Mr_Grumpums

SS/FA/Fire APP Brute: Foot Stomp -> Burn -> Fireball -> Fire Blast -> Knockout Blow -> Haymaker -> Repeat.

It's a build that I've thrown a good amount of recharge into, and has the Rare Cardiac (33% end redux, 20% Res, 10% or so Fear). With Consume and Healing Flames, he can punch through most missions just fine without stopping. Blazing Aura and Rage are both constant during the chain, and Fiery Embrace is popped at the start of a chain as soon as it recharges. Jab and Boxing are occasionally thrown in for the sake of conserving endurance.

This is hardly a chain that screams efficiency, but enemies usually don't survive the second Foot Stomp, and tend not to have a chance to get in more than one quick attack before they're knocked down.

Claws/Elec/Mu Brute ST: Follow Up -> Swipe -> Slash -> Focus -> Swipe
Claws/Elec/Mu Brute AoE: Follow Up -> Lightning Ball -> Spin -> Focus -> Eviscerate -> Swipe

Both deliver quick damage that hits quite hard.

For solo, A Fire/Dark is one of the monsters of the game. I don't think it would be able to solo an AV, but it's got loads of crowd control, group debuffs, and even throws in healing, rezzing, and a pet.

It works well for teams, also. Howling Twilight is the single best team rez in the game. If your MM and Brute both bite it, then you can bring 'em both back to life at once. Your AoE damage will also come in handy. Everything that makes a Fire/Dark good solo also makes it good for teams, and them some.

Sonic/Rad is another potential choice, if you're worried about damage. Radiation Debuffs, AM, Mutation, EMPulse, and lovely -Resistance debuffs from your Sonic Primary. You'll do less damage than a Fire/Dark, or even a Fire/Rad, but those extra /Rad debuffs will work well with your MM's /Traps powers to turn EBs and AVs into mulch.

There's always Fire/Kin, as well. High damage, loads of team buffs, and travel powers that are built into the kinetics set. I love my Fire/Kin. Buff, Kill, heal if you have to, repeat.

Ice/Ice Corrs are still monstrous, too. Not enough healing to suit my taste, but you can toughen up your friends with ice shields and Frostwork and do some serious debuffing with Sleet, Benumb, and Heat Loss. The AoEs will be a little bit weaker, but you have a Bots MM and an Elec/Elec Brute for that.

Fire or Sonic/Pain would allow you to throw out lots of healing, which your brute might need for a little while. It also has some nice buffs for the team AND for you, yourself. Fire Blast as the primary would let you do more straight damage when not healing, but Sonic/Pain would let you use Howl and other powers that lower enemy resistance.

I don't see any problems with your GF or friend's choices, by the way. Elec/Elec Brutes deal plenty of damage, and are relatively sturdy (and you could always just softcap its s/l defense...). Bots/Traps MMs are the swiss-army Masterminds of the game, which you'll see as soon as you hit a rough patch and s/he begins throwing down Acid Mortars, Poison Traps, and Seeker Drones. Being a Corrupter, you should especially appreciate Force Field Generator, which gives mez protection as well as a healthy chunk of defense.

Depending on how you want to build your Dom, there are a lot of ways you can play one.

I have a Fire/Elec Dominator and an Elec/Fire Dominator. It's hard to say which of the two I like better, to be honest.

My Fire/Elec Throws down Flashfire, Fire Cages, and then his Imps, and then hops on over to the nearest boss and hammers it with melee attacks. Any nearby minions get ranged attacks, unless the imps have gotten to them first. It's fast, effective, and pretty safe.

My Elec/Fire feels a lot more...Super than the Fire/Elec, even though it's about ten levels lower and probably weaker, overall. The combo faces some problems due to the DoT from the fire secondary keeping enemies from being put to sleep by Synaptic Charge, but liberal application of Jolting Chain keeps enemies knocked down fairly regularly while he opens up with powers like Fire Breath and Combustion. Conductive Aura helps restore health and endurance, and hopefully the Gremlins will make liberal use of their own Jolting Chain powers.

I've also played an Earth/Earth dom that used lots of control with spike damage. It also had Power Boost, which came in very handy while Domination was recharging. The pet was tanky, and fights right next to the dominator. It's a fun build that feels tougher than most dominators.

Now that We've got the technical stuff down, I'd just like to say that Scourge is, essentially, a power that lets you rub salt on an enemy's wounds and/or kick them while they're down. It's the most villainous inherent power in the game.

I'm currently running both an Archery/Kin Corrupter and a Sonic/Traps Corrupter.

The Archery/Kin is great on teams, but it lacks the insane damage that allowed my Fire/Kin corr to do a lot of its solo stuff. At 25, I'm mostly using the /Kin part of the character for healing and buffs while firing the occasional shot at enemies who are close enough to being killed that Scourge can take effect. He lacks any sort of mitigation, so he gets knocked around pretty easily if anything takes notice of him, especially high-damage enemies like Arachnos. Things will be a whole lot easier for him once he's in his 40s, but I'm not going to TRY to solo him there.

The Sonic/Traps feels like a completely different AT. Even at level 13, it can solo fairly easily if I take it slow and make use of doorways and corners as death traps. It's amazing what you can do to a group of enemies with just Web Grenade, Caltrops, and Acid Mortar. Team-wise, I can't find a group that will LET me set down a trap before they charge into the fray and get themselves murdered.

Fire/Radiation looks neat, but I bet that Fire/Dark would be more fun to play solo. /Dark has less setup time than /Rad, and Tar Patch gets props in my book for not requiring an anchor or a target. Hit 'em low with debuffs, then hit 'em high with Rain of Fire and Fireball. Throw in Blaze or Fire Blast for good measure, and maybe use Howling Twilight as an AoE Stun. Good times.

I think you'll find that "Decent" sums up Kinetic/EA pretty well. That being said, don't be discouraged when you hit rough spots.

For KM/Ea, I'd suggest the following:

-Get every resistance or defense power you can for /EA, including Tough and Weave from the fighting pool and, yes, even Energy Cloak. The sole exception for this, if you're tight on powers, is Energy Protection, though I'd get it if you have space in your build for the toxic resistance it offers. /EA is fairly squishy when compared to /Invul or /WP.
-Use your KM PBAoE every chance you get, once you can get it at level 18 or so. It's comparable to SS's Foot Stomp, but with a smaller radius and usable in the air. The more enemies are knocked on their backs, the less chance they have of going through your defense.
-Get Hasten. The +Recharge is wonderful, and once you have Energy Drain I doubt you'll ever notice when Hasten crashes.
-Get Energy Drain and use it. Depending on how you play, you might even want Conserve Power also. KM can be a bit endurance heavy at times, I've found.
-When you slot for IOs, make a it priority to softcap Smashing/Lethal defense, since it's the most common type you'll run into. It's expensive, but your survivability will increase dramatically.
-Be careful with those ranged attacks when playing a Brute. Fighting at range doesn't build fury well, and you need that fury to keep smashing heads in.

If being able to solo effectively is your goal, I think you might like a Sonic/Radiation Defender for the following reasons:

-Siren's Song is the single most solo-friendly power of any blast set. It's wide cone allows you to almost always put all of the lieutenants and minions in a mob to sleep. Since you can set your difficulty to prevent bosses from spawning when solo, you're essentially able to put anything short of an EB to sleep on your map, and then take each enemy down at your leisure.
-Sonic Blast's resistance debuffs are very impressive for a defender. A power like Howl has a noticeable effect on a group of enemies.
-Radiation Emission's anchor debuffs, which can be such a pain to keep up on teams, is very simple to use solo. Not only that, but practice in using it solo will dramatically increase your survivability and damage.
-EMPulse. 'Nuff said.
-Accelerated Metabolism, Ditto.
-You have your own heal, which is nice for the few times when you -do- take damage.

Now I don't have any video or forum confirmation, but I think this is a confirmed AV killing build, also.

Now I admit to having a HUGE preference towards /Sonic Defenders because of Siren's Song and its -Resistance debuffs, plus the unique look of Sonic Blasts. This is why I'm also suggesting a Traps/Sonic Defender.

Traps/Sonic is chock full of solo friendly powers, and it just LOOKS cool. Siren's Song is a great compliment to the traps set, putting enemies out like a light while you throw down Poison Trap, one of your two mine powers, or an acid mortar. All the while, you're solidly protected by Force Field Generator. Solo becomes a twisted game of "how much can I torture the enemies before they drop?"

Currently mine is at level 36. My personal favorite cruelty to inflict is to throw down several Trip Mines in one place, a few feet away from a group of enemies who have been put to sleep by Siren's Song. Immediately after doing so, I move over and use Shockwave on the group, knocking them ONTO the mines, which then detonate in fiery, enemy-consuming explosion. Rubbing your hands and cackling is optional.

I use Concealment for my Archery/Kin Corrupter in order to allow him to zip through groups that he wouldn't be able to handle solo, and Phase Shift has saved his life several times over.

I'm surprised that people are bringing up Concealment before the Presence pool.

I'd like to preface this with the statement that I view Force Field as a set that is to be played for fun, or not at all.

I rolled a FF/Energy Defender, and I loved it for its insane knock back. Damage was always secondary to knock back. All powers that COULD be slotted for knock back, WERE slotted for knock back.

Power Push and Force Bolt were both 6-slotted. I would hit an enemy with one at point-blank range, and then tag it with the other while airborn.

After bubblin' up the people who did the real work, I would bounce dangerous/deadly mobs into walls and corners, or knock whole groups back in order to make things manageable for my team.

The endurance cost was enormous.

I did not care.

In terms of *PTUIE* practical builds, FF/Dark synergizes well. The -ToHit debuffs mean that enemies will have a harder time hitting your precious bubbles and the stupid cargo they protect. I've also seen a video of a FF/Archery defender solo farming in RWZ. All those defense powers leave LOTS or room for you to slap in LotG +recharge enhancements, which will help bring Rain of Arrows up in record time.

Farmed my blueside lv 32 SS/Fire Brute to lv 47 yesterday, and climbed up to 50 today. He's survivable with just SOs and one mag4 KB protection IO, but I have to play the inspiration mixing game at times to build up defense or restore endurance after a big rage crash.

I just can't get over how FUN this brute is. I ran through the Incarnate arc with a friend who had been having trouble with Trapdoor on his Invul/SS Tank, partially because he didn't know to kill the doppleganger things. He didn't tell me that he'd just run through the mission with his Invulnerability before hitting Trappy, but it barely took my SS/Fire any time to punch or melt his way to where my friend was waiting (sheepishly, after forgetting to warn me). It's still weak in terms of resistance, but its damage lets a careful player handle a lot of rough spots.

Lordy lordy do I love Fiery Embrace. It comes up plenty often, and when it does, everything within my toon's reach is ATOMIZED.

I strongly suggest getting it, especially if you're a tanker. It'll definitely bolster your damage.

My My Dark/Nin Stalker has soloed multiple EBs and AVs with a build that is roughly 80% SOs, and it's done so because of Shadow Meld. I haven't NEEDED to slot in more IO enhancements.

I slotted Dark Blast as an attack, and use it as part of his regular attack chain to fill in any gaps or finish off runners. It's not Blaze, but the damage is definitely solid, and I haven't had a complaint about it. It takes the place of Shadow Punch in my Stalker's build. You could do a lot worse when it comes to a prerequisite Patron power.

I've seen a lot of Demon/This and Demon/That combos, but I've yet to see a Demons/Traps MM. Is there a reason for it that I'm missing?

I have a Necro/Therm MM, and I love it for its concept. This concept is, of course, FLAMING ZOMBIES! The /Therm heals and debuffs are nice and helpful and all, with the Lich filling in a lot of the control cracks, but seriously, FLAMING ZOMBIES!

Necro/Storm is what it is. If you can handle /storm, then the zombies will benefit. If you can't handle /Storm, then your poor zombies won't be upright for very long.

Necro/Pain is nice, but you'll be eagerly awaiting the coming of your lich. Once you have him AND your mighty AoE buff and debuff, you'll be a pain train.

I've got an Assault Rifle/Trick Arrow Corrupter that's a lot of fun at lv 13. I mean to get him up to lv 18 or so over tonight. I think it'd be fun to have Full Auto, Flamethrower, Oil slick Arrow, Acid Arrow, Disruption Arrow, and Ignite all in the same character.

I've got a DM/EA Brute who's a lot of fun, but definitely not what I'd call an AoE machine. With Energy Drain, Dark Consumption, and Life Siphon, though, he's much more solid than I'd been led to believe. He'll never be "t3h pwnz0r", but I like him anyway.

Ran a Sonic/Mental Blaster all the way to 50, and it's a great character. The -Recharge and -Res debuffs might not be a whole lot, but they certainly help teams when fighting AVs, EBs, and GMs. My build went for Elec Mastery and has three nice cones, which are sustainable as an entire AoE chain when Hasten is up. World of Confusion and Combat Jumping are a good combo for safety, and Psychic Shockwave is a nice additional AoE to fire off right before using the kind-of-gimpy version of EMPulse that blasters get.

If you want to be an AV killer, I suggest a Mind/Fire Dom. That seems to be the general consensus around here.

Now if only I liked playing mind control....

If you want to be able to deal the most damage, you'll probably want to roll up a Fire/Fire Dom. Fiery Embrace boosts the damage of your control powers as well as your secondary, and when you throw in the attacks from the Fire APP the damage is nearly as high as a Fire Blaster.

