Well eventually you'll have mitigation if you take the sweep combo, plus the KD on a huge cone (One Thousand Cuts). Not to mention your end problems will be gone at 29 (slotted energy drain) and it's not hard to cap s/l/e/n defenses in Energy Aura, you can cap f/c too although I don't bother with it.
That said, WP also wouldn't have end issues and you'd have a ton of regen and HP, plus a mix of defense and resists. WP is the Brute set that can 'farm on SOs' according to the experts, it's crazy survivable.
SR would make for a hella tight build with possible end issues, but you wouldn't be subject to cascading defense failures like /EA (I think EA gets around 51% defdebuff resistance, SR gets 95%) and the psi attack that are marked as ranged / AoE (mental blasts, psy scream and such, anything that isn't from mind control or blind from illusion) will be dodged by a SR but not by EA. Plus you get Quickness (20% rech and runspeed) and a decent taunt aura, WP's taunt aura sucks and EA has taunt only in energy drain. SR is easier and cheaper to softcap defenses too.
Bah, double post. BTW I love /EA's look and powers so I'd go on with the toon, just a personal opinion.
Yeah, I had played around with /SR in Mids. I can get all the attacks from DB plus all of SR plus stamina... but no travel power. Which, with Ninja Run, isn't as big a deal as it used to be, but still... makes it tough to concentrate your slots where they'll be doing a lot of good. Thanks for the reply Kioshi. I'll play around with Willpower and see what looks reasonable in there.
Haven't had much end problems with /EA yet, at least since I've had Stamina. The main thing is just plain feeling squishy. (edited) Posting my build, just in case I did miss something.
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/
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Level 23 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Dual Blades
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Nimble Slash -- Acc(A), Dmg(3)
Level 1: Kinetic Shield -- EndRdx(A), DefBuff(5), DefBuff(13), DefBuff(15)
Level 2: Ablating Strike -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(11), Dmg(15)
Level 4: Power Shield -- EndRdx(A), DefBuff(5), DefBuff(17), DefBuff(17)
Level 6: Typhoon's Edge -- Acc(A), Dmg(7), Dmg(7), Dmg(13)
Level 8: Blinding Feint -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), EndRdx(9), RechRdx(11)
Level 10: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx(A)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 14: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 16: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 18: Vengeful Slice -- Acc(A), Dmg(19), Dmg(19), Dmg(23)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(21)
Level 22: Energy Cloak -- EndRdx(A), DefBuff(23)
Level 24: [Empty]
Level 26: [Empty]
Level 28: [Empty]
Level 30: [Empty]
Level 32: [Empty]
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
Well all defensive sets feel squishy until their 30s, a steadfast unique somewhere early helps that. My Claws/SR scrapper is 35 and felt squishy until 32 or so when I got more slots and better IOs. My EM/Nin Stalker never felt too squishy because Stalkers aren't usually surrounded by mobs like brutes and scraps and /nin has a great self-heal.
Your build looks fine to me, on my DB/Elec scrapper I skipped Nimble Slash because everyone told me the weaken and empower combo are good only until you have decent accuracy, and now that she's 25 I have no problems with that, took me only about 13 hours to reach this level. Empower is even less useful on a brute because of Fury, and DB is a fast fury builder as you probably noticed. I prefer Power Slice because the Sweep combo is great for mitigation (Stalkers get the combo very early so I could test it on my lowbie DB/Nin).
The only DB/EA build I have planned is for a Stalker so it's quite different, and I'm too tired to fiddle with builds now, but here's a SS/EA Brute build I posted in another topic with everything softcapped, except psi of course, and with the BoTZ nerf the negative nrg def (hardest to cap on EA) might be a bit below the softcap, perhaps 44%ish. But maybe this build can give you some ideas on how to softcap an Energy Aura Brute, or get close to it:
Code:
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EA (along with my +Def sets) feels throughly squishy until you can deck it out with IOs.
Then again, it doesn't have a taunt aura, so you draw less aggro too.
