JupiterMoon

[ QUOTE ]
Nope, you pretty much nailed it. They could push their s/l res up to 73% if you have a bottomless wallet to spend on a +3% res PvP IO, but that's about it.

It's not new for people to complain about low availability/size of +res from IOs. (I think some forms of +def are too easy to get, but that's another story.) My guess why defense is more prominent is because it's more variable and easier to bypass. If Castle wants mobs to be very accurate, he has many methods to do so:

*) tohit
*) def debuffs
*) auto hit

That's not to mention that even at the softcap you can get unlucky. With res, it's far harder to bypass (unresistible damage is pretty much it) and it's more stable (no unlucky deaths).

Again, that's just my best guess at why it is as it is, but I could be completely off base.

[/ QUOTE ]

well this is true and not true about the resists.

you see...villains fight a lot of longbow. i would say a good 90% of what we fight 40+ is longbow

and longbow have longbow nullifiers.

nullifiers pop an aoe auto-hit -40% resist to all grenade thing.

so capping a resist based brute villain side matters little when fighting our most commonly-fought group.

none of my brutes can touch my thugs/traps

i'm guessing a lot of you dont have mm's or play the garbage mm secondaries

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
the problem is you cant cant actually soft cap your pets like you can in thugs.

you can put on them i think 17.9% range/melee/aoe from the single shields, another 11% i think it is from disperson bubble and thy have 7.5% each i think and that's not enhanceable right? add 5% edict of the master bonus and that's only 41.4%

have you considered doing a thugs/ff tankermind? you could soft cap them without a single io.

edit: NEVERMIND..4.1% more from manuevers caps 'em. totally didnt see that.

however i would recommend you consider team teleport as your movement power. it's going to be pretty important to keep them all in your dispersion bubble.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're Not Doing It Right (tm). My nin/ff at lvl 44 has all pets soft-capped; ST bubbles, Disp bubble, Maneuvers, Edict, and Innate defense all well-slotted make win.

[/ QUOTE ]

yes i am. read the part after EDIT...you quoted it after all

[ QUOTE ]
Generally accepted forum standards say that the OP is what counts more than the title. I doubt you would go into a thread that was titled "Niviene" and start spouting hate and filth about niviene when the first post says "happy birthday niv!" That would make you the perfect example of an internet troll. And i know you aren't. (Sorry you using you as an example niv, you are a great mod)

back on topic. a self empathy rename...that's wrong on many levels. I'm relatively confident that a self empathizer is a narcissist (sp?). Regeneration as it is now fits it's current name. You are regenerating hitpoints lost but you are taking a more active role in the regen, you have to focus more on it than you would pre-i6 (i think that was the major regen debuff)

Now, I really don't think that conversations like this one that devolve into a masochistic opening of old wounds is ever going to make the devs want to look at fixing some hole in regen. Like they have in other defense sets. As a population we need to agree that adding in -recharge resistance and -regeneration resistance are "on par" with the upgrades that other sets are getting. Also we need to agree that they wouldn't over balance regen into the "easy mode" mode that it once was. If only those two things are added, no changes to the nature of how a power acts (like making IH a toggle again) i don't think you can overbalance it, provided it's a resistance and not a total protection. Any set should have it's "counter" but i don't think the counter to a regen would be -regen. Regen already has counters in the form of empty defence that are plenty easy to exploit.

To counter the argument that regen is still popular I will present the results found in another thread. Regens over level 25 (mostly 50's) and likely reached 50 long ago, 13 . Number of new regens less than level 25, implying they are freshly rolled, 3 . It's a small sample size but if the active posters on this board are not leveling up new regens i think it's indicative of regens need of some new spit and polish.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll go ahead and assume you're being sarcastic and not notify a mod that you are a troll...

If you wanted to be really sarcastic you would have used the [QR] flag to make it painfully obvious that you're replying to the title and didn't read the whole thread or at least the OP.

Although i think you missed your comedic timing by about 2 posts. You'll have to be quicker and smarter next time.


