TheBruteSquad

Some people are using it on Virtue to fake conning purple. Might be what the OP is referring to.

Yep. Hits all of your criteria except it's squishy out of the box if you try and team-tank with it, like all pure resist sets. But you didn't say 'tank a task force' just 'be great on them'. And it is.

Are you sure Ion's 'bug' is a bug? I thought they changed it so there would BE secondary jumps... since as a chain power if the initial blast killed the first target flat out there wouldn't be.

That's pretty much my only complaint about the show... Jim wore a ski mask a few times, but then stopped for no explained reason.

If everyone played the market instead of farmed you'd be left with whatever scraps people threw at it from casual play.

The friend who steered you towards defenses was right. Before I went crazy with the defense bonuses I was built towards 'being able to survive an alpha strike' for a team. Now I'm built for 'I took damage? What the hell?'. I'll never get the next damage taken badge at this rate.

Backed by a tier 3 spiritual alpha my regeneration isn't as crazy as some people have made but it still rivals Instant Healing from scrapper regen - as a toggle. With enough enemies around, most of which are missing, it's Dull Pain + Instant Healing levels of regeneration.

I found softcapping all types too difficult on my brute (was easy on my wp tanker, who even got psi) so I got to the high 30s (except psi) and use Darkest Night against tough foes. Most of the time it works.

All that said a few lucky hits from someone NOT doing smash/lethal will ruin your day no matter what you do. The non-smash lethal resists on WP are pathetic.

Because this forum needs another topic on ss/fa on the front page. *nods sagely*

Fire/* uses 'dead enemy' as its preferred form of damage mitigation. Once softcapped SR has all the mitigation it needs to apply that status debuff before croaking. It's the same with with fire/shield and fire/ea.

SM/WP - Mr Content. Stone has low dps overall but it has high burst damage and high mitigation via fault, which gives WP time to regenerate. This combination isn't the best farmer (it *can* farm), nor is it the best AV beater (it *can* beat AVs), but if you like running story arcs, especially in Oroborus flashbacks where you don't have your fancy-schmancy IO builds that make other combinations beastly, this guy won't let you down. Running Oro arcs with 'no enhancements'? Not a problem. Fault and Rise to the Challenge still carry the day.

Fire/Stone - if you just want to stomp around in a PuG doing damage without worrying about drawing aggro or spending money on invention sets at all this brute does pretty good post granite. You don't *need* to run rooted unless you're tanking and the -recharge doesn't particularly slow down using your AoEs in a team environment where you're only going to get to use them once per spawn anyways. The -damage hurts more so snagging taunt and teleport to make sure that mean old tanker doesn't steal your precious alpha strike is a good idea.

Not even remotely true in many cases. My ss/fire that I use for farming can max out the mission tickets in a +4/x8 fire ambush farm in 4 minutes but can't generate enough single target DPS to, for instance, beat a Rikti Pylon (some ss/fire *can*, he can't. Softcapped lethal defense be damned, he's always on his butt because he only has 4 points of kb protection). Iggy's 300 dps ss/fire he is not... but that's not his purpose in life. His purpose is to throw money at my non-complete builds - And he does it well (and was doing so long before I decided to throw a few billion at him to softcap smash/lethal so he could do more things than fire farm).

At the other end of the spectrum my brutes that *can* beat a pylon take 10 or 15 minutes to max out the tickets on the same map - their single target chains are 150-200 dps but their AoE is weak... and in some cases (DM/EA) non-existant.

Clan Nosferatu, Fianna, and Sons of Ether here (all three characters of which I've recreated in homage in CoX)

Though most of the time I was storyteller so played pretty much every character type in one scene or another.

One of my group's favorite moments was in one of my Vampire games. They were told over and over again to avoid the park - it was filled with werewolves. The player who was playing a Gangrel desperately wanted to be a werewolf, and was deliberately frenzying himself all the time to get beast traits. I have no problem with character concept but the beast traits are meant to be a drawback, not a 'I can totally look cool when chilling with my friends. Don't worry, I have Obfuscate so I'm not threatening the masquerade'. So the next time he deliberately worked himself into a Frenzy I gave him a beaver tail. ("But it's supposed to be traits from creatures of the night!" "Beavers are nocturnal. I checked." "...")

That silliness aside he decided to... go to the park. He made a lot of noise approaching, said he wanted to talk, that he wanted to help them however he could, give them information, fight the Wyrm (which he shouldn't have known about), etc.

A few werewolves showed up after sensing he wasn't carrying silver and heard him out. After his impassioned speech the Alpha nodded and said simply:

"Charity begins at home."

... so ...his replacement character wasn't anywhere near as curious about werewolves...

Yup. That's a 10 billion inf ss/shield build. I don't have any experience with a high level shield defense scrapper/brute but I think that you could have done the job without the +defense pvp unique. If this is your live build money was obviously not a factor so happy smashing.

I'd tanked it first this week with my sm/wp brute and he was lucky enough to not be hit so it took me by surprise when the Tanker, which is tougher, was shredded on pulling.

I was softcapped (I'm softcapped to everything with that WP/EM. Even Psi.) Plus the team was adding a lot to my defense anyways. RNG happens. I was overconfident since I'd barely taken damage the entire task force but I *was* a little dinged up from the warwalkers when I pulled. Probably about 80% health. I didn't mind... it was hilarious.

Made me regret not taking the tier 9 (I had it for quite some time, but I respecced out of it because I never used it.)

This sums up my first encounter with her with that particular tanker nicely.

Best moment? When Zombie Man said "I'm not touching that thing. Tanker, you can pull. I'll rez you."

... and meant it.

Anyone else taken by surprise by her first time tanking?

Gloom is nice. Soul Drain and Against All Odds with scrapper base damage is nicer.

It IS one of the highest damage brute combinations, though, and gloom *is* nice. I've often thought about making one... but in this case scrappers really do outclass their brute mirror.