Rockbone

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Before you go all rebel disestablishment, you have to consider why some people rate auto resist powers lower.

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How pedantically patronizing, but continue.

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First off, I agree that not all autopowers are awful. Case in point:

Stone Armor--> Stone Skin vs. Invuln--> Resist Physical damage

I love stone skin. Numbers aside (7.5% vs 5.25% resists to S/L), the reason why I would take stone skin in my stone armor set and not RPD in my invul set is

a)because it stone skin complements S/L defense with S/L resists, providing me a more synergistic defense versus two common damage types.

b)Invul has a two toggle that has the exact same effect, but stronger, both of which are necessary and provide an adequate level of S/L resists.


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In other words, you agree with me. It's my fault I guess. My purpose here was to encourage people to consider auto powers, and not just dismiss them en masse. Nowhere am I insisting that people get temperature protection... although cold and fire are becoming more and more common in PvP. It may not be essential, but it may not hurt in some cases.

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The same goes for Energy protection in /EA: it's a passive that pushes resists into something that you already have a resist/defense combination for, while negative energy is already mostly accounted for with another toggle.

Finally, most autos come early, at key points where a brute has to choose between getting Acro (/Fire,/Dark), or continue the road up to stamina, all while laying the groundwork (mez protection, Main S/L resists, minor secondary resists) to being able to survive, and have at reasonable repertoire of attacks upon which to build fury.

The reason why there is such a de-emphasis on autos (with the exception of some of Invuln, in which they do increase survivability until you get invincibility) is because there are almost always better powers to take. By the time you can take them, you've either already reached SO levels, or your defenses are shored up enough in one form or another to be rather well off. /Fire and /EA are prime examples.

For you to assume that toggles drop often implies that the problem isn't one of survival, but one of end management, which, until you get your end recovery power or reach SOs with fully slotted stamina, is always something to work around until then.

The "Field experience" line of reasoning is a red herring. Not everything is functional out of the box, and some mobs will completely mow you down based on your powerset. The word of the day in the field is "adaptability." If, on a team, you find the same strategies result in you constantly dying, alternate means may be necessary. If solo, inspirations are there to give you that extra push against that nasty Longbow boss. Careful and rational analysis are the solution to most situations, and will do vastly more than 10 points to a redundant resistance or defense.

Basically, while it's not good to spurn any power because it's auto and has low base values, it's equally foolish to assume that all autos are functional and worthwhile. There are reasons why autos are rated lower than their toggle counterparts. It's true that you can stack auto and toggle powers, but toggles make up the meat of your defense. Autos are ancillary, and unless they do provide something vital (i.e. Grounded), always keep the option of other powers open.

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etc. etc. etc. I think that we more or less agree on this point. Please note that I said that you may want to prioritize toggles, but that doesn't mean that autos are useless. I do understand that stamina is important to keep those toggles on, here are other factors that are involved some times. Mus and their dastardly lightning attacks can zip down your endurance perhaps without you even noticing. Sure, human error is part of the issue here, but don't act like even the most 1337 of gamers don't miss stuff like that on occasion. Electricity blasters are also pretty good at teaming up to wipe out your endurance before you realize it. Also it is possible for a group of heroes with multiple holds and disorients to finally knock you out for a while. Even if you're just relying on your autos you'll still be a sitting duck, but at least you won't be a sitting duckling.

Furthermore, even if a brute's resistance/defense is "maxed out," they won't be maxed out for long if there are debuffers out there

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Fury isn't as absolutely vital as the OP makes it out to be, and survivability is not just defense, resists, and damage output; it comes int he form of self-heals, knockback/up/down, stuns, and holds as well. While it's not building mad fury (how much fury can a lone foe build anyway?) knocking a mob off its feet or keeping it mezzed is 100% damage mitigation for the duration. I'd take air superiority over RPD anyday.

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Wait... when did I knock self-heals, stuns, holds, and knockbacks? Of course these play a vital role in a brute's survival, but I don't see how these are at odds with building up one's fury bar. Keeping an entire mob mezzed or knocked back is difficult for a brute alone, but building up a fury bar so you can pound them into oblivion is relatively easy. Oh, and your question about "how much fury can a lone foe build?" goes directly to my call for brutes to get taunt. One foe can't build that much fury, but even only 3 gives a pretty significant boost to your damage output.

This guide is partly a guide on how to follow guides for brutes...

