I want to be a Bad-[cencored[

It's all in the title.

I normally tank. Man I -hated- my Kinetics Tanker, lumbering, slow; didn't die often, but took forever to clear a mission.

A surprising number of my cadre and I are soloing the GR content, we don't want to "poop in each other's cheerios".

I don't feel epic. I know, I'm not "50". I made a Warmace/Electric Armor Brute. And for a time he did pretty well, but now, close to 13, the GR content is starting to wipe the floor with him.

I don't personally believe there is a dichotomy between solo and team play. If I am a Bad-*** solo, but still considerate, and tactical with my team, there is not reason I can't Rock out even more when I have backup.

So... What Archetypes and builds do -you- feel are the most Bad-***? What powers and abilities and tactics REALLY cement this for you? In those trees are there things that could be skipped and others that are MUSTS?

I would love feedback; I want to feel "Heroic".

Additionally, what builds are best for taking on many enemies at once (Wide Cones or AOEs?), doing lots of damage, but still -mitigating- the damage as well.

Heroic? as in a nice guy who always smiles at the bad guys and yells funny jokes at the enemies? you can do that on any AT and power set. Helpful kind of heroic? try a defender.

Want something that can stay a live against just about all odds, Stone tanks are for you. If you want to actually be able to kill something in less than 10 minutes, try a Shield tank.

Care about damage more than keeping the team a live? try a scrapper.

By saying you want a bad-*** character, you are being rather vague. If you want survival above all else, choose a tank. If you want to be able to kill stuff while being hard to kill, but still don't care too much about having the best damage, choose a brute. If you want to be able to kill just about anything but also be able to take some hits for the team, choose a scrapper.

You want to be bad***?

Then you have to go above and beyond whatever the normal role of your AT is.

Taunting an AV and soaking up his damage so the rest of the team dosn't get hit? Par for the course for a Tank.

Doing that on a CONTROLLER? THAT'S Bad*** (It's something i've had to do TWICE on my mind/kin when a Fire or Invuln tank couldn't stand up to psi-damage foes)

Just something to think about.

Alright, it seems like you have hit the mark. Brute.

Which Brute is the Most Bad-***?

For this Scenario Bad-*** = Being able to take a crowd in close range (4-6 yellows), trounce them with relative speed, and not come out licking my wounds when I am done (Cones and AOEs early on appreciated).

Right now? I am a War-Mace Electric Armor Brute. Not really feelin' it.

Sounds like you want a SS/Sheild or Fire brute.

Fighting Yellows? :O just about ANYTHING can do that ....

I would suggest a Fire/WP for easy leveling, Elec/Elec might also be fun as you level. Elec/SD can be a real power house if you put in the time to build it right and IO it.

Melee characters don't really hit their stride till around level 22.

- you get single origin enhancements, which help your defences a lot
- you get Stamina at level 20 so you can keep on ticking.
- key powers start to get unlocked.

I struggled a bit with my first Scrapper, then when I hit 22 I was amazed at how powerful I suddenly became.

The best set out of the box for low levels was Fiery Armor. Resistance, self heal and a damage aura. It isn't the best at higher levels, but has had some of its powers buffed recently. It works pretty well on Brutes, since Fury amplifies your damage aura rather nicely. Fire/SuperStrength would work out rather nicely I imagine.

I've been soloing GR so far on an Illusion/Rad Controller. Its not quite "bad-***", more manipulative and sneaky/clever, but its definitley a powerful combo.

You want a bad-***? Make a Warshade. Level 22 and 38 are game changers.

Unfortunately in the low levels nothing's going to be "bad a**"; you'll need to get some levels and better enhancements before you'll go from ok to coolness. That said some are better than others.

High damage characters tend to be best early; blasters & scrappers tend to be good in the pre-teen levels since they can kill fast. Brutes would classify here also but they'll have more endurance problems. As you progress blasters will start to suffer; they're capable but you'll need to be cautious. With armor sets those with either heals or resistance tend to be toughest early while defense sets really struggle until considerably later.

Durability wise, in the early game (pre-20) your best bets would be Invuln, Fire Armor, Dark Armor, Regen, Electric Armor or Willpower. These tend to be tougher early.

stone melee or super strength/anything brutes. You get a few hard hitting powers and a HARD hitting power early with these guys. You also get several knockdowns on both sets which both feels bad *** and makes you take less damage(which means you can keep on running through stuff which is also bad ***). Defensively you're not gonna start seeing yourself be really invincible until the mid to late 20's.

Just as a note, some of the GR enemies are very tough for the levels they appear at compared to "old" content.

As for a character which is "bad-a**" at lower levels, I'd consider having a look at a Katana or Broadsword scrapper. They've got very good damage output (as a result of being scrapper primaries) while Divine Avalanche/Parry gives them a nice bit of survivability. Regen or Willpower would be excellent choices for your secondary, as they've got good defenses, as well as endurance recovery powers.

If you want we'll level it for you and stock it with IOs.

I think you would be best with a Defender, want to feel bad as?

Radiation / Sonic

I've even thrown a build up from 1-20

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Now, if you're only low, that's why you're feeling flat. All but a select few sets can feel equally devastating; the question is when they start to kick into full form.

