What brutes do you have?

ELM/DA - Clouded Electron - first brute to 50. Liked the concept, but shelved for some time now.

EM/ELA - Pillar of Force - second brute to 50. Was my favorite for a bit and first AV soloer but shelved for some time now.

SS/INV - Power Absolute - first brute ever made, been stuck in the 30s for many years now. Poor guy has been passed over so many times.

SS/WP - Matt the Body - another 50. One of my favorites for concept and abilities.

Fire/SR - Kevin Dragos - 50, and my overall favorite

DM/ELA - Doom Goon - 20ish, kinda forgot about this guy

Claws/INV - Iron Puma - 38, pretty fun so far and my current main for brutes

SS/EA - King of the Jungle - 22, I should just delete this one.

Fire/Fire - 16, can't remember his name for the life of me.

I have the following Brutes who have made it past L25 (the cut off point for execution of lame toons):

SS/WP: L50 - My first Brute, and my go to toon for TFs, farming, whatever. The combination is very simple and decidedly un-flashy (not a real word) - but it's also extremely effective and for me is terribly fun to play. He didn't have the stones to tank for teams without some decent IOing.

Claws/Invuln: L50 - A great combination. Claws is light on endurance, and high on damage - this goes well with Invuln's sheer rugged toughness. I have not IOd this toon, mostly due to having other projects I was more interested in, but the combination is definitely a good one. That being said, I personally feel that while spin is just amazing in the damage department Footstomp is better than spin for teams on a brute that wishes to be the main aggro unit due to the massive radius and nearly guaranteed KD which is good for everyone.

Stone/Stone: L47 - I gave up on this character. I liked stone melee, even more KD than SS and the DPA of most of the single target attacks is fantastic. Stone Armor I hated. I hate needing a kin or IMMENSE IOing just to move 5 feet. Even when you get to move fast, you still lack mobility and CAN NEVER jump or fly with a Jet Pack. I'll probably give stone melee another go at somepoint, but I'll only try Stone Armor again if they give some customization options for GA and if I'm feeling masochistic again.

WM/WP: L36 - I hated this brute until he got to L32 and picked up crowd control - at which point he became a whole lot more fun to play. I still prefer SS to WM, but WM is a good set overall.

FM/SD: L48 - This is a fantastic combo. Fire Melee just melts enemies (har har har), and /SD is /SD. It's a bit rough on endurance, but he's not IOd at all yet. Once he has his endurance issues sorted, I'm sure he'll be a blast to play.

SS/ELA: L38 - This is a great combo as well. I've wanted to try either ELA or FA for a while, I went with ELA because of the aesthetics, the recent improvements and because I want to laugh at END draining enemies. I'll probably make a SS/FA at some point anway.

I love Brutes they are my favorite followed closely by Widows, Dominators, Corruptors Blasters and Defenders. I have a lot of them now all in various stages of development.
I have listed them in the order I created them. Unless noted all of these are on Infinity server.

L50 SS/DA Arch Widow my first brute made day one. But my playstyle and DA are not a good match. IO's revived this character who sat in the low 40's since Issue 7.

L40 Fire/Fire Brazamal fun at first but I have not been able to get going with him in a long time. because of the heavy DOT I developed a rotating fighting style for him.
L40 Dark/Dark Iron Jack Rackham my undead superspeedster pirate. Yes he can run fast on a peg leg.

L50 SS/Elec Arc Voltinator my first villain to 50 and my villain main. I love playing this character and have the most hours on this one than any other. Also my main IO crafter she crafts all my IO projects.

L50 SM/Elec Admatine Force. I had so much fun with my last electric I had to do another. He is very single target focused but still a lot of fun. Also where I developed my speed brute concept.

L23 Fire/Elec MegaHurtz a test to compare to a friends Fire/Elec.

L44 SS/FA Exquisite Widow one I just had to try and one I leveled up with a new to the game friends SS/FA. But my friend is not very good at melee and does not play his much so I have been slowly tinkering with this one and leveling it up.

