Osmiridium

Kinetics has been relegated to the same boat as FF, Thermal, Cold and Sonic. I hate how periodic team buffs work in this game. To me, personally, it is nothing but added tedium to have to constantly recast buffs, especially on 7 other people.

What I would LOVE to see is most buffs get the MM treatment, increase the end cost proportionally to the team size and just cast it once that is applied to everyone.

This has nothing to do with the pros/cons of SB. It just happens to be the worst offender in the duration/recast cycle that people, generally, REALLY want. My hunch is that people who don't want to take SB also don't want to be buffbots. Does that hurt the team? Sure. I abide by Joshua's advice for tick-tack-toe.

"The only winning move is not to play"

If you have the slots and don't have it slated anywhere else, Soulbound Allegiance provides VERY nice increases to recharge/damage/accuracy with only 4 of them. If you 6 slot HoE, you can then get a couple of the auras into it and still have a beefy power. The BU proc in SA is better for one of your real pets though I think. Though since SA is a purple set, it's only a level 50 solution.

Some really good information here, thanks for the responses. So if I read all that right, my resistance is taken into account before the BG mode damage is dispersed to my pets, which ends up being typeless. If that's true, then one reason I went Soul is MIDs is showing 43% S/L resistance (and some decent Neg/Toxic as well). Stacking with World of Pain and Ember Shield, I should be over 60% Res easily to S/L before BG mode kicks in. The other reason for Soul is Oppressive Gloom. Stunned minions do no damage and I "think" successive applications stack (I could be very wrong on this). But, the health drain is negligible due to Suppress Pain and it's end cost is very low as well.

Sounds like I have some macro work to look into.

I'm with SkeetSkeet and Slax on this one, it's laughable if someone thinks they are making good money on the current salvage cornering. I don't care if something is 50-100k when it is normally <1k, I'm taking it to turn over 5+ mil profit. If a stack of 10 salvage is only getting a few hundred thousand profit, it wouldn't even be close to worth my time.

And Fulmens makes several good points for those that are bothered by the prices, either on principle or simple lack of funds.

All in all though, it's the winter event. As has been pointed out, the mobs for the event drop arcane salvage. Thus, there is less tech salvage being generated, so it is easier to corner them right now. It'll pass when the event ends in a few days.

I'm currently working on a Fire/Ice blaster as well. The build I am working on doesn't work in RoF and I greatly prefer it on my corruptors with scourge anyway. For my blaster, I can get two rounds of Fireball+Fire Breath in the time RoF needs to tick, and that is usually more than enough to take down the entire mob sans bosses.

That said, I love Shiver. It covers a huge range and I believe will get things within 10% of the -recharge cap all on it's own, not to mention slowing them to a crawl. Hit a mob with it and Chilblain the boss and you pretty much only have to worry about the alpha. If the mob in question is still too much with Shiver alone, drop an Ice Patch and LoS pull them onto it.

Just as an aside, if you are wanting "just" the +stealth IO and the character it is going in is 50, just grab a 50 (or easiest to attain). The +stealth uniques work at ANY level. Certain uniques like it do not follow the -3 level rule.

Disregard this if there are other factors involved.

*EDIT* It looks like this is a newer character since you talk about getting to 25 for flashback, so yeah, slotting a level 50 +stealth obviously won't work. But the info may still be useful to you if you weren't already aware.

My DM/FA brute is tons of fun and my only level 50 villain. A few notes:

1) Siphon Life and Healing Flames keep me alive.

2) Just as much, so does Darkest Night from soul mastery. As long as I am paying attention, there isn't much that is killing me running 0/x6. I know that isn't as up there as some combos, but it's not too bad.

3) Single targets are pretty easy. Stack the -tohit to go to town. Just make sure HF and SL can keep up with hits that do get through. Again, DN from soul mastery helps with this a lot.

4) MG+patron immob means you can burn patch bosses without them running.

5) Dark Consumption and Consume BOTH come in handy for me, even with stamina (can't dodge the end drain attacks. Non end draining attacks and I don't need either unless it's a protracted fight).

6) Hit fiery embrace before soul drain, it will turn it into a decent AoE attack when it's recharge is respectable. Oh, and the 10 seconds after that combo is glorious for all your damage. 30 seconds for Burn and BA (which ticks for me over 50 right now, not counting my proc).