I'd go Fire/SS. You won't get the insane level of damage that a SS/Fire brute can bring to the table, but for a tanker you'll be dishing out a lot of hurt. Simply throwing in three Recharge IOs will make Rage permanent, though you'll still have crashes that lower your damage for a few seconds that should be watched for. That being said, I think that Rage also boosts the damage from your aura, which helps a whole lot before AND after grabbing Foot Stomp.

The only Tanker I can think of that might have a higher average DPS than a Fire/SS would be a Shield/SS, which maintains a steady high damage output with a combination of Rage and Against All Odds.

On my lv 28 Elec/Fire Dom, I've found that Jolting Chain tends to keep baddies off of their feet while for the duration of your DoT. This takes careful grouping, as well as prioritizing your ST hold on enemies with KB resistance. The biggest problem with this strategy lies in other players, be they controllers or dominators, who make use of AoE Immobilizes that carry a -KB component. Unfortunately, this is MOST AoE immob powers, and the knockback that they prevent will keep you from being able to bounce them into the air with Jolting Chain.



If you're really wanting to try out Elec/Thorns, I strongly suggest grabbing Jolting Chain early to see if you like it well enough.

I don't know if you plan to use Envenomed Daggers to help reduce AV regeneration, but I find that they help a great deal in soloing AVs with any archetype.

I had to solo two EBs in a row today on my lv 26 Ill/Rad troller at the end of a particular arc, so I know where you're going with the desire to take out big enemies without having to beg for teams. I'd suggest a Sonic/Traps Corr.

A Sonic/Traps is a safe leveling and soloing toon capable of taking out AVs (Someone here in the forums has some lovely photos of their Sonic/Traps corr taking out numerous different AVs, actually). It isn't the FASTEST wide area mob killer, but Siren's Song makes killing groups much easier (Sleep a group and kill them one at a time), and Force Field Generator is an incredibly good buff. Add in /Traps' excellent debuffs to regeneration, resistance, defense, and ToHit, plus the stacking Resistance debuffs for every single Sonic Blast power you use. It's MADE for wearing out big targets, and can handle large groups of weaker enemies quite well.

I haven't seen a whole lot of problems in AR, if paired with the right secondary. It's got Flamethrower, Ignite, AND Full Auto. That's three incredibly nasty attacks, with plenty of other damage to fill in the gaps AND Bean Bag for a stun. Paired with Energy (for build-up and boost range), you can hit extremely wide cones of enemies from a long distance away.

I've got an AR/TA Corrupter that is already loads of fun at level 20. /TA has one of the nastiest-looking corrupter AoE combos in the game when you use Oil Slick Arrow, Acid Arrow, Disruption Arrow, Glue Arrow, Ignite, Flamethrower, and Full Auto. It's the Scourge that makes it magical.

I hadn't thought about Combat Jumping, actually. Thanks much!

I've got BOTH, and I'd have to agree that Fire/Elec is an overall stronger combination, albeit reluctantly. My Elec/Fire is a blast, and it makes LIBERAL use of Jolting Chain, so much so that I've got it slotted for extra recharge.

Elec/Fire lacks synergy with the added DoT messing up Synaptic Field, but I've found that Jolting Chain is an excellent means of keeping them from retaliating. For me, it goes Synaptic Field, Electric Cages, Jolting Chain, Combustion, then Jolting Chain again. Keeping in melee that way is extremely easy, and Conductive Aura in conjunction with Jolting Chain and Synaptic Field ensures enemies are sapped down to the dregs.

It doesn't have the best synergy, but I haven't run into anything short of an EB much that I couldn't solo. I'm looking forward to Gremlins for the added energy drain.

I'd like to point out that you likely won't be able to sap an EB or AV into submission. Their recovery times are just crazy. If you want to take out an AV, your best bet is probably a Mind/Fire/Fire.

Fire/Elec, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward. You stun things with Flashfire, Immobilize them with Fire Cages, then run in with your imps and mess things up. If anything survives being stunned, you slap it with a hold. Permadom, it's nearly invincible. I'd wager it could give a Mind/Fire a run for its money in some ways, though the new Fire Epic honestly gives anything/Fire insane damage these days.

If you roll up a WP/SS Tanker, I think you'll find youself able to solo strong, but not as fast as, say, a Spines/Fire Scrapper.

