Syntax42

Shield Defense is a fine set for general content because it focuses on positional defense, which works against almost all attacks. Shield Defense can also reach 90% or more defense debuff resistance on Scrappers and Brutes.

Dark Melee/Shield Defense is much better on Scrappers than Brutes because the damage buffs add a lot more to the higher base damage that Scrappers get. I ran some numbers in another DM/SD post and found that a Brute at 75% Fury does less damage than a Scrapper in every scenario for DM/SD. If you are set on keeping the Brute, it will work just fine, but Scrappers have more advantages with that combination, in my opinion.

Your build is fine for someone on a budget. I would make some changes though.

Drop Assault. The 10.5% damage bonus is a drop in the bucket for DM/SD, especially on a Brute. You can get 55% damage bonus from AAO (with 10 targets in range), over 56% from Soul Drain, 150% from Fury (reliably), and about 95% from slotting. An extra 10% damage bonus does very little when you already have 350% or more damage bonus.

Instead of Assault, pick up Grant Cover for the defense debuff resistance. While running that and double-stacking Active Defense, you can get about 70% DDR. Reaching 90% requires Membranes in Active Defense.

Drop the Kinetic Combat set out of Smite. It is expensive for the defense gained. To make up for that lost defense, move the endurance reduction from Assault to Dark Consumption to complete the Multi-Strike set.

Put your best set (and procs) in Smite because it is the attack you will use most often. This means you move the Touch of Death set to Smite. You should be using the Smite->MG->Smite->Siphon Life attack chain for single targets if you have the recharge for it.

A 5th slot to fill in a Crushing Impact set (instead of Kinetic Combat) for the 5% recharge bonus can be pulled out of Shield Charge.

Don't bother enhancing Phalanx Fighting's defense bonus. It doesn't do anything when no allies are in range. I would put a Kismet 6% to-hit bonus in there instead.

I have posted my Spines/Fire builds (post-I19) that are designed more for teaming than farming. I think they will be more in line of what you are looking for. They have 32.5% defense, making them pretty good for surviving on teams. If you can't find them with a search, I will try to dig them up.

Please post the data chunk. Your link does not work.

Play what you think you will have fun with. Pouring a good amount of INF into a character will produce fairly similar results for DPS and survivability, if done right. The only times certain builds are better than others are in extreme scenarios not encountered during regular play.

Your build will work fine. I still don't understand the fascination with farming, though. You can get INF almost as fast by doing morality missions on non-farming characters, or just play the game and not worry about how fast you get INF. The only IOs that are out-of-reach for most people who don't farm or play the market are purple sets, and those aren't very good for many builds anyways.

Many people prefer Mu Mastery so they can have two AoEs from their epic pool: Electric Fences and Ball Lightning.

I am a big fan of aiming for 32.5% defense instead of 45% on armor sets that don't include high defenses. It generally allows you to fit more recharge bonuses in a build, which means you can do more damage or use healing powers more often. Your build has a good amount of recharge for the high defense you got, but it could use some improvements.

Charged Armor and Tough could be slotted for more resistance. The closer you get to the S/L resist cap, the better. Someone with 90% S/L resistance will take half the damage that your ~80% resistance build takes. I would even push the resistance enhancement beyond the ED cap a bit just to squeeze out more survivability from S/L resistance.

The Gladiator's 3% defense IO is going to cost you 2-3 billion INF. That is probably more than the entire total cost of the rest of your build. If you can make a build that doesn't use it, you could save a decent amount of INF for other characters.

Eradication is not very good to go beyond the 4th slot, and I might not go beyond the 3rd slot, depending on what bonuses I am going for. If you need E/N defense, use 3 Eradication and 3 Cleaving Blow.

Combat Jumping is over-slotted and does not need endurance reduction.

Do you plan to use combo attacks or an attack chain? Blinding Feint is better than Assault if you are looking for a damage buff. I think the top attack chain for DB uses Blinding Feint, but I don't remember.

Mids' is mostly useful for viewing stat totals and putting together IO set builds. The text output it generates for forums isn't really that useful. Importing the build from a forum link or data chunk is very useful, though.

What you have posted is a fine format for a non-IO set build.


Some advice on your build:
Skip Fly if you can. Jet packs are 10k INF at the vendors and fly just as fast as the power. Burn only works if you are standing on the ground.

Air Superiority is not a very good attack, compared to your main powers. Air Superiority will also cause the spines powers to suffer from re-draw. If you absolutely need fly for concept, save the slots in Air Superiority for other attacks.

I would six-slot attacks instead of putting slots in Air Superiority and Rise of the Phoenix.



I strongly encourage you to get past your fear of invention set bonuses. A well-built character doesn't have to be expensive, and it can be more than 10 times tougher to kill in PvE. Farming alignment merits can easily get you enough INF to put together any build that doesn't include purples by converting the merits to LOTGs or other valuable IOs and selling them. Building your character with enough defense can make you get hit 1/10th of the time you are getting hit without defense bonuses. Recharge bonuses from sets can make your attacks recharge much faster so you can do more damage.


