TheBruteSquad

My only real complaint about regen is that late game factions tear it a new one in a big way.

Note the following observations are based on SOs only, and no primary. (Otherwise, since my own 500+ hours of playtime /regen is Broadsword, I'd be slanted into making regen a lot tougher than it actually is thanks to permanently being at the lethal and melee softcaps from stacked parry).

Arachnos - kill recharge, apply hefty defense buffs, high burst damage, lots of endurance drain.

Longbow - Minions that floor regen even through instant healing, resistance debuff, defense debuff, wardens as wild cards

Cimerorans - Heavy defense debuff, high DPS

Carnival of Shadow - Heavy endurance drain, recovery debuffs, regen debuffs, high damage

Malta - It's freaking Malta. -defense, -regen, -endurance, -recovery

None of that is healthy for any secondary, of course - those factions have earned their reputations. However, broken down each of those status effects hit regen in a painful way.

- Recharge: Recharge is life. Your passive regeneration (35 - 50 hp/sec or so) isn't what keeps you standing for the most part. It's your clicks. Regen is a very active secondary. No clicks = no survival.
- Regen: Usually this doesn't affect a regen much, funnily enough. When it does, though, is when dull pain or instant healing are running (especially both, which on my bs/regen scrapper gives me a hearty regen of 147 hp/sec).
- Def and -res: Nasty for anyone but especially nasty for regen, as is lacks both resistance and defense (outside of moment of glory, which rocks). Without any values in these to start with every single application drastically increases the incoming damage. It's nice to have two huge heals available. It's less nice when due to debuffing there's no way you're surviving 25 seconds for that heal you used after the alpha strike to come back.
- Recovery, - endurance: Other than lacking any kind of defense against these (end drain reduction, recovery debuff resistance, energy defense) regen isn't particularly vulnerable. It could be pointed out, however, that every other brute secondary now has end drain resistance, recovery debuff resistance, or energy defense natively available to them.

It's not a terrible set as its strongest detractors decry but personally with the game's current state I'm not sure I'd roll another one.

I love my wp/em tanker. Especially since Tankers got bruising. Wham, wham, 700-1000 damage done. It's flashy, it's slow, it's terrible DPS - but every time I hear energy transfer charging I know that something is going to get it.

Though honestly a lot of times, especially late game, it feels like he out damages my broadsword scrapper. It's an illusion, but a persistant one.

If you can barely dent his health bar, you won't beat him - for more than the obvious reason of him likely killing you while you pound on him: He's scripted to flee for the exit at 50% health. With his regen and super arachnoid speed unless you have a way to lock him down you won't win that mission solo (mission fails if he escapes - and as a SS brute he will).

The most useful tip is to bring a x/rad controller or another AT with -regen and a fast recharging immobilize. Failing that you can try crafting an Envenomed dagger temp power bought from the market to bring his regen down to a more sensible level - I haven't tried it on good old Biff but it's worth a shot. That won't stop him from taking off at mach one at 50%, though. Not sure what a brute can do to stop that. Black Scorpion's patron aoe immobilize with a lot of recharge maybe?

Out-leveling a story arc while it's in process is really annoying.

This morning I was working for Praetor Sinclair and had made it to the second last mission. The last post mission chat with him said things along the lines of 'we have them cornered. Now to finish it.'

Followed immediately by 'Our time together is done, $charname. Best to not draw attention to it.'

.... well, fine then. YOU take out the last two members of your elite secret team and Praetoria Ghost Widow. Glory hog.

I don't care if all the enemies con blue because the story caps at 15. Let me finish the damned arc. You can't even flashback them.

(And then what happened is a rhetorical question. I know where paragonwiki is if I really want to know. I've used it to for such purposes many times in the past when going through Praetoria.)

Once upon a time a little birdie told me that if they ever decided to port over SS to scrappers they'd raise the base damage on the attacks slightly and replace Rage with Build Up.

With a decently built WP brute (with 32%+ defenses to each type) you'd notice the increase in DPS far more than you'd notice the Tanker's increased HP in my opinion. When WP fails, it tends to fail HARDCORE - in situations where a few extra hundred HP wouldn't do a damned thing for you.

My SM/WP brute (32% smash/lethal, 38% most others, somewhere in the 20s psi) tends to survive situations where my EM/WP tanker doesn't (45%+ all except the non-existent toxic). Without a doubt SM is factoring into that, though whirling hands does a pretty good job stunning on a Tanker and most bosses are perma-stunned an attack chain or two in, but I would think probably twice the DPS helps drop foes before they get a chance to overwhelm as well.

My WP tanker, softcapped to all types of damage possible, had an average uptime of less than 45 seconds. I spent far more time buying green insps in the hospital while waiting for the door to unlock and flying back to the fight than actually playing. I was the only tanker willing to taunt Anti-matter to move him around but nobody would heal me so usually I got back to the fight in time to taunt AM, get him to a console, get hit by the pulse (beefed up because a few people and especially a few people's pets just wouldn't leave him alone no matter how often the league yelled at them), get hit by one of his attacks, hit the floor, release to the hospital, and then do it again.

