magikwand

Make a DM/SR and enjoy heavy ST, quick animating attacks that blend oh-so-smoothly into SRs elusive goodness. That is next for me. Or perhaps a DM/SD. Shield is tons of +dmg fun and can be built up to be rather sick if you stick with it. Dark melee can have its smashy moments filled with tons of utility. I bet you one of the combos will suck you in for sure. Just beware- /SR is a late bloomer.

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Rage does not a brute make.

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Huh?

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I believe he is making reference to the fact that the OPs question is more directly inquiring about Fury and not the superstrength powerset and/or rage.

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That is exactly what I meant, thank you.

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Not a problem- came through clear as day for me. Hehe, sometimes I think people who play brutes forget there are other primaries that exist outside of super strength.

From what you described, I would go mutation or natural. Probably mutation though.

Khelds and SoAs will never be equal. Thankfully so, because if any two ATs were to become equal, the game would instantly be less fun. Enjoy the two for being what they are. I, for one, wouldn't want the devs to dramatically change khelds to make them more "similar" to VEATs. As another poster stated, the recent changes have made khelds more playable and viable.

Suggestions forum is that-a-way ---->

Well, you seem to be right T-GoG. The search function is not the best on these forums. You are also right that the majority of the builds around are primarily for PvE. I found a few generic guides in the how to sticky at the top of the brute main page.

It might be good that you forgot so much about PVP, because it is radically different than it used to be AFAIK. The trend seems to be that longer animating attacks are more damaging, but most of the pool powers are more damaging than powers in your primary set. You might have to do some tinkering around and find something that works for you. Do you have Mids Builder installed? I don't typically do a lot of work with it, but I find that is is helpful to have and plan a build.

Not sure what the consensus is on PvP IOs, but I find that some sets look pretty good numberwise. It might be worth looking into some of those.

Glad you thought of searching the PvP forums too.

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Rage does not a brute make.

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Huh?

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I believe he is making reference to the fact that the OPs question is more directly inquiring about Fury and not the superstrength powerset and/or rage.

I have three main high lvl brutes and play all a little differently. I am an oddball who takes taunt but I don't exactly play as a tanker per se. Most of my builds have tons of +recharge so I don't worry too much about adding TOO many attacks, b/c I just don't have time to cycle through them all. I think, for my playstyle, taunt is invaluable and helpful in almost any situation.

My first main is a /FA and I find her to be the most survivable. Perhaps because of the high recharge and healing flames, but I always take alpha and kill everything I can. She always bounces back and has a number of tricks to increase survivability. She is my main SF toon, and I like being the only brute on teams so I can eat alpha and always have full fury. She kills stuff the quickest of all my toons, and I always find myself testing out the old fiery aura of adage of "kill them before they kill you". Also, if on a co-op team, I rarely pick up tanks, so I find myself tanking AVs often. This isn't a problem for me, as I know the ins and outs of /FA fairly well, and I always take time to build a well balanced team.

On my /Inv, I play almost the same way, but perhaps a bit more cautiously because she is not quite as IOd and well built as my /FA. Dull pain is near perma, and with an attentive kin in the ranks, I never worry about it dropping. She is plenty tough, but I find her to kill notably slower than my fiery aura brute. Also, the game is a bit less thrilling as she eats alpha. I think the spikes in my HP bar make /fiery aura exciting and engaging.

I also have a /SR, but I find she is the least tank like of the bunch. Perhaps because of the nature of /SR or maybe the way I have her IOd, she just doesn't feel as tough as the other two. Consequently, I play her even more cautiously than the other two. I am convinced RNG hates me, as I am past softcapped for defense, yet still plant more than I want to admit.

As others have pointed out, the great thing about redside is that just about any AT can take alpha with less difficulty than their blue counterparts. The only classic red AT I see opening alpha on a mob with more reservation than the others are corruptors.
- Brutes have high HP to rely on for opening up a mob
- Dominators can hit a control/mezz for their opener
- stalkers can hit a placate/fear after opening up with an AS
- Masterminds can of course go in body guard mode/sacrifice a few pets and keep moving

Most teams roll fast enough so that rolling into the next mob becomes a race anyway. Redside toons have flexibility in roles, and I think that is one of the greatest in-game mechanics of the game. No AT is needed for anything, and where Blue ATs are flexible, I find that Red ATs are contortionists.

So in sum, you can build your brute to fill whatever role you like, so long as you SMASH! everything in your path. I like the role of conscious berserker. Most of the time, I play like the Hulk (when he retained most of his intelligence and reasoning, despite the transformation). Not mindless, but certainly ready to lay waste to everything in my way.

In before the

I am pretty sure there are several SS/FA builds that have come about in the past several days that you can use as a template for your build. This is one of the most talked about combos right now, so finding info shouldn't be very difficult.

I am still enjoying the Doom in these threads. Get over AE and find other ways to create teams.

... and to answer the question posed in the title of the thread, I plan to stip my EM/ and roll a DM or WM instead.

I am a relatively new person, yet I find EM is far from enjoyable. It is slow and clunky and just terrible in my eyes. No aoe is just the icing on the cake. (which tastes awful, mind you). It may work for stalkers and tanks, like Clouded said- but I think that Brutes are more in line with faster animating sets with more AoE.

With my DB and FM brutes, I am used to killing stuff before other people. With EM I am used to watching my team-mates kill everything while I watch and waste animations.

I never played it before the changes, but I know it is much different now than it once was. I have a few brutes at high lvls, and I can honestly say the EM is my least favorite.

