Duo - Corruptor and Brute

Hey all,

I've been playing the game for almost three months now, most of which I have played as a Dual Blades/Super Reflexes stalker, along with another person who was a Plant/Thorn dominator. We've managed to get to level 39, playing at level 5 difficulty after level 22 (Yay SOs) but sadly, we've hit a brick wall and we are incapable of taking on most AVs by ourselves. I know slotting sets can assist with this, however I would like to think that the game was designed in a fasion that allows two people to duo some tough foes without the need for set IOs.

Recently, I have decided to try and level up a brute since out of all the ATs available to the game, I have not had the chance to play a tanking-type role. My friend has already created his character, being a Sonic/Rad corruptor.

What I would like to do is create a Brute to compliment his choice, one that can really dish out damage to single targets, since we are primarly going to be duo'ing.

As for primaries, I would like to avoid mace, battle axe and dual blades, as they do lethal damage and I've played enough characters that do that sort of damage. I was thinking more along the lines of energy melee, however I am asking for opinions here.

For a secondary, I am really stuck here. I've been told Will Power is the way to go, however, I don't know how effective WP will be with only two of us most of the time. Again I am completely open to suggestions here.

Please help me out, I can work on a concept after I have decided what kind of character to actually go with. Again keep in mind, this will mostly be for duo play, with maybe one or two others who join us on off times. If someone has any recommendations on a different duo setup, being different ATs or otherwise, please post them as well!

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shield is also a really fun choice for brutes. Shield charge is insane with a decent amount of fury to feed it.

the hubby and i are running (among other things) a sonic/pain corr (him) and an axe/shield brute (me). only 30 so far, so don't have shield charge yet, but it's sick. i love the set.

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Well, your friend's Sonic/Rad Corruptor should definitely help in the late game against AVs, I'll tell you that much.

Since your friend will be able to give you AM, a heavy-hitting, but endurance-heavy set might be a good mix. I'd suggest either Stone or Super Strength for primary. Fire could work, but you'd lack mitigation, so depending on your secondary, it might not be that great.

As for a secondary, if it's just you and a friend, you probably don't need the stability of a Stone Tanker (well, at least not Granite, except against AVs). I would say that Invuln, Willpower, or Fire Armor (especially if you can work in Tough for the AVs later) might work well.



However, you might be fine setting it to the highest difficulty for most of the game, then putting it down one level when you come across AVs. Remember that fighting AVs as a duo is probably much harder than fighting the same creature as an EB.

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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus

Out of all of my Brutes (I play quite a few of them) my favorite has got to be my DM/WP. Dark Melee has that up close and personal feeling in combat. It's speedy and very effective against most enemies, and Siphon Life is a great power to make up for Willpower's lack of a self heal.

Teamed with a Corruptor, especially a /Rad, I would call that a juggernaut. YMMV

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Sonic/Rad is a very strong corruptor combo. With that as your partner, it's hard to go wrong.

That said - well, I love Willpower and Invulnerability. I do. I'm not sure I'd recommend them for your purposes, though.

The thing is...WP and Inv are strongest when you're surrounded by many enemies; Rise to the Challenge and Strength of Will only really hit their stride when saturated. You're not gonna get that while going head-to-head with one tough enemy - an AV.

Now, you can tank an AV on a WP or Inv brute. But in my experience, I find myself leaning on my Tier 9 power a lot. And burning a lot of inspirations.

I suspect a Super Reflexes or Shield Defense brute with softcapped defenses would have an easier time of it. And it's really not hard to softcap an SR brute in particular with a couple pools and a handful of IOs.

DM/SR might be good for this purpose; Dark Melee has strong single-target damage and a self-heal, plus the tohit debuff stacks well with your defense. Note that your corruptor partner's doing some tohit debuff on the AV anyway.

Other primaries? Well, Super Strength is a popular brute primary, and does do good single-target damage. But a lot of it comes from spamming Knockout Blow. That may not be to your taste. Energy Melee has two heavy hitters, but their recharge is vastly longer and the attacks animate much slower than KO Blow. Stone Melee is reputedly a very good single-target set, but I have no experience with it.

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@Acyl

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This post may sound elitist and/or self-promoting, but it's not meant to be - it's meant to say that it really doesn't matter and to offer some advice from my personal experience.

A Sonic/Rad Corruptor can (with just SOs and a good player) solo most AVs themselves. Rad/Sonic (essentially the same build as a Defender) is one of the recommended heroside builds for soloing AVs. I've done AV soloing pre-i9 with an Ice/Rad Corruptor, and Sonic deals slightly higher sustained damage to a single target due to stacking -resistance. The only real issues to worry about are being mezzed and running out of endurance. For that reason, the Brute you make is mostly irrelevant. If you enjoy what you're playing, and you're contributing damage, it'll work.

You can also make Brute builds that can solo AVs that will make the Corruptor just an add-on to make it go faster; if you each have a character that's capable of taking on an AV solo, then you really have no worries when you need to duo one.

Now, that the "meh, who cares" part is out of the way... my advice if you want to provide great single-target damage is going to change based on how much of an IO investment you're going to throw in: the sets fluctuate a lot at varying levels of recharge (here is a post I made summarizing results BillZBubba worked out for comparison).

So poke around and see where you want to go with a primary, then take a look at the secondaries. If all of them just have SOs, Electric Armor is fairly competitive but it drops off in the comparisons when you start adding IOs to everything else (defense sets just get a lot better than resistance sets because all of the set bonuses they can get, and sets that have a self-heal can focus on recharge to have it up more often - ElA has neither). The only one I'd recommend staying away from is Energy Aura, and that's because if you take it the Corruptor is going to be pulling a lot of aggro off of you due to the lack of a persistent taunt aura - you'd have to be throwing off lots of AoEs or switching targets constantly in a crowd to keep things on you, and I personally find that annoying.

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With a sonic/rad corruptor helping you, you should be able to duo most any AV out there. If you want to solo them my suggestions would be fire/sr, fire/shield, dark/sr, or dark/shield.

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