Is Energy Melee/Fire Armor squishy or effective (or both)?
By
Bill Z Bubba,
Posted on: 2010-06-23 20:02 in Brutes
I think the idea is just awful personally. Fiery aura benefits from having either a primary that offers lots of mitigation or something that kills fast. Unless you are constantly up against single hard targets, and even if you are, I think there are other sets that offer better choices than EM. It is slow, not numerically top dog vs. single targets, and one of the heavy hitters does damage to the caster.
Bottom line- the combo isn't a top shelf combo for survivability. EM does nearly nothing to help /FA's mitigation void. /FA boosts EM's AoE issues(complete lack of), but not enough to convince me that it is an acceptably wise choice.
Words to the wise aren't necessary- it's the stupid ones that need them.
"You're right...I forgot...being constantly at or the near the damage cap is a big turn off. Definitely not worth it."
- Vitality
Fair enough, but its a concept character, so my choices are really:
1) Fire/EM Tanker
2) EM/Fire Brute
3) Scrap the character entirely
Option 3 is tough for me. If the character weren't important to me, I'd probably have already dropped her. 
Thanks,
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan
Slot for accuracy, go for small team size at a fairly decent +level. Your ST mitigation is great. Get yourself some S/L defences from the various sources (Gladiator day job, temp power, siren's call) and you'll do fine.
That said, Billz will probably present a contrasting viewpoint if you ask him.
The damage gap between an EM/Fire Brute and a Fire/EM Tank is rather large. If I had to pick one as being superior, I would roll the Brute, especially if Gloom and Darkest Night somehow fit your concept.
Or dark obliteration slotted for to-hit debuff.
I had a EM/FA Brute for a while, post-ET changes. It wasn't actually that bad, but he was heavily IOd out for recharge. Being able to use HF every 12ish seconds helps a lot.
He was great for soloing set to small team difficulties, but I hated playing him on teams because of all the corpseblasting I ended up doing with ET and TF.
He hit like an absolute train though, BU + Fury + FE + ET/TF = monstrous
I say if you like the concept go for it. If you don't mind the long animations, it's a very solid combo for soloing.
The Brute would be more squishy than the Tanker though. A lot moreso. You could either build for a lot of recharge like I did and rely on stunning/killing stuff and HF or build for some positional defenses. You can quite easily and cheaply get defense in the 20s to all 3 positions (or skimp on AoE and get more melee) which makes a huge difference for /FA.
Edit: please, please do not slot Dark Oblit for -tohit if you take it. If you want to debuff stuff, use Darkest Night. It's much better and has a damage debuff as well. Dark Obliteration is a ranged AoE damage power, slot it as such.
Support Guides for all Corruptor secondaries and Fortunatas
The Melee Teaming Guide for Melee Mans
The Melee Teaming Guide for Melee Mans
Well, if I made the character, I'd being her over to hero side when Going Rogue comes out. Do I get to keep my patron powers on hero side? I'm not sure. I was thinking that I should avoid patrons since I might not have them when I cross over.
Also, I hate Total Focus, so if I do re-roll as a Brute, I probably wouldn't have it. After the nerf/animation changes to ETransfer and Total Focus and whatnot, I couldn't stand having 2 slow attacks, so I dropped TFocus because I don't really like the jumping up and down animation. With that removed from my attack chain, am I killing a lot of the reason to be a Brute?
Thanks,
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan
I have both an EM/ brute and a /FA brute...though not one with both.
EM/ gets a lot of hate because it used to tear through stuff with crazy fast speed, now it's got a lot of weight to its heavy hitting time. It has very good mitigation, though you'll have to cycle through enemies peppering various foes to get mitigation vs. more than one target. Likewise, the big hitters are best used as 'spikes.' Opening with total focus/energy transfer without good fury and/or buildup means more energy used for something that gives less. The first three attacks can be cycled to give good fury, and once that's up, BAM! kill something else in a couple hits. Likewise, DON"T finish a target off with total focus/energy transfer. (Unless they're a really tough target that actually needs the big orange numbers to finish them off.) It's a waste. Rather, go to a new target and start afresh with one of those. After that, you'll probably need just a few light punches to knock 'em down.