That being said, a WP/SS Tanker can take a ridiculous amount of damage, and dish out almost as much as a Scrapper in full swing. You can also softcap it, though it's ridiculously expensive. My lv 41 WP/SS is able to solo AVs (with envenomed daggers, of course), and I haven't looked for a team on him for ages.

So I guess speed would be loads of minions/LTs with a Spines/Fire , /Elec, or /Dark. Strong would be a WP or Invul Tanker primary with a /SS secondary. This is very broadly speaking, and many will disagree. They'll probably be right, actually.

Personally, I'd ride the line between them and make a character like my Fire/SD Scrapper. He's got Fire Sword Circle and Shield Charge for AoE, Against All Odds to further boost damage, a strong ST chain for tougher enemies, and enough defense/resistance/extra HP to handle a good amount of hurt. Once I get him up more levels, I'm going to see about what I can do IO-wise, but from what I've read it looks promising.

Oh, and as for Quick Recovery, it's very much worth it on my WP/SS. When you're running a lot of toggles and spamming Foot Stomp and Knock Out Blow, those Rage and Hasten crashes can be nasty. The faster you can recover your endurance, then better.

Hi there! I've had an Ill/Rad sitting around at level 10 for a while now, and just recently gotten around to leveling it.

Even with my altitis, it wasn't hard to start leveling him in earnest after I got to level 18 and began experimenting with Phantom Army. He's at level 22 right now, and stalled because I don't want to waste a respec on him yet, and would like to have a better idea of what powers to pick along the way.

I've read through Local Man's Guide (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=141225) already, and now I have a lot of numbers whirling thorough my head that a lv 22 has no business worrying about just yet, plus a lot of useful info on how to play the combo.

Since I'm on a mac, and have no mids with which to display epic builds, I've used Suckerpunch, which hasn't been updated since I16 to display which power's I've taken so far. After getting the veteran reward which allows you to skip over prerequisite travel pool powers, I went right past hover and air superiority to Fly, so you're reading that correctly:

+----------------------------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner v5.0
+ http://planner.cohtitan.com/planner
+----------------------------------------------------------------
Archetype: Controller
Primary: Illusion Control
Secondary: Radiation Emission
+----------------------------------------------------------------

01: Blind => Empty(1)
01: Radiant Aura => Empty(1)
02: Deceive => Empty(2)
04: Accelerate Metabolism => Empty(4)
06: Spectral Wounds => Empty(6)
08: Radiation Infection => Empty(8)
10: Hasten => Empty(10)
12: Superior Invisibility => Empty(12)
14: Fly => Empty(14)
16: Enervating Field => Empty(16)
18: Phantom Army => Empty(18)
20: Lingering Radiation => Empty(20)
22: Flash => Empty(22)

+----------------------------------------------------------------
+ Inherent Powers
+----------------------------------------------------------------

01: Brawl => Empty(1)
01: Sprint => Empty(1)
02: Rest => Empty(2)

I'm more-or-less happy with what I have at the moment, though another attack would be very helpful when solo. The question is where I should go from here?

I think Air Superiority would be handy to have as a filler, for one, and Hover would help with knock back much later on, plus be a handy spot to slip in a LoTG: Recharge.

From there I went:
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner v5.0
+ http://planner.cohtitan.com/planner
+----------------------------------------------------------------
Archetype: Controller
Primary: Illusion Control
Secondary: Radiation Emission
+----------------------------------------------------------------

01: Blind => Empty(1)
01: Radiant Aura => Empty(1)
02: Deceive => Empty(2)
04: Accelerate Metabolism => Empty(4)
06: Spectral Wounds => Empty(6)
08: Radiation Infection => Empty(8)
10: Hasten => Empty(10)
12: Superior Invisibility => Empty(12)
14: Fly => Empty(14)
16: Enervating Field => Empty(16)
18: Phantom Army => Empty(18)
20: Lingering Radiation => Empty(20)
22: Flash => Empty(22)
24: Air Superiority => Empty(24)
26: Spectral Terror => Empty(26)
28: Hover => Empty(28)
30: Mutation => Empty(30)
32: Phantasm => Empty(32)
35: Group Invisibility => Empty(35)
38: EM Pulse => Empty(38)
41: Fire Blast => Empty(41)
44: Fire Ball => Empty(44)
47: Consume => Empty(47)
49: Fire Shield => Empty(49)
+----------------------------------------------------------------
+ Inherent Powers
+----------------------------------------------------------------

01: Brawl => Empty(1)
01: Sprint => Empty(1)
02: Rest => Empty(2)

Does this looks like a viable build? Also, does this look like a build which one could make into a Perma PA build with decent recovery?