Dark Melee/Dark Armor Brute Guide
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Just for giggles, I'll post my build. I won't bother putting down my slotting because that's too much like work.
1: Smite, Dark Embrace
2: Shadow Maul
4: Death Shroud
6: Swift
8: Combat Jumping
10: Shadow Punch
12: Obsidian Shield -> This is where I'm at now.
14: Super Jump
16: Health
18: Dark Consumption
20: Stamina
22: Dark Regeneration
24: Acrobatics
26: Soul Drain
28: Oppressive Gloom
30: Touch of Fear
32: Midnight Grasp
35: Cloak of Fear
38: Murky Cloud
The whole part from 30-38 is tentative, I don't know how fear works nowadays but I heard it's not great. Plus there's always the endurance considerations. The whole build looks like a giant AoE aggro machine, doesn't it?
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That's almost exactly what I have on my DM/DA scrapper, though I think you have Cloak of Fear and Opressive Gloom mixed up.
From my experience, fear IS worth taking for DM/DA.
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All you need to do is stay alive.
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I personally like Death Shroud because of my playing style. I slotted it with 2Acc, 1End, 3Dam. I like herding groups to a corner and let DS burn them while I concentrate on the tough ones. Here is one tactic I used to gain a couple of levels when I was in my mid thirties. Any brute with decent AoEs can try this, but you should at least be in your lower thirties.
First I acquire the Carnival girl contact, forgot what her name was or who introduced me to her, but she's in St Martial near the Carnival tents area, she stand at the corner of a building by a bridge. You need to acquire her as a contact so she will sell you inspirations...you'll need it. The area right behind her, you will find plenty of Freaks and Tsoos in their mid thirties. They have bosses too. What I do is I bought a bunch of purples from the girl, pop about four of them and run around and agro as many as I can handle, for me, that's as many as they're willing to follow. Run back and hide behind the girl (sound very manly huh?). Pop a couple more purples, talk to the girl and buy a bunch of reds and use them. Make sure you don't close your dialog with her, keep the store open so you can buy more inspirations as needed. The mobs will round the corner and surround both of you so it might be very difficult to click on her again until the enemies are dead. I would wait a bit for all the enemies to pile in, then hit Soul Drain, Dark Regen and Dark consumption, Death Shroud is always on. At this point my fury is maxed out and DS is cooking away. I concentrate my attacks on the bosses, and use any AoEs that comes back up.
With the girl feeding me reds, purples, oranges, yellows, and greens and blues when needed, I'm practically invincible and burning everything around me. Turn on CoF to debuff them if you have it. Of course it can still be very dangerous if you agro too many purples or reds. So just bite off as much as you can chew. You get nice XP, infamy and enhancements too. Too bad the closes Quartermaster is half a mile away. It might not be worth doing this anymore once you hit lvl 38. I didn't see a lot of people in the area so I don't think you'll be disrupting anyone. It's amusing to see once in a while someone came to talk to the girl just to find out she was being mobbed by about thirty Freaks and Tsoos. Lucky for her you were there to protect her! TIP: keep the store open!
Awesome idea Dark, I'll have to try that sometime =P
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I don't see Obsidian Shield in your build. I highly recommend finding room for this as it gives you -sleep, hold and psi. I didn't think I needed it early and then I get a story arc with Lost in it................ enough said? I was cursing in every mission getting held or slept and all my toggles dropping.
Also, I was wondering if anyone has any experience running cloak of fear or opressive gloom? As a dark scrapper, I loved these powers, but how do they work for a brute? They seem to work against building fury.
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Regarding Oppresive Gloom, I have little experience with it. I tried it on Test briefly, but quickly got tired of losing Fury as I chased down what appeared to be jet-powered drunken foes. It's effective, I suppose, but struck me as more of a headache than anything else.
I've heard a lot of opinions in both directions regarding CoF. As a Dark/Dark Brute, I tend to run CoF and Death Shroud together. Yes, CoF seems counterproductive to Fury generation. Yes, Death Shroud seems counterproductive to CoF. But together, my experience is that they blend nicely.
With both of these powers running, the following occurs:
1) Attention of your foes is drawn to you by Death Shroud. This generates Fury and reduces aggro on your team, if any.
2) Cloak of Fury provides damage mitigation. Attack rate of your foes is slowed somewhat, and (perhaps more importantly) the attacks that *are* made have reduced accuracy. While fighting solo, it may be less important to run this power.
