I'd normally wait till DO's I find I dont have the end to fight longer battles till then, but I understand that SS blooms early and nothing I've played really does
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
The first thing I do with a brute is take the combat walk up to the fortuna in mercy, attacking everything enroute to it, up my diff to malicious and walk back, again killing everything enroute then do the first contacts mission arc, then off to PO, usually lvl 4 before I start the missions than away I go.
I usually leave it at this level for some time as soloing gives enough mobs to generate enough fury, and the mobs are bigger if people do your missions without being to overwhelming earlier on.
This was how i left it for ages, and one day though, this is a bit toooo easy now, SO's don't half make a differance, so about 3 lvl's ago upped it to Ruthless, and now am having even more fun.
These settings, Malicious and Ruthless, give more mobs for you to kill, so it helps you build fury as a brute, although some of your squishy friends may complain if you team and don't tell them. 
don#t forget that if you put difficulty up to vicious, then you will have to face red bosses, can be a bit hard in early levels. And with malicious you face more enemies but same lvl, so malicious seems like a better option at that stage.
Right, im lvl8 and my lvl'ing has seemed to of slowed down a bit, ive been soloing on my inv/ss and things seem to be getting a little too easy, time to jack up the difficulty??