magikwand

In a word: No.

The reward/time benefit ratio is skewed pretty heavily towards unfun and boring for most. Not to mention the fact that a build has to be pretty seriously twinked out before you can put the hurt on either. Few people have the spontaneity combined with a proper build that will allow them to just decide "I think I will go solo GM hunting today... ho hum".

I think AVs are more reasonable to solo- they offer more of a challenge/threat than GMs.

Even though softcapping defense is considered to be great- I would still rather take my inv brute SFing over my sr brute. Don't get it twisted- my sr is positionally capped with excellent DDR, but a few unlocky rolls will quickly land in HP points in the danger zone. RNG has a bad way of ruining my day. I prefer the high resists and reliably scaling defense of invulnerability over the high defense and oh ***** scaling resists of super reflexes.

Anything can be made ridiculous with the right amount of influence/infamy. As far as WP is concerned- it is fairly strong out of the box. It has a native and very strong Endurance recovery tool working in Auto with Quick Recovery, and is basically Regen-lite with strong HP regen. It lags a bit behind other sets in resistance and defense, so taking alpha strikes can be tricky before you invest in IOs.

With electric armor- it is a sturdy secondary. Especially with the recent buff. Naturally, it has superior end mitigation options. Combine that with excellent resists and a great heal on a reasonable timer, you get a strong set. The complete lack of defense can be patched up easily with IOs, and you can add in some more recharge to make Energize come up fairly often.

Yes, Claws is a lethal dmg set, but even so, you will find that (with fury backing you) things still will get sliced quickly and mercilessly.

Dark/Dark can be strong, but you have to overcome some pretty sever endurance issues before it becomes a real powerhouse. I certainly wouldn't call the resists low though. And reliance on a self heal is tricky, but the heal is more of a back up. Dark armor is a sturdy set in and of itself.

As far as Fotm, that would likely be elec/shield for brutes now. Though I hear /shield is next in line for a big nerf, I am not certain it will be nerfed in the brute version. Scrappers, on the other hand, should be counting down the days to when shield charge gets some of the gas siphoned from its tank.

So, my friend, it all comes down to how many coins you can drop to get what you want. I loved my fire/fire brute above anything else, and I played around until I found a build to make her nigh-unkillable and a death bringer with no mercy. It also cost me more money than I care to recall. Unless you want to get stuck with stone armor, any kind of real tanking with a brute will come at the expense of a sizable investment.

Oh glee- this thread again. People who prefer tankers will still play tankers. People who prefer brutes will still play brutes. It isn't really a question of which will make which obsolete as there are still clear and dramatic differences between the two. Stop being concerned with what everyone else is doing and just enjoy the game for what you enjoy it for.

(unless, of course, your predilection involves making baseless and pointless predictions about the rise and decline in popularity of archetypes. If that is your choice, I would encourage you to do something else. )

Meh, if you want control, play a dominator. I don't think the fact that EM has stacking controls are enough to draw attention away from the fact that it has been gutted like a fish and is now at the bottom of the barrel.

My opinion on EM is that it is fine... if you are soloing. As a couple of other people have said, teaming with your EM will lead to you attacking enemies postmortem. Too add salt to that wound, sometimes you will do ET on an enemy that was struck down by a teammate and now you have done damage to yourself. It has a bunch of the slowest animations and they are all, save whirling hands, pretty much ST. Even whirling hands has a notably poor radius.

With your particular brute, there may be some fury gathering issues as well. EM is low on mass punchvoke, and WP has the weakest taunt aura this side of the tauntless wonder of EA. Meaning that it might be a little more challenging to remain the life of the party if you are teamed. With as many elec/shield AoE ***** brutes you see in the Isles these days, fury may not be all it could be if you were solo.

I suspect that EM will be even more overshadowed my KM when it debuts. Much to my own chagrin, the closed beta peeps are remaining rather tight lipped about the details. KM will probably turn long cast times into a cool thing.

So to answer the original question- yes, EM is still viable. If you like soloing on high difficulty low team settings. If you team, you might find EM to be an exercise in frustration.

Any brute secondary can be made into a tanking one. Invulnerability does well as it is a bag of both defense and resists. WP does even more, but it can sometimes be less than ideal for "tanking" because of its notably weaker taunt aura. In fact, I believe it is bottom rung for taunt duration. Outside of Energy Aura which lacks a taunt aura altogether.

If you want to avoid resist based secondaries with dmg auras, that rules out /FA, /DA, and /ELA. /Shield and /stone armor are currently incompatible, so that leaves just SR, WP, and Inv. I prefer inv out of the three because it is strong against most kinds of damage in the game and has the strongest taunt duration of the three mentioned. Having multilayered mitigation through Resists, Defence, and Boosted Hit Points is nothing to scoff at.

Now that I think of it, I even have a Claws/Inv at 50 that I do enjoy. Oddly enough, when I play /inv on a brute, I always find myself wishing I had done a secondary with a damage aura. Claws are quick, but I know I would be even faster with Claws and a dmg aura melting mobs.

I would go for both, with a slight edge going towards recharge. Both are critical to the success of a good /FA, but healing flames is the jewel of this set. Defense debuffs won't be resisted late game at all due to /FA having a native DDR of 0. Recharge debuffs will have a hope of resistance with the new Temperature protection.

If your resists are decent to start, you can do wondrous things with fast recharging healing flames. If you pool all of your effort in +def, you might find that you are one spawn of Cimerorans away from a fast death.

With that said, you will probably be able to do both comfortably. If I am not off my rocker, a lot of sets will give both +def and +recharge.

