New Player Seeking Veteran Advice: Brute

Firstly, Hello . I just recently started playing the game. I am enjoying the Brute AT but am seeking some advice on my power choices.

After reading what I could around the forums here it's looking like my choices may not have been the best for starting out. I went Dual Blade/Electric and man does the endurance drain hurt. I'm only level 13 at the moment and am considering a re-roll but before I did that I wanted to probe a few more experienced minds here.

I love the idea of the dual blades, and of course the animations. Not having had much opportunity to play with other melee powers, I'm not sure how it stacks up with damage output. I duo with a stalker and I have noticed that most of the time there's not a whole lot of point to me even bothering trying to get off that next skill as she'll have torn them a new one by the time it goes off...
That's not entirely relevant to my post though.

I am considering a re-roll, as I said, to either elec melee/willpower or dual blade/willpower. I am wondering if the "chance" at endurance transfer with the elec melee would make willpower redundant or if the chance of that endurance return is low enough that willpower would still be a greater benefit with quick recovery.

I'm also still torn on not sticking out my current build. I took fitness with the idea that I would have stamina at 20 - but again I just have no idea if that's going to be enough to soothe the extreme endurance problems I am having. Dual Blade looks and sounds purty and the electric armor fits with my character concept... but I'm just not sure it's worth it.


Thoughts? Advice?

Much appreciated.

I'd recommend bumping your difficulty up to get more enemies if you're finding your stalker friend defeats them too quickly. Also adding teamates will increase spawn size, and you'll be able to further adjust your difficulty once i16 goes live.

As far as endurance problems go, most brute players will recommend endurance slotting in your attacks. Constantly attacking to build fury can drain your blue bar very quickly.

I'd recommend waiting until level 20 or whenever you get Stamina to decide whether or not to re-roll your brute. You can't usually judge how well a brute will do before Stamina and slotting SOs.

Don't be intimidated by stalkers that do a lot of damage. That is what they do. They are really sort of your assassin companion. Generally (and especially) when a new spawn is opened up, you as a brute are the distraction, and they are the nuke.

As far as the endurance drain, it is always rough before brutes pick up stamina. Just having to run armors/toggles is a bit difficult and attacking on top of that can make things appear worse. I suggest adding one or more end. reduction in just about all attacks and secondary powers. You don't really need to slot for dmg with brutes, Fury takes care of that pretty nicely.

I won't be supporting it mathematically, but I would guess that /WP's quick recovery would be more adept at keeping your blue bar filled up than Elec Armor. I might be wrong, but I just don't have issues with endurance/recovery on any of my WP meleers. And one other thing, QR is actually numerically superior to stamina for end modification. So if you do decide to roll a /WP, be sure to keep that in mind. There are even some people who run QR and skip stamina.

A reroll to Elec/WP Wouldnt be bad. Their one of the higher performing brute combos at the moment IMO. DB/WP isnt bad either. That's not to say that DB/Elec is bad, especially with the change to Conserve Power coming in i16, it's just not great. I've seen some people rock it pretty well, and It really is a playstyle all on it's own. I'd suggest rolling seperate toons that are /WP and try them before rerolling.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler you *******!!!!

Thank you for all the replies!

I did in fact roll up some other power combos just to experiment around a bit. After playing them each for a couple hours I fell in love with the ElecM/WP combo. I do see that there is still endurance drain with trying to build fury but it's not even a smidge of a bit close to the trouble I was having with DB/ElA - and I don't even have quick recovery yet.
While the DB/WP combo looked fun and was performing pretty well also, the ElM just felt better and added bonus that the electricity fits with my concept of the character.

I may try another DB combo sometime in the future, maybe even the DB/ElA combo again but I think I'll save it for when I have more experience with the game and a better grasp on slotting and power sets and et al.


I greatly appreciate the advice and opinions!

As for the DB/Elec Brute I would recommend a couple things to make the teens easier. First at level 13 you should slot your attacks with endurance reducers first and then one accuracy, this is where most of your endurance is going so reduce it as much as you can. I like to have my attacks slotted with 3 endredux and 1 acc at this point. Second, only run the toggles you need to fight the enemy you are facing. Charged Armor will get you by on most missions and add then add Conductive Shield when facing Clockwork or CoT at this level. I have played many brutes in my 3 years and I seldom have endurance issues any more by following these simple things.