TheBruteSquad

PB on auto for me as well. Clicking brawl and/or boxing between real attacks is much less disruptive an experience for me than realizing as I see Held appear that PB lapsed 10 seconds ago just as I charged that Lost Anathema. Especially on a brute, where I spend more time watching my fury bar than my health or endurance.

Aw, go try brute anyways. Do paper missions and pretend you're listening to a police scanner instead. Play Superstrength, run Rage, get full fury, hit KO blow and Footstomp and realize "This? This is why Superstrength hasn't proliferated to Scrappers."

Not to turn this into a stalkers thread... but I've been struggling through a Stalker (I've made and deleted probably 15 over the years, but I'm determined to see this one through) and for me, at least, even with the changes what Stalkers contribute to the team always feels like "....And?"

They take care of difficult targets first and fast. So does a blaster. At range. In the same amount of time as Assassin's Strike animates. Actually, some Blasters can drop a spawn in that time. It's a bad example because it mixes Blue and Red, but there's been a bit of co-op endgame stuff lately. Sticking to Redside only... the Dominator also took care of that difficult target. They may have even locked down the entire spawn. Most Brutes also took care of that difficult target, and took alpha for the team doing it. A mastermind who sets all his pets to attack that target ALSO took out that problem target. All the red-side ATs are capable of neutering or flat out destroying a problem minion or lieutenant, and any red-side team is capable of dropping a problem boss in 10 seconds or so.

So that leaves stealth. Traditionally, the stealth classes scouting ahead pinpointing threats is quite useful. In City of X, redside in particular, it is not. Two of the five core ATs have a mechanic that rewards them for moving swiftly, and watching that reward evaporate swiftly (fury) or slowly (domination) *can* alienate the players of those ATs. Plus, stealth really isn't *needed* for anything in the game. A good team will steamroll Hero adds on the LRSF. A bad team will faceplant to Freakshow. Either would have done the same whether they knew what was coming or not.

I love 'stealth' classes. A Stalker was the first thing I rolled as a result. It was also the first character I ever deleted. He only made it to level 17 before I said "The pony, it has one trick." As a brand new player to the game - with no expectations of any AT.

Without a second thought.... BRUTE!

15 brutes
3 SoA (bane, crab, fort)
2 tankers
1 of every other AT

That's entirely possible, which is why I've poured over guide after guide of /Regen lore in the player guide section and scrapper forum.

If I click dull pain and instant healing before the fight then he does alright, sure. I just don't have the inf blue side to even try and get dull pain perma. Though I could see how more recharge would seriously help everything.

Regen is the one secondary I wouldn't roll on a brute. I have a broadsword/regen scrapper at 50 and all he does, when placed into the same AE missions as my sm/wp brute, is suck and die. Unless instant healing is up, then he does ok. I don't know how much of that is the heavily resisted primary, but I spend more time clicking defenses than attacks with him in a tough fight.

I've played Spines and Broadsword as scrappers, and neither impressed me overly much. Especially late game. I wouldn't mind seeing Martial Arts brought over, but I really do believe we already have the picks of the litter. Many scrappers would kill for access to Super-Strength or stone melee. They want OUR sets more than I want theirs...

Dark Melee just makes every set better. All of them.

One of my most fun brutes is a Dark Melee/Energy Aura. The to hit debuff in Dark Melee really helps out energy aura's lower than SR numbers, and with two endurance drains available as early at 28 you're never out of endurance (in fact, I've considered dropping dark consumption because it never gets used).

It's a single target brute, but with a small purple insp from time to time you can easily take alpha from an 8 man team. If you use IOs you can probably soft cap the most common damage types.

Techno-magical mutated incarnations of ducks?

Really, that's how anyone does it. None of my brutes, even the resistance only based brutes (dark, fire), tanking for 8 man teams has come anywhere near the 10 million naturally. I think my dark/dark is somewhere in the mid 3 million mark after 500 hours of play. And no, I don't run oppressive gloom or cloak of fear.

I left my mez protect toggle running with my sm/wp and rested in front of a red con freakshow stunner. They have more than one attack, but stay at range, and weren't able to smoke me with their chain (just come damned close, and barely able to get back to full to survive a second chain, which is where you want it really.)

Crashed trying to edit one of my custom groups. Twice now.

Yes, that's the whole file. I deleted the end of file bit when posting to make it look neater.

I downloaded and scanned with MWB (been meaning to pick it up for a few weeks now anyways) and it couldn't find anything wrong, either. Guess I'm just being paranoid.