I tried it once- unfortunately the team melted before we completed the 2nd mission. People are afraid of challenges like this. Congratulations. That is a good time for any team, and a great one for a specialized team of blasters only.

Awesome thread and pics. Alas, I have no pics of my lone ill/ff.

I too have felt that people refer to purpled out toons when they should just say IOd out or money pit toons. On a few toons that need significant amounts of recharge or +dmg, it can help. But you are correct, I can't think of any purple IO sets that increase defense directly. As someone else pointed out earlier, a /FA would be happy with increased recharge for healing flames, but I find it smarter to build for defense *and* recharge.

My conclusion: it's a wash. Either one is going to be fantastic. Scrapper damage tends to be more predictable and smooth. Brute damage can be very spiky and bursty depending on the amount of fury you are generating.

Neither DM/SR brute or DM/SR scrapper will stand head and shoulders above the other.

I like the power, and I have it on my SS/SD brute. He is over-eager and gets himself in hot water every now and then. The +res is nice, and so is the +end recovery. The crash is very manageable. I only have it slotted with the original slot, but I find it to be a worthwhile power if you have the room for it.

Super Strength won't feel great at lower levels because you don't have access to your one AoE attack: Footstomp. It is great, but you have to wait for it. I never thought SS was all that great until I played one all the way into the thirties. Then I fell hard for the action. Yes, it is unquestionably skewed towards ST dmg, but KO blow, Rage and Footstomp make the set very pleasurable for me. Not to mention my SS user is /shield defense, so he is a thirsty damage beast.

If you want something that is a bit more balanced towards ST and AoE and not Dual Blades (as you have already played one), you could try fiery melee. You get Fire Sword Circle as an AoE earlier than Footstomp, and you could still choose Fire Breath. I had this attack for a very long time and I always found it to be fun and a good place to slot some IOs. Most forum goers seem to not like this power for Brutes, but I think it is handy.

Claws is the new kid on the block, but still a fantastic and balanced choice. Not only do you get great ST and AoE toys, but you also get a couple of Ranged options!

Battle Axe and War mace also have some pretty decent AoE and ST options. I haven't played either one. After that, the powersets tend to go either heavily ST like Dark Melee or Energy Melee or AoE like Electric.

One more thing, WP goes pretty well with any brute primary, especially endurance hungry ones because of QR. I would just advise you to try to stick it out with your brutes- the best is sometimes yet to come. Not everyone judges playability at lvl 50 or even post 32 for most toons, but I think you have to wait until you get access to all of your primary and secondary powers before you decide if you can't play the set or not. Some powersets are late bloomers, and sometimes they really bloom.

Now that EM has been completely neutered, it can probably be ported to scrappers without too many crying about it.

SS, however, would probably be nerfed pretty hard before it comes to scrappers. Not that I think it would be numerically OP (I know it has been speculatively theorized as more or less in line with other scrapper primaries), but the overall perception is that it would be just that. Brutes and tankers everywhere would probably be very upset.

Personally, I don't enjoy playing low level characters. I love endgame content and doing ridiculous things on IOd toons that I didn't think possible. With such builds, most of my toons become notably more gimped at lower levels, so I rarely malefactor down. (Unless it is to a lvl 45 mission). I am addicted to playing superpowered IO characters- that is my idea of fun. To each his own. I can't wait for Incarnate lvls.

As it has been mentioned briefly, EA has no taunt aura. If you plan on tanking, you might choose a more appropriate secondary. I am not saying it can't be done- but it will be more challenging than you may think. Especially with a ST heavy primary like EM. If you had more AoE to enhance your taunt and aggro control it may not be such an issue, but it just isn't so with EM. EM/EA plays more like a hearty stalker on paper. I am sure it isn't a bad combo, but I don't think you will like it if you are planning on "tanking" and maintaining aggro.

Hasten, PB or Rage on auto? I would do PB for sure. No PB- you are mezzed and dead. The other two can be applied when you have the time. There was a thread on this same subject matter not too long ago.

If I can coin a phrase from the scrapper forums- there is no such thing as a bad combination of powers. Any combination can be made effective, unique, and deadly. The only thing I would advise you to steer clear of initially is Energy Melee. Why? It doesn't really have anything unique going for it except for cool glowing fists. That, and the fact that I freely admit I just detest that power set.

Battle axe has good mitigation options and solid damage, and Willpower is a great secondary for brutes. It might be a little tricky because of all of the versatility it allows in slotting, but it can be made rather effective with common SOs. I think your choice in your first brute is solid. You avoided some of the trickier sets like SD; which essentially requires softcapping defense to be effective.(to my knowledge, this cannot be done on SOs).

Also, don't fret too much about throwing everything into one single character. There is a reason we have so many available character slots on each server- USE THEM! Create alts (alternative toons) and lots of them. I personally am a brute fanatic. On my home server I have about 6-7 brutes. Don't feel as if you can't just roll another toon if you don't feel like it. This whole game is alt-friendly, so be well rounded and make as many different characters as you can.

One last note- you might have to come up with a different character name. I can't imagine that particular name being available on any server. Naturally, after 6 years of people playing this game, you might feel as if all of the good names are taken. Hehe. Be creative and have fun!

Brutes take the best qualities of the blue meleers and none of the bad. Don't focus on what you can't do as well as another AT- focus on what makes you unique. Sure- brutes may not be as tough as tanks. Does it matter if you SMASH! your way through anything and nothing is left to hurt you? Play to your strengths and they will overshadow your weaknesses.