Nightchill_EU

About the power set topic. I also think Kin would be godly for a duo of brutes. If you like the "buff" idea Thermal has abit less resist debuff than Sonic but has a damage buff and strong heals along with resist buffs, and a resurection power.
Mind Control also has abit too much hard control, if you lock down everything 2 brutes may have fury issues. Maybe a Sonic Corr would fit better, or Ice or Fire Control.

Why not Darkest Night? Unsloted its steady 10% -tohit and 20% -dmg, its huge on AVs/GMs (and actually quite amazing on tough packs since its even AoE, not to mention is a super herd tool).

What kind of reciep I shout turn my tickets for? The Gold ones?

Fire/Shield wont solo tough AVs. Shield, even caped def is still about 8% to get hit (hoping AV doesnt have accu buff or innate accuracy). These 8% WILL kill you at some point if you dont have selft heal.

Dark is good for self efficiency but lacks AoE options, a VERY high +def DM/FA/Soul would kick *** but its gonna very expensive.

DM/SD/Soul will do nearly as good on AVs with about 2 billions and you can cover AoE part with Charge/Dark Oblit/Judgement.

I wouldnt advice Scrapper, unless you plan on mostly solo, Soul Drain + AAO will give you A LOT of +dmg and you ll hit cap very fast in teams on a scrapper. AAO is amazing threat, maybe too good for a scrapper when running trials. Also Scrapper doesnt have access to Darkness Night ands its probably the best AV killing tool you can find.

Thanks!

Ice and Cold powers looks to be the one you should take. You could skip armors and/or Frostwork if you arent a teamplayer but they both are amazing buffs (Frostwork is generally very underrated).

I would really go for Mace Mastery on patron simply because with /Cold Sorpion Shield pretty much caps you for S/L/E with SOs. Than either Web Envelope for cheap'ish 5slots purples or Web Cocoon for 4x Basiliks Gaze. Since Web Envelope is pretty counter productive with Sleet I like the later better. Freeze Ray + Cocoon will also hold bosses very fast.

Disruptor (pet) let you slot for x4 Expedient Reiforcement and is pretty much perma with a descent build.

Thats the build my bot uses, but its a bot.

The numbers on buffs and debuffs may be very different.
If you take FF for instence, Bubblex2, dispertion and Maneuvre caps team at SO level on a FF Fender, it doesnt on a MM.
Sonic, Cold, Traps also have very higher numbers on Fenders. 20% res vs 15% on Sonic is a LOT, the difference is actually more important than on the damage potencial.

Now some sets actually feels "better" or lets say "less worste" on Corr/MM/Trollers, like Kin, Rad or Empathy.

/SR: You will get to soft cap quite fast but you will be really unable to tank some mob groups/AVs. Its cool for Scrappers but imo has too much weaknesses if you end up being the only tank in a group with high demands.

/SD SD is great, specially on a brute with has a large damage cap. Overall its very endo hungry and doesnt feel very tough at the low levels. But once you have a 2 billion build with caped def and caped DDR it extremely efficient. Of course like all defense based sets you might encounter problems on soem mob groups but overall its very much more versatile than /SR. And brings fair AoE and aggro on AAO is huge.

/INV Inv is amazing, certainly the best pure tanking set for a Brute (since I find Granite armor very counter productive toward fury and damage hybridity in general.) Tho it doesnt bring any damage and WM somewhat lacks on both ST and AoE damage. If you dont plan on solo/farm much and you expect your teamate to cover the AoE job it will be a great combo (Fireball, Mu lightning ball or Dark Oblit in addition to Judgement will make you less inneficient on the AoE table but it is still nothing compared to Shild Charge or Burn).

/FIRE is very less squishy than I hear around. Fire built for defense is actually very resilient. And the damage it brings is just freaking awasome. Blazing Aura is the highest damage aura, Burn is the best AoE brutes have access to (no really, its huge) and Fiery EMbrace is the only build Up like power that goes over damage cap.
Tho there is no good color to remove the fire armor effects and if you dislike the cosmetic aspect or concept it will drive you crazy after a while.
Overall I would say even if its maybe the least defensive (also I find SR and WP less versatile at high level of IOing) you dont lose much on this aspect compared to the crazy damage boost you get.

/EA If you are talking energy armor I have no idea, the Stealth armor always confuses me for a tanking AT. If you are talking Elec Armor its quite impressive. It has damage aura, passive recharge (therefore is more offensive than Inv), crazy good recovery/sap options, descent heal. Probably the most interesting part is that its a secondary with very good resistance to very commun damage type in the high end part of the game: S/L, Energy, Psy. If you only consider Incarnate Trials and lvl 50 TFs (mostly Apex) and you build it for defense, its probably the best tank you can find.
On the cosmetic part its not very intrusive besides the electric field under your feets.