L38 FM/DA Balor Doom Beast. This is my Balrog concept and is getting to be a lot of fun once I did some IO shifting around and a few respec's

L38 SS/INV Incredible Magnitude This was made after the repair to INV and to compare to a similarly built /Elec. Both have similar costumes based on my main PnP Champions character.

L41 SS/Elec Crushing Magnitude. The other half of my test and you can tell which one I like more. This one is a different slotting focus than my main SS/Elec to test out alternate set slotting.

L38 SM/WP Clown Smasher a fun dip of my toe into WP. Once again single target smash focused.

L50 BA/Elec BlitzKrieg Storm a slow to get going fury character but once I get my fury on look out.

L30 Claw/WP Red Stripes. My current brute project.

TEST Server
L35 DB/WP Drop Dead Mike gaunt looking mobster in pinstripes and tails. Who confirmed for me I cannot stand the sound of DB repeatedly.

I also have a few others on alternate servers that get little play time. I have also deleted a EM/Elec, EM/EA a few Dark/Dark until the one above stuck with me.

After my Claws concept my next will be a DM/SR built as a super speedster.

I've 3 Brutes currently, all between 35 and 45 and all made within the last year. I came late to the party.

Black Abomination : DM/WP(45). My first brute. Great single target damage and very, very tough. In his mid-20s he jumped into a group with a purple Lost boss (one of the big buggers) and failed to spot the Pariah and Sigil were also in the group. Thought I was dead but went for it anyway. Survived easily. The lack of AOEs drove me on to try :

Crom Cruaich : SM/FA(37). Ok, stone melee is a weird one for more AOE, but the idea was to try and control everything and then Burn em to death. Plus he was a remake of my first ever hero, a Fire/SM tank. Works much better as a Brute, SM gives Fire extra survivability, Fire gives Stone extra damage and End Recovery. In practice he's a bit fiddly, especially on teams and the teens End woes were horrific. Great as an AE farmer with specific baddies (ones that do Fire Damage) but that gets dull. On teams his specific style of play doesn't necessary work well and he can be slow to build Fury but the rain of orange (Fire Build up -> Fault -> Burn -> Tremor is fantastic when surrounded) and the spike damage you can is great. A great boss killer (Two build-ups -> Seismic Smash -> Burn -> Heavy Mallet -> Stone Mallet = Dead Boss).

Bolt Cutter : Claws/Elec(38). i16 came along so I had to try Claws on a brute (had a scrapper one so knew how fun it was) and Elec got a buff too. This is my most fun Brute to play. Not the toughest, although the Heal helps a lot. Attacks have a lovely variety, quick single targets, good AOE and nice ranged powers too. And the sets look great together . Very quick and no End woes at all. Laughs at Carnies and Mu (especially Mu. After playing the perma-drained SM/FA I owed those floating nightshirts payback).

I'm mostly a Corruptor, Brute and Controller player, in that order. There aren't any other ATs I really enjoy besides the three. However, I've invested most of my time playing brutes while playing, and usually only ever one or two different brutes whereas it seems I spread my time equally amongst my controllers and corruptors.

From least important to most important, I'll list my brutes (all 50) and give a short explanation for each one:

Energy Melee/Super Reflexes: I originally created this character to be a primarily solo brute. I actually enjoyed energy melee and to a certain degree, super reflexes, but it's likely I'll never create a /SR brute ever again. Once this brute hit 50, I spent a minimal amount of time on her before I decided to delete her. I'm more of a run in and take aggro and herd kind of brute, /SR didn't suit my needs for that and while EN is a great melee set it didn't meet what I wanted to get out of a brute - although I may recreate an EN brute at one point or another in the future.

Electric Melee/Shield Defenses - This one was created just after SD was released. Using LR and then SC was ridiculously fun, but still...the combination seemed lacking to me. Don't get me wrong, both sets are great, especially when paired, but it didn't offer me what I had come to expect from brutes.

Dark Melee/Shield Defenses - After creating an EM/SD, I have no idea why I set out to create this character other than to give SD another chance, which I actually did enjoy playing. This character was mostly solo'd to 50, and soul drain was an immense help and the set performed beautifully. While I do enjoy DM more than I did EM, SD still left me something to be desired, so in the end I ultimately abandoned her, although she won't be deleted.

