looking for best solo survival secondary

/shakes tiny fist of rage at Iggy

I may have to just work on my katana/wp sitting at 25

I tried two do 2 rwz pulls at once with my fire/sd I need to try since I rebuilt him some and see if I can do it I been close a couple times

jshmoe did it too with his DM/Invul but he had to use a couple blue insp.

Shhh.....

/changes targets

ah jeez! Not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight.

The Arachnos/Carnie/longbow content is very heavy there... Meaning psi heavy and loads of -resist (kill all LB nullifiers first - brute rule #1 according to Smurphy lol)

Oh and there are so many arachnos missions that with no perception it's sooo fun to forget you're blinded (like you killed the whole mob but you're still blinded) and rush and aggro 2 spawns lol. I know I did it a lot on my fragile dominator on 8 man teams.

I guess the + precption IO from the rectified reticule set is your friend you can put it in Invincibility once you get that but that is a little late since you do not get it until 28 but once there it is low enough level you it works for explar

Yeah, you can put it in Soul Drain too although it's most likely you'll want to 6-slot with oblits for the s/l def component and recharge.

And man, those nullifiers... I was on an 8-man team on an open map, so there were like 1000 longbow. 3 stalkers, 2 brutes, 3 support.

I was one of the stalkers so I started AS'ing the nullifiers but there were too many, I couldn't kill them all. We wiped in the first mob in seconds. Then I told the other 2 stalkers to focus on the nullis and everything went smooth as silk because without them, the Brutes' resists and defense weren't being floored.

I wouldn't say it sucks at all.

You can mostly avoid enemies that exploit your weaknesses (I almost said "holes" and then thought better of it...)

I'm assuming you're designing a character to solo AVs with, and since you can pick and choose your enemies, along with your knowledge of game mechanics & character building - I'm sure you'll end up with what you expect from the character.

Heh. I'm not designing it for anything except leveling up team tanking, really. I17 came out, and suddenly my friends wanted to play red side, and insisted I come join, and said they needed some aggro control. So Invulnerability or Shield Defense, really. Decided to go with Invulnerability because I just finished leveling a Shielder, and Dark Melee has what Invulnerability needs, so there you go. It was totally thrown together last night. I'm like level 5. Not planning to do anything with it unless I end up loving it.

Ah, well in that case, it's still a good combo.

Some thoughts:

DM is little too ST focused for my tastes for Brutes, and for what you're using it for (Bruting for teams, Brutes don't tank ). While it grants you excellent survivability through Siphon Life and a powerful End recovery tool - you really do want some solid AoE damage by L30 or so.

As you know, Brutes lack Tanker levels of Hit Points, Base Resistances, and Defense Numbers from powers. So, for a Brute, the best Defense really is a good offense.

Luckily Invuln being what it is, after a certain point, you will be "tough enough" for the most part.

That being said, I absolutely hate the progression of powers for Invuln, specifically as it pertains to Brutes (Yes, it's the same progression for Scrappers, but generally no one expects scrappers to take alpha strikes and maintain at least some level of aggro control).

Unyielding should be at L10, and Invincibility should be at L16. With resist elements and energies coming after 20.

If you can put up with that frustration to L28, you'll be golden from there.


If this character remains a general play build, I'd say you should avoid the big juicy temptation that Gloom is and go for E-fences and Ball Lightning to round out the build overall.

If you do end up wanting an extreme AV soloing build, obviously Gloom and Darkest Night will be key.


You probably know most of this, but I thought I'd share anyway.

Can't say I agree on that one. For AV soloing, endurance management is key and DN costs a lot for a minimal return (-tohit is heavily resisted to the point of being negligible, and -dam, while nice, isn't that useful for the endurance cost). Gloom is a powerful attack in DPA but terrible DPE. Dark Consumption alone won't be enough - it's actually not even enough to sustain the normal Smite MG Smite SL chain for me, at least without making unacceptable sacrifices in other areas of the build.

I much prefer the Mu Striker, which can be summoned at range and adds about 30 DPS during its 4 minutes duration, all for a one time fee of 26 end. That's pretty much the textbook definition of endurance efficiency here.

Gloom and DN are best left to teaming (that said, I'd rather have E. Fences and Ball Lightning there) or taking on +4/x8 stuff.

While I completely agree Invincibility should come at 16 (like AAO) I disagree Brutes can't tank. In a team setting you'll have some sort of support, from buffs/debuffs or even controls from Doms/MMs/Corrs. My SS/Fire tanked a lot of stuff because of that on SOs (and of course KB IOs).

Not saying that Brutes SHOULD always tank, but tanking benefits brutes, it's like instant fury because of the incoming attacks. That's why I have a 50 Granite Brute w/ Taunt, ZOMG survivability only with a few IOs and Fury generation is great. I only stopped playing him because he's ELM and I got sick of the lack of ST damage. I'll add Gloom if I ever play/respec him again to see how it goes, he was made a long time ago and I didn't know Gloom was so awesome.

Even Taunt benefits Brutes if you can fit it in. I was rocking my Fury on a team of squishies sometime ago on my Stone/Ela Brute... Then two other Brutes joined the team, and they both had taunt... I didn't. I was like 'ZOMG where's my Fury', they were all stealing it from me . For some reason it seems Virtue Brutes get Taunt more often than Freedom players, but that's not exactly a very accurate observation because I team on Virtue redside much less than Freedom.

I hadn't considered that, thanks for the correction.


I'm kind of surprised, I'd assumed DC would be enough.

I guess it really depends on the build, but I was thinking of
Midnight Grasp/Gloom/Smite/Siphon Life/Gloom/Smite @4.53 EPS

How much how much recovery would you need to sustain that if you were also using DC?

I've been considering making a resistance based armour (Electric or Dark) to use with Katana.
Any one know how the two would compare in regards to survivablilty and general performance?

Dark has more flexibility in some areas you have resistance some defense in cod a -kb hole that you need to fill, a fear or a stun one of the best heals in the game for pve.

Then you IO it out for goodness

Elec has good resistance higher S/L and caps on energy, grounded gives you kb when on the ground I put one IO for when jumping around, Power sink helps with woes and can drain the endurance on enemies (a pretty solid one and can be better with added slots) so it is not OG or cof but it does give some mitigation energize is a solid heal and a regen buff


Both have damaging auras

It is about preferences both function fine I give a slight edge to dark for having more utilities. I played two /da's to 50 all pre IO's and I an currently working on a lvl 41 db/eia.

I have to disagree, my scrapper brother.

On my DM/WP brute, the difference between the hammering I receive from AVs without darkest night compared to with is quite noticeable. I mean.. it's a 21% damage debuff as per CoD. That's not petty mitigation.

And gloom... that thing turns an attack chain for a non-weapon set from good to "yougonnadieyougonnadieyougonnadie!!!"

I honestly can not see running my DM/WP brute without both of those in constant use.

EDIT: Yea, the end cost is high. I do have both stamina and QR 4 slotted with perf shifters including the +end proc on both. But it is SO worth it.

Wouldn't it make more sense to slot 4 Eradication and a couple Scirocco's?

Thinking about it logically, I'd rather add more defense to the damage types I DON'T resist the hell out of. And more HP is always a good thing. Scirocco's adds some regen, which while not strictly necessary is the only useful bonus you can get for 2 slots out of any other set.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.