[/ QUOTE ]

you whine too much. regen should have regen resistance. willpower only has 23% and it means nothing when longbow spec ops debuff you to -5.06% - effectively shutting down 700+% of regen. of course i already stated this - on page 1. now who's not reading what?

my post was in reponse to werner's banter.

quit whining.

op wants old regen?

hrm.

i used to two box my dm/regen with an ff defender back before issue 1. talk about disgustingly overpowered.

a high recharge stone/shield would burn through over 1.5 eps more than a dm or fire/shield. in fact on my sm/wp brute with 4.24 eps recovery it still has end problems. stone melee is an end pig.

i believe fire has best end per dmg setup available to scrappers or brutes but as powerforge said you'd have to try to fit aid self in there at some point and hope it's not a dot that's killing you

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I went with /EA. Partly because I'd already soloed AVs with /SR and /SD, but also becuase brutes don't get Conserve Power in their epic pools like scrappers do, and /EA gets not only Conserve Power, but Energy Drain, too. Endurance management is one of the critical issues in fighting AVs, and it's possibly the most easily overlooked.

People who forget that brute /SR and /SD don't get Conserve Power the way scrappers do, will likely find themselves disappointed. Softcapped defense and a high DPS chain mean squat if you have to let up because you're running out of endurance, allowing the AV to regenerate lots of the damage you've done.

Dark Melee brutes may find some solace in Dark Consumption, but it's not nearly as useful or reliable as the tools provided by /EA.

Now EA is more vulnerable to defense debuffs than /SR or /SD, which can be a problem while fighting some AVs, and it's weak to psi and negative attacks, which several notable Freedom Phalanx and Vindicator AVs use. So it's by no means perfect for redside AV soloing.

But it does come equipped with the tools you will need to sustain a high DPS attack chain indefinitely, which is one of the keys to beating AVs. Brute /SR and /SD don't have these tools available, unless they're DM/, in which case the tool they have is inferior.

[/ QUOTE ]

the end drain isnt an issue at all.

my current fm/sr build has 3.23 recovery and burns 0.9 in toggles. it can maintain it's attack c hain for quite a long time.

powerforge's proposed fm/sr build would take over 40 minutes of continous attacking using his three attack chain of incinerate - cremate - firesword to run dry on endurance.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, I'm not saying they did it badly, I'm just saying I'd have done it differently; I'd have been sure not to release the game until it more closely resembled the comic books.

That would mean allowing people to fight while airborne without gasping for breath. That would mean making super strength able to do things like lifting objects that are heavy. That would mean giving the heroes more to do than just hit things. I could go on and on.

By no means do I mean to say it would be easy, even with today's technology, let alone the technology available at that time. I'm just saying my priorities would have been different.

[/ QUOTE ]

'im guessing you werent here when cryptic was sued by marvel and dc due to there being claws and regen as a combo as well as others?

they cant bet THAT close to the comics we know, they will be sued to the ground.

i just spent about 5 minutes in mids and made a dm/sr that was soft capped with everything but elude from sr, leaping as travel and weave.

after putting 3 io's in the sr powers, i added one touch of death set, two zephyr sets (one in cj, one in sj) and all 6 bits of gaussians fire control in soul drain.

ended up with 45% to melee, 47% to aoe and ranged.

that's - a cheap investment. the end drain is high but that's pretty much compensated by dark consumption and i hadnt even put anything into any other powers.

yep. i think /sr is highly underrated for brutes.

edit: and even though we take but dont slot tough for /sr, putting the steadfast +3% in there meant i dont even need the gaussians set. i got my steadfast io for far cheaper than a full gaussians set is

what are rikti - namely rikti bosses - weak to anyway?

i know there's a spreadsheet out ther somewhere but i always forget to save the link when i come across it.

edit: n/m apparantly i did download the spreadsheet. if i'm reading it right - fire/energy/cold

heh powerforge must have a busy inbox as i've been chatting with him a ton too

one thing you didnt touch on was how much money you were willing to throw at this. it is rather expensive to soft cap an /sd brute redside vs. /sr while still having enough global recharge to have a decent attack chain.