Most glaring weaknesses, epecially ones like lack of KB protection, are easily filled with IOs nowadays. You don't even need to take acrobatics to fix that issue.

There is no one set that is the end all be all for everyone. None of us will ever agree that one set is the "best" unanimously. For example- some people swear by their Stone armor, and I know that is at the bottom of my list of want to plays. Yeah, the survivability is great, but I know it isn't for me.

Best is one of those words that is extremely subjective. I am convinced, moreover, that there is nothing objective about such a word. Yes, you might find a build that is numerically superior in paper in one regard or another, but there are a plethora of factors that can instantly and radically alter game play.

I agree for the most part with Siolfir. Brutes take the best attributes of Tankers and Scrappers and wipe everything out in their path. Certainly, there are some defensive sets that require a bit more investment with IOs and strategy to really shine.

Sure, some sets might need some work, but to bring up EA (which was recently buffed) as a weak link and apply that across the whole AT of Brutes is silly. There are people who will claim there are problems with probably every set across every AT.

Some people can't get with fury, and they claim it is too hard to maintain- but I have never had that issue.

I want to ask you a question: what is your opinion regarding your brute? Do you enjoy the brute? If so, just because you read somewhere that someone is trashing brutes, would you change your opinion? Just enjoy the game and to hell with what everyone is saying on the forums.

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.

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I was thinking last night.. I know this is way out there.. But I think Brutes should get Claws. What do you think?

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Are you kidding? That is what this whole thread is about! Claws for brutes...
NAO!

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a bug that is causing dom's to do to much damage then was intended.

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I lol'd

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I found the broken image funny, myself.

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Haha, yes, seems to be directly indicative of the way some people think of i15.

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I wasn't implying anything about issue 15.

I just thought loading the updater and seeing i15_Live.jpg to be hilarious.

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Forgive me- I misunderstood. I still did laugh though.

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I found the broken image funny, myself.

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Haha, yes, seems to be directly indicative of the way some people think of i15.

If I understand the temp powers right from other chatter on the boards, one of the temp powers gives hefty -res debuffs to Reichsman.

Also, I was on a brute while taking on Reichsman, is it odd that I saw my temp power miss? Seems like it is pretty harsh if it did. These temp powers seem to be THE way to take down Reichsman, and if they are not auto hit I think they ought to be.

I read it in another thread, but it seems like an AT from each class is almost needed in order to complete this tf. I don't know how I feel about that really. I am all for inspiring team play and social interaction in the game, but now it seems like this SF has gone a bit too far. Just because we have no stalker should not mean instant fail. I guess the days of hearing "BSF NEEDS a MM/Stalker" will not seem too silly anymore.

I propose that the necessary buffs be granted based on your number on the list of the team and not your given AT. That is, instead of MMs only receiving temp power Z, it should be given to team member number 1. Instead of stalkers only receiving temp power Y, it should be given to team member number 2... and so forth.

I tried the BSF and it felt like I should have dropped the F and just call it BS. We had three brutes, two corrs (one rad and one kin), a poison MM, a bane and a fortunata and we failed. The team was made up of people who are pretty familiar with the alt they were piloting and we got pwned hard. Not a PuG really, just one unknown person who still played his brute fairly well.

To start, the objectives are rather unclear and esoteric. Especially compared to a TF like ITF which tells participants exactly what to do. I can get past that, but I just can't believe how difficult (nigh impossible) the BSF is. Even in the beginning of ITFs, it was a bit difficult, but I never felt the kind of frustration I felt today with Reichsman.

If the devs designed this TF to almost require teams to have one of each AT to be successful, it should be explicitly stated as such. Though I don't know if this is stated when one visits the contact or not- as I was in charge of recruiting and passed the star to a team mate to be the contact.

Also- I loathe caves. Having to crawl around in that cave and look for Recluse's generals was a vile way to kick off the beginning of a failed last mission. I think it would have been immensely more fun to take on all four of them simultaneously in the end room with a few ambushes as opposed to having to search for them and lead them back through those narrow and awful hallways to the end room.

I will probably not do this again until more is revealed on the ways to beat it. Not sure if it is just new SF blues or if the bugs contributed more to our failure, but it was more than a little frustrating.

- to add a bit more, there are several other secondaries to try in addition to /stone if you are looking for something new. Try /invuln or /wp or /sr. I personally find those more fun and less penalizing than /stone

I don't like /stone myself for several reasons, but I realize it has its merits. I won't ever play because I am pretty particular about costumes and such. As long as you have to look like a giant pile of rubble, I will never play it.

If you have played everything else and just want to try it out, go for it.

I say you just grab a few more levels in game, and get all three, then tell us how you are enjoing them.

I really don't understand what you are saying. I think you are asking that brutes be watered down to make tanks feel more superpowered, and that is absurd. I really think that if people are so upset with basic game mechanics (like AT properties) that they should either play different ATs or use IOs to improve the performance of his particular alt.

Asking brutes to be forced into a less aggressive role is retarded. I will echo what others have said- if you want to tank things you should play a tank. If you want to be an unequivocal steel ball of destruction and arrest, you should play a brute. Brutes are not tanks. Tanks are not brutes. Just because I rush into a mob and take alpha does not mean I am a tank.

Anyone looking for high base dmg or a high dmg ceiling in a melee type character should probably not being play tanks. There are 3 melee ATs that deal more damage on a regular basis.

Yes, as we all know Rogue is looming and the horizon. If some tankers are so insecure that they will be overshadowed and displaced by brutes, they probably have other issues going on.