/WP is good, great for early recovery tools at low levels and very independant. The problem I have with WP it the break point. You ll be most of the time completely unkillable unless... you are not. I mean, if you are fighting mobs that does less damage than you heal back you are fine, if you reach the break point you feel VERY squishy. And on trials or Apex I feel I reach the break piont very often. If you have no problems playing with insp and poping some oranges time to time it is a good set. I d also like to add that threat generation is very underperforming compared to /FA, /Inv or /SD.

Well going from Scrapper to Brute changes things a bit. But from the trials I'v done I'v very much more healable when I tank AVs. My scrapper goes dodgemissdodgemissSPLAT.

In my experience SD is great fun but when ennemies start going through def (either with huge accu buffs or the non compressible 8%) its very frustrating because you may just die on a single blow. Dunno about SR, looks even worste

[quote]Toxic - Base 15% Fire Armor (requires using Healing Flames) versus 0% Electric Armor[quote]
I stack up healing flame to a steady 75% res toxic with NO problem.

For Energize VS Healing Flames the point isnt purly HPS by "heal when its needed". Unless you are fighting heavy Toxic mobs you wont cast healing flames on timer, but you will most likely do with Energize.

As for tier 9 powers I would pick any of them. But both have their strenghs.


Than again I'm not the advocate of FA>ElA but I dont support the reverse statement.

I'm using this atm, not sure how good it is. Its very endo costy but I run pretty much with a Kin all the time.

Actually /FA is not that squishy if you compare to Elec.

Def - None, like Elec.
S/L - Same
Fire - FA is to the roof. Elec is standart.
Cold - FA is average/low. Elec is standat.
Energy - FA is standart. Elec is to the roof.
Negative - Both standart.
Toxic - FA is to the roof (with Healing Flames prebuff) - Elec has 0
Psi - FA has 0 - Elec is standart

Both has none status prot to Fear. FA lacks KB res but its very easy to obtain through IOs so its a non-issue.

While Energise is super cool, on a pure suvival matter, Healing Flames are widely supperior.

Fire brings fuckload of damage. Fiery Embrace goes over damage cap, Burn is the bes AoE Brute have access to and Blzaing Aura is about 30% more damage than Lightning Field.

On the other hand, if that matters to you, Elec can pretty much ingore endurance issues quite early. But it doesnt make it tougher.


So I would say, on the tanking side, FA and Elec are both very good with a Def oriented build with a little edge for FA in general and a quite a wide supperiority to Elec when fighting Rikti/Praetorian (whitch is 80% of the lvl 50 content).



As for the primaries, Dark Melee is super good but it has no reliable AoE and Elec Armor doesnt really help on that. Energy seems to be overall weaker but definately have more SMASH feeling.

My advice is: Make them have babies and roll DM/FA

Its the way the game work. You cannot target youself. Single target buffs and heals are balanced around the fact they cannot affect the owner. AoE buffs/heals are either less effective or have long cooldowns or have some limitation that make them less powerfull than single target buffs/heals.

Seriously do you realise how freaking easy it is to cap def a FF Fender? Self buffing bubbles would get them to cap at lvl 22, Scrappers/Brutes/Tankers have to build for it!

The whole balance on CoH is based on teamplay, thats what makes it different to other games.

This thread will be completely uninteresting to most of the Brute community since i mostly state very known facts. But since it has informations I have lately been looking for it might help some players.

So, I'v been looking for a good character with less weaknesses than my DM/SD Scrapper. I hardly farm but I run a lot of +Alot*Many missions, kill AV/GMs in a duo+bot team (EarthKin mate, Cold Fender bot and I).
DM/SD is great, soft caped def and nearly caped DDR, DM brings debuffs, healing and both have huge +damage abilities but I had very weak spots. Dev Earth were CRUSHING me with Guardian's Quartz, Nemesis were distroying me when I was in a team with uncontrolled AoE, +4 lvl Carnies with multiple Master Illu were blowing my butt away and also Incarnate trial bosses or very hard psy AVs and GMs. All in all it was always safe but pretty much anything that passed through my defense made me bite the dust, or at least giving me very hard time.

So I decide to roll a more resilient character, but since I am pretty much main dps and tank I wanted a brute more than a tanker.
For secondary I wanted a +res set because def cap is easy to reach with Cold buffs and brutes have a very high +res cap.
At the first glance Dark Armor has the least weaknesses but I dont like the idea of stealth. Elec also looks good, mostly because these Praetoria LOVES energy damage but toxic is at 0. Fire has weak Psy but damage boost is incredibly supperior, Fiery Embrace goes over damage cap, burn is priceless and let you pick a primary without AoE, Blazing Aura is also more damage/aggro than the 2 others. A good point too is that FA's relatively low cold resist was completely removed by Cold Domination's buffs.

