Stone / Fire or Stone / Elec Brute?

Hey folks,
Enjoying my Dark/WP Brute so much I'm thinking about starting another at some point.

I reckon I want to retry Stone Melee (the first character I ever created was a Fire/Stone tank who was deleted years ago). Question is what to pair it with?

I'm drawn to either Fiery Aura as a recreation of the Tank, or maybe Elec Aura.

What's peoples opinions on the two combos.

So I ended up, after making a build for both in Mids, on going with Fire. More defensive holes but Healing Flames. And oodles of damage.

Level 5 now and by the gods those two mallets eat End. Roll on DOs / SOs, Stamina, Consume and lots of Inspirations. One-shotting minions at level 3 with a big smashing noise sorta makes up for it though.

If I didn't already have an Elec/Fire brute I would have a Stone/Fire. After playing around with Stone/WP and Elec/Fire I realise the combination was all wrong......... though I wish my Fire/DA was Fire/Fire........... infact maybe it's just that /fire brutes are awesome as I cant think of a primary I wouldn't play with it.

With Stone Melee I used just the heavy hammer and stone fists until I got Quick Recovery at 20. Fault is the key IMO and is stupidly fun (even without the bind "That was my FAULT!" though it does add to it)

I want a Stone Melee scrapper now

Finally, gasping like an asthmatic marathon runner who smokes 50 Major a day, I cross the line to level 12 and DOs.

I mean the End burnage of this build is just ridiculous!! So much pain scrambling my way to level 12. The last level was made soloing a lowbie farming mission with lots of AM buffs going, street sweeping is tedious beyond belief when you're out of blue most of the time and resting whenever it's up.

If it hadn't been for that Farm mish I think I'd have given up. Thankfully now I've at least got tonnes of -End DOs slotted into my powers so I should be a bit better. Plus the Farm mish showed me the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of what I will be able to do once my End woes are sorted and I can keep my Fury up, having to stop and rest and watching my Fury ebb away made me want to cry.

Fault is excellent too, I've been mostly using it mid-way through a fight so I get some Fury built from being attacked before Fault & Healing Flames fixes me & I can do some serious damage with 3 attacks (especially if Build-Up is also ready).

Looks like this will be a much different Brute to my "never stops" Dark/WP Brute, squisher, but with even heavier spike damage & developing a nice amount of AOE havoc later on.

Plus I realised that I'll have the Seismic Smash and Burn combo in my mid-20s which should be a real boss killer.

Once you get end sorted (took me QR and Stamina on my Stone/WP) you'll probably find attacking get fury just fine and you can use perma fault. I think Consume will actually be better than QR on stone brute, but not 100% sure the numbers will support me. The downside will be if you're just left with the bosses but I tend to take them down first so I can 1 shot the Ltns

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Once you get end sorted (took me QR and Stamina on my Stone/WP) you'll probably find attacking get fury just fine and you can use perma fault. I think Consume will actually be better than QR on stone brute, but not 100% sure the numbers will support me. The downside will be if you're just left with the bosses but I tend to take them down first so I can 1 shot the Ltns

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From what I remember on my (horribly built) Fire/Stone tank Consume managed to scrape me through. But that was soloing with a Tanks level of damage (and a horrible, horrible build. I took Jump Kick instead of Combat Jumping, didn't take Stamina until respeccing it in at level 26, after about a year being idle and didn't take Fault at all). It really was the ultimate n00b build and the main reason I tend to ask about these things on Forums nowadays

Consume is probably best for rampaging through lots of minions, QR is better for Boss & EB fights.

Bosses will be held and horribly burnt to death anyway, at least that's the theory.

