MorePlz

I feel like every brute I run into in game is SS/. I understand the farming potential it has, but personally, I dont care for the set. Rage is nice and all, but I never liked the downtime when rage wears off, along with the endurance you lose from rage, the set just isn't all that fun for me to play.

As far as AoE's go, im sure SS is top, but how close is Fire Melee? I have a 50 fire Melee brute, which I really enjoy, but how far behind SS am I?

Im sure this has all been discussed lately, but im interested in hearing what everyone has to say. I was thinking of making an /EA brute, and was considering playing Fire Melee again, because I really enjoyed the set.

So, how far is fire/melee behind SS for Aoe/ST?

My current project is a fire/ta corruptor. He his lvl 23, and he feels pretty powerful. Im enjoying the debuffs mixed with fire's aoe potential. It seems like the sets blend well together.

On the other hand, I feel like im lacking survivability. I know traps has ffg, which can help a lot in that area, especially in the late game when combined with IO's.

My questions are, how do the two sets compare? For straight debuffing, does TA come out of ahead? When I get to lvl 35 and can use Oil slick arrow, will I be satisfied I carried on, or will I be wishing I made him /traps?

Ty in advance.

Ty for responses. That's what I expected. I have played both at 50 on a brute, except my shield brute is paired with stone melee, while my fire brute is paired with elec melee. I wasn't sure if my opinion of fire being better was based solely on elec's greater aoe damage.

I'm currently working on a claws/fire that seems very promising. I'm not sure if claws will outdue elec melee, but I'm sure it will be close. The claws aoe is so strong, on a shorter recharge than most others. Paired with the constant damage buff from 1-2 follow ups. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I haven't seen any recent posts. With the new changes to burn, how do these sets compare from an offensive standpoint?

Blazing aura
Burn
Fiery embrace

Against all odds
Shield charge

Who wins?

Yeah, that makes sense, but isn't that gonna be a waste of fulcrum shift, if I skip it on the next group? Or will FS even be up that quick? Just curious if these two present any minor problems for anyone. I mean, the set looks great, even if I don't throw out the most effecient FS possible.

I decided to role an arch/kin. I'm level 35 right now and enjoying it. I'm getting close to fulcrum shift, so that's exciting. When I made this guy I was thinking RoA + FS = awesomeness.. but now I'm not sure

Rain of arrows cast time is long. Possibly good for setting up scourge, but ppossibly bad for trying to stack with FS. If I'm giving my entire team such a large damage buff, along with recharge buff, will they kill most of the enemies before I can use FS and RoA?

Maybe I'm overthinking this a bit, but for anyone else that plays an arch/kin, how does your perform in a large team setting?

Well, its been a while since i've been on the forums, or CoX at all really. I haven't played in a few months, and decided to reactivate my account tonight. I read about energize, and wasn't really all that impressed with the description. Aftering doing some color swapping, which is very sweet, I bumped my setting up to 6 man groups, got me a council newspaper mission, and decided to see how good I am now. I was very impressed. The power seems to fit /ela perfectly. If anyone remembers my name at all, I was one of the biggest whiners about getting /ela fixed. I definitely dont think /ela is THE top secondary for brutes, but with the insane endurance, and now some "decent' survivability (excellent when combined with my IO bonuses) I think ela is a respectable choice for brutes.

Well I didn't settle on a new dominator until sunday.( Last day of double xp weekend) I went with ice/fire. He is 50 and IO'd and I'm really liking it. The hold time is the same as gravities, but I found out what the real problem was. The rooting when casting the hold. With gravity It would require me to just sit in a spot so they were so far away, but with ice I can cast it and normally keep moving to get fairly close to where they are. The other two doms I've played were /thorns and /nrg. And I would have to say /fire > both.

But.. What I was actually here to post about for those who may not have even read the top part.

While in RV, I was watching the "damage bonus" under combat attribute while Fiery embrace was running, just to see how much +damage I had with IO bonuses and such. Problem was, Fiery embrace only lasted for about 10 seconds, even though the icon was still showing that it was active. Anyone else ever notice this or know what the deal is?

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Mind/Nrg and Earth/Nrg are very good atm.

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I'm loving my Fire/Energy in pvp, however zones sorta "hamper" his abilities, since it scatters my fire imps and causes un-wanted NPC aggro..


Other than that though, he totally rocks

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Good to hear, I'm thinking I may reroll to fire/nrg. Sing doesn't really even do anything since you can't stack holds :/ It also seems like i'm struggling to use wormhole. It doesn't seem to work the same way as tp foe. Anyone have a clue of what I'm talking about with wormhole, and possibly an explanation of an easier way to use it?

It just seems like Gravity's hold wears off by the time my first attack is going off... I guess gravity doesn't have much synergy with nrg. I'm thinking fire would be a better choice to go with. Fire/nrg or Fire/fire. (Not a fan of mind/fire)

Well back when I heard doms were getting a Damage buff, I decided I was going to make a new dom. I got him to lvl 30 that night and he is currently only 41(Going back to finish him up now)

He is Grav/nrg. I thought that lift=levitate from the mind set. Also dont like the animation when you cast the hold. Wormhole isn't what I thought it would be. Singularity doesn't seem like he will have much of an effect in pvp. I've been told dimension shift has a few uses in pvp.( Casting on a blaster when he uses aim/bu?) Overall, gravity just seems to be lacking in pvp.

I was thinking I could salvage him by comparing it to mind in the sense that powerpush = levitate, since they both have high mag kb. Should I just reroll, or will the set be decent in arena/zones at 50.

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Just a pointer, jump straight up with Shockwave, targeting an enemy close to you, and click the ckill at the apex. You will ragdoll everybody as if it were a PBAOE, throwing them against the floor, providing much more mitigation than knockdown does and limiting scatter. It's easy, it mimics a PBAOE, and with range enhancement it's a MUCH larger AOE than anything else you can have.

Claws has some of the best soft control, and ragdoll is far more potent than knockdown, by a factor of 3 at least.

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Well for this case, Claws wouldn't be the best choice if this is the method of soft control you are using.

[Grounded]- KB protection that only works while you are on the ground. Jumping in groups will most likely knock you down quite often.

As for claws having best soft control. I honestly dont know if it is better soft control than Stone Melee. I have a 50 SM brute and he kept mobs on their back constantly. Granted, he did have some good recharge bonuses, but even without he was very effective. Fault is a ranged group knockdown, and tremor is another PBAoE knockdown that can be very effective. Tremor has a 15' range, and a fairly short recharge, so using it and fault is probably the best soft control.

In general, I wouldn't say "use inspirations" since that isn't really specific to a certain set. A blaster could use inspirations and tank with little difficulty in most situations.

As for "pairing with knockdown", the OP wanted claw/elec info on how to improve the survivability.

Honestly, without a set that provides constant knockdown you will not be able to consistently survive spawns solo. I'm not even sure knockdown will save you. My fire/elec brute will be similiar to your claw/elec, and i'm telling you now that you will struggle to survive, or constantly use inspirations(Which I hate to rely on). My brute has some regen and 36% melee defense, and about 21% ranged def, but still struggles due to defense debuffs. Just a little insight for the future.

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I'm curious how to make Electric Armor as durable and strong as possible. I'm probably going to make a Claws/Electric Brute when they come out for Brutes.

I'm trying to make him as tough as possible. With an all resist set that can be pretty hard. There is a little mitigation in Claws, but not a lot and I want to make my toon as tough as possible.

What suggestions do you all have?

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Make sure to get a nice chunk of +regen. If your only doing AE missions, +def will give you a nice advantage, but any real mobs will definitely cut through it very quickly due to defense debuffs. I found this out from personal experience. Tough/weave is a given. If you dont build for any defense bonuses, I would say dont even take weave, since only 7% wont help a whole lot.

As for aid self, I never really saw the advantage of it, unless you are gonna use it inbetween groups to decrease downtime. It takes several seconds to cast, and by the time its done animating, you will probably have taken as much damage as you healed if you use it in combat.

Just my two infamy. Good Luck with it, and lets hope i16 has something in store for us.

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Why would we want this? So when the power is NOT up, we can do just as poorly as we do now? No thanks.

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Are you serious? It's increases your HP which is the same as providing +resis, and it would be very similar to Dull Pain.

I don't know about you but going from 1700 HP to 2200-2500 HP is pretty damn effective. Not to mention people can already perma-DP.

Now, do you have a suggestion or you just here to be a negative nancy?

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Sounds good to me, lets have it!

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If this was the last option, then yes I would take it.

The reason being for NOT wanting it is as follows. The "dull pain" which was referred to was actually [true grit] type numbers, accompanied with some +endurance recovery, (or -end cost liek conserve power) that would NOT be permanent. So we would have a few hundred mroe HP's, only SOME of the time.

For saying it can be made perma? Yes it can. Gobs of recharge and it will be, but using that as part of your argument is kind of irrelevant since balance isn't based off of IO's.

All in all, If we are getting some +HP's, Let it be a REAL dull pain clone, or a permanent HP buff if its going to be True grit type numbers. A stack of +HP's would make me happy.

That is all.

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One more question concerning Frozen Aura: If you slot the sleep set's "10% chance for 5% heal" can it proc multiple times in one application of the power. Since you can hit up to 10 enemies with Frozen aura, its pretty sure to at least give you a small heal, but does anyone know if it can proc off of, lets say two people for a 10% heal in one usage?

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It will only hit once unfortunately.

When it was first available, the chance would individually roll against everything it hit. That was awesome, but it was very OP.

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Oh okay, thx for the clarification. Would you still recommend slotting it in Frozen Aura?

One more question concerning Frozen Aura: If you slot the sleep set's "10% chance for 5% heal" can it proc multiple times in one application of the power. Since you can hit up to 10 enemies with Frozen aura, its pretty sure to at least give you a small heal, but does anyone know if it can proc off of, lets say two people for a 10% heal in one usage?

Good to know, ty for the responses. I was thinking of going with shield/ice melee. The damage buff from shield should make the lower damage ice attacks decent, while making the Frozen aura, fireball, and frost decent aoe damage, and very survivable.

Good or bad build choice?

Looking at the tanker secondaries, I recalled /ice getting some type of buff.. So I decided to check it out.

It seems like Frozen Aura is a very good aoe now. It seems to be tied with Footstomp for damage and recharge, but of course no Rage. I know the single target damage is lacking, but in the AoE department, is it on par with most other sets? Or am I just overlooking some of the bigger flaws.

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Good catch. I removed most of Stygian's ability by doubling the recharge and nearly halving the heal values. Perhaps a base 5% per dead enemy would be enough. That and removing the end-recovery. As it isn't that common of a power and dependent upon surviving until enemies begin dropping, there is potential for balance. I just may have left the numbers still a bit too high. Either that or instill a 3-4 target cap.

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Idk, I think the overall Idea may just be a little much for a brute.

/EA gets a group heal that does just 3% per enemy, and it can miss (IIRC). Getting the recharge on that power down to 30sec before IO's could make it usable twice a group. It would have to be interruptable. I could see my brute running in and using FireSwordCircle, and instantly killing minions, and using the power halfway through a fight to get full life, and then again after cleaning up the LTs and/or boss. The power would have to require a target cap, or a heal cap. It would have to equal /EA's heal. I like the idea, It would be hard to balance for a brute though, without gimping it or making it OP'd.

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Suggestions to fix electric:

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Fixed. It may look minor, but you need to get the set name right if I'm going to believe you know what you are talking about. I'm inclined to believe you haven't played the set. The same thing applies with the next word in bold.

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Add a minor Mez affect to Lightning Field and/or Power sink. Mezzes minions, chance to Mez LTs.

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1) Lightning Field is a taunt aura that deals damage. It helps keep my enemies near me so I can SMASH. Mezzing minions makes them do the drunk walk away from my SMASH.
2) Minions are the least of my worries as an Electric brute. They might add up, but I rely on their attacks a lot for ease of fury generation. When I have trouble on an electric brute, it's facing a +3 boss that hits very hard.

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Add a +regen bonus to Conserve power and call it Overcharge or something similar. Make similar changes to other versions of CP.

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Electric Armor needs more consistency in its survivability, not another long-recharge click power. I have powersurge (if I actually take it) for survivability. The power you sound like you're suggesting is Regen's instant healing. As cool as that power is, I wouldn't want it. I'll repeat what I said - Electric Armor needs a more consistent means for survivability.

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Give Mu brutes/SOAs a version of EMP as the "Epic power" an alternative could be Electric Shackles/Tesla Cage.

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So if I roll an electric brute, I have to chose Scirocco as my patron? The issue at hand is that when Electric Armor gets ported blueside, there will be access to two Conserve Powers. Removing conserve power from electric armor solves this issue. The only issue is what to put in its place. The last thing I would want there is a mez - especially something like EMP Pulse.

I suppose I should put forth something new. The issue with Electric Armor is two-fold:
1) For Soloing, electric armor does not have the health gain to maintain fury once you run out of greens. On a team, you WILL definitely run out of greens. Soloing, the same thing does happen. Therefore, a method of recovering health will do much in this respect.
2) For teaming, electric armor does not have the survivability to lead an 8 man team at relentless - if the team is not providing solid mitigation. To increase survivability, the resists of certain areas should be increased - particularly smashing and lethal. 5-7% should be enough, though this may cause some issues when ported over to Tankers with their better resist values (they'll probably then be able to cap S/L/E).

Therefore, I am suggesting two changes to Electric Armor:

Remove Conserve Power and put it in Scirocco's PPP and in its place is:

Ionization: You drain the defeated foes around you of their mental energies, refreshing your armor. The more powerful the defeated foe, the greater the strength restored.

Minion: 5% Heal
Lieutenant: 10% Heal
Boss: 15% Heal

60 Recharge
15 End
25 Radius

This ability allows electric armor to recover after the fight is over so that the downtime between fights is reduced.

Also, by increasing the S/L resists, the ability to build an electric brute to survive alpha strikes is much easily attained. Sure, one can invest in IO sets (I have two level 50 electric brutes that are heavily invested in), but it should not be necessary. Electric Armor with just SOs really does pale in comparison to the others.

The only other possible alternative is to remove the interrupt from Aid Self so that it can be used mid-combat. I don't see that happening.


Edit: for clarity.

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I like the ideas in here. To start off, The idea of using the WS power, Sty--- Circle, would make the set heavily overpowered IMHO. A full life refill while having a full blue bar also won't be happening.

/ELA does need consistency to survive, not a long recharge click power. Previously someone wanted to modify Conserve Power to Give +HP's while it was active. We dont need something for half the time, We need a permanent Fix.

I Honestly think a + HP power would make the set much tougher. Adding a permanent 400-500 HP's after getting all the accolades would make for a brute with High HP's, and decent resistances. Along with the HP's, a slight +regen in grounded, almost as health, would help a lot to decrease the downtime, but I think that would be a little much.

As for the change, I also hope its something viable for pvp.

Also, for those who use defense to "fix the holes in /ela" stacked with darkest night: So many mobs in the game have Def debuff powers, that it basically eliminates your defense very quickly, leaving only darkest night and your resistances to defend you. Invul, WP, Sr, /shield, and /stone all have Defense debuff resistance, making +def bonuses GREAT for them, but very sub par for /ela. Give us soem defense debuff res and I would be happy. But, things aren't centered around IO's, so that wont be happening.

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Ya know /Traps was changed recently... It was a change that definately made it viable, effective, and it was probably the most fun I've had with a PvP toon in a long time.

Alas via PM confirmation from Castle it seems it was a bug. (Removed in the latest patch...figured I was the only /Traps Corr out there actually PvPing so I didn't bother posting abut it) Basically, Trip mine, Posion trap, Time Bomb, and Acid Trap were all set to follow the catser.... a "follow-aggressive" stance. (Acid would detach from base and fly...and posion traps flew as well) I could lay 4-5 trip and posion mines and set out to a rooftop 300 yrds away to ambush a squishy troller or blaster... or take the time to lay 15 mines and 6 posion traps and become a walking PBAoE nightmare for any AT foolish enough to spend more than 2 seconds in melee. I spent over a week playing around and testing the change... Setting up mines and having them follow me across the zone. It made ambushes ten times more effective although the time consumption of having to lay several and baby-sit them as the follow slowy behind was somewhat annoying when facing multiple opponents.

I think the unfairness of it all was that once the mines left their "home" spot where they would remain visable, they were completly not visable. Unless you noticed the fall damage or water trails they made, no opponemt could be made aware of their location or existance... like I said for a PvP AT that revolves around ambush tactics... this was gold.

I was told only that a moving trip mine was definately a bug... so perhaps with the Traps set headed to the Blueside it will get a few AI buffs as well. I'm just guessing the supossed bug I found was a clue to what the devs may be planning... I mean how does acip trap just start detaching itself and moving/flying with you without someone actually making it possible?

My Rad/Traps Corr teams often in RV so perhaps I've come to find it easier to do well with the set. They know my style of play and usually are more than willing to accept an ambush/pull tactic rather than the SS/SJ split up spike all day tactic. I see no power changes needed... keep them as is, but the AI changes I saw would be more than welcome back.

Edit: The changes I experienced were only in PvP zones.. which is why I think the devs may already be looking to buff the set's PvP viability. Here's hoping!

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Woah, I thought it was just me, but I noticed acid mortar was following me around. When I was setting up on the side of the train, I would go aroudn to get a target, and the Acid mortar would be right next to me. I thought it was just a visual glitch. For some reason though, I would notice random explosions go off on people that were near me with orange numbers above their head. I guess I was taking part in this little bug without even knowing. Nonetheless, it was very sweet the few times I saw it happen, even if I just took it as a visual bug.

As for the tactics you mentioned, If the radius of the bombs and such were increased, then it would be quite a bit more useful to try to get enemies to run over them.

IF someone with superspeed on just runs over my mines and doesn't stop on one, It will pretty much foil the entire plan I had.

Webnading then tping them onto caltrops and traps is tough to pull off.. I've tried it, but you gotta have a lot of time, and get quite lucky imho.

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I would be happy to demonstrate in game where it actually matters. Where instead of debating numbers you can see "hey Electric armor works".

Plus Hitpoints, Regeneration, Recharge and Defense are all great on Electric Armor. Many players think that only soft-capping defense or massive piles of defense make a difference. Every little bit counts.

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I actually think its just everyone sucks with /ela, except for you. You have mentioned in the past that you have a build on live, which you posted, that focused on +hp's and +recharge, and you attempt to kill them before your life reaches zero.( I would go back and find it if I felt I needed to.) Maybe you have a ton of recharge and spamming footstomp is acting like a big damage deterent. Maybe it keeps them off of you very well to make it above sub par.

Basic play isn't balanced around IO's but we all know that with IO's, /ela is far behind.

Having a big stack of defense isn't the only way, but its probably one of the best ways to increase survivability, and on a /ela, it does pretty much nothin with all the defense debuffs.

As clouded said, it may be SS/ that is "clouding"(pun intended) your view of how /ela really performs.

I"m glad you can make it work, but with Fire melee on my brute, I cant pull off the same trick.

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Why would we want this? So when the power is NOT up, we can do just as poorly as we do now? No thanks.

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Are you serious? It's increases your HP which is the same as providing +resis, and it would be very similar to Dull Pain.

I don't know about you but going from 1700 HP to 2200-2500 HP is pretty damn effective. Not to mention people can already perma-DP.

Now, do you have a suggestion or you just here to be a negative nancy?

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Becauswe we are getting a "True Grit" type power, that is up half the time... That means /Ela will be just as bad as NOW, 50% of the time. We are getting lower DP numbers, and its gonna be up half the time. Either DP numbers, or perma +hp(True grit numbers)

On a more positive note, there is no way they are porting the set over to tanks the way it is. I'm definitely seeing the conserve power change going through. Maybe they will add something more than just the change to conserve power, idk.

Anyway, YAY :P

Oh okay, I thought you took the numbers From Time Bomb.

I'm down for sending it to Castle, I'm sure other /trap players would appreciate it :P