3) Everything around you takes a surprisingly large amount of continuous damage from Death Shroud, especially as Fury begins to ramp up. It's important to note that while each tick of damage is not tremendously large, it potentially affects many targets, and stacks seamlessly with your attack chain.
Your mileage may vary.
Here is my recent respec of my level 50 toon. He is much better at fighting now that I slotted 2 accuracy for most of his powers. Prior to that he seemed to miss targets quite a bit.
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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
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Name: Chaos Fury
Level: 50
Archetype: Brute
Primary: Dark Melee
Secondary: Dark Armor
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01) --> Shadow Punch==> Acc(1) Acc(3) Rechg(7) EndRdx(25) Dmg(34) Dmg(36)
01) --> Dark Embrace==> DmgRes(1) DmgRes(5) DmgRes(21)
02) --> Smite==> Acc(2) Acc(3) Rechg(7) EndRdx(11) Dmg(29) Dmg(36)
04) --> Murky Cloud==> DmgRes(4) DmgRes(5) DmgRes(21)
06) --> Shadow Maul==> Acc(6) Acc(9) Rechg(9) EndRdx(11) Dmg(29) Dmg(36)
08) --> Combat Jumping==> DefBuf(8)
10) --> Siphon Life==> Acc(10) Acc(13) Rechg(15) Rechg(15) EndRdx(37)
12) --> Obsidian Shield==> DmgRes(12) DmgRes(13) DmgRes(25)
14) --> Super Jump==> Jump(14)
16) --> Dark Regeneration==> Acc(16) Acc(17) Rechg(17) Rechg(34) EndRdx(39) EndRdx(39)
18) --> Dark Consumption==> Acc(18) Acc(19) Rechg(19) Rechg(34) Rechg(39) EndMod(40)
20) --> Acrobatics==> EndRdx(20)
22) --> Air Superiority==> Acc(22) Acc(23) Rechg(23) EndRdx(40) Dmg(43) Dmg(43)
24) --> Hurdle==> Jump(24)
26) --> Soul Drain==> Acc(26) Acc(27) Rechg(27) Rechg(37) Rechg(37) EndRdx(40)
28) --> Health==> Heal(28) Heal(31)
30) --> Stamina==> EndMod(30) EndMod(31) EndMod(31)
32) --> Midnight Grasp==> Acc(32) Acc(33) Dmg(33) Dmg(33) EndRdx(43)
35) --> Oppressive Gloom==> Acc(35)
38) --> Soul Transfer==> DisDur(38)
41) --> Gloom==> Acc(41) Acc(42) TH_DeBuf(42) Dmg(42) Dmg(46) Dmg(50)
44) --> Dark Obliteration==> Acc(44) Acc(45) TH_DeBuf(45) Dmg(45) Dmg(46) Dmg(46)
47) --> Summon Widow==> Acc(47) Acc(48) Dmg(48) Dmg(48) Dmg(50)
49) --> Soul Tentacles==> Acc(49) Acc(50)
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01) --> Power Slide==> Run(1)
01) --> Sprint==> Run(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Acc(1)
01) --> Fury==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Rechg(2)
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Uhm, I'd wait until after Stamina for Death Shroud, but I'd not leave it out. I don't slot it for damage, just accuracy and endred. Fury makes it's damage more than noticeable and added to the PBAE utility toggles, you can lay waste to entire spawns of minions while killing the Lt. or Boss.
Cloak of Darkness is nice, but only really a necessity if you're going to PvP or took a travel power other than Super Jump with an opener of Combat Jumping. CJ will give you immobilization protection, but the two should stack for PvP and then there is the +Perception for PvP as well. Nice for spec-ops and such too, but not essential.
In regards to Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom; if I'm remembering correctly, OG can only affect minions. However, the fact that the endurance cost is nearly non-existant is nice. But, if you don't have an ae immob, you end up losing fury (and patience) chasing down all the mobs that your Death Shroud would otherwise have killed.
Cloak of Fear will affect up to Lt.'s on its own and stacks with Touch of Fear to handle bosses more readily. There is no hold, as some people refer to it. It's simply that the Fear cowering code is used, rather than the Fear scatter code that is used with Rain powers. Any time the feared mob takes damage, it gets a chance to run or attack.
My personal preference is for Cloak of Fear as it doesn't scatter the mobs and stacks with ToF. Using both early is handy on Boss fights, but it is endurance intensive. I do intend to pick Oppressive Gloom back up, but most likely not until I get my patron ae immobilization.
I have a level 21 Dark/Dark Brute atm. He's a semi-heavy endurance user. Now, with Stamina, will I still waste endurance like it's out of style?