The different set bonuses available can be confusing or intimidating, but it is much easier to look at others' builds than to try to tackle a build alone for your first time. Do a search for other Spines/Fire builds. I have posted a couple in the past. Finding others should also be easy due to the popularity of the combination.

That isn't a popular combination, so I doubt many people will post builds. You are better off searching for other Dark Armor builds and adapting them to fit with Fiery Melee. The best builds will have around 32.5% defense to S/L and E/N, or melee/ranged/aoe.

The easiest way to increase survivability on any character is to add defense. Aim for 20%, 32.5%, or 45%. You can go with S/L and E/N, or positional defenses. For Fiery Aura, it may be hard to get a lot of defense, so aiming for 32.5% S/L and E/N may be the easiest way to reach a significant level of survivability.

Your build should have Weave and Combat Jumping, as a minimum for defensive toggles. Maneuvers and Stealth can help, but they are expensive on endurance. It is up to you if you choose to take those or not, but make sure to turn on combat suppression for Stealth in Mids' so it doesn't report more defense than it should in combat.

If you can't make a build on your own, search the Brute forums for ANY Fiery Aura build and try to modify it to fit your needs. Post whatever you get here and we can help you modify it to make it better.

I am a big fan of LOWERING defense to 32.5% on most of my characters. With the soft-cap at 45% for most content, any defense between 32.5% and 45% is wasted when you use an inspiration for the tough content. I also find that 32.5% is enough for most situations. The biggest advantage of not pushing your defense as high as it can go is that you can fit more recharge in a build, usually. More recharge means you can do more damage. More damage generally means dead enemies faster, which means you take less damage. My logic is flawless!

The long cooldown makes it less than reliable for healing. I would use it before jumping in so you can get your max HP up and boost your regen while it lasts. I have never used EE against Hamidon, though. An Essence of Earth should be all you need against the raid Hami, and the LGTF Hami dies too fast to need any real tanking.

Maneuvers is the highest costing endurance per defense toggle you can get. Picking it up will depend on your build, your goals for the build, and how much more endurance you can afford to spend on toggles.

As Willpower, another toggle shouldn't be a strain on your endurance. Toggles are more valuable than set bonuses if you can afford the endurance cost, so it is probably a good idea to pick it up.

Keep the defense "sweet spots" in mind though. Anything between them is a waste of toggles or set bonuses. Aim for 32.5% S/L and E/N, or 45% defenses. At 32.5% defense, one small inspiration can soft-cap you for normal content and two inspirations can get you enough defense for incarnate content. Personally, I prefer 32.5% over 45% so you can fit more recharge in the build and run a better attack chain. Inspirations are easy to get.

Sets with weapons are not the best choice to combine with Fiery Aura. As a Fiery Aura character, you will likely be using Burn about as often as it comes up. This causes your weapons to be put away, then you have to spend time on the re-draw. Avoid combining Dual Blades with any armor set that requires you to press buttons from your secondary set often.

Super Strength is the most common set to pair with Fiery Aura for Brutes. Rage crash isn't an issue if you keep it double-stacked, or reactivate Rage just before the crash. The best single-target chain for SS/FA is Gloom->Haymaker->KO Blow->Gloom->Haymaker->Burn.

Claws is actually not very good for DPS on a Brute. It is much better on Scrappers because they gain more out of the damage buff from Follow-Up.

Stone Melee does not have knockbacks. If the magnitude is less than 1, it will knock a critter down instead of back. This can be modified by level difference, so just be aware that fighting anything lower than you may cause your knockdowns to turn into knockbacks.

For your DM/SD character, it sounds like you need some help with your build. You shouldn't have trouble standing up to most AVs. The only AVs that might give you problems are Lord Recluse and incarnate AVs. Post your build on the Scrapper forums if you want help improving it.

The sweet spots for defense are 20%, 32.5%, and 45%. Those are in order of number of small inspirations needed to hit the soft cap, from most to least. Obviously 45% would cost you more recharge than you want to give up. Hitting 32.5% in one category is possible, but you would probably have to give up the mentioned attack chain to hit 32.5% in two categories (S/L and E/N preferably). If you manage to pull off that kind of build and still run the top attack chain seamlessly, I would love to see it.

I went with 20% to all positions on my SS/FA so I could fit in as much DPS as possible. It isn't enough for some people, but I'm used to an inspiration-popping playstyle.

If you bring a Cold Domination Defender with you, keeping Benumb on Ghost Widow makes her hold of doom around 25 magnitude. A Shield Defense Tanker can reach that by keeping Active Defense double-stacked. A Stone Armor Tanker goes to 34.5 or so hold protection with Granite + Rooted, but moving slow may be a bad idea because of her heal. Granite Armor only has 21.6 mag Hold protection by itself, which can be enough with a breakfree or two.

Farming isn't always the answer. Playing the market can yield far more INF if you are patient. If you aren't patient, you can collect alignment merits and turn them into Luck of the Gambler: Global Recharges which sell for 100-150 million. You could also save them up and spend 30 or so on a purple IO, but it would take you several months of farming alignment merits to get a single full purple set.