Dark Melee/Willpower - I love Dark Melee, I really do, and that much should be obvious. After getting my first brute to 50 I decided to bring up another one and see which one'd suit me more. This was when I had just gotten back to the game and WP was available. The set played well together; much better than I had expected. Again, this was a brute meant for soloing, and for attempting challenges. However the more time I spent on her the more I started to hate Willpower. To start with, it was mostly just the set; the extra regen/recov was nice but I had gotten used to the type of brute who could take hits without needing extra regen. And eventually, another reason why I started to dislike willpower was simply because of the aesthetics of the set. The glowing yellow-ish color didn't suit me, although I do appreciate power customization being available now for that fact.

Super Strength/Fire Aura - My latest 50 brute. I love SS, and after seeing some SS/Fire brutes in action I decided to jump on the bandwagon and level one up as it was. I love the set. It suits what I needed, and provided more than I wanted, although one aspect I miss not having is some sort of T9 click armor. That said though, it's high in damage and can serve a variety of needs for me in addition to being a more suitable brute for facing Hamidon.

Super Strength/Invulnerability - My first 50 brute, and one that I've played the most. While my SS/Fire is highly enjoyable and may be an eventual challenger to the spot, this one has still been my most reliable and the one most able to take hits. I've stuck through with it when Unyielding used to offer -defense and when the resist passives didn't offer secondary effects. It's still likely to be the brute I play the most for teaming purposes, although my SS/Fire is likely to take preference for solo play.

Overall, it's likely I'll get at least two or three more brutes up at one point. Although I've got a fair number of brutes I've created and leveled, it's still an AT I enjoy immensely and I've still got a few more powersets I'd like to pair together.

i have:

SS/WP - very good end management but a tad squishy at times, more of a dmg dealer than a tank, but can do decent

Dark/stone - this is my 2nd favorite toon out of the 30 some i have right now, just finished IOing him out, he runs 4 toggles normally (5 if you count rooted when needed) and has no end probs. the -tohit of the attacks and the massive resistance/defense he has really makes it nice, and soul drain then dark consumption is an awesome 1-2 shot of pbaoe goodness. once you get slotted to get rid of the negative effects of granite this combo is godly IMO

Axe/fire - end hog AND tons of redraw (might scrap this guy when GR is out)

claws/invuln - very high dmg (especially with fury built up), and great surviveability

EM/SR - very fun to play, high defense + extremely good single target dmg make him a great dmg dealer

fire/shield - very high dmg dealer, build up +shield charge + fire sword circle can finish off a good 70% of a mob and if anything still alive then a good fire breath will do the job


thats all the brutes i have for now, may try some others at some point, i definitly love brutes over tanks or scrappers because of having the DPS and surviveability

SS/EA (50): My first and favorite brute. He's got, I dunno, 1700+ hours on him. He was entertaining with just SOs, but he's got one of the most expensive builds of any of my characters now, and wanders around with 47+% defense to everything. The only character I log in almost every day. A fully IO'd anything is a thing of beauty, but to me that's particularly true of /EA.

EM/FA (50): Tucked away on a server I rarely visit, he used to be entertaining. The change to ET's now-glacial cast time (and to a lesser extent TF's stun reduction) just killed him for me. I pull him out every 21 days to move him to a new day job location. I'd delete him if I didn't love his name so much.

Claws/SR (50): Made her because I know my SS/EA is going to swap sides when GR launches and wanted another brute to generate inf with vill-side. My fastest 50 (92 hours solo, and could have been faster if I'd been able to stomach more AE), but not yet tricked out. I have a hard time getting motivated to purple a brute who's already (a) over the soft-cap (not relevant for purps, but whatever) and (b) already has almost hasten-level recharge just walking around. Her end recovery isn't super, though, so while she can solo AVs, I end up having to chug blues a few times.

Stone/Stone (48): Was 47 for over a year. Will probably be 48 for a while. Getting him to 50 would be nice, but doesn't serve any purpose.

WM/WP (42): Was a ton of fun to level to 41, then I ran out of interesting new powers to take and slid into patron hell. Could shove her to 50 as well, just not motivated to do so.