The single most powerful-feeling character I ever played was a Super Strength/Shield Defense Brute. This character felt not so much like a character as a fundamental force of nature that I had, through some accident, been mistakenly granted. Most sets and combos have a way of activating their MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE mode where everything just dies, but this guy was MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE at the minimum and just got a little absurd after that.

There are a few reasons he worked so well.

Firstly, Suepr Strength. It's pretty much the easiest set to play with in the start. You get your entire attack chain for the rest of your game by level 8, and at level 18, you get Rage, the best power in any set ever, a massive damage and tohit buff that by level 19 is always on. Then when you hit 32 you get Foot Stomp, the finest PBAoE the developers have chosen to bless a set with. It's a little less than half the damage of, say, Lightning Rod, for which minor inconvenience it's got less than a fifth the recharge. You get to drop the bomb two or three times in every single spawn. Super Strength also has the convenience of absurd amounts of knockdown. You can kill Elite Bosses with SS without them ever getting a shot off at you. The most important part, though, is that the set just feels absurdly massive, with huge shockwaves and explosions and people flying everywhere every time you hit any attack.

Now, SS has a weakness. Shocking, yes, but true. It does a damage type that's often resisted. How do we deal with this? ADD MORE DAMAGE.

Shield Defense is, in addition to being a fine and functional defesive set that gets downright good on teams, gives you EVEN MORE DAMAGE. It has Against All Odds, which gives you a generous boost to damage for every poor fool who wanders into your Instant Death Radius. Combined with Rage, you're adding at least another +100% to your damage pretty much all the time, and EVEN MORE against big groups, which are, it should be noted, your natural prey, before we even talk about Fury. But, since the finest damage buffs known to man are obviously not enough, the developers in their beneficence granted us Shield Charge. This power is basically Lightning Rod, except in your secondary. So now not only do you get the Foot Stomp carpet bomber, and an absurdly massive permanent damage buff, you you also get a tactical nuke.

Once both are loaded, the game is almost dangerously fun. You walk up to any similar-level mob, hit Foot Stomp, then Shield Bash. Everything is now dead. Move on. If it is not dead, it is a boss, and oh dear, you've got massive single-target damage on top of silly amounts of knockdown. Sure, you COULD notionally be overwhelmed, but this just doesn't happen because everything dies too fast. I had to stop using my SS/SD Brute for testing my AE missions because when I was using him it never even crossed my mind that roving all-Malta-Sapper patrols would actually be challenging.

In short, SS/SD has massive single target damage, monstrous AoE damage, colossal damage buffs all the time, easy-cap positional defense, two damned good +health powers, a solid backing of resistance, and so much knockdown that none of the defense will ever matter against just one enemy. Also, it gets good earlier than all the other Brutes and never stops getting better. SS/SD killed my ability to ever enjoy playing other Brutes, because they just can't duplicate the feel of a runaway bus full of freight trains.

Jus tremember: Characters with a concept that you can really get into and a costume that you like automatically get a +100% buff to levelling speed.

SS/Willpower brute.

Enjoy.

There has been more than one thread lately like this: "I want something that does more damage than everything else, and survives better than everything else, and I want it to peak before level 20."

... that's why we have "Balance."

Every tank I've ever played (Admittedly only 3-4), and every villain I've ever played, took about 20 levels to get their feet under them. Super Strength [esp. on a tank] is a PARTICULARLY slow starter. You get zero AOE powers from 1 to 31 on a brute, 1 to 37 on a tank. You start out with a couple of patty-cake melee attacks. When you finally get the big hitter you sort of forget about the low levels; I'm told mothers forget the pain of childbirth, too.

I felt at my most bad-*** while playing my Fire/Storm Controller. He started off a little slowly, and had a steeper learning curve than other characters. My sense is that Controllers are among the more challenging ATs to play, and require a more cerebral approach. Someone who just wants to sit back with a beverage and slap some sense into the bad guys might not like playing one. Like many Tankers, he had Endurance problems until he got Stamina, and most of his powers had to have a -End Enhancement in them, and he soloed very slowly. If you've played Tankers before, these similarities could be either no big deal or your perfect reason to not play a Controller.

Given all of that, my Fire/Storm was capable of forging a team into a nigh-unstoppable engine of destruction. Experienced SG-mates were surprised to learn that I always played on the highest Difficulty Setting. Scrappers and Blasters I would recruit for PUGs would shy away from enemies I pointed them towards, then say "wow" after they had kicked its butt. Teammates would exclaim "You have ____ too??" when I unleashed a new power they hadn't seen me use yet. I played this character before Alternate Builds were introduced, but the Power Sets offered so many awesome powers there's no doubt in my mind that I could have created a second, perfectly capable build using all of the powers I'd chosen to skip. I'm not kidding - or even exaggerating - about any of this. I actually thought the character was a bit over-powered.

Something about this makes me snicker.. you sure you wouldn't be better off simply reading a guide? :-)

Level 13... that's a difficult time for about everyone. My recommendation for almost every toon is to take air superiority at level 6, slot it with 2 acc, 2end, and 3 recharge. Try to run a chain where you use that power every time it's up. I don't worry much about +damage enhancements until the 20s on any attacks... especially on a brute who's going to have more +dam from fury then in enhancements anyway.

That'll get you through the teens solo pretty safely. If you can combine air superiority with 1 hard control to stun/hold/fear an enemy while you perma-knockdown another one, then you're golden.

I'll often use that stategy up into the 30s (on almost every AT).