plan a few builds in mid's. a lot will depend on your primary of choice as well. you may or may not need to pickup the medicine pool. you may or may not have room for many attacks in the primary. just remember that mid's incorrectly counts phalanx as always having one team mate in range so subtrace 3...whatever i think it's 3.75% from your totals page to see your actual defense.

it's also apparantly easier to get rather high resistances to defense debuffs as SR and elude is a great power to take but not bother to slot at 49 for when you have to deal with av's with tohit buffs or if you find yourself having end issues on those long fights until yo uare fully slotted out. /sd cheats using hammi-o's in active defense and double stacking it so there's a real possibility of the dev's pulling that rug out from under the feet of /sd players at some point in the future.

[ QUOTE ]
"Fitting these powers into the SS/WP formula is easier than using the Slap Chop. You only need 5 powers out of the primary to be successful (Punch, Haymaker, KO Blow, Rage, Footstomp). Everything but Resurgence in Willpower. Two powers from a travel pool if you want (I like leaping personally), and three powers from Fitness (hurdle/swift, health, and stamina). Add up those powers and you have room for a power to unlock Tough and Weave, Gloom (Yes have some! This attack rocks the socks!), Darkest Night, and one other power of your choice (I like Hasten)!!! There are many ways to slot these power choices and it's hard to go wrong. My power choices may go against your character concept, but really the only difference I can see is swapping Leaping for Flight."

But then you miss out on Dark Obliteration, which is imo not an optional power. I was faced with a choice between Darkest Night and Weave. Darkest Night provided a noticable benefit for the team, and weave was only for me. Darkest Night is also more useful for dealing with AVs.

[/ QUOTE ]

the debuff component of darkest night vs. an AV is not on the same level as weave imo. dont forget that av's resist a hefty portion of those debuffs.

with /wp you really do have to choose between getting your typed defense up, or getting a lot of global recharge. it's hard to get both especially if yo ugo for kinetic combat sets for smash/lethal defense.

religious use of footstomp is going to be extremely helpful to keeping your wp alive. obviously that maters almost nill in cimeroa and the custom AE missions where mobs are immune to knockdown. so getting it's recharge down will be important.

you really should max out the regen in RTTC. with just one enemy in range i go from 32.6 to 54.8 hp/s at level 44 (i also have 2150 hp due to frankenslotting)

i'm also stone melee, and fault is a god-like power for survivability when paired with wp (again, outside of cimeroa and some AE setups).

getting enough of the kinetic combat sets to make a difference in your survivability can be expensive and may take a while to actually locate, but it's worth it if you feel this is a char you want to invest in long-term

the problem is you cant cant actually soft cap your pets like you can in thugs.

you can put on them i think 17.9% range/melee/aoe from the single shields, another 11% i think it is from disperson bubble and thy have 7.5% each i think and that's not enhanceable right? add 5% edict of the master bonus and that's only 41.4%

have you considered doing a thugs/ff tankermind? you could soft cap them without a single io.

edit: NEVERMIND..4.1% more from manuevers caps 'em. totally didnt see that.

however i would recommend you consider team teleport as your movement power. it's going to be pretty important to keep them all in your dispersion bubble.

i guess my quesiton then is - without grant cover, how much defense debuff does your build have and is it enough for general play?

what are you giving up exactly?

you dont even have shadow punch or shadow maul in your build. you have about as many attacks as anyone who builds for 47% does.

pm sent

[ QUOTE ]
SS/SD

[/ QUOTE ]

yep i've seen ss/sd in successful practice doing the JoJo map. he was a beast.

200m is hot. better than i can do. then again, i dont farm with my mm's on 8 mans, only when i three box.

i always invariably get that one moronic /storm or /ff that spreads the spawns out before i've had the chance to root anything when i do 8 mans, or that corruptor who starts with rain of fire.

