Goshnova

Where's the damage coming from? It doesn't look like you'd be putting much damage out at all, even for a non-nova Warshade. I see Ebon Eye, Gravity Well, and Essence Drain as possible attacks.

Dark Armor benefits greatly from building for some sort of defense. Kat/DA and BS/DA are probably the only combinations that can cap to all three positionals (though the BoTZ changes might have changed that, most of the /DA builds that capped Ranged and AoE used a set or two of them, not sure how a build like that would look now). Resistance, the massive heal from Dark Regeneration, and some defense can make Dark Armor's survivability almost ridiculously high. Of some of the top end DA builds I've seen, the only thing that really is a danger are -Defense Debuffs like those from Cimerorans.

So, you might have some trouble soloing AVs with a Kat/DA without some defense because of the mitigation that that brings on top of Dark Armor's other strengths. I don't doubt that Kat/DA can solo AVs. I think it was Werner that soloed all 11 Praetorian AVs without a single death.

The damage from Ice is pretty weak in PvP. Plus, I believe it has this weird deal with Ice Blast and Bitter Ice Blast. Ice Blast, the tier two blast, does more damage than the Tier 3 blast, which is Bitter Ice Blast. As a Blaster, most people want to be doing the most damage possible+procs in a short amount of time, and Ice Blast isn't the highest damaging set, so it gets placed pretty low amongst the primaries in PvP. And, it doesn't really have any secondary effect or gimmick which lends itself to PvP. Fire has DoT, Psy has slow traveling projectiles, Sonic has -res, and Rad has a stun in Cosmic Burst. Slows don't do much in I13 PvP unless you seriously stack them, and a Blaster isn't the AT that brings enough slows to do this effectively.

As for Devices, I think it does alright in PvP. Web 'Nades are always good. Takes time to set up though, which probably won't happen often in Arena but can work in Zone. But as far as secondaries go for Blasters, /EM is still at the top, Devices and Mental Manipulation also work fairly well.

There might be other reasons that I'm not seeing though, so if you haven't, ask in the PvP forums.

I'm looking at it, and Mid's is only showing me 35% S/L Defense. You've got about 10% S/L in Bonuses, 5% from Weave, 2% from CJ, and about 16% from Frozen Armor. So I think rounding off and adding the decimals should give around the 35%. I'm not really sure where you're getting the extra 10% from, and this build doesn't look like it's soft-capped.

Have you considered Super Strength? Most of the top farming Brute combos have SS as their primary. It may only have one AoE in Footstomp, but it is a very good one, with good damage, mitigation, and a wide radius. Plus Rage is a good damage and ToHit buff. You can use the Patron pools to leverage more AoE as needed, namely the Mu and Soul pools.

Some good Brute farmers off the top of my head: SS/Fire, SS/Elec, SS/SD. SS/WP can work well on SOs too, though I believe the other powerset combos can outshine it once they have invested a little into IOs.

This is mostly from a farming perspective, though I think that in general PvE Fire and Elec as a primary can do well. In my opinion though, Elec/ doesn't have all that great AoE outside of Lightning Rod. Chain Induction is kind of incidental AoE, Thunderstrike has a smallish radius and the full damage is only on one target with the rest getting weaker splash damage, and Jacob's Ladder is just your standard small melee cone attack.

Honestly I think the best solution is to just carry Breakfrees. Building for mez resistance can be done, but usually compromises other parts of the build. That and even getting 100% only equates to cutting the time mezzed in half. It's not something that I'd really bother building for, so I'd just be sure to have enough inspirations in my tray.

Well now I'm not so sure if this is about AT balance or PvP gripes.

I'm just going to take a gander at this and throw out what I think is the most obvious reason we can't buff ourselves.

I'm pretty sure that it has to do with how buffs and debuffs work in this game. Since they're multiplicative, and not additive, being able to buff yourself in addition to others would be unbalancing. A single FF Defender can softcap an entire team, so if they could bubble themselves you're looking at a toon that can reach levels of high resistance and defense using only SOs. So you take a squishy AT and allow them to have massive levels of survivability and damage (if you include other buffing sets, such as Empathy or Pain Dom) and do this all on their own with little investment.

Not sure that allowing Emps to cast both RAs, CM, and stack Fort with AB on themselves is the way that buffing ATs should go. A team of buffers/debuffers is already strong enough to trivialize anything in this game. If anything, all I see a change like this doing is adding more "Be All End All" to the game.

Also, take the shields and use them in PvP. See what kind of returns they bring. It's laughable.

Well the thing is, in PvP, you don't have 45% positional defense. DR (Diminished Returns) lowers that value by a good amount, so you really have a lot less defense than what you've invested in when you PvP. That and Player ToHit is base 75 instead of 50 like most critters. So even if you had 45% defense in PvP, player's would still have a base chance to hit you of 30% instead of 5% like mobs in PvE. That's without any accuracy or ToHit bonuses.

Well for one thing, 45% defense isn't the softcap in PvP. Plus there's DR, so any defense you get is reduced to a laughable amount. Most /SR's live in Elude in PvP, and SD Tanks need to build for a crapload of Ranged Defense among other things. Player ToHit is something around 75% I believe, plus most people lead off with BU+Aim so defense isn't really an option in PvP.

As for a Fire/Rad, I really don't see that working too well in PvP. Nothing in Fire Control (I'm assuming Controller, unless you ment a Corr) to really help in PvP, at least damage wise. You won't be getting kills 1v1 on a Controller. Rad does alright in PvP, but any kind of mez thrown you're way will detoggle all your debuffs, and most PvP toons pack at least some kind of mez.

Well first of all there's DR (Diminished Returns) so there might not be quite that much resistance (would have to check though, I'm not sure about the numbers off the top of my head).

/Elec's heal is also on a relatively long recharge in comparison to Reconstruction. But I think most of the reasons that Regen and WP are considered better is because of some of the inherent utility in the sets. Regen has a lot of tricks up it's sleeves, with many ways to heal back or avoid damage. WP has built-in +Perception and some decent resistances to back it up. Then there's KB. /Elec doesn't have KB resistance, only KB protection in Grounded. A lot of toons in PvP back some serious KB, plus there's the fact that Grounded only provides protection to KB on the ground. Since almost everyone takes SS/SJ for PvP movement, anytime an /Elec would leave the ground would leave them very vulnerable to a Knockback attack followed by a spike. An Elec stalker would have to build for large amounts of KB protection to prevent this, whereas a WP or Regen would be immune to KB because they have something like 10000% resistance to it.

That's why I would think that /Elec isn't very good in PvP. I use an Elec/Regen Stalker to PvP occasionally, though I haven't finished his build yet. It's rather nice to not have to worry about getting 41 points of KB protection while having several reliable heals and MoG to fall back on, on top of being able to phase, even if it's just long enough for Recon to recharge back up.

I RP often in CoX, and I pretty much agree with what Frosticus says.

I tend to notice in-game events and incorporate them IC. What I mean is, if someone RPs their character as a God, I kinda expect said character to perform feats in the realm of the game that reflect that. In other words, if Mr. God is RP'd as capable of rewriting all of reality and sneezing Lord Recluse and Statesman out of existence, and then dies because of a Hellion? I'll notice that. I'll usually comment on it IC. Nothing more than a comment or two, or friendly teasing about the inconsistency. While some people may not appreciate that much, it's that kind of reasoning that drives me to make my own characters perform better in-game as I claim them to be during RP.

Usually the only kind of actual trouble that may occur because I automatically link in-character and out-of-character ability is during PvP. That's only because people usually get pretty touchy about losing in PvP.

Like others have said, in PvE all sets do well tanking. PvP is a different story. The best sets for PvPing on a Tanker are probably Fire, Invuln, and Elec. Willpower is kinda "meh" for PvP because it's mostly just a bag of hitpoints unless you add in Aid Self. Invuln is a little weak in this regards as well because Dull Pain is on a long recharge, but makes up for it with better resists. Shield Defense can also work if you build for a ton of Ranged Defense. If you're more serious about PvP, Super Strength is the best secondary.

