Kepaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Is another round of Powerset Proliferation going to be in Issue 19?

Over the course of the game, I've played a bunch of brute with kin corrupter duos. I've been both the brute and the corrupter at different times. One unanimous bit is that fire seems like the best corruptor primary overall... as for the brutes, here are some thoughts from previous experiences:

Dark/Shield - Shields was great, but dark was so anemic in a group setting that I eventually had to reroll the character. It did ok in a duo setting, I guess, but even then I felt like I did meager AOE contribution (mostly through the PPP) and half-decent single target contribution compared to the fire/kin. Contributing solely through shield charge and the patron/epic pools seems like a stretch for saying that dark is great in a very AOE-centered game. It's a really nice soloing primary, though.

SS/Fire - Was strong before the buffs last issue, is pretty incredible now. Fiery Embrace now can push you past the double-fulcrum damage cap. Add to that blazing aura and the new burn, and you have something that will make you feel incredibly powerful offensively, if somewhat fragile if you're doing x8 spawns.

SS/WP - I consider willpower too boring when combined with a set like Super Strength. Could work well with a more "busy" primary, though. This brings me to...

Mace/Electric - I was really impressed by mace. At high recharges, you essentially have a continuous and very powerful AOE attack chain from the primary alone. The single target chain is also quite powerful. On top of that, I don't see a lot of people use mace. Electric secondary (and speed boost) helps with mace's endurance issues.

SS/Shields/Fireball - My current main character, and also my favorite character so far, after playing this game off and on from the start.

I still need to try fire melee. It seems to have a lot of potential, though I'd need to get used to losing the huge radius of footstomp. Rage won't be missed, though... I wish they'd replace it with something else. I hate the crash so much that I no longer use the power except in heavy to-hit debuff situations.

Brute by far. Especially in the earliest levels. Just put brawl on autocast, to help your fury be constantly at its best.

Masterminds always seemed dinky. Until you filled out your pets, but that takes some leveling. They're quite safe, if you don't mind practically boring your enemies to death.

Scrappers lag behind brutes at the earliest levels. They're actually better than brutes for solo leveling once you can get to 22, though. A brute has an advantage there, where they can just slot purely for accuracy and endurance in earlier levels. They get adequate damage buffs from fury. Once a scrapper can slot for damage, without neglecting accuracy, their higher base damage actually has a chance to shine.

Spines/Ice with full fury would be hilariously good. I'd make one in a second. Katana/Anything would be great, though I never liked Katana. It's great on paper, I just can't stand the death-by-many-cuts playstyle. Unless of course the cuts are double toggle auras, because that has comedic appeal.

Though really, what I'm hoping for is Scrappers getting more brute primaries. I want a version of footstomp or crowd control that can crit.

SS/Shield wins out in sustained damage, that is, damage over time. People above are saying that Elec's burst damage advantage is overkill for situations you'd actually see in the game.

However, Elec/Shield is incredibly flashy, especially with the new power customization. Even when min/maxing, you have to consider how good you look. Besides, you could always lightning rod + thunderstrike one group, then shield charge + thunderstrike the next group.

Or you could just obliterate a group with all three. Why does OVERKILL have to be a bad term? It sounds like a compliment to me.

Yes, another double XP weekend's coming up. They said after I16, and it would be an extra one due to stability problems on some servers the last double XP weekend. The actual date is yet to be announced.

When I was leveling my SS/SD, I got my defense to about 33% to melee and ranged. Then I just carried lucks around. One luck got popped every minute or so to keep myself at the cap, with new inspirations coming in constantly to turn into lucks or whatever I needed. I lead the group and absorbed the alpha strikes (or I tanked, stupid recent "brutes aren't tanks" thread) during my entire run from 1-50.

Before I got the gaussians set and steadfast IO, I popped two lucks a lot. This worked, too, but it was kind of annoying. Once you get to 33%, just having to pop one luck really makes the process easy.

SS/Shield Brute...

... paired up with a Fire/Kin Corruptor.

They just compliment each other too well. Brute does the initial volley of damage, the corr scourges everything with fireball and rain of fire, picking off the rare survivor with blaze. The corr heals and buffs, the brute easily provides an additional 15% defense to all.