/FA on a brute plays something like regeneration on a scrapper. You can have good resists, but a lot of your survival can come down to heal slotting/timing. With EM/ you may have a bit more leeway, taking out high damage targets fast with damage or stuns.
If you skip total focus, you will lose your second biggest hitter and your earliest one, as well as you second guaranteed stun. Skipping this power skips a lot of the reasons people choose EM/. (High burst damage/mitigation.)
If you roll the brute now and secure patron powers- they will remain yours unless you respec after crossing over. Then, you will lose access to your hard earned patron powers and be forced into hero Ancillary pools.
One question- could the concept of your character work with DM or SS? Both will have similar animations (no weapon combat) to EM but I think both tip the scales as more favorable.
Words to the wise aren't necessary- it's the stupid ones that need them.
"You're right...I forgot...being constantly at or the near the damage cap is a big turn off. Definitely not worth it."
- Vitality
At 50 my EM/FA brute was heavily IOed toward recharge for healing flames, had darkest night which I placed on every spawn and stacked on the melee defense I had gotten, had tough and weave and used burn for its fear effect to add more mitigation.
I deleted him and remade him as a dm/wp. As Talen expected I would say, the combo sucks.
Here's the kicker: If you team with a lot of buffers, you can leverage FA's extra damage output. The downside is watching enemies die while you're stuck in the 3 second long animations for ET and TF. Nothing's quite as fun as seeing enemies die before the damage you were going to dish out lands.
If you solo a lot to avoid the above, get used to leaving your difficulty at levels that other brutes will snicker at behind your back.
EM/FA was the perfect combo for my vision of Lucifer's avatar in the Rogue Isles. But being able to reach my level of acceptable performance is out of EM/FA's reach.
Be well, people of CoH.
Ironic note, I've been finding that myself, I'm getting fed up with Burn for having a long animation.
Edit: please, please do not slot Dark Oblit for -tohit if you take it. If you want to debuff stuff, use Darkest Night. It's much better and has a damage debuff as well. Dark Obliteration is a ranged AoE damage power, slot it as such.[/QUOTE]
Darkest night also uses a lot of endurance. I recently slotted dark obliteration for -to hit just for set bonuses. It now hits for -8 which is like free defense and a great opener on the way to a mob. Not recommended for every toon but nice if you're not dependent on your patron aoe for its damage. Admittedly though this was on a shield broot which i couldn't quite get to softcap after the botz changes, so i didn't need the -damage from darkest night thanks to against all odds.
Thanks for the replies. I can see now that I should definitely not make a Brute. For one thing, I would definitely be switching to Hero side, and I constantly respec and tweak, so keeping patron powers would be unrealistic.
As for the question about concept, Super Strength and Dark Melee don't fit. Also, I hate Rage. For the concept, I specifically have to have Fire Aura and Energy Melee.
I'll just keep the level 36 Fire/EM Tanker now and just plink around with her from time to time. She won't be a main, but she'll fit my concept and I can drag her out when I'm in the mood.
Thanks all!
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan
For the record, I did make another EM brute. She's EM/Inv and will never take ET, Stun or TF. And she's going hero side to be my "tank."
Be well, people of CoH.
Thats a curious thing...
Iv heard a Rock/FA Brute is a great Farmer, why wouldnt a EM/FA Brute be a good farmer?
Rock/ has Fault, to amplify your AOE survivability, and keep people in burn patches.
All,
I have a Fire/EM tanker that I already find to be pretty squishy but I love the concept. I'm almost thinking that with Going Rogue looming this year, I might re-make her as an EM/Fire Brute and then cross back to hero side, simply to get my kill speed up since I actually prefer to scrap/solo with the character.
My concern is that, considering that I already find the Fire/EMelee tanker to be squishy, how much worse is the Brute version? Or is the kill speed miraculous enough (albeit single targety) to be worth converting? Or should I scrap the idea and shelve the Tanker?
Thanks,
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan