TheBruteSquad

Have it. Have used it. It failed to remove the drivers as well. Really, it's the damnest thing.

Fortunately my trusty, rusty 9.2s seem to be holding up well. Except now that the application is controlling the AA apparantly I crash alt-tabbing... that *is* problematic.

I came to this thread because post patch it does look like my ATI CCC is able to control AA any longer for the game, and apparantly this is so. Go thread go.

Sadly, I can't update my drivers. Have never been able to. I can't uninstall them using add/remove programs... just gives me an error message. Even in safe mode.

Alternatively, poof, it crashes to desktop when you press ok, and then starts fixing all the files when you go to reload the game. Well, that's what it did for me anyways.

He knew because occassionally he'd target me and see the little bars over his head (I'd see bars appear above mine). Also he'd periodically not engage an enemy right after defeating one and notice that it took me a second or two to resume blasting and buffing. That was part of his leeching accusation.

Yes, we were on the same team. It *would* be pretty rude (to put it mildly) to follow a scrapper around who was street sweeping and throw a gloom at every mob they went to engage.

Wasn't really an issue, I apologized, hung further back so I'd stop crowding him (no more siphon power bonus for him, but plenty of breathing room), and just targetted through the controller instead. Just wanted to make sure that some sort of CoH social taboo wasn't being stomped all over.

If you have stamina and quick recovery, take 'em both. That's what I did. I don't need DN 99% of the time -- mind over body + tough + rise to the challenge is more than enough -- but when I do, it's nice to have. (I only really use it on +2 roman spawns when running the wall in Cimerora, which can chew through 50% lethal resist and 120 hp/sec regen in about 10 seconds.)

Playing my Kin I got chewed out by a scrapper for targeting through him. I said "My heal needs people in melee range of a mob. You're within melee range of a mob." to which I got a "It's rude, stop leeching."

So... uh... since I usually play melee and love when the ranged target through me (especially when I play one of my tankers), did I miss a memo about keeping someone targetted to target through them being rude?

I highly recommend fitting toughness in, if nothing else. I've always found it a huge boost for any brute's survival. Even my stone armor brute has it (because 86% resistance to smash/lethal is so much cooler than 60 something).

Not just in CoX and its looking like hardware, but still hoping someone has heard of the problem.

My Altec Lansing 121i speakers have decided volume control (on the subwoofer) really means balance. Turning the knob left shifts balance to left, right to right. Funny part is when it's in the middle there's no sound at all. At first I thought the Realtek driver had gone screwy, but plugging in a set of headphones shows that the driver is working fine... balance control in the control panel, dx diag tests, and volume tests in the audio mixer program are normal.

I've tried rebooting, cold booting, simply turning the subwoofer off, unplugging and replugging... nothing so far. What else *can* you try with speakers?

Not that it matters much, but the speakers in question. Could just be the wiring going, I suppose? The speakers pre-date my current computer (just over a year old for the computer, probably three or four years old for the speakers).

While both are commonly resisted, there are a lot more common factions with at least some mobs that are vulnerable to smashing... robots, in particular, are popular throughout the Council/5th Column, Rikti, and Arachnos (though I don't know if the arachnos bots are vulnerable to smashing. They are, however, brutally resistant to lethal). War Mace (super strength, stone melee) *wrecks* these units. I had an arc up filled with robot units just for the joy of seeing all the pretty explosions as my stone melee brute leapt in. Lethal vulnerability side there's the Banished Pantheon (rare red side), Vahz (rare and quickly outleveled), and Carnies (painful).

Like others have said, it's not a big deal overall... but I do hate seeing my 50 broadsword scrapper *crit* a Council robot boss for 360 with headsplitter where my stone melee brute does 500+ with seismic smash. Since I fight a lot of Council (doesn't everyone?) I've got an unhealthy dislike for lethal damage as a result. (Though the nearly 800 damage crits against Carnies from the scrapper are funny).

I have a 46 Energy Melee/WP tanker, so I can talk about EM at least. I also have a em/sr brute but it's only 25, and has been pretty much 'meh' compared to the other SR brute I'm leveling (fire melee).

For survivability, EM is fantastic against small spawns even without defense toggles running. Even bosses spend more time stunned than not I find. When soloing my tanker only runs the mez protection, rise to the challenge, and focussed accuracy.

