What Secondary Synergizes with Claws/?

I've only experienced the joy of being a brute in brief glimpses when I could actually maintain fury for single fights at a time. But with the advent of Claws/ for Brutes I feel things may change. What better way to build and maintain fury than lots of quick recharging, endurance-light attacks leading up to bigger AOE attacks once you're furious?

But which of the secondaries would help build and maintain fury best? /Fire maybe? I think armor and mitigation is fine - DEF, RES, all good discussions. But I get the biggest thrill in taking the baddies out as fast as possible. That's good mitigation.

Oh, and as an added wrinkle, of the secondaries that help build/maintain fury, are there any that are better than the others at protecting from ranged attacks?

Thank you in advance for the advice.

I'd go /ELA over /Fire Armor nowdays. With Electric Armor, you can LAUGH OFF energy damage, slows and end drains. These types of resists are hugely helpful in the late game when just about every mob types has at least 1 of these debuffs. Additionally, Claws has a build in 20% endurance and recharge discount. As you might well be aware, electric armor has an additional 20% recharge bonus. So you're already looking at a 40% recharge bonus for your attacks right out the gate. This means you can spam your heavy hitters more frequently and for less endurance. How does an attack chain of FU, Focus and Evis sound?

Electric armor will also provide good resist numbers to most types of damage, has a tier 9 god-mode power and can sap enemies of their endurance during long fights. It also has a damage aura power which helps maintain aggro and unlimited endurance recovery with power sink. You might have heard that with issue 16, elec now has some decent +Regen and a mild heal. The over all package is robust, visually appealing and fun to play.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Most of the secondaries synergize well with Claws. Dark, Electric and Fire have a damage aura which benefits greatly from Follow Up (especially double stacked) and all of those sets lend well to quick killing as mitigation (slotting for recharge).

Energy Aura and Super Reflexes are gods once soft capped. You will have a harder time with EA though, both leveling up and soft capping it. Both can have high recharge in addition to the soft cap.

SR and Electric have a power that boosts your global recharge by 20%, lending themselves well to what you described.

Willpower and Invulnerability can make you extremely tough, but don't lend themselves to high recharge builds as well as the other secondaries.

Stone armor... you don't wanna.


I'd recommend taking either SR, or one of the sets with a damage aura. All three from the latter group are viable, each having its own pros and cons. Dark has the best heal and some nice utility powers, but is very tough on endurance. Fire also has a great heal, decently mitigates any possible end problems via Consume, and has extra damage on top of all that in Burn. It's a tad squishy though. Elec has higher resistances, provides the best end management tools in Power Sink and Energize, has an okay heal (Energize again), and gives a boost to recharge. If you get as much recharge as you can, you should also be able to get anywhere from 20% to 35% defense against S/L or melee and 15% to 20% against the rest. If you take SR you can soft cap all positions, have maxed def debuff resistance, and permahaste to boot. You won't have a damage aura or any toys, but you can take Aid Self if you wish.

Thanks for these. I have a very cool concept in mind, and unfortunately, /WP or /SR would work best thematically. I have a /SR and love it, but am looking for something new. I've always been attracted to /WP, and it's a contender, but I'd like a second form of damage other than S/L, unless that's not worth selecting a secondary for because they are low producers.

Of the remaining discussed, /Stone also fits thematically, darn it. And I like the idea of mud pots for a slow around me while I slice and dice, along with minor fire damage. IF I chose to go that way (still a lot of convincing to do), does Superspeed overcome the major slows, or do I need to stick with TP for that?

I have /EA on other toons too, but seems to be a lot of skippable powers if I've already got a lower endurance consumer in Claws, especially by taking Fitness pool. And I've never been a fan of END leeching which never seems to make a difference.

You cannot take stone with claws, unfortunately, just like shield, it's not an option. Personally I went WP with claws, been soloing normal story arcs set as 2 villians equal level, and have gone from 1-20 in 2 days, which is a record for me. I'm sure other people have done better with various sets, but I'm happy with WP so far.

Really? Paragonwiki doesn't seem to say there are restrictions with Stone Armor. Where do you see this?

That would be either the char creator, which will grey out shield and stone if you pick claws, or the I16 patch notes under brutes.

In your first post you say you like taking out baddies as fast as possible... Stone Armor shoots you in the leg in that regard. It has penalties to your recharge rates and damage.

WP is a good pick. You won't be able to slot for mad recharge, but you can still have a decent amount of recharge in and be nigh unkillable. Go for it if you like it.

I've gotten to level 35 with my Claws/Invul and slotted with level 35 common IOs. It feels pretty good. Endurance isn't horrible (no tough/weave yet) and I'm already able to take alphas/tank for my teams. I do wish I had a damage aura, though.

I went with Claws/Elec myself. The extra recharge from Lightning Reflexes will be nice, especially on top of Hasten and the unlimited Blue Bar. Other than that there's not a lot of synergy really, Lightning Field gives you even more PBAOE damage which is nice and Shockwaves knockback won't much of an issue as it would be for WP or Invun (in fact it'll be a bit of a lifesaver I reckon).

I do have a Claws/WP scrapper and they're pretty excellent too. Again not a huge amount of real synergy, and you'll need to be a bit cleverer with your Knockback, but the lack of clickies in WP helps you focus on Slicing and Dicing without worrying about clicking a Heal or clicky mez protection, and Quick Recovery means you don't really worry about End (I did take the Fitness pool too, WP and the Fitness pool go very well together).

Thank you all for the advice. I ended up taking a Claws/Elec because I was able to use the new costume creator to tone down the electric look and stick close to my theme. The end result looks just fine, and I'm quite happy with it. He's a redress on "Riki Tiki Tavi" named "Ricity Tavi" (see how I did that?). Kinda Mongoosy looking. I'd like to get the Cyborg eye laser maybe for that final touch, but he turned out well.

The Lightning Reflexes will be good synergistically for his character, and right now the electricity coursing around his body was taken from the "dark electric" theme, and looks more like a guy bristling to jump into a fight.

I was on a three-man team last night and got him from 1 to 12 and am really enjoying him. I don't see too many downsides, and Claws/ is as I expected - rocks the Brute Fury bar. I don't know if it's to be expected or not, but the couple times I was on a bigger team, I hardly attracted any Fury - seems to be attached to aggro possibly less so than how much I attack, but no biggie.

I have heard that Taunt is actually good for building Fury as well - is it the power itself that builds Fury, or the fact that you start getting attacked more afterward?

Oh, and I must report that END isn't as MUCH of an issue as other Brutes, but I still run out. Started the Fitness pool at 12, and so far have taken every Claws/ attack. I don't see many I would skip.

Thanks again. See you in-game!

I have a Claws/Fiery Aura Brute that is currently level 21. She's pretty fun to play, but can be a bit squishy. I've yet to get Blazing Aura or Focus (I just HAD to get Stamina at 20), but they're coming soon... along with SOs. Should be a fun time.