City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Mayhem Maven

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  1. Mayhem Maven
    1. It depends on what you want your brute to do. If you are exclusively doing fire farms, then you can rely on purple inspirations to be your defense while your 90% fire resist takes care of the rest. This allows you to optimize all IO sets on recharge. Some go for 32.5% defense vs. fire (one small purple inspiration from the soft cap) to reduce the dependency on purple inspirations--which still leaves lots of room to build up recharge. For an all-round build that can do more than just fire farms, you'll want at least 32.5% defense to smashing/lethal and perhaps to other damage types too. Again this will still leave you with room for a decent amount of recharge.

    2. If you have a seamless attack chain, then there is no need for low damage filler attacks. It is really easy to get and maintain 60+ fury.

    3. Some brutes never take taunt. Those that do tend to save it for the late 40s--you likely don't want the undivided attention of every enemy until you have set IOs anyway. The power takes some decent sets if you have the slots to spare.

    4. I tend to jump in and make things dead--I'm not sure how much that helps. By the time you have IO sets and such, you can easily take the hits. When grouping, if I don't think I can handle a sustained beating from all the enemies, I will wait a few seconds before using all my AE abilities, which lets the Mastermind pets or whatever take a few of the hits. If I think I can handle the beating, I start right in with my AE attacks, happily drawing the attention.
  2. Mayhem Maven
    Up until the 30s, Willpower is going to have a lot better survivability. Then Electric starts to catch up. Electric gets a heal at 28 (Energize), and once you get Power Sink slotted you'll never have endurance issues again. Although Power Sink requires enemies to work, it is autohit, so it is very reliable (plus it gives you something useful to do while sitting through the reduced-damage time from Rage crash). Foot Stomp, from the knockdown, and Power Sink, from draining enemies of endurance, add a lot of miscellaneous survivability. Lightning Field not only adds much needed AE damage (Super Strength only gets Foot Stomp for AE and not until 32), but also lets you do low-level ambush missions in the Mission Architect if you want to speed level through the low levels (see the CEBR thread for more details), something SS/Willpower can't do. Even on SOs, by 36 you'll be very powerful and you'll only get better as you start investing in IO sets.

    As for Patron Pools, Mu and Soul both make good choices. Mu gives you two AE attacks (Electric Fences and Ball Lightning), while Soul gives you Gloom, an amazing single target attack that you'll want to work into your standard rotation, and Dark Obliteration, a decent AE attack.
  3. Mayhem Maven
    If you pick a high survivability, low damage secondary like willpower or invulnerability, make sure to match it with a primary that can do AE damage. That's why mauk2's fire/willpower and claws/invulnerability suggestions work. I had a dark melee/invulnerability brute that I deleted because of the frustrating lack of AE damage [edit: I know Dark Melee has Shadow Maul, but its ease of use is nowhere near that of Foot Stomp].

    For a well-rounded brute, with great single-target damage, great survivability, and decent AE damage, I would recommend Super Strength/Electric Armor/Soul Mastery. For single-target damage, you have Gloom, Haymaker, and Knockout Blow for attacks, plus double-stacked Rage, Lightning Field, and Lightning Reflexes. For survivability, you start out average for a brute (despite lacking defense, you have high resists and a heal), but by the time you get your defense soft-capped through IO enhancements and power pools, you become godlike. Your survivability especially shines in the incarnate trials where you have 58% resistance to smashing/lethal and 90% energy, the three most common damage types. And for AE, you have Foot Stomp, Lightning Field, and Dark Obliteration. Admittedly, it is not a seamless AE attack chain, but you can fit in a single target attack on a boss to fill in the gap.

    As a great starting point to give you an idea how to build one, check out Auroxis's moderately-priced, soft-capped build:

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    I would recommend two variations from his build:
    1. Replace Mu and Ball Lightning with Gloom and Dark Obliteration. I would only go Mu Mastery over Soul if you were going to take both AE attacks.
    2. Replace one of the Obliteration enhancements in Foot Stomp with a Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge enhancement. It will help you Foot Stomp more often which will up your damage. Sure you lose 1.88% smashing/lethal defense from losing the 6-piece Obliteration bonus, but the -tohit from Gloom and Dark Obliteration make up for it. In fact, you could probably further adjust the build to sacrifice a little bit more defense for more recharge, as I did, but, again, this should be a good starting point. Also, this build thrives on recharge, so make sure to pick the Spiritual Alpha.
  4. Mayhem Maven

    LF Help SS/ELA

    POST-ACTION

    Also, don't overlook tricks like 4-slotting Brawl for a 5th melee power for Smashing Haymakers or Kinetic Combats.
  5. Mayhem Maven

    LF Help SS/ELA

    POST-ACTION

    I like your power selections; I have something similar on my SS/ELA (I actually dropped Taunt and Power Surge for Assault and Vengeance because I didn't find myself using those powers, and the switch improved my recharge, but that's my personal preference). Consider Smashing Haymakers for cheap 4-piece smashing/lethal defense--which lets you grow into Kinetic Combats as you get the merits or inf. Also I would recommend against Siphon Insights in Gloom and Dark Obliteration. I actually use those powers for damage; I 5 slot them with Decimations and Positrons instead for recharge and decent combat numbers.

    What's your defense goal? You're at 40.7% Smashing/Lethal and 41.6% Melee. Are you pushing for softcap? Or would you be better off one Luck inspiration away from the softcap (32.5%), but with a lot more recharge?