As for endurance... my tanker is always out of end. Always. Even with stamina and quick recovery getting me to a 3.8 recovery rate. I'm not sure how much of that is because of the 1.35 consumption of his toggles (damn you focussed accuracy six slotted with gausians (I think? the one that gives 2.5% defense against ranged as it's six slot), but ET and TF make me want to weep when they miss, since they're MOST of the tankers ST damage). My low level em/sr is ALSO popping blues every time they drop if I dare to do something like run my defense toggles. The energy melee always out of power could be user error, though, so a numbers person might be able to help more. But anecdotally ... yeah 'pink pom-pom warrior need end badly' has been my experience so far.

Radio missions can indeed spawn ambushes.

Hmm. Fair enough. My bad. Having read the build closer... I'm of the opinion you've *seriously* understlotted your attacks. Especially Death Shroud which is basically useless as you've got it slotted now, except for as a massive endurance drain.

How much defense did this slotting give you?

Meh. Who needs Defense when you have Touch of Fear, Darkest Night, and their massive stacking to hit penalties?

Well, the only real difference between ToF for brutes vs other ATs is that it's a defensive power that builds fury. Always nice to see.

Other than that, it adds a ton of survivability early game against bosses. Also you can use it to fear something annoying, like a special ops, while you Brute the rest of his friends into a fine red mist. I take it with every single dark melee character I make.. it's fine with just the default slot with an accuracy in it.

In a team it is a great team defending power, as the -acc helps no matter who the mob is attacking. That said you don't bring a Brute to handle control. You're better of in probably 99% of all cases just beating the living tar out of a boss than trying to nerf its accuracy in a group.

Overall I would rate it as one of the best damage mitigation, single target, powers in the game.

Mine is now working. I'm not sure if it was because I filed a petition or if it took nearly three hours for code to take. Either way works for me.

About an hour ago, yes.

I am getting the same thing. Paid for, code applied according to the manager, greyed out in power selection screen.

Almost literally the last minute, since it was a few hours before the event was scheduled to end. I'd burned a half hour on my zero g pack and couldn't beat 51 seconds no matter what I did. The zero g pack burned out and I figured I'd do one more run without it before waiting until next year. Combat jumping + sprint was getting me a consistant 54. Then all of the sudden a golden light of IR from above as I started my run... 43 seconds later another badge for the pile with my main of the year.

I know it was more common to see random IR buffs earlier in the event, but somehow I missed them all. So thanks mysterious buffer.

Zombieland, D&D, Champions Online, and Thanksgiving. Might get the remainder of my pre-SO alts to SO level if I can shift mental gears enough to put up with being out of endurance for more than 6 seconds and all powers having recharge times.

Got my Nemesis staff veteran award a few days ago, though! Always wanted one of those things. Might make an alt just to blow things away with it at low levels.

Yeah, the flaws in my examples did occur to me after I'd posted.

And without toughness, Elec does NOT have great resistance to smash/lethal. It's better than dark armor or fire armors, yes, but not by enough to overshadow their secondary defense of potent self heals.

After playing every other brute secondary I've been spoiled by the resiliance of layered defenses. Resistance + defense. Resistance + heal. Resistance + defense + regen. Of course, a case can be made for sapping being Electric's secondary defense, and it works really, really well against even con enemies - but most brutes don't need to worry about even con enemies at all. It doesn't scale well against the most potent threats.

Edit: ANd to tie into the OP better... I dislike Super Reflexes for the same reason. It's all Defense. SR has the scaling resists, though, which are better than nothing.

I'm not so sure about that. I have my own SM/Elec at 50 and it's never been the lack of a heal that dissappointed me (I have a well slotted aid self). It was the one trick nature of the secondary: Resist damage and kill everything faster than it kills you. She's the only brute I have at 50 that can indeed get killed by longbow eagle death squads continuously dumping autofire into her. A heal every 2 minutes, before recharge, won't help with that. I've had bank runs where I've had to pop 3 greens in 10 seconds to deal with being on fire. My other 50s laugh at this situation (wp basks in the flames, so does the fire armor before hitting his 20 second recharge healing flames, dark contemptuously hits dark regen, stone is barely aware he's fighting).

As for the OP... for me, what killed my SS/SR was the endurance drain. Rage's crashing combined with the global recharge bonus flattened my blue bar. My slotting was one acc, two end reduction, and 3 damage when I finally shelved him, and it still wasn't enough. Plus there was always the Sword of Damocles - Castle fixing it so that stacking rage didn't negate the hefty defense penalty - hanging over his head.