Rockblood

Hm? Dual Blades has a ST Knock-Up and two AE knockdowns. I wouldn't call it low mitigation by any means. The damage is all lethal, but the Attack Vitals combo is ridiculous DPS (and spammable out of the box).

I agree with this assessment. However, if you have enough money to blow on IOs and get to the S/L defense softcap, the list changes from 'which is most durable', to 'which is cheapest'.

Invuln and Stone don't require much. In-built defensive toggles and if you decide to dip into Weave, you can hit the 45% mark with only one or two Kinetic Combat sets.

Invuln has pretty decent debuff resists, but nothing spectacular. Most of it is found in the passive resist powers. Unstoppable will, for a time, make you feel like a God. However, I could never play an invuln brute, because I always found it to be better on a tanker (my opinion, pinch of salt). As a side note, I have an Inv/EM tanker at 50 (my 3rd 50).

Stone also has pretty good debuff resists. Defense debuff from Rock Armor and Crystal Armor (I think), and END drain from Rooted. Minerals gives you Psi defense and +perception (nifty against Arachnos). If I were to create a Stone Armor brute, I would build him to work without Granite. Pump up the defense numbers to soft-cap, get enough runspeed bonuses to negate Rooted's penalty and use Granite only as an 'oh-snap' toggle. IT might be easy to negate Granite's movespeed penalty, but you still can't jump or hover, you suffer a 65% recharge penalty (which is *really* expensive to negate) and a 30% damage penalty (mostly negated by Fury). On a side note, I have a Stone/SS tanker at 50 (my first), building towards the non-Granite playstyle.

WP will require 5 Kinetic Combat sets. I have a DB/WP brute at 47, created on GR launch. I have 4 Kinetic Combat sets, Weave and CJ. I basically stopped dying at around level 30, even when I'm at aggro-cap and have two elite bosses pounding on me (part of it is soft-mitigation from DB, though). With enough defense (I found 30% to be the majic number), your regen will keep you alive through seemingly impossible situations. You are, however, susceptible to debuffs that go through your defense (WP has negligible debuff resists). It does, however, have good psi defense and psi resists, along with +perception (again, nifty against Arachnos).

DA I don't have much experience with, although you can find many supporters on the forums. It has a pretty comprehensive list of non-damage resistances, which is always nice. I'll have to let someone else talk about DA.

I've played a DM/EA brute to 32. I know how much Siphon Life can help you live longer. I just don't agree that it's an 'impressive' self-heal. Besides, as Invuln, you already have Dull Pain. Siphon Life will be just the icing that keeps your cake at full HP.

By Soul Drain and +recharge, I meant that having recharge boosting powers/IOs would allow you to use Soul Drain (and Dull Pain and Unstoppable) more often.

I wouldn't say Stone is the worst tanking set. With IOs, you could easily counteract the penalties you'd get from being in Granite, which makes you tough as all hell. WP, however, has a really crappy aggro aura, but has very good all-round survivability.

I'd go with Ice or Dark for 'best' tanking primary. Good survivability, great aggro control, which only gets emphasized with IOs.

SS is a favorite because of Rage and Footstomp (best PBAoE in the game, due to its ridiculously large range). It might do only S/L damage, but no one really cares, in the long run. But in any case WP is probably the 'brutiest' secondary, concept-wise. Something about being too stubborn/thickheaded/stupid to go down like a normal man is very brute-like. Also, the fire-and-forget nature of WP fits into the whole 'offense first, defense maybe later' approach of brutes.

And I wouldn't call DM's self-heal capabilities 'impressive' by any means.

However, DM does have Soul Drain. WP does not benefit from +recharge at all, while Inv has Dull Pain and Unstoppable. There's more synergy between DM and Inv in terms of recharge.

On the other hand, DM's to-hit debuffs will stack up nicely with the to-hit debuff in RttC.

At the end, it all comes down to which playstyle you'd prefer.

Well, I would like to have fun with him and do TFs/SFs and other stuff. So a 'feeder of influence' wouldn't be the most accurate description. Also, I have never used a PPP before, so I'd like to take that opportunity with this character (leaning towards Soul Mastery for Darkest Night).

Also, my experience with Hero Merits tells me that difficult-to-obtain IOs are not that difficult to obtain anymore, which will ease the build process.

But I understand where you're coming from and /WP was my first instinct as well. However, I had just leveled a /WP brute and the experience would have been much too familiar for me to enjoy the character fully.

I'm leaning towards /Inv, as its something I'm comfortable with and I know what I can and cannot face (or need to face with insps). A friend suggested /fire because the potential for face-melting was great (in fact, he got really excited about the idea). Yet another suggested /stone, though he couldn't elaborate (he heard it was a popular combination with elec melee a while back).

Does anyone have any experience with an Elec/Fire brute or seen one in action? I've played FA tankers before (before the change to Burn and FE) and found it to be a relatively painful journey. I can only imagine that the relative squishiness of /Fire can be mitigated by a Brute's higher damage output.

Also, I hate being one of those posters who don't really know what they want and only come onto the forums for validation of their choices.

The Hulk.

'Nuff said.

I'd go for WM and not BA. It has better weapon customization options and it works better when you think about the 'dude who grabs a pipe/bat/shovel and starts breaking faces'.

You're right, I forgot that Shield has a +damage aura. That removes it from the 'all defense, no offense' camp.

Also, I never said that Stone is offensive in nature. I said that it has an offensive aura, which removes it from the 'all defense, no offense' camp. It doesn't matter that Granite would reduce the damage of the aura, the fact is that the aura still does damage and thus, Stone cannot be classified as 'purely defensive'.

They could give them small values at level 1 and slowly increase it until it becomes the 'normal' values they are at level 20. That way, it makes pre-20 (especially pre-DO) levelling slightly easier and you still get that feeling of character growth.

I play a lot of melee toons and most, if not all, of them take Stamina at 20. What this change means is that I can take other powers instead of having to save three 'mandatory' slots for the Fitness pool.

Purples and priority targetting can solve most of these problems. Also, debuff resistances.

Besides, RNG can always hate you and no amount of defense can help.