage. The end issue that high damage brings is easily taken care of by QR+Stamina, without having to go into expensive unique's.

My much ignored macro on my SR when we face nemessis: "Lts die LAST or I go solo the other half of the map while you struggle with stacked veng." =(

Well I can somewhat understand debuff padding on SD/EA but SR, I have 46.2 def to all one one build and 48% def to all in another and I NEVER see it dip more than 1-2% even after herding the aggro cap of romansn an having superstacks of debuffs.

But to Hit, I was under the impression that +5% more def is laughable to +To Hit which is normally around 20-25%, without any stacking.

No Set Bonuses to account:
2 Nucleolus 2 Golgi 1 Mako Quad 1 Doctored Wound Heal/Recharge

Acc: 82.14%
Dam: 82.14%
End: 82.14%
Heal: 88.51%
Rech: 41.01%


Accuracy taken care of by set bonuses and I NEED MORE RECHARGE?:
1 Golgi, 1 Numina Heal/Rech, 1 DW Heal/Rech, 1 L50 Damage IO, 1 CI Acc/Dam/Rech, 1 Mako Quad

Acc: 39.75%
Dam: 80.94%
End: 51.85%
Heal: 84.67%
Rech:89.93%

I was recently skiming through DEF threads and a lot of people are were citing different reasons to exceed the regular 45% softacap and go into the 50% def.

It was my experience that once you were softcapped (or maybe 1% above it for def debuff padding), you were fine until you fought +6s or ran into +Hit. In which case it is not 50% def you need but 75% to remain capped.


My question is what are the situations for you, SD/SR/EA brutes where 45-50% def rather than 45% would have significant survival impact? Keeping in mind redside enemies and encounters, these are still the brute boards and none of you have gone softie on us and turned blueish "yet".

=P

In my humble opinion, I prefer it when I have the option to choose a set that I have to take every power save for the godmode to be unstobpabble, and having to cope with tough bargains for pool/ancillary powers, and other sets that allow for much roomier build options.

For me DA/FA/ElA are such sets which in itself does not require you to take every power in the secondary but allow you to build a toon that is more flexible and different depending on your other power choices. I actually LIKE the fact that I can cover mitigation with three power choices and not six.

What I mean is with these sets which people usually consider underpowered, you can achieve great builds (albeit expensive) and have very flexible toons that play drastically different if you use the dual build option. They will each excel at a task and have their kryptonite nevertheless.

I dont think every secondary should have a heal, that is why aid self exists, I dont think every secondary should have end recovery power and I don't think every set should be compared to WP.

Simply because every set has a can opener, and if you build sets like ElA which are relatively IMMUNE to drains and slows, which kill most other sets dead, you are breaking the balance of the game further. How much longer will it take from that point until the WP people start whining about how their ElA friend can solo three scirocco/carnie mistress AVs in the AE but they can't?

I don't like to compare ElA's SL resitance to Stone/INV, or it's Fire resistance to /FA, that line of reasoning will only lead to identical sets with different visuals.

ElA, FA and DA are very similar in resistance numbers, they are all resistance sets that bring something to the table and take something away. ElA Brings speed and End, FA brings Healing and Damage, DA brings Healing, bases for pbaoe control and End Problems.

It is tough enough to even try to compare these three very similar ground sets to each other, they have bases on which you can build a totally different performing toon, that if you try to compare these sets to drastically different secondaries such as SD/INV/WP you are no longer comparing apples to oranges but a kiwi to a ribeye steak sure they are both food, but... =)

Claws/ElA
60% res to smash/lethal, 90% to energy, 43% Fire/Cold Resist, 36% psi resist, 33% Neg En resist
30+% positional deffenses + Darkest night
Perma Hasten
Evil shredder robot theme

So much fun