Of course, this only applies to PvP.

The only zone with any amount of PvP left in Virtue is RV. There's occasionally quite a few people in RV in the evenings. Not as much as on Freedom, but probably a lot more than the other servers. SC usually has less than a handful, and Bloody Bay and Warburg are only to get temp powers, though I think that it's like that in a lot of zones.

Now if it's good PvP in Virtue RV well, that's debatable.

Um... Tankers with Force Fields?

Wanting CoX to be more like a comic book, that there is the crux of the problem. You want the game to be something it's not, and then bring up perceived issues with the game because that's "not how they do it in the comic books." We have endurance because it's part of how most MMOs operate, because we need some type of limiter. Otherwise we would just wait for our powers to recharge and spam them indefinitely. Likewise, there's problem a good reason why we can't perfectly recreate comic book heroes.

They'd be overpowered. If you could make a character that has offense and defense of Superman, that would certainly not be balanced.

Smashing Haymaker is a good discount choice to get some defense, though it's worth noting that the set is much better for Typed Defense builds rather than Positional Defense builds. I think Smashing Haymaker gives .94% melee defense.

I don't have any numbers, but I believe that because of Brute's lower base damage numbers, Shield Charge does lower damage than the Scrapper version. Pseudo pets like LR and SC have a lower base damage cap than Brute's do, so it's likely that the damage dealt will hit that cap and won't go above that. Unless they changed that. Or at least that's my understanding of how it works.

I recall the Scrapper forum numbers stating something like Brutes having a %3 damage lead over Scrappers. I've always felt that Brutes do far more damage, but I think this is perception. Overtime, crits and the higher base damage seem to match up pretty well with Brutes' and their Fury. Gloom though, will do a ridiculous amount of ST damage that Scrappers currently just can't match. Outside of that, the Scrapper-Brute damage issue is less apparent.

Of course, a Brute does have higher HP and higher resistance caps, which are nice. Especially on teams, with external buffing.

One problem I've occasionally had though, is when there are more then one Brute on a team. Sometimes generating enough aggro to help along the Fury bar can be a bit challenging depending on powersets and the other player's Brute. I've noticed that my /WP brutes sometimes have a harder time generating Fury when there's say a /Shield or /Inv Brute that just sucks up all the aggro. Attacking of course still generates Fury, I've just personally noted that sometimes the amount of Brutes on a team can end up having lowering the amount of Fury generated because aggro is still important to keeping a high amount of Fury.

Oh, and for the OP's question, for both PvP and PvE, I'd have to say that something like an SS/Fire Brute would be best. A bit squishier than other Brutes, but they have high damage, can farm, and are one of the best options for PvPing. SS/Inv is a good choice as well. Ultimately, the PvP aspect is the clincher. Most Brutes are not the best option for PvP, though that doesn't mean they can perform admirably well.

I don't have the numbers, but I recall seeing that SS without Rage is very subpar compared to other tanker/brute damage sets. I believe the amount of damage that SS does is actually below the other sets until you factor in Rage. That 80% damage buff, easily perma'd, puts the set up with the others. Take that away, and SS suddenly isn't that great anymore. It's performance relies on that one power.

Same for Stone Armor. Out of granite, it's one of the weakest tanker sets out there. In Granite, it has ridiculous levels of survivability. Even just on SO's. Other sets like WP or Invuln need IO investment to start reaching the raw amount of survivability that Granite offers. But without it, Stone Armor is one of the least survivable sets out there.

Oh, and I fail to see how Stone Melee has better AoE than SS. Single-target, I see that. AoE? Footstomp is much better than Tremor. Fault has great utility, but in terms of damage does nothing.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122362

For this.

Basically, DB isn't a good option for PvP. MA, FM, BS, or even Kat are all much better options to PvP with.

The time has come....

I doubt any of this would happen at this point in the game. I think Whirling Hands could get a buff, but honestly anything more than that I don't see happening. It's designed as the ST melee set, but nowadays it just lags behind all else since the numerous changes to the set.