Phosphorescency

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the op has a slight point - defense is nearly useless on the ITF as they can s tack enough -defense to make even an SR defenses fail, and they do it quickly being they are using the broadsword primary and every attack in taht set has -defense that stacks.

if a typical mob is hitting yo uwith hack, slash and slice that's 22.5% defense debuffed. on an sr or tricked out sd that's 1.125%

now what if there are 10 of these mobs? it adds up


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Just tried this on my dm/sr, who runs 48.42% melee defense. Herded up a room of about 20 guys in a mish. Hardly anybody hit me, I monitored my defense. One hit dropped me to 47.8% defense, I never dropped below 47% defense.

Did this again on the Cimeroran wall, herded up the whole wall, 22 guys. Did not have any issues getting hit, never dropped below 47% defense.

A couple hits in sequence on /energy, /inv, or /ice can be devastating, but I've never had anything like a cascade failure on the ITF on my SR.

No problem here, interesting to see what different people do differently and in no way do I have all the good ideas.

Will say that if you're feeling awesome now, wait until you have Crowd Control taken and slotted up a bit. Great power!

Sad thing is, thanks to the minimum chance for ToHit clamp, 200% defense really isn't any better than, say 48% defense. Anything over 45% and all you get is some overhead to protect against defense debuffs and ToHit buffs, and SR mostly ignores defense debuffs.

Do wish I had 200% defense against things like Rularuu watchers and DE after Quartz drop, but largely 200% defense is pretty pointless.

Mistake, horrid luck, or troll? Hasn't been anything like my experience with SR, especially on the ITF. Soft-capped defense (over 45%) and 95% defense debuff resistance is fantastic.

Edit--Getting 200% defense is pretty challenging, that's something like all of SR, Elude, and two force field defenders bubbling and running the big bubble. Bit of overkill, really.

If you're running MA or Spines, I'd go OG. MA for the synergy, Spines for the lower end use. If you're DM, CoF has the synergy. The swords get a slight synergy with the -ToHit from CoF, but mostly I'd say it depends how many slots you can throw at it.

CoF with 5-6 slots is better than OG with 5-6 slots. OG with 1-2 slots is better than CoF with 1-2 slots. CoF drinks slots, but between the fear and the -ToHit it's a little better of the two when heavily slotted. Better mitigation, and less resisted mitigation.

And the highest damage per activation in the set by a MILE. Love Freezing Touch.

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I agree, though, that, overall, /Energy isn't the best choice for Archery (or for Assault Rifle, for that matter).

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Nothing against everything you have to say about Archery synergies, but I think that /Energy is indeed the best secondary for AR. Mental is also good, Ice used to be fun before the Ignite nerf, but AR+Boost Range is nasty.

Very few better teaming blasters than AR/Em, huge area damage and pretty safe since you're delivering all that damage from well back. At 60-70' you're back far enough for Full Auto to be a decently wide cone, and flamethrower and buckshot are still hitting at that range.

Ice Melee's single target damage is pretty abysmal, but the AoE damage between Frost and Frozen Aura is solid. Not Fiery melee good, but well above stone, energy, or dark. The mitigation against anything vulnerable to knockdown is great.

You could go without Stamina, but if you take Tough and Weave you'll probably want it. If you solo you may want stamina, since it takes a heck of a lot of attacks to finish a boss.

The tier 9, frozen aura, is well worth taking now. Same animation and damage as Foot Stomp, smaller radius and a sleep side effect instead of knockdown. Call of the sandman chance for self-heal is fun, useful, and cheap for this power.

Freezing Touch is a must-have power. You can even ignore the fact that it's a hold, it's one of the absolute best damage per activation powers that tanks get in any set.

So I drew up some attack chains, and took a Mace and Axe brute into the Rikti War Zone and took on some pylons.

For my Axe brute, for example, I fired off Chop, Swoop, Gash, Brawl, Cleave, Brawl, Chop, Swoop, Gash, Brawl, Whirling Axe, Brawl, repeat. Four times. Rant the chain three times to get a fairly consistent result.

Then I ran the same chain, replacing Swoop in all cases with Kick, which has the same animation time.

