JupiterMoon

exactly. tauntingin any form isnt required for a brute to just be a dps machine. we build fury far faster cycling through our attack chains than just having mobs beat on us. it helps, but it's not necessary.

even those times i'm playing a brute that's not 50 and in a group with a 50 brute (in this scenario, the taunts from the 50 brute even if i'm sk'd to 49 or 48 carry more weight and i dont pull aggro from him/her/it) i have no problems getting to and maintaining 70-80 fury with a good, solid single target attack chain. so technically we dont need taunt. taunt doesnt stop runners much anymore either, and scrappers have been scrapping for 5 years without it just fine.

no. i have a feeling the side affect of having taunt affects, higher hp and the tanker hp and resist caps on brutes was they were designed to be a villain groups meat shields when a meat shield was needed. if this is not the case, then there is no reason for brutes to have higher hp and resist caps than scrappers, because we can solo or straight dps wihout them just fine.

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Jadkni wins round 1.

Let Round 2 begin...

GO!

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hardly

never leave bodyguard for one

if you can, start out by dropping fluffy on the EB (well actually start out by dropping your difficulty if you havent already). plant darkest night and tarpatch then start spamming the hell out of your hold and fear. you will eventually take some dmg which will put your pets on said bosses. dont leave bodyguard.

he was pretty tough for my necro/dark too, but by using fluffy offensively in the above fasion i was able to down him.

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you dont have to be a granite brute to tank.


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I lost you, did I ever say this?

Just to be clear..tanking is the act of getting and holding the aggro to keep attacks off your party is my understanding. pls anyone feel free to correct me on this. Still just because my stalker can tank, it doesn't mean he's good. My words were "I built a pure granite for the uber tank, brute. If you don't think /rock can survive a higher lvl of damage and greater number of spawns, then I can onlty assume your experience with brutes is limited. Iff you checked my PARTIAL list up there I'm sure you will find I have played most sets and combos of those sets to compare.

And pls no "if you build this way or use these sets".. all have access to same IO sets or others.

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wasnt disagreeing with you, just pointing out that not only granite can tank well. actually if you are fortunate enough to be /wp with tough and have both a sonic and thermal, or two sonic or two thermal, you now have the same resists as a granite brute without the penalties and far far more regen

you dont have to be a granite brute to tank.

if you are tanking as a brute, then it's pretty obvious you arent alone. odds are, there is at least one thermal or sonic on your team, or a bubbler.

brutes scale insanely well when outside buffs are added. take a willpower brute and put sonic or thermal shields on it - voila, you now have the same smash/lethal resists of a willpower tanker. add in a second set of shields and yo uare capped to smash/lethal. what did you give up to make this possible offensively? absolutely nothing.

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Tactics offers more than just +tohit and it helps the whole team. Make sure you are ok with giving up its other extra perks too.

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this is important. since heroes fight arachnos with some regularity and a few of their mobs have smoke grenade and equivalents, the +perception is darn handy

You should look up Powerforge and send him a PM for his scrappers build. im sure you can adapt it to SS

yeah. the other set you mention - mostly SM - doesnt have rage and tremor PALES to footstomp in that if you actually use tremor, you lose fury. nearly three and a half seconds to fire it off, about the same animation time as shadow maul.

footstomp is a little too good, lets not kid ourselves here. it is our PSW

i dunno. the devs seem determined to limit somewhat how much aoe we get.

i mean brutes were the first non tankers to get fiery melee, and they removed consume when it was given to them. consume would be bloody FANTASTIC and is a far far better power than fire breath.

i bet real money if they ever give brutes spines and claws, they would lose one or more aoe powers.

it's difficult to justify taking invuln red side. i mean at least tankers can cap smash/lethal with tough. we cannot. around 70% if i recall

willpower can hit 50% smash/lethal and have the insane regen that invuln does not. it can also achieve the same levels of defense that invuln can with io sets albeit without the 50% defense debuff resistance invuln has.

outside of concept it's hard to justify taking invuln over wp redside now especially when one considers how willpower scales as soon as you add sonic or thermal shields. yes you can add that to an invuln brute - but you still dont have that 60-100+ hp/s regen

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I'm curious as to what everyone thinks is THE best soloing combo of AT and powerset in the game. By best I mean:

<ul type="square">Good from level 1 onwards.

Well balanced - so none that are, say, very survivable but not very hard hitting until late on (Bots/FF I'm looking at you when I say that...)

Not dependant on an IO build - good with only TOs/DOs and eventually SOs.[/list]So, what do you think?