DM/Ele (36): Amazingly squishy. I think I stink at /Ele. Needs a respec. Has been in his 30s for 2-3 years.

Various low-mids, including an SS/FA, Fire/SD, SS/Inv, etc.

Fire/Psi (50): Whaddya mean, he's not a brute?

50-SS/Invul. My fav for sure. SS speaks for itself and pretty simple to get right. Invul is a fine balance between def and resists. Get it right, your awesome. I use this toon to farm 2+/8 all day and never drop below 80 percent health. Stay away from unstoppable. Build you toon without it for a while. Then, if you want it as a fun click to toy with, buy it just to see yourself with capped resists. It amuses me to just up into a few of mobs watch all my typed defs cap then pop unstoppable just to see both def/resist capped at once. Gotta love it.

50-DM/FA. A close second. I dearly love all the tools in this build has: two heals, two damage buffs, two end boosts. Jack up S/L Def, global recharge, hit the KB protection ios, combat jump and your good to go. MU is sweet with this set. You get two targetable raduis AEs to make up for the lack of good recharge AE in the primary. I built this is a toon to solo avs. Basicly designed to fight forever with heals and end recharge. I found out with Mus he makes a great farm toon as well. I do 2/8s with him when I get bored with my moster above. Pop Feiry embrace, then soul drain, Mu lit ball, Elec fen. Ton of damage. Its amazing how much damage blazing aura is.

50 fm/fa. I love the damage on this guys. I built him orginally to be support damage to a buddy of mines Stoner. Since they I Kinetic combat'ed him out. Hes has very impressive tanking with high S/L defense, while still maintain impressive single and ae damage. Hes not quite at the level as the other two but he is a ton of fun.

50 Dm/Wp. When Willpower came out I jumped on it. In my mind I had him surpassing my DM/FA build but Wp just lacks the damage and aggro I love so much with my DM/FA. However he does make a fine tank type. I have him tricked out with High Typed Def and I use MUs the Aes. The regen with siphon life nice. Over all a tough build. I jack Global recharge with LotG and purples to get the damage but damage is still disappointing. Tank wise I would rate him 3 or 4th of all my brutes. The damage his just so much better on my ss/invul and DM/FA that mobs die so much faster. He can do 2/8 pretty easy enough just not nearly as fast as others.

50-SS/FA. Ok, I made this guys when it was all the rage for farming. Gotta say I like the other builds better. I dont know what it is. On paper it all adds up. I have jack up S/L def and global recharge. I have built him similairly to my other FA builds but damn its tough on end even with consume and I would think with the KB in footstomp it would be more durable then he is. I dont know I guess it got talked up so much that when I built it and played it I expected better. I was disappointed. I did find he is ALOT better group build then solo. The extra group buffs really help him out. There is a edge with this toon. Once your in a good group you step over the edge and Then its does become the Monster but solo it just lack luster.

50-DM/DA SIGH. Man I try. I have respec this guy more times then i can count. I hit him hamis in toggles, i have frankienslotted. I have done everthing to make this guy the well round monster I felt he could be. When I cant sleep at night sometimes I puzzle over how to make this guy. His current incarnation, I just made him at tank. I use the PBAEs to jack up eng/neg def, taunts IOs to get some S/L and Fire/cold def and kinetics to get the SL up. Current he has like 43 defs s/l, 35def Eng/neg, 30 fire/cold. With very nice resists he makes a great tanker, ie not much ae damage. Its well known that end is just a massive problem with DA. I did grab mircle and Nums as well but nothing seem to cut into the mass end eater.

I got a bunch of 30s and 40s brutes. The only one that looks particually promising is a FM/WP. I think that combo could have some real potential.

Best of Luck,
Louis Cipher

I have a few brutes
SS/SR lvl 50 was the first brute i truely enjoyed playing, super fun post 32
elec/elec lvl 50 was fun to play as well, just not a tough
the rest of my brute are low lvls
claws/invul lvl 25
stone/SR lvl 19
FM/WP lvl 19
Dark/SD lvl 19

Fire/Stone at 50
Claws/EA at 50
Dark/Inv at 31

I play a lot of brutes and scrappers because I solo a lot and they are pretty much the premier soloers in the game (with masterminds vying for the title). I tend to alternate between them depending on whether I am in the mood for constant, non-stop scrapperlock or if I want to play in a more measured pace with occaisonal pauses. In the former case I play my brutes, the latter scrappers. I have two accounts and lots of alts.