It is perhaps the most underperforming set available, but can be made to shine with the wonder of IOs. Kinetic Combat sets can boost S/L defense to the cap and with tough and Energy Drain saturating a full pack for the heal, you can make it work. The Def Debuff Resistance is midrange, so you will lose your softcap defense often.
That said, it does have a huge plus side of making you have to worry much less about Endurance, which when it came out, was it's niche for Brutes. Now, they have other options.
As for re-rolling, I think the big question is 'Do you have fun playing him?' 'Does the power effectiveness/theme/everything appeal to you?' I've worked my Stone/EA close to 50 simply because I wanted to see if I could make EA shine. IOs are making it effective, if not near the best.
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Quote:
I think most melee toons are quite squishy at this stage.|
Originally Posted by Valorin
I've got a DB/EA brute that I haven't played in a while. She's up to 23ish, but I could never get past feeling super-squishy (for a brute, anyway).
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Originally Posted by Valorin
Does EA have better synergy with Dual Blades at higher level?
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Originally Posted by Valorin
Does it get better
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Originally Posted by Valorin
or am I better off re-rolling her with a different secondary?
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I don't know what's your reason for choosing EA at the beginning. If you just want defense, super reflexes is actually a better choice. For EA, I think the set-defining power is energy drain. You can afford to have tons of toggles from fighting, leadership and the couple endurance-draining toggles from the patron power pools that can make EA tougher than it is supposed to be. If you can't make the decision right now, you can level to 28 and see how energy drain works for you.
Thanks for all of the replies. I'm thinking I'll keep the DB/EA around and play around with her. Just looking at Mids, I could see where you could almost have a hybrid defense/resist build if you build in the fighting pool (looking at ~30ish resist to smash/lethal and 30ish defense to the same- with just SOs). That'd mean no patrol pool, but I'm not seeing much there I really think I'll need.
As for the "is she fun now?" question, I love the fast flashy feel of Dual Blades. And, maybe the biggest problem is that I have a SS/Willpower in the same level range that seems to be on a different planet in terms of power. With him, it's just slow going whittling through each enemy one at a time- but my dear and fluffy lord can he take a beating.
Thanks again for the replies.
Valorin, I agree on the Patron Pools, I plan on skipping the epics on my DB/ELA scrapper because I'll have a lot of fast recharging attacks and the redraw is annoying.
And don't compare yourself to those SS/Will guys... When th FoTM was EM/ELA (before the Energy Melee changes), and Willpower was kinda new, I was on a mission on my Stalker with two VERY IO'ed 50 EM/ELA Brutes and a 50 SS/Will Brute on regular IOs, without a single bonus, he outclassed the two other brutes and never died, the other two did.
If you ask around, the forum guys will tell you that SS/Will is the only Brute capable of farming on SOs.
Actually, darkest night from the soul mastery helps EA a lot. It is not obvious on the first sight. It's pretty hard to protect yourself against defense debuff. Most people make their defense (in particularly s/l) beyond soft cap such that they can take one debuff. It's a lot easier to use darkest night to debuff mobs' to-hit such that you can still floor mobs' to-hit chance even after a few defense debuffs. And the power has damage debuff as well, which is effectively some kind of resistance.
Since darknest night uses a lot of endurance, not every brute can afford it, but EA (and ElA) makes it really easy. I know that it's pretty hard to squeeze in patron powers, in particular for dual blades which you want combos.
Oh yeah I'd totally recommend Darkest Night if it was available at 41. But a DB/EA Brute build is tight if you want the best combos (skipping nimble slash and taking all the others). I was able to get some PPPs and Aid Self on my planned DB/EA Stalker but I didn't get Fitness nor Fighting, and didn't bother to softcap to fire/cold.
I've got a DB/EA brute that I haven't played in a while. She's up to 23ish, but I could never get past feeling super-squishy (for a brute, anyway). Does EA have better synergy with Dual Blades at higher level? Does it get better or am I better off re-rolling her with a different secondary? If so, what secondaries work best? Willpower? SR? I love the fast, flashy feel of the primary. It reminds me of my claws/da scrapper (who I LOVED once she got rolling).