Thinking Ahead: End-Game PvP and Grant Invisibility

Dual Blades is not, from what I've heard, the best choice for PVP. And I'm not sure I'd recommend it with Fiery Aura; the long animations will prevent you from hitting Healing Flames when you need it, and that could kill you.

Most forms of stealth suppress when you attack, or get hit. This one is no exception. Also, most serious PVPers get as much +Perception as they can, so they can see stalkers. GI gives far less stealth, so it won't even help in PVP.

You can't target yourself. That means that a targeted ally buff can't be used on self.

It's not.

PVP in this game is a lot different from other games. It's also a lot different from the PVE game. My suggestion is to find someone else and go hang out in the Arena for a couple hours so you can get the feel for PVP.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

No, you can't use Grant Invisibility on yourself, it is a team buff power only. Stealth and Invisibility are the personal stealth powers.

Okay, here's how stealth works in PvP:

Stealth is measured in feet, as is perception. If your stealth rating is higher than your opponent's perception, you will remain unseen for as long as you do not attack. If their perception rating is higher than your stealth rating, the difference between them is how far away they can see you from. So, if you have 500 feet of stealth, and your opponent has a perception of 550, they will see you from 50 feet away.

That's where non-Stalker characters get burned. Stalkers have a stealth cap of 1143 feet. The absolute perception cap is 1153 for eveything but a villain epic AT (theirs is over 1200)
So, a stalker at stealth cap will only be seen by another character at the perception cap when they get within 10 feet.

The stealth cap for non-stalkers is 571 feet. And base perception is 500 feet. So any character who wants to see stealthed opponents only needs another 200 feet of perception in order to make that stealth completely redundant, because that will let them see you from more than the range of any of their powers but a snipe. Some PvPers will tell you that stealth is a good thing in PvP, but I'm not so sure about that.

That said, the Concealment pool IS a good idea for PvP, but not for the reason you were thinking. The reason it is a good idea is for the 4th power in the pool: Phase Shift. Phase Shift makes it to where only another character who is phased can hit you. So if you get in over your head you can Phase and get out of there.

I don't recommend Dual Blades/Fiery Aura for PvP at all. Hate to tell you, but you picked a combo that is towards the bottom of the effectiveness list for brutes. If you're really dead set on it you can go level it, but when you start PvPing with it you're likely to be disappointed with it's performance.

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.

what would you suggest? ...class and spec?

SuperStrength

Energy Melee

Fire Melee

If these don't take your eye, don't make a brute.

This is a fairly good assessment but it misses two things:

1. VEAT stealth cap is 880 feet (lower than Stalkers, higher than everything else). Unlike any other AT, though, a VEAT cannot hit their stealth cap without outside help (unless they're using Invisibility which means they can't attack) - they can get 500 from Cloaking Device/Mask Presence and another 300 from a stealth IO, which still leaves them short 80 feet.

2. Stealth on non-Stalker/VEAT ATs is largely useless if your opponents have capped perception. While this is generally the case in large-team arena matches (one application of Clear Mind will perception-cap someone or get them pretty close, plus most PvP builds already run Tactics and the +perception IO), it's not always the case in duels or zone PvP, as most builds are not capable of self-capping their perception. The exception here is any build which has in-set perception (Dark, Nin, SR, Willpower, etc) and adds Focused Accuracy and the perception IO. Running just FA, Tactics, and the IO will get you close (the distance varies by AT since the perception buff in Tactics uses AT modifiers) if you aren't one of those powersets. You'll find that many zone builds don't have capped perception, which means you can sometimes get the jump on your opponent, or toggle on Invisibility to make a quick getaway when they can't see you. Villain ATs don't generally have to worry about maxing their perception (in zone at least) because they don't have to deal with Stalkers (and to a much lesser extent VEATs) but that may change with Going Rogue.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

My suggestions would be...

1: Go to the PvP forums, found here. Not saying you're questions are not welcome here, or won't be answered, but you'll be able to get more PvP minded people there to help out.

2: Go to your server's forum, found here, and ask about PvP there. Do they have any active PvP super/villain groups? Would anyone be willing to help give you some pointers in game? That sort of stuff. Because like mentioned earlier, there are different rules going from PvE to PvP.

3: Visit the Wiki, found here. There is a plethora of info on the game in general, including how stealth works. If you got the time to read up, here you can find the wiki's info on PvP.