7) Burn is tricky as a brute. First, since it's a pseudo pet, it caps at +400% damage. Second, you find out that Fury is a 2 second refeshing damage buff. What this means is that for the first 2 seconds burn is going, it get's your Fury bonus, but drops off after that. This is why the numbers drop all of a sudden.

8) I started out with Mu as my patron, then switched to Soul. My AoE didn't drop by THAT much (though I never took Static Discharge) and DN is just huge. Gloom is also like the best Single Target patron attack for Brutes also.

9) Rise of the Phoenix is very fun. I lose Fury and a few seconds when I die, but it looks cool and it helps me judge what I can take without having to run from the hospital.

Heh sorry, didn't try to come across as overly critical of anyone. The whole point I was trying to make is this. Brutes do damage and live off of Fury. There are secondaries out there that can leverage this to the brute's advantage. SR isn't really one of em. But its defense is fantastic when properly slotted. But check out something like Shield Defense or Fiery Aura for a more damaging route if that's what you are looking for.

There are "caps", and then there are practically worthless increases. My softcapped Claws/SR does not have the medicine pool, so has no heal. GMs and AVs (unless they have some extra tohit beyond their inherent increases) can't kill her unless I get very unlucky. A heal would help in a few cases, but for the rest of the game, it wouldn't be used. Some groups give her trouble (Vanguard), but I don't have to fight them.

Survivability in any given fight is binary, you either live and win, or die. There are no "bonus" points for having extra-super-awesome survivability. You don't get an extra recipe or merit increase for not taking any damage. If I take down an AV with 1 HP left, I still won. So if my SR wins without taking a single hit, then any bonuses to regen/resistance/+HP aren't even factored in. That is the "overkill".

Now, I could set myself to some ridiculously difficult metric to achieve, such as soloing the LRSF like you mentioned. I'm sure people build for it. I bet someone has done it (I don't know of any). But Task/Strike forces are meant and designed for teams, so I would just get one of those. Quite a bit cheaper than the IO layout it would need as well.

All that said, some people LOVE building to pull off the impossible. If that is your gameplay preference, then by all means go for it. The point is there are mitigation levels that can be achieved that is way overkill for certain/most parts of the game. And hitting them at the expense of other facets of your character may not be worth it.

It still means DM goes very well with SR....from a defensive standpoint.

One interesting thing about /SR, and this has been brought up before in other forums, is the concept of "too much survivability". Now, staying alive is the goal, but at what point is your mitigation way more than you actually need, and what you give up for it.

/SR is the poster child of softcapped defense and comes packed with extreme DDR as well. There are VERY few mobs in the game that can send you into cascading failure with /SR. Defense through IOs is much more prone to this, but is still very survivable.

The downside is that for a huge portion of the game, your defense is overkill. The DM/SR combo does exactly that. DM increases the Defense factor even more and packs the heal SR lacks. But if you can already survive with SR WITHOUT a heal and DM's -tohit, then what are you really picking up? My Claws/SR scrapper sure doesn't need "more" mitigation than she already has.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Brutes live for damage. Their cap is incredibly high (like 850%) and they have Fury. Due to this, Brutes get a lot more mileage out of defense sets that improve offense, just look at /SD brutes.

After playing with /SR and realizing how Brutes worked with damage, I rolled DM/FA and scrapped my DM/SR. I wanted to gain the benefits of a high damage secondary while still retaining good survivability. Now, I can't just hop in a group of 50 enemies and laugh like SR, but I can still stand up fairly well using LoS tactics and playing smarter. On top of all that, I get more benefit out of team mitigation buffs than SR would. My resists are far from the cap (cept Fire) and I have negligible defense. Thus getting those sonic/cold/therm/etc buffs help me quite a bit.

Anyway, the short of it is, there IS such a thing as too much mitigation, but for Brutes there isn't such a thing as too much damage.

DM goes very will with SR. As you said it picks up a heal that SR lacks and the -tohit from DM lets you be a little more free in hitting the softcap in defense.

I can't comment on the /WP side of things, but I would recommend against a few things suggested about DM.

- If you are looking at taking on EB/AV, I would keep ToF. On bosses/EBs/AVs, the -ToHit is what really shines. not the fear. The fear itself is also good for some of the mobs you want to "control" right off the bat.