I think the hold will probably last long enough for burn, but you can make burn perma but not the hold. My Elec/Fire brute duo's with a Rad/therm corr and was stack Imobs to keep bosses held for burning. Most AVs dont run from burn so it works alright

Of course you can have a ghetto hold and burn. You win

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I think the hold will probably last long enough for burn, but you can make burn perma but not the hold. My Elec/Fire brute duo's with a Rad/therm corr and was stack Imobs to keep bosses held for burning. Most AVs dont run from burn so it works alright

Of course you can have a ghetto hold and burn. You win

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I think I made Seismic fairly perma in Mids with some Frankenslotting. Two of those wonderful Acc/Hold/Recharge IOs and a combo of Acc/Dam and Dam/Recharge recipies from cheap melee sets. That's just over perma vs even level bosses, I think.

Of course those Acc/Hold/Recharge IOs can be (relatively) expensive for me since I'm not good at amassing Inf. But that's the goal for the mid 30s for dealing with bosses.

Fault, Burn, Fences, Tremor & Ball Lightning for everything else. Yum.

Update time (since there's very few posts about this combo here or States-side). Now mid 20s (25 to be exact) and my End Woes are, if not behind me, at least managable now. Stamina & Consume are both needed and even then you can easily run out of End, even with my hammers slotted with -End SOs. Think I'm gonna need a Performance Shifter at some point : The Random number generator didn't smile on me last night when rolling Silver ticket rolls, dammit. But I've already gotten a Steadfast Protection Knockback Resistance from 15-20 Bronze Rolls thanks to the MA (slotted into Plasma Shield)

Seismic Smash is a godly power altogether, remove a boss from a fight with one Smash. Build-Up is great for Stones heavy, slow recharging attack chain, can do enormous damage to a Boss in seconds running it. I'd recommend getting Build-Up as soon as it's available.

Fault is the ultimate power in the combo so far though. Allowing enemies to hit you for a while whilest you hammer them down seems to be my best way of getting Fury up nice and quickly, my attack chain is a bit slow to do it alone, even with Brawl on auto. When they start hurting (and Fury is nice and high) Fault followed by Healing Flames sorts you right out and you can then pick them off one by one while they fall over, get up and wander around. Plus it recharges really quickly so even though they don't stay stunned too long they soon will be again. I've seen some Stone Melee guides say it's just Ok (a Stone/Elec guide too, which was baffling), but for a fairly squishy */Fire Brute it's a 5 star power for sure.

Plays differently to my Dark/WP Brute mid-20s. No way I can take as much damage as he can (he once jumped into 2 Lost spawns in the Midnight Arc and didn't even notice there was 2 extra purple conning bosses, one of the Kabra Kill, until he was halfway through them) and I'm better at fewer, more powerful enemies (all the better for clobbering) but from now on it's all AOEs which I'm looking forward to.

Anyone playing Stone/Fire should read this US Guide on keeping the blue bar going. Especially in the god-awful teens (hang in there, it gets better eventually).

I just deleated my stone/fire last night to make new alt space and now after reading this i want to go roll one again

Dam you

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I just deleated my stone/fire last night to make new alt space and now after reading this i want to go roll one again

Dam you

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Hee hee. My work here is done

Basically twas the whole point of my post, along with "stick with it until level 22, the End issues do get better".

So over the weekend I got Burn on my Stone/Fire and it's great, especially combined with 2 AOE knockdowns.

However I noticed that when my Fury is high the damage starts off high but then ramps down during the duration. The "Rain of 11s" start falling until eventually they become a "Rain of 5s".

Is this expected behaviour because Burn inherits the Fury damage buff but it expires during Burns 10 second lifetime? How long does Furys Damage Buff last?

I think the fury damage bonus lasts as long as a "tick of fury" which could be pretty much anything.

Slight bit of Threadomancy from me, mainly because I asked this question pre-merge and now there's a lot more Brute experts around who might help me answer it :

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carnifax However I noticed that when my Fury is high the damage starts off high but then ramps down during the duration. The "Rain of 11s" start falling until eventually they become a "Rain of 5s". Is this expected behaviour because Burn inherits the Fury damage buff but it expires during Burns 10 second lifetime? How long does Furys Damage Buff last?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DSorrow I think the fury damage bonus lasts as long as a "tick of fury" which could be pretty much anything.

So does anyone know how well and how long Burn & the damage bonus from Fury work together on a Brute?