Phoenix_Blight

Awesome, thanks a ton!
I checked the markets and at first glance, it should kinda bust my budget by a good billion...but hey, that's just three evenings of farming.

Gonna play around with it and mids tonight. Again, thank you, MUCH appreciated!

tl;dr at the end for those who understandably cannot stand my rambling

Ahoy,

I have recently resubbed to CoH - and I have to admit it was mainly for staff fighting and how it works on a brute.
I only seldomly used to team at all, and I certainly have no idea about IO'ing, or incarnating, or whatever - for me so far, the game has been about coming up with a large number of satisfying and diverse character concepts and, in general, levelling.

I always wanted to have a /dark brute, for thematical reasons, but it used to be the one set that was totally not fun for me to play on a brute - the reason was the prohibitive end cost of dark regeneration and the set's total reliance on it during the levelling phase - enter staff fighting and soul mastery, and all of a sudden the end costs are easily manageable. Ever since level 22 and SOs, I have been running at x4 without any IOs at all, and faster than most other combinations I tried out so far. I might have to now and then use purple inspirations when the recharge on dark regeneration is a bit too long for icoming damage, but in general, my brute tears through masses of opponents like a shadowy chainsaw.

I admit single target damage seems a bit lackluster, especially considering that the other two staff fighting masteries don't really work (yet, I guess) due to end issues, but it is nowhere near dramatic (it's still a brute ).

Now I am nearing the 40s and I still don't feel like shelving the toon - in fact, I have teamed a whole lot (which is a new experience for me) and always had the feeling I was contributing a lot to any team setup whatsoever. CoF/OG/Dark Regen make for a nice alpha-soaking combination (yet :P), AoE damage is quite ok despite the damagetype and as soon as debuffs from the team kick in, I find myself grinning like an idiot at the feeling of immortality I get.

In fact, I would very much want this brute to be my first 50 that actually gets IOed and incarnated. I do have mids downloaded - but my competence ends right there. The whole system is set up in a way that I am having some trouble making sense of it.
That's why I'd appreciate if some experienced player could whip up a "starting" IO setup that is not too pricey (my level 50 /fa brute whom I don't care for much but who can farm AE reasonably well has earned me the paltry sum of 1.5 billion inf.) It's what I got and what I can spend at the moment, and I am looking for a decent setup for starters that could lateron be gradually improved upon as more inf trickles in.

I found most builds posted would cost a hell of a lot more than I could afford at the moment, and they are usually so intricate that I get no feeling whatsoever of how and why things are set up the way they are - I'd rather gradually improve upon a solid formation to get a feel for improvements myself.

So that's it - I understand that's a lot of work and hassle I am asking for, so I do understand if noone feels like doing that, and I cannot offer anything else than my everlasting thanks for those that help me out (Sorry, soul's already been sold for twinkies.)

Anyways, thanks for reading all that drivel,

PB

tl;dr - I am looking for a more or less solid starting IO setup for level 50 for a SF/DA brute that should ideally cost no more than 1.5 billion inf (if that is possible at all). Thanks in advance for any and all contributions that help me out

Thanks a ton for the input.
I can deal with " a little underpowered ". I cannot deal with "downtime approaching playtime". A little underpowered means I'll hang on.

Anyways, about the medicine pool - with prereq, travelpowerprereq, fitnesspool-prereq, hasten-prereq...I am looking at a ton of prereq-powers, somehow - how would you go about that? Right off the bat, I consider delaying travel power and prereq and get by with jet- and jumppacks, and hasten will get pushed past level 20 as well (I tried it on my 25ish sonic/dark-banshee-corr which I dumped because of th god-awful sound effects and without decent recharge I often don't use hasten at all cause it might come in handier lateron :P).

Ahoy and hello, evilmongers and associates

I just started a fresh and shiny energy/storm corruptor. Why? Simple - I so far have levelled a fire/dark brute to 40 - and am stuck there because I am somewhat bored. I hop into a group, fire off the same attack chains over and over again and swear at flying mobs.

Since I am somewhat paranoid about group play (me being absolutely inexperienced with group play in general) because I have seen the consequences of joining a random group of people if you don't know what you're doing firsthand in many other games - cussing and general failure do not an enjoyable evening make - for me at least. For guilds - or super-/villaingroups, I don't have enough spare time.

So - I am soloing exclusively. That's one cornerstone of what I want to do.

Why did I pick the combination I picked? Because a) I absolutely ADORE the ragdoll animations - they convey an absolutely fabulous "super-power"-feeling, b) because I wanted a ranged combatant with a more strategic approach to fighting than the tactical approach of the brute and c) because I like the energy powers graphics-wise.

I am somewhat at a loss though when it comes to countering several problems I encountered.

1. The biggest problem - my green bar. No heals in the primary and secondary leaves me with inspirations and the rest-button, which is not enough. Every other spawn, I am falling dangerously low, which makes it risky to engage another group of enemies without some annoying downtime.

2. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Simply put, I cannot rely on knockback from energy/ which for me is a problem. When I really need a knockback, I have to rely on gale. When I absolutely don't want a knockback (e.g. danger of adding another spawn), I might fling mobs everywhere. Wouldn't be that much of a problem, though, if it weren't for problem 1.

3. Finally, a lesser problem I encountered is my rapidly diminishing blue bar. Energy/ really uses up a lot of gasoline even at half speed. Stamina will solve that, I hope.

Now, how do I best deal with these issues, I wonder?
A couple of things have crossed my mind - a) getting health asap, three-slotting it; b) picking up the selfheal from the medicine pool (which I would most likely do with a free respec, since 4 levels without shiny new powers frustrates me, and as a soloist the first two medicine powers are...well. Apart from that, c)I don't know if I should engage spawns differently. Right now, I mostly pull from afar with the snipe, so that I don't eat lead from all enemies at once before they start flying; and d) slotting - knockback into the damage powers? range enhancers? That would mean problem 3 would become more of an issue, because less accuracy/damage means more end/mob.

I would very much appreciate any and all advice from the "pros", as well as a primer on how I can expect my powerset combination to evolve once SOs are available and I get to the big guns - because, frankly, if my corruptor plays itself as it does know in the thirties, I will scrap it and never look back.

Oh, and my apologies if parts of or even the whole post are hard to understand - not a native speaker here