Tonality

Which is what makes it incredibly difficult to give a blanket statement. Team composition plays a significant role, and given how variable it is, this makes predicting the ideal team difficult. However, in general:

Lieutenants in general give a higher rate of xp/time. However, on some teams lieutenants do not last long enough for your kinetics to buff the team from fulcrum, and the damage potential of the team is lost. This is the point typically where boss farms become more efficient with XP/time. However, I'm loathe to say this as well, as this encourages a mentality that believes a certain powerset is required to play the game properly.

I've had mixed feelings about the new system. However, I have yet to come up with any good reason to retain the old one. The only thing I could think of was that one could powerlevel quicker with bridging, and well, that's not a very good argument. So, there isn't a negative to the new system, and I look forward to it. Sure, I'll miss knowing that I could tweak things to do something that most people don't know, or get that lucky invite to a team where I'm getting dragged along. But, now everyone on the team can participate without facing potentially a +7 or +8.

Actually, I have to applaud the developers for making such a careful change that reduces the ideal speeds for powerleveling while making minimal impact to team play (and actually improving team play). I like the new system.

I will actually miss the puzzle on PUGs of figuring out how to best SK people for team efficiency, considering leash range and ideal AT pairings and who should be paired with the highest level toon. I liked the puzzle. But, the new system is better.

Rise to the Challenge is an offensive toggle and can be dropped if you are mezzed. It happens, but rarely.

I'm not sure the brute community has group of number crunchers like the scrapper community does. However, I do recall Bill Z Bubba doing some work on them.

What makes it difficult is brutes may have two attack chains - one for damage output, and one for building fury. I know I do this on some of my brutes.

As a min/maxer, I love this kind of discussion. As there is potential for abuse, I will try to be as specific as possible without necessarily providing a cut and dry method for those that might consider this an exploit. I also wanted to state that I do not spend even a significant portion of my time in the game doing this, and have lately abandoned this altogether. I consider myself a powergamer - I want to know the best way to do something and enjoy optimizing my characters to be as powerful as possible. That is fun for me.

Onto the topic.

Reward/Time is also an incomplete analysis. Team composition plays a significant role in kill speed. A good leader (which is rare) is aware of what the team can and cannot do efficiently. There are many AE PUGs that fail immediately because they do not have the capability of handling a boss farm. Others simply do not have the speed necessary to make it worthwhile. In both circumstances, the ideal for the team is an all lieutenant map. However, under an ideal team (you are damage capped and they are debuffed), an All-Boss farm becomes an ideal, however at that point, farming elite bosses or AVs is probably the true ideal.

In the spirit of discovering the ideal method for leveling a lowbie, let's outline a few basic points:

1) Travel time should be minimal. This includes travel time between mobs. The ideal would be that you are continuously saturated with enemies to ensure every AoE is capped for maximal efficiency.
--With this said, all boss spawns pose a significant challenge for many as you are now dealing with 17 bosses. Therefore, under this circumstance a lower level may indeed be the ideal.
--I could choose stone armor, but in doing so, I will reduce my potential damage output somewhat. More on this later.
2) Team size should be minimal.
--As rewards are divided among the players present, unless fellow players can effectively contribute by increasing the kill speed, they are dead weight.
--In practice, this usually means one level 50, one lowbie, and 6 fillers. This actually will drive the earned xp per kill of a lieutenant beyond that you encounter on the boss farms.
3) Achieving both damage and survivability is needed
--As such, brutes are quite effective at this role. Tanks and scrappers both can also perform effectively, however the balance between survivability and damage in the brute AT makes them shine.
--If you decide to increase travel time, controllers and dominators can easily perform well, however survivable melee AoE heavy ATs shine on certain maps where the entire time is spent at the aggro cap. I output a consistent 400 AoE DPS on my brute, while soloing. I have yet to encounter any other AT that can match this.
4) Difficulty Setting impacts reward
--As there is a percentage increase in reward, it is often toted that either +4 or +5 difficulty levels are the ideal for reward. Players often point out that +4 spawns an extra enemy, which certainly does increase reward, however considering that the map we are choosing to farm in already ensures that you are guaranteed to be at the aggro cap, +5 difficulty is ideal. Once the map is wiped clean, it can be repeated.
--We must also consider that by choosing the maximal difficulty, we are also increasing the mob level to +2, which reduces kill speed. However, the reduction in reward/time at lower difficulty becomes even more noticeable when using fills. The xp/time ratio is actually ideal at +5 in this circumstance.
5) Bridging
--When one powerleveled old-school, a bridge was needed to maximize reward. Under the current system, which is set to be eliminated, it is possible to set a map where the lowbie is 5 levels below you, earning rewards for enemies +7 to them.
--At this level, they can offer very little, if any contribution. There will be no enjoyment taken from this, other than watching the XP fly by. Put simply, it's BORING.
--I suppose the ideal AT to join in this brute is the /sonic corruptor. They can cast their AoE debuff on the brute and stay in range, but invisible, avoiding any aggro, and increasing the kill speed. There is a range to this power, so those thinking of making a sonic to doorsit will be disappointed.
6) Enemy type should be selected to minimize risk
--Certain armor sets can cap resistance to a certain element, such as energy or fire. Paired with some defensive slotting to the same element, the incoming damage is negligible.
--Bosses are high risk enemies. If you chose to go the soft-cap route, a few unlucky rolls guarantees a faceplant. Any time spent dead is time lost.
--I can run a SS/elec due to extreme survivability against energy damage and tremendous endurance management tools. A SS/fire can perform just as well against fire enemies at a slight decrease to endurance management.