My current stable of brutes:

Flame Raven: EM/Fire, L29
Obsidian Bruiser: SS/WP, L40
Raven Darkblade: DB/WP, L44
Razer Charlie: Claws/WP, L31
Crypt Thing: SS/Invuln, L13
Sahara Blaze: Fire/Fire, just started
Midnight Mystique: DM/Elec L15
E-M Cowgirl: Electric/WP, RIP at L18
Princess Pinky; EM/WP, RIP at L35

Not as huge a list as it would seem but I have about as many scrappers. So far I haven't tried or won't play the following primaries/secondaries:

Axe, Mace, Stone melee: I have no good character concepts for these plus I am tired of smashing/lethal damage villainside - to many longbow to fight. If I do eventually play one of these it will be a mace brute as my mace bane VEAT is a blast (crowd control FTW).

Energy Melee: When the last changes went into this set it lost its shine for me as a brute. I still found it reasonably effective solo but the slower pace was just not fun, especially as the sets big hitters are net fury losses. I will probably try again if EM ever gets ported to scrappers as the slow activating attacks are not going to be as much of a drain. Currently if I want a heavy single target set I will go with dark melee as I find it a lot more fun to play and more effective. My surviving EM brute, Flame Raven, is my crafter and marketer. My other em brute, princess pinky, has been re-rolled as a mind/energy dominator so I can STILL have pink pom-pom's of doom villainside :-)

Super Reflexes,Shield Defense, Energy Aura: I have the first two of these secondaries on scrappers but I like being able to start IO'ing out characters in the early to mid 30's and get as close as possible to the softcap early on. Blueside this isn't that hard as the necessary recipes are available on the market at prices I can manage, redside the recipes aren't available at lower levels or are far to expensive, despite the fact that I have MORE cash redside than blueside. As much as I would love a shield defense brute I just find def based sets to squishy until I hit about 30% def to at least melee and ranged - which is tough to get without at least a few good IO sets. I am just not interested in energy aura - it doesn't have enough variety to be interesting and it faces the same problems as the positional def sets - possibly worse as the kinetic combat prices are insane redside and thats the best set for filling out S/L defense.

Dark Armor: I can't stand running out of end and this sets bounding factor is end use so I haven't been able to bring myself to do a dark armor brute yet.

Ok, here goes:

SS/Elec (50): Inspired by a thread in this very forum which voted this as the best all-around PvE/PvP combo, went on hiatus around level 20 but rebounded to make it to 50 just as PvP died out (bah). Benefited a fair bit from the /Elec revamp, as I was able to drop Aid Self at last and take Weave for some +def. My first big IO build, he's ostensibly my main, mostly running Lady Greys and cutting up +3/x8 Rikti missions for a living nowadays.

Dark/EA (50): My first 50 villain, though she was never really that great to play on the way up. I softcapped her on a whim (and a shoestring budget) a few weeks ago, and found she can now solo AVs. Mildly annoying, considering how much time and inf I spent on my main, who's still a little squishy in general use. My favourite Brute for speedy SFs, as Energy's non-suppressing stealth power makes her ideal for taking out crystals and turrets without attracting undue attention.

Elec/Stone (50): A team-only Brute all the way to 50, good for soaking agro but the Granite/Lightning Rod combo didn't quite work out as well as I'd hoped due to Granite's -dmg and -rchg. I keep meaning to buy IOs to help with some of his shortcomings, but it's hard to justify the cost when I've got other brutes that are more fun to play and still very survivable.

SS/Fire (50): A real blast to play on the way up, but pretty much redundant with my SS/Elec now. Even with SOs, this combo is every bit the farming powerhouse that it's reputed to be.