Did basically the same chain with my Mace brute, swapping Jawbreaker and Kick.

Results? The redraw penalty for Axe and Mace is very real. It adds about 3/4 of a second to the following attack now to pull out the weapon.

The redraw penalty used to be a myth, but no longer. Back Alley Brawler has modified enough animations now in order to make them faster, and flow better, that the draw time is no longer included in each and every animation. And I for one am glad.

You can respec, but you only change your power selections, order, and slotting within the primary/secondary you originally picked.

A SS/WP Brute will be SS/WP forever.

Have fun, there are a few guides to SS/WP in the guides and FAQs post, worth a look before you get too far.

DPS against a single target or multiple? Burst or sustained?

I wouldn't go elec/elec for a first brute, it's really not one of the stronger builds against typical content, especially not until level 35.

Willpower is a great secondary for Brutes, very strong and very user-friendly. Highly recommended.

For single target damage, the kind of thing you need most soloing, Stone Melee is good. For area damage, Super Strength is good, but doesn't get that way until level 32.

Most of the rest of the primaries are reasonably balanced, and any of them work very nicely with Willpower if you have a good character concept. SS/WP is easily the most common Brute in the game these days.

They said that--long ago--then tested things and found out that it wasn't true quite 100% of the time. Then came out with new sets and new animations.

It's not always true any more that redraw is meaningless.

Redraw delay used to be a myth, prior to issue 11 it was almost entirely mythical. The draw time was included in the animation time for all attacks. Recently, in order to reduce animation time and make animation "flow" better, they've removed this in many attacks.

Redraw absolutely affects some sets now, dual blades being an obvious example. Redraw feels like it affects Axe now,

I'll have to run a test this evening timing a chain of attacks with a stopwatch, one chain using Kick and another chain using Swoop to be sure one way or another.

It just seems kind of all over the place on IOs and set bonuses. You've slotted some IOs, some hugely expensive, that don't seem to help you a lot. What are your primary goals on set bonuses?

Does 4-slotting Tempered Readiness in Caltrops really get you much? The defense from 6 Gaussian's is nice, stacked with other defense, but I don't really see much else. 6-slotting Positron's in Full Auto gets you Toxic resistance for that 6th slot, at the expense of little recharge in the power.

If you could find another slot for Buckshot and Flamethrower for some range, it would help equalize the cones.

I think Smoke Grenade causes aggro if that proc goes off.

I have never seen an AV, GM, or Sniper run out of an Ignite patch. AVs and GMs have huge resistance to Avoid, it seems, and this can work against them.

Might get better answers in the Tanker board, but a few suggestions.

Common IO targets for Ice tanks are getting smashing/lethal defense soft-capped (45%), getting psi defense up to a meaningful number, boosting recharge to the point where Hoarfrost is permanent, and boosting regen.

Edit--I like to have smashing/lethal soft-capped even before EA if possible, so I have plenty of overhead so I'm less susceptible to defensive cascade failure on the ITF from all the defense debuffs you get hit with there.

Weave, CJ, and just a few IOs like Kinetic Combat and Mocking Beratement or Perfect Zinger can get you soft-capped to 45% for smashing/lethal defense. Scirocco's Dervish is a good choice for getting some psi defense. Lots of IOs to boost recharge speed, including Crushing Impact and Red Fortune in your defenses.

Call of the Sandman Chance for Self-Heal in Frozen Aura is fun.

Tough is good to have and slot up a bit, especially against really hard hitters, like Warriors at level 29, and Cimerorans late game. When they hit, they hurt a lot, tough takes some of the edge off and stacks nicely with the scaling resistance in the passives.

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Oh, another question, do IOs count in the diversification thing? Like if you have a damage/accuracy in a fourth slot in a power with 3 damages, will it be hit by the penalty? Or does it not count?

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IOs count, but it's a bit more complicated. Basically as your total accuracy and damage in a power approach 100%, it starts to not be worth adding more. As defense approaches 60%, same thing.

You may have left before I5, where they reduced the effectiveness of defense quite a bit. This hit SR pretty hard.

Good news is that SR got it all back with inventions. You're at about 30% defense with SR. This means a typical minion gets, instead of a 50% chance to hit you, a 20% chance to hit you.