Personally, I'm always of the opinion, play what YOU want to play, not just what's good for (PvP, farming, AV killing, TFs, etc etc etc). You might get told to make a certain type of character to PvP, and become a PvP God with it, but if you don't like the power sets, you're not going to enjoy your godliness, you know?

Anyway, good luck!

Brute is fine, for the most part Fiery Aura is fine.

Dual Blades is the problem here. It's not a bad set in PvE but in PvE it has a couple problems that hurt it's performance - redraw and fairly long animations.

Redraw - You will have to redraw your swords every time you use a power that is NOT part of Dual Blades. If you use your heal, Fiery Embrace, a pool power, throw a shark, etc., you will put your swords away to do it and then pull them back out again to use your next Dual Blades attack. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but PvP is very active and fast paced here. That time you spend putting your swords away and pulling them back out adds up in the long run, and can be the difference between victory and a faceplant if you and your opponent trigger an attack at the same time. If you are both low on health and you have to draw your weapon and the other guy doesn't, more often than not you will die because of it.

Long animations - Dual Blades has some of the longer animations for melee attack sets. You cannot do ANYTHING else while your attack is animating, so if you need to heal but you're in the middle of One Thousand Cuts, you're pretty much screwed. You also can't MOVE while your attacks are animating, so any time spent rooted in an animation is time spent vulnerable to attack.

I concur with Donna on the suggested sets. Super Strength and Fire Melee would be my first choices. I don't like Energy, bu it's not a horrible set.

Dark Melee isn't bad, and if you worry about theme at all it matches up nicely with Soul Mastery (which contains 2 great powers for brutes, Gloom and Darkest Night). Dark Melee also includes a heal that is also one of the harder hitting attacks in the set, and the whole set debuffs their accuracy.

Never played Stone. I'd avoid Battle Axe and War Mace, because they have some of the same problems as Dual Blades (War Mace hits a LOT harder and has shorter animations though)

I personally like Claws (like my name didn't give that one away ), but it's not the best set for PvP. Not the worst set either though.

Secondary-wise, Invulnerability, Willpower, Electric Armor are all good. Energy Aura, Fiery Aura, Super Reflexes, and Shield Defense are kind of middle of the road. I would avoid Dark Armor and Stone, Dark is kind of squishy in PvP, and Stone lacks mobility. ENergy, Super Reflexes, and Shield have a problem that the other sets lack: their weakness is your opponent's accuracy....and your opponents are likely to have a LOT of accuracy.

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.

But.....you can see a non-stalker, non-VEAT at stealth cap by just popping a couple yellows. Inspirations are available to everyone, and yellows add to your preception as well as your accuracy. Base perception is 500 feet. Stealth cap is 571 feet. The +Perception IO alone will get you close to that or over it, since it adds 20% (but I'm not sure how hard that is hit by DR) 20% gives you 600 feet of perception, one yellow on top of that will let you see anyone that isn't a stalker or VEAT anywhere within threat range. 2-3 yellows will do the same even if you lack any perception buffs.

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.

This is a real power.

It makes me smile.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

Actually it's Spirit Shark, scroll down a little bit in the link and you'll see it.

It's available to Stalkers, Brutes, Soldiers, and Widows.

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.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

Eh, it's a ally buff, not a team buff - slightly different but huge in the effect.

Most people use "Team buff" to refer to anything that buffs the whole team, which does affect the caster, in one go - Aura buffs, AoE toggles, etc.

Ally buff - friendly to you. Even if not on your team.

Then there are some that are "Teamed Ally" buffs - those are ally buffs that only work on your teammates.

This bit about yellows is true, but 90% of the time people won't have yellows in their tray (usually just greens, reds, and maybe a few blues these days) so unless you want to be constantly burning yellows to see enemies that may or may not be there, it's not really reliable.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

Sort of - the game's short help descriptions refer to a few different types of powers/buffs/debuffs:

* Self (just what it sounds like)
* Foe/enemy (just what it sounds like)
* Ally (anyone that cons friendly to you, regardless of whether they're on your team - ally buffs affect the caster as well)
* Team (anyone on your team, including pets of teammates)

Any PBAoE buffs (whether ally or team) will always affect the caster (but maybe not with the same attributes - Grant Cover provides the caster with defdebuff and recharge resistance but not extra defense like it does for teammates).

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."