Stone/WP (41): I originally chose these sets when taking part in an SG challenge, in which a few of us soloed Silver Mantis up to the last mission with spawns set for six (pre-SSK). She was definitely well-suited for the purpose, even with SOs, though the defeat all mission took a while to finish due to a lack of damaging AoEs at 25. I'm surprised that there aren't more of these around, given WP's ability to address the common complaint about Stone's end usage. Only gets the occasional airing nowadays, as something of an exemping specialist.

Claws/SR (27): Showing definite promise after the oft-mentioned SR survival issues in the early levels. I'm kind of bored with pure defense sets, so he's on the back-burner until a side-switch when GR hits.

My current brutes:
SS/FA 50 - Not the first brute I've rolled, but definately one of my favorites. Might not be as durable as others but he can smash with the best.

Claws/SR 44 - Love this combo. Tried it on a scrapper awhile ago and it never really clicked. Fury made all the difference.

Stone/Inv 14 - Fun so far. Stone Melee is probably the smashiest set I've played yet. Really want to take this guy blueside once GR hits.

Deleted brutes:
WM/WP - Not a bad combo by any means, but I like to avoid repeating sets.

Dark/Dark - My first brute. Got him to 35 but had no clue how to build him at the time. I regret deleting him now.

Elec/Stone - Started out fine, but the higher level I got, the more it seemed like a chore to play him. Granite just killed the brute feeling for me.

Oh god what haven't I tried?

Here's some that didn't get deleted:

EM/WP: My main brute/forum avatar, just doesn't stop, I love the combo of stamina and QR, each with a set of Performance shifter. Wish EM/ had more AoE tho, but the mu PPP helps.

SS/InV- classic unstoppable force/immoveable object

StM/ElA- Imho, awesome synergy. Stone is slow, elec speeds it up, (l spent a month logged out at the black helicopter line for moar speed) and the sapping end move helps for the end -heavy primary. Love it, there's a guide on it around here somewhere that I read and somewhat followed, it's old, but it helped.

I had an ElM/ElA brute but i deleted it and remade it as a scrapper when those sets were ported over. I found it too hard to generate enough fury with only aoe attacks and my survivability wasn't good enough to keep me alive long enouhg to see a descent change... well most of the time anyhow.

currently i have the one brute. FM/SR and it's awesome! it's only lvl 15 or so but the survivability from SR is very noticeable, it's quite low with only 19.5 def ranged 14 def melee and no def to AoE, but it's still brilliant.

And Fire Melee is a beast of a set, it mowes through everything with no effort what so ever. End is a bit of a problem atm but thats to be expected at lvl 15 with no slotting =P

I have:

oOBunny Gone BadOo - lvl 50 EM/DA/SM Brute

Black Baller - lvl 50 SS/WP/Mu Brute

oOPower SurgeOo - lvl 48 Elec/Elec/Mu Brute

Out of all of them my favorite is oOPower SurgeOo. I will probably try my hand at an Elec/SD/Mu Brute here pretty soon. Shield Charge and Lightning Rod just sounds very crunchalicious.

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

SS/INV (50) - Still trying to find the perfect IO build for him. Loved this brute until the Dev's made me change his name. Still my main brute.

Drk/Drk (50) - Very active build. You have to really watch whats going on. Loved this toon in a team, solo? not as much.

BA/Shld (50) - Probably dishes out the best damage of all my brutes. Pretty endurance heavy. I've not gone the IO route on this guy yet.

Next brute project will either be a SS/Fire or a Fire/Stone for farming

SS/EA - 50
SS/Fire - 50
EM/Elec - 50
SS/SR - 48
SS/Stone - 50
Fire/Fire - 43
Elec/Stone - 50
Elec/Fire - 50
Elec/WP - 38
Claws/Elec - 23
SM/WP - 41
Fire/Stone - 22
SM/Elec - 22
DM/Elec - 50
DM/Fire - 30
BA/Invuln - 27
Elec/Shield - 43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

em/ea
ss/fire
next will be ss/shield

My main is Kong Fu, a SS/INV 50 (yes, my battle cry is "Everyone is Kong fu Fightin!")
But I have a ton in progress, including a :

Elec/ELA 36
DB/EA 31
Dark/Dark 32
SS/SR 29
WM/SR 28
WM/Shield 27
Claws/WP 23