Silas

Yo dude, I made and IOd out an EM/FA brute on a whim a while back, working on accolading him out. The idea was to use him as a pvp toon, bad idea? If I posted his build would you mind shredding it for me?

He's probably my 1st choice to bring to pvp, though I'm open to suggestions. I think you've gotten me reinterested in teh pvpness.

Yessssssss...

btw don't you dare build it for defense. The softcap knows you love it truly madly deeply, you don't have to cling to it so much :P

More recharge = more stuff killed = more insp drop. If you need defense eat purples, ain't no inspiration that makes Footstomp come up faster.

With your resources that brute (assuming it lives to 50 :P) better have over 80% rech, or else.

Nah, seriously though, awesome. I love my brute. You'll hopefully enjoy it more than your SS/SD, I find /SD a little boring. Highly effective, but boring.

Oh snap Kahlan, are you considering making a SS/FA?

Fireheart: I get what you mean about getting so wrapped up in smashing face that you forget to push some buttons, but those buttons can make you smash so much harder so its definitely worth it

The other thing is Tankers really play very differently to brutes. Tankers get aggro because its arguably the only thing they excel at, brutes get aggro because aggro = fury = bigger facepunchings. Pow pow.

As for double stacking Rage, as a general rule I don't. Doublestacking it does spare you the -def crash, but not the damage or end crashes. You'll also be crashing twice as often and you can avoid the -def crash simply by refreshing Rage once it starts to flicker on your buff bar.

Looking at your build, if you wanted to keep it more or less as-is I would take Hasten and FE at 35 and 38. FE can easily be put off until the late 30s/40s, its very nice to have but certainly not game-changing. Hasten you might want earlier depending on how much exemplaring down you do, I think on my build I picked it up somewhere in the low 20s.

Resistance power slotting: I wanted +rech and +rec from sets and since the only +rech from resistance sets is 5% for 5 slots and otherwise a kinda crappy set, I focused on those that gave +recovery. These would be Impervium Armors and Steadfast protections. The Steadfasts also allow you to get some KB protection, but bear in mind they cap at 30 so you won't get very high resistance values. For this reason put them in a power you don't mind shortchanging a little for enhancement values. That said, you could easily go 2-3 Steadfasts and one or two generic 50 resistance IOs, you've certainly got the slots (take them from the leadership powers).

Another good option is Titanium Coatings, 3 of them for the +hp bonus. With resistance sets you generally want the res, res/end and res/end/rech (in that order of importance). This will give you good values for both resistance and endurance reduction.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, look up Silverado's sig. He's soloed a tonne of GMs on his defender. As for time, on my son/rad Pylons take about 10-12 mins iirc, most GMs who don't run around like headless spastics ( ,,l, Scrapyard) are 10-15.

An ice/cold defender with good defense should be more than capable of soloing an AV or GM.

As for corr vs defender times, the speed at which an AV/GMs health drops past the 50% mark is very noticeable. The last 5-10% goes crazy fast since you're pretty much doing double damage on every single hit (and AVs/GMs have the hp to take it, unlike minions/lts where much of the crit capability of Corrs is wasted). Given the extra debuff strength defenders have they shouldn't be too much slower, especially with a secondary like cold or sonic which are very high in damage.

Let us know if you manage to solo any GMs, I'd be interested to see.

Hilariously powerful or hilariously boring?

Dun dun duuuun, you be the judge.

Empathy is hilariously powerful. I would elaborate but anonymous passive aggressive rep comments are tedious.

So basically, yes. Emp r good. Not the fault of the set that its the go-to set for vacuous idiots who want to heal leet.

While not strictly as amazing for SS/Fire as it is for Fire/Fire (especially since we don't get a fire mastery *sob*) FE is definitely worth it. It only needs a slot or two of recharge and is a nice damage boost. Way I see it, I went /FA for more damage. FE brings that.

Taking a cursory look in Mids, assuming 99%ish damage enhancement (3 generic dam IOs), 80% fury and Rage (what you'll usually be running at) Footstomp hits for 260. FE kicks that up to 307. The damage buff it gives non-fire damage may not be the full 30s duration or 100%, but its still significant. It also makes a huge difference to Blazing Auras damage. Radius may be small, but PBAoE tics of 50-60 are not.

As for your build...looking at it I can see how you've built to be tougher by getting more defense, the problem is you've not got enough for it to be noticeable. Running CJ and Weave you've got 14% s/l which is nice, but if you want defense I would aim for much more. Either pick a single type (like s/l or melee) and get it into the high 30s/40s (softcap it if you can without gimping your build, the softcap being 45%) or mid to high 20s for all three positions.