Okay, so if you have had some trouble in the past getting a hang of your brute, you may have sought out guides to help you. There are a few excellent guides out there for brutes - especially guides to the AT in general.

For the sake of completeness I'll just summarize them here:
1. Attack as often as possible, because that builds your fury bar.
2. Open with smaller attacks to build up fury, and then unleash your hard hitting powers when your fury bar is up a bit.
3. Auras do not contribute to fury, but they do help maintain aggros and the damage they deal can be pretty sweet with fury building up.

Okay, nothing too new so far, right? SMASH! pretty much sums it up.

There are MANY guides, however, written by people who have used a character builder rather than testing their builds in the field. You can generally spot these a mile away because they are OBSESSED with numbers, and generally how they relate to numbers in other powers.

These guides will generally tell you that a power is "sux0rz" or "useless" because you get more defense or resistance from another power. That's right... I'm talking about the secret ANTI-AUTO LEAGUE or AAL. It took reading several guides telling me that various auto powers were useless because a toggle power provided more of the same to write this.

This simply doesn't hold water in the field people. It assumes that A) your toggles will NEVER be shut off, and B) that the powers don't stack, and C) you'll never have to make up for debuffs.

Sure, toggle powers DO provide more resistance/defense than their auto counterparts, but firstly, toggles cost endurance, and secondly, *SURPRISE!* you can take both! I don't know about you, but usually dying is something that I try to avoid when I play CoV or CoH... You might want to prioritize toggles over autos, but claiming that autos are "useless" because they are not as good as the toggles is absurd... and deadly. I know from experience. Autos are what your brute needs to stay alive long enough to SMASH! and keep SMASHING!

On that note one has to wonder how these people who leave out most of their brute's secondary even survive out there? Well, firstly, many of them don't because they've made the build in a character builder instead in the game. Secondly, they stay alive in the game by not really fulfilling their archetype's role. ALL of these AAL guides have a phrase along these lines usually under a description saying that TAUNT is useless:
"remember ur not a CoH Tanker you're a Brute" "Brutes play more like scrappers"

After this they'll go on and on about resistance numbers, hit point numbers, etc. etc. all to prove to you that a tanker can take damage better than a brute. To which I respond thus: "Oh okay, I'll just hop on as my Tanker to be the primary aggro holder for my CoV team... oh wait..." Firstly, scrappers aren't just melee fighters who do more damage than tankers. They specifically deal extra critical hits to bosses - they're DUELISTS. A big part of their job is to single out the most dangerous leaders in a mob and take them down. You can figure this out by reading the description of their inherent power.

READ THE DESCRIPTION OF THE BRUTE'S INHERENT POWER!

Fury builds as the brute attacks AND as the brute IS ATTACKED. This would seem to indicate that the more often you're being attacked, the higher your fury will be, the more damage you'll deal, the better overall brute you'll be. This incredible damage output makes up for the brute's hit point deficit compared to tankers. Part of a brute's defense is his amazing offense. -- that is unless you're the kind of person who still thinks a tanker is supposed to herd an entire map so the blasters can AoE them all... c'mon guys.. that's so... i2.

You have taunt available to you for a reason, brutes. Don't give me that: "It's not your job to pull that guy off your friend your job is SMASH! ur not CoH tanker lol!" Well whatever, my brutes can't take as much damage as my CoH tankers do, but they do more damage, which means the people fighting me are dead more quickly. Also, my brute with taunt deals more damage than your brute without it because since I have my defenses maxed out and as many people attacking me as possible, I have FULL fury bar, much earlier and much more often than you do.

Who else is going to be the primary aggro holder on your CoV team? The stalker? Give me a break. The MMs pets? Please their defenses are usually even cheesier than the stalkers, plus your MM friend will hate you for making him or her recall their people all the time (exception:bruiser for thugs... because he's a brute too! :P) "Spread out the damage over the team"... I've heard this and it holds the best so far, but it's too chaotic and unpredictable if you ask me.

So new guide:
1. Taunt
2. Attack often , build up to biggest attacks in middle of attack cycle.
3. Max out those defenses so you can take all that damage.
4. Trust your experiences in the game over any guide.
I wrote this after reading so many guides telling people to not get autos or taunt. I know that my main brute's fury bar has been doing extremely well and his survivability has been great since I completely disregarded that advice. Do not take my word for this. Try it out in the game.

Cheers all!