Solo Brutes

So, I've played a few character on villian side and have 3 50s, but the only brutes I have is a 50 Elec/Shield and a 38 SS/EA.

I abandoned the SS/EA brute, because I feel that EA is pretty craptastic. I don't like it at all.

Elec/Shield was ok and had some pretty great tools, but I had some pretty good friends to team up with back then.

So, I was curious from those experienced with playing a lot of brutes, what are the best solo set combinations for a brute in your opinion.

I am 99 percent Blueside, but I have dipped my toes redside.

Out of all the Brutes I have tried solo, two have stood out for being high in the fun factor.

SS/Willpower and Mace/Willpower.

I am not awake enough to say why they are so much fun for me...I do know that the SS builds fury quickly and that is good

Good luck.

Lisa-who busily guzzling coffee..Must wake up now

/WP is going to be one of, if not the single best secondary for solo brute.

Well rounded and good performance right out of the box.

Anything/WP.

For my money, the sickest and most joyful of all brute combinations is claws/wp.

It is the most beautiful blender I have ever seen in this game.

Aye, Willpower was, IMO, made specifically FOR (solo) Brutes. Rise to the Challenge is the soulmate of Fury.

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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

It sounds like willpower is unanimously seen as the best solo secondary.

It would also seem that no one primary has the definitive edge. However, I am likely to believe that Bill Z is right with claws.

I would imagine with low activation times, low endurance costs, and excellent mix of AoE and single target damage it is probably the superior solo primary.

All the input is extremely helpful and I imagine I have my secondary set, but what do you all think about the individual merits of various primarys as a solo brute?

Fire/SR is a great solo build in the mid 30s+ game. Before that (pre IOs, etc), it can be painful.

I would love to add my twopenneth worth into the fold .. I been playing with a lvl 50 elec melee/ shields brute and I have been soloing everything on +4/ 8 man teams with the one exception of nemesis as their vengence does not require a hit check and therefore bypasses defence. I have slotted 3 membrane exposures in to increase the defense debuff resistance and I have to say it is outstanding at everything.
I cannot see why you would need to play anything else if you have got it properly slotted you can solo anything (except nemesis )

If you are experienced, you might enjoy DM/Elec. Great damage, self sufficient for +Dam, +end, +health, +Regen, +HP. Very survivable, especially with Darkest Night.

ss/shield and elec/shield are both fun

I have two brutes: a WM/SR and a Fire/WP. Both are fun, and both kick ***, and in my experience both were good from the get-go. I find the biggest improvement one can make is early IO slotting. I go at 17 and load up on IO's. Some for set bonuses that'll help out. Some for frankenslotting.

As much as people say SR is a late bloomer, I found that some decent slotting early on made it a lot of fun and took care of most of the endurance issues. And routinely crushing 3-5 guys at a time with Shatter is sick, wicked, and nasty. Once I get some better defense values and recovery, I'll be cranking the difficulty way up and seeing what she can do.

Willpower will get most of the votes, and rightly so, but I'm liking SR.

I've played a bucketload of Brutes to the high levels. Of those, some have been better than others.

By far my most enjoyable Brute is Lord of the Red Fist, my SS/Shield. Half of that is because I love the character concept and the powersets fit it perfectly, but the other half is that this build is also damned good fun to play. The sheer slaughterous destruction they can unleash is the sort of savage beauty seen in a catastrophic bushfire or a multiple-train derailment. There's no subtlety involved. Between Fury, Rage and Against All Odds there are so many damage buffs it's just silly. The combination of Shield Bash and Foot Stomp is like the total solar alignment that would tear Earth apart, except you get to do it every second fight. There is just something unspeakably awesome about charging through +3 enemies until you've got the entire aggro cap chasing you, then turning around, shattering their ranks with a Shield Bash, and then killing every last one with a Foot Stomp. They even work defensively, with the stupendous knockdown potential of SS compensating well for the relative suck of Shield's defenses on a Brute, especially if you take a detour into Air Superiority.

Now I don't know how powerful this build really is. I hate invention set fetishism, and will use them only so far as I get the inf to through normal play. My build is probably comically inefficient. But I have never played any other character that made me feel so truly powerful. From the first time you get a few attacks and realise that nearly every one you have is animated such that you are [/i] smashing people in the face with a shield[/i] to the moment you first use SB-FS it is a visceral experience. This character was so much fun that it overtook seven others in their 30s-40s on the way to 50.

The only niggling weakness with this character is that I can't use the two-handed smash KoB with the shield out. It would be so appropriate to the most damaging power I have to smash some poor chump in the face as hard as I can with a giant slab of rock, but apparently, no dice. This would be so good it's the top of my own list of animation fix priorities.

I've tried a bunch out, my favorites are claws/SR and SS/SD. /willpower to me is more fun for scrappers, it does synergize well with fury, but I dont think I've ever had what I would consider to be a "fury problem" with any brute. Fury rises whether an attack hits or misses, and I really hate the way my survivability scales down and up depending on the mobs with /WP.

By comparison, claws/SR with Aid Self is pretty close to immortal, especially if you carry a few purples for emergencies. Its still a blender, but its a blender that laughs at most AVs.

SS/SD is just fun for the raw carnage. You're already going to be stacking recharge for rage and footstomp, once its softcapped it holds up really well, but my shield charge is also down to 21 seconds. A 21 second no crash nuke. Yeah, its beautiful to watch.