For primary my main concern was single target damage since FA is quite enough for AoE. I considered at first going for DM like my scrapper but I dislike how Soul Drain works, it doesnt works good with my playstyle. Here is the problem. On large packs Soul Drain and AAO were giving me huge amound of +damage, but so was Fulcrum Shift and I was widely over the cap most of the time, but on single AV/GM all 3 were very weak compared to other options. Build Up and Rage are always good, arguably worste than Soul Drain on multiple targets but obviously better on single target.
My second choice was Stone Melee (at might end up regretting my last call on this). DPA is overall quite good, On Seismic Smash its godly, so extremely better than Knockout Blow. But when I heard (and tested) that rage crash doesnt drops you def when it double/triple diped I went for Super Strengh. Of course I dont regret having Foot Stomp but I mostly went for SS because of Rage and single target damage. With my current haste and speed boost I can run KB/Hay/Gloom/Hay/Gloom/Hay/KB...
Now it is no secret how better Rage is compared to build up. Tho, one reason I might regret my choice is that Build Up curve with haste is linear, whereas Rage curve isnt due to haste not reducing the ragecrash time. For exemple, at a purly theorical level of haste when Build Up last as long as it refreshes than Ragecrash is permanent. So at some point of haste (probably impossible to achieve) build up becomes better than rage. Also the highest your +damage is at the more you lose when rage crashes. Making rage scaling very less than build up with both haste and damage buffs. Than again, the level of overall damage buff needed to make build up better is probably impossible to achieve.



I leveled from 1 to 50 in about 20 hours, its not an achievement, a lot of ppl have done half this time or faster.

Level 1 to 8: Took me less than one hour using my brother's EarthKin troller on RWZ's strory arch missions. Thats pretty uneffective and can go extremey faster with better PL toons on better PL missions. It also takes about one or two hours to get lvl 8 doing solo street hunt/missions.

Level 8 to 16: Took me a buttload of time, alot more than I thought. I strated to run AE fire ambush farms but with only Fire Shield and later Temperature Protection I was pretty much getting smashed all the time. So I loged a /Thermal on my bro's account and my Cold bot and I buffed myself for 4 min before entering missions and ran out everytime to get rebuffed. It was long and painfull and boring.
Again, my Scrapper could have power leveld that extremely faster.

Level 16 to 28: Was still pretty long without any AoE beside Blazing Aura and Sand of Mu (woohoo). I could log off /thermal with SOs in my +res powers and get Speed Boost instead, Cold defense was still needed since insp drop wasnt great without AoE.

Level 29 to 32: The first time you push Burn you are like "Seriously?" while your insp box goes full in a couple of seconds. I still needed Cold buffs to have a safe start before inspi starts raining but I wasnt going out for rebuff any more. At this point Power Level is about the same speed if your toon has Judgement and level shift.

Level 33 to 50: Now we'r talking about it. Once you have Burn and Footstomp slotted with x3 dmg and x3 recharge you dont go to the trainer anymore. You are at like 2 or 3 hours from 50. Burn - Stomp - Headbutt keyboard for insp - Burn - Stomp... Zone in zone out, pick new farm, raise level to +2 or +3.

Just tested rage on another toon. It indeed somehow doesnt debuff your def if another rage if up when the first fades. Wierd. And awesome.

And there, another one jumps on the bandwagon...

Ok thanks.

I called mine Mister Hankey :/

I went for Stone... but ONLY because my SS/Granite had issues with rage crash (non double stacking because of bloody granite rchg debuff) but if you tell me you can actually skip rage's debuff defense, SS becomes the most freaking sexiest primary set on earth. Like, beside it looks dull.

I had BS/Regen scrapper back in the time, weapon unleash after using (formerly widely overpowered) air superiority was very painfull. If swords disapear after using Burn or Healing Flames I'm going to headbutt my screen.

So I tried again this morning and died again (with first toggle and temperature pretection without sloting) on pretty much every single spawns. So I just loged my Thermal on another account and buffed my butt outside to 90% fire resist every 4 minutes.

Xp doesnt seem very impressive at the first glance, compared to what can achieve my x4 t3 DM/SD scrapper with pure PL but I suspect it becomes better with level. I also have to start buying insp.


Note: I am not Claw! But Stone. I have Sand of Mu.

This doesnt seem right I really dont believe you can make it solo to 50 in 10 hours.

After test CI's DPA is somewhere between Charged Brawl and Gloom. So nowhere near the whooping 44 DPA on the character sheet. its not a bad attack but the recharge necessary to reach CI/CB/Gloom/CB is wait too high to make it worth it.