Wait, so brutes are supposed to be tanks now!?

I have a Scrapper that I play as a dedicated tank role, she constantly taunts and keeps foes on her, and has both Confront and Provoke, so she can main tank or off tank depending on whether a "true" Tanker is available. She's built for that, and usually needs a teammate backing her up to take that much damage for a full team, but that's the choice I made about her build. I certainly don't look down on Scrappers that didn't build for tanking, or aren't able to.

I keep saying that the Brute is like the Scrapper on blue side, it is not DEDICATED to tanking, but it is able to if it is built for that role. In fact, it should be better at it than the Scrapper. That doesn't mean that it's specialized like the Tanker is, though, the Brute is a damage dealer, and that's its role on the team, just like a Scrapper. The Stalker is the specialist on the red side.

If you want to build for offense, that's your choice. If there is another tank available on the team, then that role is covered, and you can offtank. If there is not, then your team needs to be prepared for that, being willing to back you up to help you survive the aggro you gain, and watching their own aggro. If you cannot survive the aggro you are pulling and someone else is pulling aggro off of you, then that is a MUCH better thing than you falling, and the aggro you DO have getting dumped onto the rest of the team. That's a team wipe in the making.

That said, if your teammate was a Dominator, there's not much he can do to handle his aggro. If he's an offensive Corruptor, or has limited self support powers, he can have trouble with that, too. In that case, the best thing you might have done is discuss with a Mastermind or another more defensive Corruptor on the team how he could back you up and pull some of the aggro off you.

In fact, I've often said a Mastermind is the best teammate a Brute has. The MM is the other redside AT that is supposed to tank for the team, only while the Brute can hold the aggro very well but can't take the damage like a Tanker, the MM can take loads of damage but can't hold aggro. It can help you to grab the aggro of the center of a group, and let an MM's henchmen grab some foes at the edges of the fight. That way neither of the two of you get overwhelmed, and you can both tank for the team. And the MM can heal and buff you with his Secondary.

As a Sonic Corrupter duoing with a Brute with taunt or duoing with a Brute without, from my perspective the one with taunt was far better.

But I don't care about that!

It's villains and villains are villains. Do what the hell you like and I will do the same, just don't complain about me.

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but my opinion is that Brutes are the red side's counterpart of tanks... But they are NOT tanks. They can do more damage at the expense of taking less. They are basically Scrappers with better defense but an offense that takes time to get up to speed.

Counterpart, not mirror image.

I think it's fine to expect a Brute to take the Alpha (and most Brutes should want to). While Brutes are not tanks, they are sturdier than other Villain ATs (besides some MMs) so...dive in there first, Brutes, and start Smashing!!

Take Alpha, Yes! Hold Constant Aggro, No.

This alone will help team survival, along with pumping Fury up fast...

Even with Tanks on the team, I'll try very hard to be first in and take Alpha, which seems to irritate some Tanks for some reason. Not sure why...any Tank worth his Hide should be able to take Aggro from me, while I get to build up some good Fury before he does.

Perfectly said Arcanaville...thanks

I may be crazy, but I can't shake the Everquest experience from my view of how AT's fit together. In Everquest, the best meatshield class (warrior) also happened to be the class that has the weakest ability to taunt. Every other class could easily pull agro off the warrior if they did something wrong. It was their job to NOT pull agro of the tank. (typically, an epic level fight would start with the tanker fighting the target for 20-30 seconds without anyone else engaging in order to build up enough agro to hold it for the rest of the fight). Furthermore, you only fought 1 badguy at a time. You would go through great lengths to only pull 1 badguy at a time (monk's were masters at pulling because they could pull more then 1 thing, then feign death and wait for all but 1 to return to their spawn point, then get up and reagro 1 badguy to lead back to the team). Furthermore, crowd control was assigned to various team members who could mezmerize multiple badguys... that was litterally all you would do with some AT's in a fight, is keep 2-3 badguys mezmorized until the team was ready to attack them 1 at a time.

Given that viewpoint... the problem isn't the brute.. It's 1) the person who overagro'd and got himself killed, and 2) the dominator who wasn't doing good enough crowd control.

Obviously CoX is a different game entirely, but I think that's more a function of CoX being too EASY and allowing people to be lazy in thier playstyles. When you run into something harder, it's common to say "oh, well the team isn't built well enough" instead of realizing that the task is very doable if you down and play with some structure and stategy.

i've noticed if your brute is scaled-tiny female, you can hide in the cluster of MM robo's or behind a bigger toon of w/e AT and the rest of the team seems to forget you are there. all except for the stalker who nvr seems to quit with those side-long looks. Ignore him, he's invisible after all--pretend he is not there, or look around inquiringly as if wondering..."who farted?" he will eventually get impatient and AS his mark, or the dom will have already dominated the mob. either way, its good for lotsa lolz and more importantly you avoid the alpha strike and dont faceplant...if somebody gets flattened as a direct result of my un-orthidoxed tanking methods i say "helllo? /energy k? im only a stoner in RL"

-if you find yourself kicked for your seemingly cowardly behavior, do not fret: another benefit of being a brute is the ability to take your ball and go home. you are brute, more than capable of pleasing yourself if need be.

for the record, ive only done this on sammies, i really hate sammies. im prone to accept blindly sometimes and sometimes it's a sammie. initially i always TRY and like sammies. i last maybe 3-4 mobs before i get bored and employ my special tanking techniques.

its not like i dont mind taking it, because i DO enjoy taking it. im against taking it by ugly sammies. and if nothing else, sammies are very ugly. i'd bet if AE farms where pretty instead of ugly, CoX would live happily ever after.

I laugh at this whole post. I started a tunt post on Tank side. Wow, talk about agro! Half the tanks think they are not tanks lol. Or at least it seems that way.

You can build a brute very tanky, and run it that way. My main is a 50 SS/Will brute that I have almost completely purpled out. He can not quite tank fully, and has no taunt. But he fights like a wet cat. The huge global recharges mean I am spamming my heaviest attacks allatime.

That guy sounds like such a noob.

First of he said, "brute..." not using your charicters name therefore being an idiot as he sees you as an object rather than another person with a mind and everything (magical isn't it)

Therefore, you should have turned arround and said
"my names #, not brute. I don't have taunt, i don't play my brute like a tank and if your not happy with that then you can jolly well 'quit the team' and spend your time learning about this game you obviously know nothing about!"

that would have shut him up and gotten that annoyance out of your hair =)

If your Brute can't fulfill the role of aggro management (read: tank) while dealing massive amounts of damage, you're doing it wrong.