My /fire brute, who has both a heal that recharges in less than 30 seconds and no taunt (thus could stay with the herd at all times) had a much better time.

The premise behind the trial is cool, though, and I don't mind the gimmicks. I find myself in the odd position of liking the trial but not enjoying it.

All VEAT anything always has and always will steamroll everything.

Until the new Keyes Reactor. Take that, softcapped things that like to cluster close together to stack buffs. You're now weakening each other and having to deal with losing half your hit points every few seconds.

I've always kind of liked the fact you can't casually get rid of something fused to your central nervous system until none of your abilities rely on its presence. Remember, in canon your other builds are still the current you ... you're just focusing on different aspects of your potential.

I picked Arachnos. If you're picking for power, though, I'm pretty sure Warworks is still on top.

Focus on defense first. It will help with whatever you want to accomplish.

After that look at how much recharge you really need. Rage is perma on 3 SOs. Stacking it is nice, but doesn't really do a whole lot for brute damage because of the way damage bonuses work in the game (even for fire aura). Stacking rage is much more noticable on a Tanker in my experience. Most likely you'll be slotting for recharge to get the best chain you can run. I'm not sure how much is required for SS.

+health is nice, really nice, but ultimately a few hundred extra health total pales in comparison to lowering the chance of taking a few hundred damage period. Plus you can get a decent amount of bonus health after your other goals are met and with accolades.

Fighting is HUGELY useful. Take kick, take boxing - won't matter because you won't be keeping either on your hotbar. Toughness and weave are where it's at.

I love roleplaying. Every single one of my characters, even the throwaways that don't ever see level 10 before being fed to the great woodchipper in the sky for their server slot, has a bio. Sometimes it's just a sentence until the inspiration hits to flush it out to 800+ characters. Every costume is built around personality traits.

I roleplay in local, supergroup, and coalition primarily. Team and league if it's a RP team or league.

With all that said a dedicated RP server is a terrible idea. It stagnates the pool. I once stood in a neutral town in Anarchy Online and gave a speech explaining why the rebels were wrong and that it wasn't too late to come over to the winning side. In short order I had dozens of people joining the discussion, with more people filtering in asking 'is this an event'. Most of these people had never so much as considered speaking 'in character' - and more than a few new roleplayers were born, joining me (or the other side, who had their own RP leader show up three minutes after I started despite it not being a planned inner-guild event).

I see the calls for a RP VIP server and I shake my head. RP is one of the things a free player can do without becoming a VIP - why hide away from that instead of encouraging it?

Also in my MMO experience an RP server rarely ends up about RP. People I know tend to pick them because on average they have less people running around with stupid character names.

Then again, one of my alts is a half-human/half-efreet King in exile from a fictitious state named 'my Lord' for the NPC interaction hilarity.

Hero Register: "Welcome to the hero registration desk. What name shall you be known as to the people of the city?"
King Alphonso: "I am a King. People shall call me 'my Lord', as is proper."
HR: "... well, I guess it's better than 'lolcatgirlzRsexah131'. Welcome to the city, my Lord. (God I need a vacation."

I was wondering how they'd handle it (choking maybe, was my thought) but AbridgedGuru exceeded my expectations this episode.

Nah. How they fixed it was by showing him scary clown pictures every time he wandered too close to the wall. Negative reinforcement. It wouldn't work on most of the other enemies in the game.

This is my fault. All of it.

This is a true story:

When I was a child I found out I was dying. Not quickly but inevitably. At first they didn't give me to 30.

I was very upset about this (understandably), and I railed against God Himself that it wasn't fair, that I didn't want to die, that more than anything I wanted to see how it all ended.

I passed 30 (36 and climbing, woo!) but I really am in the twilight of my allotted time. Medicine has obviously gotten a lot more accurate since the early 80s but I don't need them to tell me - my chest hurts every single day. I might have 10 years (60%). If I have 20 it will be a miracle (10%). I do not have 30 (by the math I don't have 23, but 30 sounds cooler).

I'm human. I'm selfish. I've still never let go of that childhood wish.. that burning desire to see how it all ends.

So... a part of me hopes a comet destroys the earth in the 2012. It's a terrible wish, and I know it, but it's all I've ever had.

Fortunately, the more rational part of me will point and laugh at the doomsayers just like the rest of the world.

My own sr brute is fire/sr and he is indeed glorious.

I'm guessing that before you get to insane levels of recharge you won't notice the difference between Brute damage with fire melee and Scrapper damage with fire melee. I'm also guessing that you WILL notice the difference between brute toughness and scrapper toughness when using SR.

Advantage: Brute.

<-- Will neither confirm nor deny allegations of bias.