TL;DR:

For the ideal metric for powerleveling, nonwithstanding exploits, lieutenant spawns allow a player to minimize risk while maximizing kill speed while maintaining a good reward value. Bosses increase the reward, however, increase risk and decrease kill speed, to the point that in the ideal setup of constantly being saturated, no AT or powerset can match the rate of reward/time done by a specialized brute farming their ideal enemy.

None of this will change AE gameplay. This process is incredibly dull for the person being leveled, and not many players truly enjoy this type of playsyle long enough to make this worthwhile. Boss farms will continue to be the choice for AE, due to the possibility of actively participating on a team, compared to doorsitting. Also, the level 50 that would powerlevel the lowbie in this fashion is intentionally reducing their rewards so that the lowbie receives the greater reward for less effort. As such, it is highly unlikely that this selfless act will ever be commonplace as it is not worthwhile for the 50 to do this.

I realize by posting this, I am opening a debate to the morality on maximizing reward. That is unfortunate. However, as I initially said, the exploration of what truly is the best and fastest is an enjoyable venture. There is no intentional posting of any exploit, and the one point which could be considered was intentionally left vague enough that no real information was given. Also, as I said earlier, team dynamics has a significant factor on reward/time, and a good team leader will choose missions that are both enjoyable and rewarding to players. Performing the method I outlined is not the ideal method for teams.

I don't think the fury mechanics would need to be tweaked. If they aren't attacking you enough, you just need MOAR MOBS.

I've been wanting an ice cube with a fire sword since I heard about ice armor.

I'd play it for the temp power, just to spawn that drone on the LRSF while everyone else brings a Shivan.

WSF forming PST.

If you are talking a purely SO build, electric melee may have the upper hand on AoE capability. However, when you start getting better recharge, Super Strength outperforms the AoE capabilities of Elec. For sustained DPS, Super Strength is the way to go, but it requires some investment to get footstomp firing quickly.

In either case, both sets benefit greatly from recharge bonuses. The sooner Lightning Rod is up, the happier you'll be.

FWIW, I would have answered the snark too had it not already been done.

It depends on what you are farming.

-If you are farming nemesis from TV, then first off, you want a SS/WP or SS/Fire, not a fire/fire. Knockdown is great mitigation.
-If you are farming AE, you'll be concentrating on AE mobs doing mostly fire damage. Switching over to aegis in your armors for better fire defense on top of your resists will make a big difference.

When it comes to high-end farming, builds are often made for a certain map in mind, to maximize kill speed while reducing the risk as much as possible. In any case, the build I provided is fairly stable. However, a specialist for a specific map will most certainly outperform you.

For what it is worth, I have never gotten that slow of download speeds from CoH's patch server. Check that there isn't something impeding your connection speed. I usually average around 200kbps on mine.

Now, when I was downloading the patch for aion, I had 15k. That was due to extreme server load. It does not make sense that the servers would have that much load right now

As for the snark at the end, you'll find forumites are happy to highlight this and never really answer your question because of the snark. It's best to avoid it so you get the answers you need.

From what I've tested, I think your friend is right. You can test this yourself.

1) Softcap yourself to positional or typed defense
2) Bring a luck or two.
3) Find a single enemy and let them hit you, monitoring their %chance to hit you in the combat monitor. It should be around 6.75% for a minion.
4) Take the luck to raise your other defense.
5) You see no change in the %chance to hit you.

Now, it could be doing two separate rolls that aren't displayed in the combat monitor, but somehow I doubt this as it would make a positional and typed build nigh unhittable.

I could be mistaken, and if someone has the evidence to prove the contrary, I gladly welcome it.

I think we will see it in issue 16. MMORPG.com had a recent interview with castle who said this in regard to patron pools:

linky

Somehow, I think when Castle said 'unfortunately', I think that he'd like to move it, but felt that he couldn't. I have no idea what would happen if the two powers were flipped and energize had a running enhancement in it. Maybe it would crash the game and make it impossible to even get to the respec screen in the first place.

There has to be a reason besides the cottage rule. If there isn't, we need it moved too!

I have to side with Gruumch on this one. 50% S/L resist with tough is drastically better than the ~35% you would get without it, especially considering the vast amount of S/L damage in the game.

It also does depend on your playstyle. If you are wanting it for solo play or circumstances where you are not handling the bulk of the aggro, you will not need it. However, when you begin handling more than your share of aggro, you will feel squishy and healing flames won't come up fast enough.

Tough is a welcome addition on any brute build, with the possible exception of EA, which still benefits from it if you slot it with reactive armor. Actually, I'll go out on the limb and say Tough is one of the best pool picks for every brute.

I believe the mechanics with fury were also later changed to include attacks you deal as well, so the results in beta may no longer apply. As there are many attack chains that have quick attacks, there are sets out there that let you sustain high levels of fury without being attacked. For example, take a DM/SR brute out to a rikti pylon and see for yourself. Most of that fury is being generated by you, not the pylon.

I think the reasons why we don't look at ice armor again have to do with our wannabe-ice Energy Aura. I still personally think we should.

I'm doing a very poor job at communicating.

I'm certainly proud of a lot of the numbers I'm capable of generating, which is a mix of skill, mission design, and build design. I understand your point now. In any case, the argument was over semantics. We both admit we can maximize reward. What I consider a good player does this in their sleep.

I wanted that list to encourage a more moderate point of view in this debate. In that respect I failed. For lack of a better comparison, we're constantly inundated with Republicans and Democrats, yet where is Ross Perot in all of this?

It depends on the culture and the methods of defense. In this case, I don't expect to see anyone on either side of this debate strap explosives to themselves. (eagerly awaits the quote and reply of "We can only hope")

I wanted to make the point that in this AE debate, emotions and opinions have become intensely polarized. I suppose I could have done a better job at this.