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it varies on what you're fighting.

for red side due to the mag 4 hold, stone melee is a superior boss hunter. it's also an end hog of a primary and i've found i had end problems with all brute secondaries except willpower when paired with stone melee before io's - quick recovery AND stamina of course. fault is also a fantastic control to give wp's regen time to work when overwhelmed (except when in cimerora and they dont wanna go down!)

redside also thugs/traps or bots/traps are good. thugs is a little easier than bots due to having high dmg, fast recharging aoe's starting at level 12 and unlike bots, thugs/traps can softcap all of their pets defensively post io's - bots probots will never be softcapped unless you also dip into the leadership pool.

blueside it's mostly scrappers who shine 1-50. controllers can do it, but it's quite slow before you get your pets and your secondary is fleshed out. plants seeds of confusion is INSANELY powerful though once you have it and have slots in it. pop that bad boy and go to town with the aoe's.


if you want to also be able to solo av's, redside the best at to do it without temp powers or io's are thugs or bots/traps mm's. there are other mm's that can of course solo av's, but tehre will be some av's that just munch them. thugs or bots with traps is a better overall combination for every av/hero you have to deal with redside - and they are harder redside than blue

blue pre io's you're again looking at scrappers and controllers. i only have a fire/kin and ill/rad controllers at 50 blue side. the ill rad is an av machine the fire/kin not so much but it depends on the av in question. my dm/regen scrapper never really had any issue with any av's blue side. my dm/invuln had issues with some heavy psi using av's. i've never tried to solo an av with my old tankers - no fear of dying just took too damned long.

what are you igoing to do with this trio? taskforces? ae? mission running?

the brute can be wp if you take pain or ff in your secondary. stone is a very late bloomer and expensive to build around reducing the recharge penalty.

in a group setup with the right buffs, a wp brute can tank as well as a stoner. better even unless he's eating a lot of long bow spec-ops grenades or hefty amounts of defense debuffs while not having any resist shields up from a sonic or therm corruptor.

you and JB need to stop trying to copy comics and make your own original heroes or villains.

if you try to play blueside after playing villain content, prepare to be bored to tears.

i was just about to since i have recently fallen in love again with footstomp for...well for everything. and i enjoy the hell out of the super strength attack chains far more than stone melee.

however willpower is probably theone secondary brutes get redside that would still be viable. during the rage crash and assuming that -defense stays up even if yo urefresh rage as soon as it crashes (i've never actually tested that in game but i should) willpower still has it's resists and regen working for it.

/sr and /sd would now be at 25% defense assuming they didnt overcap their sets. ouch!

personally i'd be more worried about a foostomp nerf.

you'd stil have fire/fire in both brute and tanker flavor

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health is also a better place to put numina and miracle uniques than fast healing .... imo.

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How so? You can take Fast Healing way before you can get Health and consider Fitness pool could be taken later in a brute's life if needed or desired.

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because the bonus from fast healing is higher and enhances better than health

because - and you said it too - one generally starts to io out their chars at or near 50.

i put no io sets in hpt or fast healing on my wp brutes unless it doesnt interfere with maxing out their bonuses to the cap. they are too important to the build. health on the other hand is just a stepping stone to stamina with a small but noticeable increase in regen. two or three slot it and put 2 or three uniques in it and call it a day.

if rage couldnt stack, then yo ucouldnt avoid the -20% defense penalty. this would seriously hamper any /sr or /sd brutes, and any ice or sd tankers who took super strength.

dont slot brawl. put an end reducer in it and set it to auto fire

if you want another quick firing attack like that, pick up boxing and slot that. but not brawl.

go with super strength or dark melee. in the long run you will be happer.

footstomp &gt; lightning rod + thunderstrike

the resist cap for brutes is 90%

health is also a better place to put numina and miracle uniques than fast healing or hpt imo.

sow is more important for a brute than a tank. a wp tanker can get 70% smash/lethal with tough. a brute? 50%. the extra from sow can be the difference between living through the incoming dmg and a trip to the hospital.

the op should drop dark obliteration and darkest night. running 8 toggles without stamina (rttc, iw, mob, hs, tough, weave, cj?, darkest night) will need stamina. 7 toggles will need stamina. my sm/wp brute runs 7 toggles and burns around 1.02 eps. she recovers 4.20 eps. she can and does run out of endurance fighting eb's and av's with 60%+ end reduction in every attack. and that's with stamina.

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You're not soft-capped. You're at 43ish melee and AoE - unless you specifically edit the Mids' DB, Phalanx Fighting has 1 minimum ally in range. Your first build was closer to soft-capping than the second (needed more AoE).

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Not sure what you are seeing but I am soft capped on all three according to Mids.

Melee: 48.1%
Ranged: 51.3
AoE: 47.5

Unless, of course, I am using Mids wrong....very possible I reckon.

I have Phalanx set for 1.

Looking into this some more it appears you may be right.

Mids reports the numbers I put above...but doing the math myself I get:

Melee: 43.15
AoE: 42.53
Range: 46.28

So...I dropped Grant Cover and added Maneuvers, keeping all the slotting the same and now I have:

Melee: 45.79
AoE: 45.17
Range: 48.92

So...soft capped on the big three.

Whats weird is when I toggle off Phalanzx it drops my Def 10% yet I have it set for 1 enemy so it should only give me 4.52%

Anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong?

Edit: ah, I see what you mean now about Phalanx...thanks!

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phalanx isnt set right in mids. that 1 yo have it set at is the one other team mate in range at all times.

go into the database editor in mids and uncheck the ability to let it scale so it will only show you it's unenhanceable base at all times - which is 3%. if you are alone in a mob, you only get 3% from phalanx.

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I'd get rid of soul mastery myself, but thats just me. I'd also slot at least one end reduction in some of those attacks.

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no

get rid of darkest night and dark obliteration? sure

but gloom? hell no.


OP - if you ever plan to slot out io sets, you'll eventually want to get stamina