My browser's been acting a little suspiciously, and I'd rather not risk my CoX account needlessly (among other things), so am looking for another pair of eyes to go over this and see if I missed something:

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2
Scan saved at 10:14:22 PM, on 6/18/2009
Platform: Windows Vista SP1 (WinNT 6.00.1905)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v7.00 (7.00.6001.18248)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\Program Files (x86)\AVG\AVG8\avgtray.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\SpeedFan\speedfan.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Trend Micro\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant =
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch =
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName =
F2 - REG:system.ini: UserInit=userinit.exe
O1 - Hosts: ::1 localhost
O2 - BHO: AcroIEHelperStub - {18DF081C-E8AD-4283-A596-FA578C2EBDC3} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEHelperShim.dll
O2 - BHO: Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper - {DBC80044-A445-435b-BC74-9C25C1C588A9} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jp2ssv.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [StartCCC] "C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CLIStart.exe" MSRun
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG8_TRAY] C:\PROGRA~2\AVG\AVG8\avgtray.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SunJavaUpdateSched] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe Reader Speed Launcher] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\Reader_sl.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [igndlm.exe] C:\Program Files (x86)\Download Manager\DLM.exe /windowsstart /startifwork
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /detectMem (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [WindowsWelcomeCenter] rundll32.exe oobefldr.dll,ShowWelcomeCenter (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /detectMem (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')
O13 - Gopher Prefix:
O16 - DPF: {39B0684F-D7BF-4743-B050-FDC3F48F7E3B} (CDownloadCtrl Object) - http://www.fileplanet.com/fpdlmgr/ca..._2.3.7.109.cab
O18 - Protocol: linkscanner - {F274614C-63F8-47D5-A4D1-FBDDE494F8D1} - C:\Program Files (x86)\AVG\AVG8\avgpp.dll
O20 - AppInit_DLLs:
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\Alg.exe,-112 (ALG) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\alg.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: Ati External Event Utility - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\Ati2evxx.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: AVG Free8 E-mail Scanner (avg8emc) - AVG Technologies CZ, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~2\AVG\AVG8\avgemc.exe
O23 - Service: AVG Free8 WatchDog (avg8wd) - AVG Technologies CZ, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~2\AVG\AVG8\avgwdsvc.exe
O23 - Service: @dfsrres.dll,-101 (DFSR) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\DFSR.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @keyiso.dll,-100 (KeyIso) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @comres.dll,-2797 (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\System32\netlogon.dll,-102 (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\psbase.dll,-300 (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\Locator.exe,-2 (RpcLocator) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\locator.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\samsrv.dll,-1 (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\SLsvc.exe,-101 (slsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\SLsvc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\snmptrap.exe,-3 (SNMPTRAP) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\snmptrap.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\spoolsv.exe,-1 (Spooler) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\ui0detect.exe,-101 (UI0Detect) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\UI0Detect.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vds.exe,-100 (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\vssvc.exe,-102 (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%Systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe,-110 (wmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbem\WmiApSrv.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%ProgramFiles%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing)

----

I can't see anything, and AVG can't find anything, and there's nothing suspicious in msconfig ... still... something seems off.

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...and along comes Clouded once again, like clockwork, to bring negativity to the land and start pointless arguments, only to bicker back and forth for many, many posts and derail yet another thread is his endless tirade of forum absurdity.

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Perhaps you shouldn't post on public forums if disagreeing with you gets your feelings hurt. Not everyone likes Claws and pointing out the highly resisted damage type is not off topic. It's very much relevant and a point of discussion.

And you gotta be the biggest hypocrit I know, did you even read your own posts in the I15 Beta forums? 90% Negative.

All you seem to do lately is whine about COH.

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no it's not. claws does just fine being lethal. see: rikti pylon test results thread

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Don't Pylons have the same resistance to all attacks?

edit: And while I'd play claws just to have a brute with the primary, I've tried it scrapper side and it feels rather anemic. Not enough screen shake or 'whooom' special effects. I also find spines terrible and I don't think I'd make a spine brute even if it meant not having a brute of that primary.

DM/SR is a monster. The endurance cost is high, but at least it has Dark Consumption to help, and even as early as level 8 you'll be largely unhittable to a tough lt or boss if you nail them with a touch of fear (which you can, and probably should, respec out of once your defenses are soft-capped).

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So what is all this talk I hear about Super Strength getting nerfed? Are they going to nerf Rage? or Footstomp? or Knockout Blow? Are they doing this in i15? Or is this just all myths? Thanks in advance

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They're planning on fixing the bug which allows stacking rage to eliminate the def penalty. That's it.

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You could use sands of mu, dark melee's shadow maul, and flurry. All of them have super fast punches being thrown all in succession.

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Seconded.

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Thirded.

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That's terrible for Fury, though it does OK for Scrappers and Tankers.

Not really, no. I have hundreds of hours logged with shadow maul in particular on several dark melees, and a lot of experience with the sands of mu vet reward to boot, and I've never felt crippled by the fury loss. It's 6% at most, though more often I have more fury than when I started by the time it's done animating thanks to incoming attacks.

My first 50 was a dark/dark brute. The only problems they had were against heavy spike energy EBs. Then brutes got Darkest Night and even they ceased to be a problem in the slightest.

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What about actually playing the game?

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ITS MY $15 AMONTH ILL PLAY HOW I WANT

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Won't argue with that. Enjoy your insta-50s... I rarely play my 50s, but I understand some people play their 50s all the time, so all the power to them.

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I was just curious what the fastest is so far for getting from 1 to 50 using MA.

Thanks!

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3 hours, 49 minutes, on Freedom. Not by me.

<qr>

I'm getting this too, since the event. At first I put it down to massive lag hammering the log in... but when I do connect (sometimes I have to quit and retry a few times) all the servers are green.

As above, when it dies, I can't access the forums or official website either. Anywhere else, fine (cyle through my 15 webcomics to test).