The fire/kin corrs I group with tend to have high defense from set bonuses, and Grant Cover just pushes them to the cap. It's hard to call a character fragile when it is defense capped, has 60% resistances to the most common damage types, and can heal itself. Plus it lets them stay in prime fulcrum territory, barring AOE mezzers: directly in the middle of a group.

lol wut a bad build u didnt even put an enhances in punch


Are you trying to cap AOE defense, too, or just melee/ranged? I have different advice if you're trying to cap AOE also, but for now I'll assume you just want melee/ranged.

1. Don't put the second slot into Phalanx Fighting, so not worth it. Just use it as a LOTG Recharge mule. The defense enhancement only enhances the bonus you get for standing right next to other people. I don't think I need to elaborate this point.

2. Put that extra slot from the above in Haymaker. Put a full Touch of Death set in there. That should cap out your melee defense.

3. Mako's Bite full set into KO Blow, raising your ranged defense.

4. Bust Grant Cover's slot amount down severely. I heavily suggest just to the one slot it gets for possible LOTG Recharge purposes. If you were going for set bonuses, you could probably just allocate another slot or two to health for the numina's 3 piece bonus.

5. Add one or two slots to combat jumping to put a 2 piece zephyr's in there. By this point your ranged defense should be capped out.


AOE capping's really quite possible, though after trying both non-AOE capped and AOE capped builds I have to recommend the former. If you wanted to, you could do a fully AOE capped build by taking the above tips, but then 6 slot stamina for Performance Shifter for an additional 3% AOE while also having Combat Jumping be 3 Zephyrs and a LOTG +Recharge or Defense slot. Looks like you'd have to make the following sacrifice for 44.6-44.9% AOE defense: You'd have only 3 (Woops 4) extra slots to share between Tough, Active Defense, and Health. 3 to share between them if you insisted on having two LOTG's in Combat Jumping along with 3 Zephyrs.

Sorry I didn't post a Mid's build, but I mangled my copy beyond repair at the moment.

Sometimes I see the argument made that when GR hits, no one will want tanks in a commonplace PUG. I kind of doubt that. If anything, people will probably like tankers just because it's an advertisement of the player's mentality.

Tanker Icon near name = Most likely going to be thinking mostly about controlling aggro.
Brute Icon near name = Most likely going to be thinking mostly about punching mailboxes and destroying cars with lightning.
Scrapper Icon near name = Either thinking about CRITICAL messages or spreadsheets, depending.

I've seen some tanks that produce acceptable amounts of damage and some brutes that don't manage to do anything of value. At least with a tank, a bad player has a random chance of accidentally contributing. To me, the fact that we'll have a choice between tankers, scrappers, and brutes at all times just means that I have a bigger pool of PUG people to choose from that can fill a similar role.

Offtrack: I also look forward to having a pool of defenders, controllers, and corruptors to buff my brute to asinine levels.

I recently leveled an SS/Shield, without kins or any outside help for my blue bar for the most part. Stamina consumption wasn't a huge deal, especially post stamina. Some things that helped me:

1. Put tons of endurance reducers in your attacks. Sacrifice damage. When I had DO's or under I basically just slotted accuracy and damage, by the time I reached SO level I did two acc, two end, and either two damage or a damage and recharge, depending on the attack. Fury gives you the option of neglecting damage until you're IO'ing it up, because you're still going to do brute damage with a loaded fury bar.

2. As soon as you can get IO's reasonably well, switch to them. Three or four school IO's have the most total enhancement percentage per slot. If you don't care about set bonuses, it's not difficult to get 60% enhancement or more to all the stats of all your attacks way before level 50.

3. Linked to the above two: Your attacks drop your endurance faster than your toggles, as a rule. Make sure to concentrate on putting endurance enhancements in your attacks.


Additionally, but I don't recommend it because it will cause me to be booed at: Rage seems to really deplete your endurance. I never liked the penalties of Rage anyway, despite the numerical superiority of the power. Once I started using Rage only in emergencies, I noticed that my blue bar went from almost full to almost nothing less often. This is most likely due to the combination of Rage and Hasten crashing at the same time. It seems to me that when I only have to deal with Hasten's crash, my endurance bar has a chance to actually bounce back.

Most AOE in as little time as possible? Probably Electric/Shield/Mu. Not necessarily the best in sustained AOE dps, though.

Not City of Stockbrokers? Doesn't feel like it from where I'm standing.

Playing the market not heroic enough? If I remember right:
Batman's main superpower was that he played the market.