- Shadow Punch is worlds better than Brawl, period. The only thing Brawl has going for it now is that it is end free, which helps the lower levels. SP has the stackable -ToHit that all the ST DM attacks have, deals most of it's damage as negative energy, has the same activation time, recasts only 1 second longer (and DM attack chains are easy to build), just....no. Only use Brawl early on to build Fury, need it to fill an attack chain, or when you are tight on end.

- Dark Consumption is never "useless". If you do have stamina and quick recovery, it won't be as needed, but it's there when recovery isn't enough or you get debuffed/end drained.

- I don't see any mention of Shadow Maul, which is one of DM's big hitters. It's actually in the top 3 against only 1 target (SL and MG being the other 2), but takes off when you hit 2+ mobs. The animation is slow and the cone can be a pain to use, so it can be a personal preference, especially if you are going mostly for ST damage.

I can't comment on Soul Mastery, though all I hear is great things about Gloom. And Darkest Night is one of the best debuffs in the game.

Yeah after looking at Energy Drain's numbers I would say DC is not needed. It is up more often than both DC and Consume combined. The only thing I would say though is that DC (like Consume) only needs .52 end to fire off while Energy Drain needs 13. So if you find yourself in a near empty scenario, it won't help you. But again, with a 60 second recharge it should be up enough that it will only be an issue if you are hit by lots of end drain in a short time span.

I can't comment on the EA side of your build, but I can add my experience with DM.

1) I like Shadow Maul, but I didn't take it till 47. I haven't really noticed issues with Fury generation, but as the number of mobs stack up, my Fury comes from their attacks more than mine. Shadow Maul also hits like a truck, easily up there with SL and MG. It's good enough to use against one mob if you have a break in your attack chain, but it soars when you hit 2+.

2) My secondary is Fiery Aura, so I also have a second end management power. A good portion of the time I only use 1 of the 2, but against Carnies, Mu, missed ToF Sappers, having the second one makes things much easier. If your build is tight you can probably get by with just 1. Also, I have stamina as well and still enjoy having both.

3) It really depends on what you need to fill. DN from Soul Mastery is incredible for staying alive. Mu has the better AoE powers. I can't attest to Mace or Leviathan. I went with Mu since DM is light on the AoE and Fences (Targeted AoE) works better than TT (Cone) with Burn from /FA.

I'm rather curious how you do 0/8x with a dm/fa/mu. I have the same powersets and seem to get pasted by groups if I go 0/4x or more, particularly Longbow.

I'm just about level 46 only skipping Taunt and Shadow Maul from DM and Temperature Protection from FA. My achilles heel seems to be having HF up enough and then getting slowed on top of that (Temp Prot is slated for level 49 right now due to this). I can generally survive the alpha from bigger groups, but then just go down waiting on HF and SL can't keep up on it's own.

I will say that I am not stacking defense bonuses from IO's, focusing more on recharge, +HP, regen, recovery, etc. I know Defense stacking is incredible (I have a /SR scrapper soft capped), just hoping I don't have to go that route this time.

I was wondering if there wasn't something like that going on, I noticed that the "drop" wasn't as severe with lower fury levels. So is this considered a bug or a "feature" of fury and pseudo pets that will not get changed?

So I have had Burn for a few levels now and have noticed that when I first drop the patch, the damage ticks for X damage. The mobs will flee, but usually come back after a second or 2. When they do, burn is ticking much lower. I didn't know if it was some feature of the flee mechanic or not, but I just picked up Midnight Grasp and noticed the same damage drop off even when I immobilize something and it can't flee.

Now I haven't read up much on Burn (other than the great herding days long passed), but I have never seen a power do this. It doesn't seem to matter what enemy group it is, what buffs I have going or whether they can run away or not. The first 2 or 3 seconds is one number and then it drops off.

I haven't sorted through a MG/Burn test to add up the total damage done. It's possible it could be doing the correct damage with the first few seconds being front-loaded, but I figured I would just post and see if anyone has any input.

Thoughts?

I would say it depends on the other corrupter's powerset and fighting scenarios. If you guys are fighting large groups and they happen to be something like fire/, then the AoE they might be using will trump most sets at that level. Early on archery is more about ST damage than anything, but is decent for that since it gets its tier 3 blast very early.

Also make sure you are actually hitting. All damage and no ACC means you may be missing more than you realize.

That's off the top of my head, others can help and offer tips as well if you can give some more info (My corr is fire/, only played an arch defender before awhile back).