The way I built my brute was crazy recharge. The way I see /FA is not so much a resistance set with a heal, but more a set with a great heal that has resists to shore it up. Healing Flames is a phenomenal self-heal. Keeping that in mind, the other thing I wanted from my brute was huge damage without ever having to stop. More recharge = more damage. More recharge = Healing Flames and Consume up more often, don't have to stop for health/end.

So I said screw defense, if I want enemies to miss me I can scoff purple insp until I can't feel my face. My build has about 90something % recharge, but its also very expensive. For a price-restricted build I would say you could easily get around 40-70% without breaking the bank. Enough to make a nice difference.

The other thing you'll want is recovery. Lots of +recovery. Hasten crashes, Rage crashes, Footstomp is a huge end hog, it all adds up. SS/Fa is enough of an end hog without adding stuff like Assault and Tactics. Neither of which you need, btw, since fury/Rage/FE are all the damage buffs you need and Rage is a nice tohit buff.

Hope this helps. If you want I can post my build or a rough draft of a cheaper version of it.

The benefit is that they don't drop in effectiveness as you level. A 35 SO is best when you're 32 and drops off in effectiveness until you out level it, but a 35 IO will always give the same enhancement.

At 50, the advantage is that the enhancement value generic IOs give increases. So a level 30 damage IO will give you just under 35% enhancement, but a level 50 one will give you 42%. For reference, a level 53 dam SO will enhance a powers damage by 38%. So if you've got the money (and as you're in the Market forum you've got no excuse now ) they're definitely worth it.

Pretty cool, though I'd be interested to see if you can do the same with just one of those chars. That would be a better test of the builds.

Great guide man, looking forward to the rest of them This may even entice me back to pvp every now and again.

My work here is done.

hassle the devs about pvp recipe drop rates, plzkthx

Also p.sure the FFB proc in Shield Charge will buff the pet that is summoned (and dies instantly after dealing the KD and damage) not you.

All polls indicate Schismatrix was voted Worst at being bad '09

Please use the money to buy a sandwich.

Whoops so someone pointed out that the 5% def number is for s/l, HS gives 20% to exotic damage which is very respectable. So I take that back as an example.

A better example would be the PBAoE damage toggles. They don't hit very hard at all and eat a lot of end, but over time add up to a lot of damage. I never said Fire Breath makes or breaks a build, my point is just that I feel it should not be so readily discounted based purely on its animation time in a vacuum, which seemed to be what was happening.

Fire Breath takes 2.67 seconds to animate. You can fire off 2 Fireballs in that time? My corr has 95% global rech, hasten and 90% rech in Fireball and it recharges in 4.5 seconds. Share your hax plz.

Or, you know, less hyperbole. Either works, really. While it is true that Fireball and Rain are much easier to use and are my go-to AoEs for most of the time, I feel depriving yourself of the damage potential of Fire Breath is ill advised. When stuff is lined up right (which you can do yourself while soloing or moving around on teams) Fireball-Fire Breath is a huge combo.

Also Force, Herr. Mids says: base damage/sec for fireball is 3.09/sec, fire breath is 3.92/sec. When enhanced (using my builds enhanced numbers, Ragnaroks in Ball, Positrons in Breath) Ball is 21.6/sec, Breath is 20.1/sec. Hardly a huge dps difference.

While you could chuck out Blaze and Blast in the time it takes to spew fiyah, Blaze and Blast only hit 1 dude. If you look at Breath in a vacuum sure, its numbers look weak. If you look at it in the context of the set and how it synergizes with the rest of the set(which is what matters in game, unless you only ever play with one power at a time) its a great power.

To me, skipping Fire Breath because it looks bad in a vacuum is like skipping Heightened Senses because wtf, 5% defense for tankers enhanced? That's barely more than Weave is at base, and Weave is to all damage types. But as I'm sure you'd agree Force, skipping HS would be ridiculous. It's just not realistic to judge powers like that. Although there are some powers which are real stinkers based on their vacuum and in game performance >.> (sup, Repel)

He wasn't saying that SOs aren't good enough for average CoHing, because they are. He was saying that there are some things that you cannot do without IOs. For example, softcapping Shield Defense for scrappers/brutes (Tanks can do it with just Weave, I believe but correct me if I'm wrong)

Billy Madison.

I dunno man, crazy chicks are bad news bears. Once you realize there are sane chicks who have the awesome stuff you like about crazy chicks but without all the insane baggage, its good times.

Well about the learning thing Bud, I've played with you (albeit not much) and I'd put you in the good players category