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As long as you're having fun that's what's important, but in the low levels you're generally better off sticking to your primary and secondary before going into the pools.

Scrappers don't need Fury, so they can be a bit more surgical than Brutes. They don't get that same "oh crap oh crap oh crap" effect, either, though, that you get racing from spawn to spawn trying to keep your meter up. Their damage output is spikier than Brutes' due to crits.

In general they're a tiny bit squishier due to lower resist caps and HP, but for the most part survivability is the same, at least solo, and regen is a great set for keeping you up once you know what you're doing. It's busy, though, so make sure to keep an eye on that life bar. Reconstruction doesn't do you any good if you're dead.

I don't know that you need fitness with a Kin; it's not a real end-starved set. I'd hold off and worry about slotting up Quick Recovery first, which is about 1/3 better than Stamina right off the bat. I also wouldn't bother with Leadership for a long, long time, the pool power you want ASAP is Hasten, which helps a lot in keeping all your clicks cycling faster.

In general they play pretty similarly.

I still don't buy the "oh no you have to blow a slot or two on KB protect" argument. You don't have to blow an entire power pick for /FA's status protection, either, so no useless slots that just have -end in them wasted there, plus you get all sorts of options. You don't need ridiculously expensive +end/recov IO's as much with /FA due to Consume, you get TONS of AOE damage from Blazing Aura and Burn (and most people are crazy about AOE in COH), etc.

Sorry guys, a couple of enhancement slots are really not that huge of a burden. Every set has slots you HAVE to spend a certain way (+Recharge on /SD's status protect, etc). Oh nos, the huge manatee...

Claws is going to be used pretty much exactly as it is on a Scrapper, too. I don' t know that you really need a specific guide for it. The whole "thing" for Claws is fast recharges and low end costs, so I don't think there's much to do except go forth and SMASH.

Take both, slot 'em for damage and recharge. You're a DM/FA, you need the AOE!

The PP pets are beyond useless, with the possible exception of the Dom Mu one, which occasionally heals you.

If you want Shadowmeld go for it, but I'd get Tough rather than the pet. The pets are TERRIBLE.

I think re-jiggering the Tier 9, and getting some earlier AOE defense (come on, there's shotgun-using mobs at level 1) would pretty much fix SR. SR's not really flashy enough to justify being as late-blooming as it is, IMO.

Man, I don't get the "if you need IOs the set sucks" people. I'm a latecomer to the world of defense base sets - I played mostly resistance and regen sets - and defense sets (like shields) BLOW until you've spent tons of money on IO sets. God help you if your primary doesn't have a heal (IE, you're not dark melee).

I find it less onerous to slot a -KB IO or two into FA than slotting dozens of expensive IOs into all sorts of powers I HAVE to six slot (even if I didn't want to!).

FA is a lot more functional at the SO level, IMO, than SR/Shield/etc. Resistance-based sets are easier to "gauge" incoming damage than defense sets. YMMV.

DA and FA are also different once you get to the end game, by a fair amount, just by what you're fighting.

DA is very strong against energy and psionic enemies. Fire is strong against... Fire.

There's so much more energy and psionic stuff late game it's nuts. Fire is VERY occasional.

Truly, I don't mind the KB hole THAT much, but I'll let the super-number crunchers tell that story. I don't spend that much time in the end game, so I tend not to notice the more glaring design issues. Everything's balanced in the 20s.

The reason KB doesn't do direct damage is a design feature. It made sets that did knockback much, much more powerful than those that didn't. Way back (I mean way, way back, in the original beta or alpha) it did do damage based on if the recipient hit something or fell.

Balancing stuff kind of sucks. You'll never make everybody happy.

I am like the poorest CoH player that's been on since launch, and even I don't have problems affording and slotting a few -KB IO's.

DM/FA is fun as hell if you like clicking lots of buttons. It's pretty short on mitigation - there's no Psi protection whatsoever except healing through it, no inherent KB protection, etc. But man does it make things die. With the /FA buffs coming with GR, things will die even faster, but you're still going to be pretty squishy.

MA's getting buffed too, but mainly in the damage front. Regen is still a pretty killer secondary in terms of staying alive.

I am going to throw my hat in the ring on Mr. Bubba's side. /Fire has never been offensively weak. Its problem has always been durability. I have a pretty decent DM/Fire Brute (all IO's but not extreme, lots of +melee def) that is just getting chewed the heck up in the 40s. I have a MUCH less well equipped /Nin stalker who is far more durable.

The Burn change, while great for more damage, is still going to mean even squishier /FA, because running from the fire DOES make them not attack you for a bit.

The big thing for me is the change to Consume, that could be handy, especially since I end up dealing with lots of end drain from Mu mobs.

I just deleted a little-used character and noticed the same thing. Slots are still unavailable.

I wanted to reserve a name for GR

On my Ninja/Ninja stalker I put the Achilles' Heel proc in just the fastest-recycling power, which was usually get enough to keep it up on anything with a significant amount of HP. All my other melee attacks pretty much had +Def 6-piece sets in them. Is one Achilles proc enough you think?

I am perpetually a pauper in CoH because I never transfer INF between chars (and I only have two 50s anyway, damned altitis). One thing to bear in mind is that you're often better off frankenslotting lesser sets than using "pure" IO's. If you can buy a cruddy set's recipes for 5000 when a table-bought recipe costs 20K, why not do it? You usually end up with greater total bonuses and if you're smart about sniping the recipes for cheap off the AH, you'll spend less money.

Also, if you do start assembling the good sets later in life, you don't HAVE to buy the level 50s of every recipe. The under-max recipes are often significantly cheaper, and if you're hitting the cap on your favored stats anyway, why bother with the 50s?

So on one of my poorer characters I found one of these. Before I WW it, is there any compelling reason I should keep it? I don't really transfer INF between chars (for no reason I can really name, I just don't like to do it), so it would fund a lot of basic upgrades for this guy.

I just never see these in people's builds, so I wasn't really planning on keeping it. Any discussion as to the merits of this IO is welcome.

Scrapper primaries have no natural taunt component; it's strictly damage agro.

Some scrapper secondaries have a minor taunt component. Damage auras, of course, tick off every one they hit, but the debuffs from Invincibility and Rise to the Challenge will also attract bad guys, provided some other agro source doesn't override that.

Yeah, it's pretty much it for regular-recharging AOE you're gonna get (Dark Consumption and Soul Drain both do damage, but even slotted for it it's not really very useful), so you gotta grab it. You pretty much need to grab Shadow Punch or Boxing as a DM brute; you need something that charges fast with a quick animation time. I usually cycle through the fast animation stuff a few times before cutting loose with Shadow Maul.

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Another question regarding Boxing. Does it cause any redraw issues for Stone/ brutes? If I'm using it as an auto will I end up having to have the hammer redrawn each time afterwards?

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Stone brutes don't really have redraw issues. Seismic Smash, Stone Fists, etc don't have the hammer out either. The hammer is a "fake" weapon like Fire Sword etc that doesn't have a "draw" animation. It just appears at the beginning of the animation.

It has both faster recharge time and faster anivation time than kick, and people generally hate knockback.

It is awesome. You can fix the KB hole with IO's, you fix the immob hole with Combat Jumping or Burn, and then you punch things and set them on fire until they die.

Getting 4 Kinetic Crashes is around $250K or cheaper, getting a -KB IO is like 3 million. It depends on where you are money wise.

With two slots and quickness there is no gap.