Add in something like Combat Jumping and Weave, and your defense goes to a bit over 38%, now enemies have a 12% chance to hit you. Get 7% additional defense through Invention set bonuses (unaffected by ED), and you can be at a 5% chance for things to hit you--same as Elude--full time.

What level? If you're below level 22...pretty much par for the course. Sorry. It gets much better.

If you're above level 22, have to see more about the build. 5-slotting the toggles is a bit much, really, and 5-slotting the passives does virtually nothing for you with SOs.

Enhancement Diversification, if you aren't familiar with the term, says that more than 3 of anything doesn't do much for you.


Edit--saw that your post says 29 now, not sure if it did before. You should have ranged and melee toggles, probably no more than 4-slotted with 3 defense and the passives AT MOST 3-slotted for defense, beyond that, focus on offense. You're good with claws/sr properly slotted and once you get some IO bonuses you'll become great.

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then typed defense since there's only 3 positional defenses but 7 types of typed defenses.

Melee/ranged/aoe

vs

smashing/lethal/fire/energy/negative energy/cold/toxic

If you have to get each to 45 to soft cap, which set is easier to soft cap?

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The devs did fix most of the inequality by changing the set bonuses recently. There are very few set bonuses that don't pair smashing/lethal, energy/negative, fire/cold. No such thing as toxic defense, thankfully pure toxic attacks are rare outside of Vahz and Hydra.

So basically, positional and typed each get three bonus types to work on.

Positional gets an edge on psi and toxic, since far as I know all toxic attacks are positional and most psi attacks are positional. Typed gets a small edge in that just by capping smash/lethal you've covered the vast majority of what you'll see in the <40 game--most attacks include one or the other.

Exactly--Rooted gives 86.5% resistance to endurance drain.

Stone and Dark tanks are occasionally annoyed by sapper and carnie end drain, but not much more than that.

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if you are able to work fury up to hover at a certain level or higher, then yer dealing just as much damage per landed hit, as you would with or without 3 slots of damage SOs.

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This assumption that the SOs became meaningless can be explained one of two ways that I can think of--

1) The Fury damage buff basically replaces the enhancement damage buff, and as you clear 100% +damage the SOs aren't relevant any more
2) That Fury by itself takes you high enough on damage that you cap damage, and that since you've hit the cap, the SOs aren't relevant any more.

I'm guessing now that you were thinking the former?

In any case, it's additive. The Fury buff, the enhancement buff, the Build Up buff, all additive, and still short of the cap on Brutes.

I found Ice Patch still highly useful from 22 to the late 30s on my Inv/Ice. Until I had Weave in the build, everything well-slotted and most of the set bonuses I wanted, Ice Patch was crucial in keeping me alive.

Ice Patch, then jump in air and Frost as "Death from Above" was also important to my limited damage output.

Late 30s and beyond, with all the defenses in place, and with some enemies not vulnerable to knockdown, Ice Patch became less of an automatic thing. Now only use it against exceptionally large & dangerous spawns, enemies that target my weakness, or just for the fun of it. It's still a fun power.

Nice to have a power that's as effective as it is without any slotting, too.

Well, the damage cap was the only context your question really made sense to me, too.

Basically, if you have an attack that does 100 damage, for simplicity 3 damage SOs make that attack to 200 damage.

50% Fury and no damage SOs make that attack to 200 damage. The near-mythical 100% Fury and no damage SOs make that attack to 300 damage.

Max Fury AND 3 damage SOs, and the attack would do 400 damage, so at no point are the damage SOs wasted.

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SR doesn't really need a travel power. With the glut of slots take swift instead of hurdle. Then by the low 40's have 3 run speed slotted in swift, sprint, and quickness. Presto, mini-travel power. And training for people who do drive by cave speedboosts.

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This also works, but it's cheaper in slots to take Hurdle for a travel power. Hurdle is faster, and gets you some vertical movement to get over things more easily. I didn't have 6 slots to spare in my DM/SR build for travel.

As a travel power, three-slotted Hurdle is faster than 3-slotted sprint + three slotted swift + three slotted quickness. Crazy but true.