[ QUOTE ]
I imagine lots of people wouldn't. But for an additional IO getting 3.13% defense is an excellent deal. The REAL waste of money is Gladiator's Armor, I haven't bought one yet but I likely will for this build.

Still tweaking it to try and have minimal overage on defense but its a very irritating give and take. That and I really dont like slotting Soul Drain with Gaussians so it makes it harder.

[/ QUOTE ]

why wouldnt yo uwant to go over?

most /sr build for 47% so that if they do eat a couple broadsword/dual blade/katana style d ebuffing attacks, they are still at 45% afterwords due to their defdebuff resistance.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
i wouldnt go with any of those secondaries.

if you want to mostly aoe, that means some herding. and to herd, you gotta survive


while the secondaries you listed can survive most mobs - they all have a group or two that just eat through them.

personally if i were to make another herding brute it would be an /sr brute. why? defense debuffs in the form of various lethal attacks are EXTREMELY common in this game.


sadly none of the brute primaries are very good for aoe. it's too bad we dont have spines.

[/ QUOTE ]

Grrr I had a much longer post here but am refraining myself ... JupiterMoon you dispense awful advice in almost every post I read of yours and preach it as truth .... stop it ... stop it right now

To the OP: I would go with what Smurphy said and roll up a SS/Fire ... I have seen a few good ones in action and they are just sick.

Peace,

Amrat

[/ QUOTE ]

i do not give bad advice. i give real world advice.

i've been on teams with an ss/fire who just melted to the jojo map. he couldnt take the hit of the constant dual-blade wielding dudes. most of the ss/fire farmers i meet do the map spwans where there are custom enemies that do ONLY FIRE DMG.

in fact most brute builds designed for pure farming cant survive the JoJo map at all. if you need the arc id i can give it to you. it takes a pretty tough brute to survive the spawns without added CC help as they arent easily stunned from things like fault and stack multiple -7.5% defense debuffs being dual bladers.

best farming brutes for this map have been ss/shield and ss/sr from my personal experience.

and i'm still farming 70,000 infamy per minute on my thugs/traps on a map set for three people. so clearly i have no idea what i'm talking about

so far you have said your only concern is dmg.

the immob+burn combo with 75 fury, double stacked rage and fiery embrace going is over 1000 dmg to everything it's hitting. that's as much dmg as seismic smash on a target not resistant to smashing after a max target fulcrum shift and 80 fury.

IF pure dmg is what you're after, immob+burn+footstomp=done, next spawn.

you dont need an attack when talking about respec builds for io's or second builds for io sets. not even as bots. in fact if you really feel the need to get an attack, slot electric fences for dmg.

in fact a dmg slotted electic fences = 50 dmg. photon grenade with same slotting? 55 dmg. LOL

[ QUOTE ]
Dark would be pretty good. The AoE heal means you can recover HP fast after taking the alpha in BG mode. Add in fluffy, and not only do you get more healing, but more -acc debuff.

Plus a nice res debuff for more damage, Fearsome Stare for a nice opener, and an AoE rez to undo the occasional team wipe (no help with pets, tho)

[/ QUOTE ]

or you can go traps or ff and slot as suggested and simply not have an alpha to actually eat?

[ QUOTE ]
On my necro/storm I slotted all of them into tornado. I'd rather use tornado as a slotmule than gangwar honestly. You can get so much more useful effect out of slotting Gang war for the expedient reinforcements recharge buff.

On my Thugs/Poison I four slotted Expedient reinforcements and tossed the RE Defense IO, then spread the other two out accross my bruiser and my thugs. My reasoning was that my bruiser was already ED capped on damage and I didn't need any more ACC or EndRedux so the extra slot wouldn't hurt. On the thugs...thugs die a lot so the Value of slots that increase their performance is mitigated somewhat by their uptime so losing a slot here for another unique isn't too bad of an idea

[/ QUOTE ]

and that's prob because you're storm and poison. if you are /traps or /ff, your pets rarely if ever die even the suicidal arsonist - which makes gang war a power that you really dont need to use as any form of mitigation or dps.