Optimizing /Stone Without Granite?

Hey fellow Brutes

I've always wanted to try Stone Armor so I rolled a Kin/Stone for Going Rogue and I'm loving it so far. Honestly, the look and sound of Granite Armor was a major reason for my interest in the set. But as I try to assemble an IO build I'm realizing something and having what may be a crazy idea. As good as Granite is, I don't want it to be the focus of my build or my play.

I've seen the typical /Stone build; enough Recharge and RunSpeed to counteract Granite and Rooted, Teleport for vertical movement and some Regen if it can be fit in. Well I don't wanna do that. My concept is for an elemental master (Got the Kin powers colored to look like the Clockwork plasma attacks to represent fire) so I took Fly. Also, I find high Recharge builds tedious to assemble and notably more expensive than ones that focus on other attributes.

So here's what I'm thinking. I wanna use Granite Armor like the Tier 9 defensive power that is (Meaning sparingly and only in the most extreme circumstances). So I'm planning to put a build together that has softcapped Smashing/Lethal Defense, plenty of +RunSpeed to counteract the debuffs that /Stone is infamous for, and some +Regen to help keep me in the fight. I'd like to get your opinions on such a build. Has anyone ever done it before? If so, did you find it adequate for Bruting or were you still using Granite a large amount of the time? Thanks for any input you can give me.

*grabs popcorn*

Honestly, it's been mentioned on here, and it really isnt a good idea. At all. If you want a brute that can do all that, roll an invul. Thats about the best I could tell ya.

A stone brute is 37 levels of suck and then you hit 38. Curbs still defeat you though

Hell, even without granite, rooted will slow you down enough to drive you mad, and...you guessed it. Curbs will defeat you

Invul, Kinetic Combats, soft cap it with 1 in invince, and still be able to use the space bar

What LygerZero said.

Keep in mind that Rooted is the main problem to your mobility as it stops you from being able to jump, and you will want Rooted if you are /stone.

I've played around with making a granite-less build in Mids, and really all you end up with is a massive endurance draining build from running all the toggles, with vastly inferior protection. You can use sets to softcap yourself to various damage types, but there's no way to get that huge 58% resistance that Granite provides.

The only reason I can see for a granite-less build is if you're trying to softcap yourself against psi damage, and for that you need to ask yourself if you are really planning to fight enough psi enemies to warrant the sacrifice in power and sets.

I'm all for a shake-up to /stone already so that there can be a good argument to go granite-less, but right now there is no argument.

^ What they said, unfortunately.

/Stone is balanced around Granite, so all the other armours are pretty poor and use a lot of endurance.

If you really wanted to go this route, I'd aim to softcap your smashing/lethal defense and get as much +rech as you can on top of that for Earth's Embrace. Get a lot of +rec too.

As the others said, even if you drop Granite you've still got to use Rooted.

I've gotta reiterate though, unless you're 100% dead set on this route I'd urge you to reconsider. You'll be going to great lengths and expense to get fairly poor results.

If you want an elemental theme, why not go Stone/Fire? It's a fantastic (if end-heavy) combination. All the KD/KU in Stone and Fault help /Fires relative squishiness a great deal and Fire helps the SM hit even harder.

And I just realized at 4am I use too many smilies. I do rather enjoy my 3 hours of sleep though!

You can softcap to smashing/lethal/energy/negative and psi. Toggling between granite and 'all other rocks' switches your defence hole between fire/cold and psi. As noted above though, rooted has worse movement penalties than granite so you are still stuck taking teleport or moving around with no mez protection.

The plus point to building for softcapped defence outside of granite is that you remain softcapped inside it, that added to the innate resistances makes you almost unkillable. Offensively though, you have problems.

Hmm...wasn't expecting the results to be so unanimous.

I'm at work so can't check the Endurance costs of Stone Armor's toggles versus those from Invulnerability but the set doesn't seem too blue bar hungry at level 22 but that could change.

I've had very good experience with increasing Smashing/Lethal Defense on my Peacebringer so, theoretically, it should be cheaper to do on a toon that actually has some to begin with.

As for Rooted, I'm aware that cancelling the movement penalty completely would be tough to do and I've got no intention of doing so. I find that, generally, once a fight gets started I don't have much need to move very far or at great speed.

Any other advise you can offer on the subject is appreciated.

Why did the thought of a granite brute (or rooted) using the jackhammer emote on a curb just make me literally laugh out loud? someone needs to put up a picture of that. lol

I'm not exactly a numbers kind of guy, but I'll just explain what I'm currently thinking...

Granite Armor is one of the better aspects of Stone Armor , 37.5% resistance to all (but psionic) , and 15% defence to all (but psionic) all for only .26 end/s . It also has the negatives, to recharge/movement/damage.

From reading what you wish to do.. you want to take Granite but only use it when you need it, like a T9 "Oh no!" power. And be softcapped to Smashing/Lethal without running Granite . This may work, it just WILL be expensive to pull off.

You want to take the flying travel pool, and not teleport . You won't be using Hover because rooted would cancel it out. So, that leaves you taking Air Superiority , which is not a bad attack. If you're not taking rooted , then you may run into the problem of being constantly mezzed .. and lose out on 100% regeneration . So, open Mids and just mess around abit and see what you can come up with

Added: Made this build, to my liking, capped to Smashing/Lethal , have attacks slotted well, skipped Granite in favor of more endurance recovery. All the kinetic combats I used will be costly to get though.. also, it doesn't have much recharge but I got Earth Embrace down to a 38 second downtime , 471% regeneration, 198% recovery and 10.2 movespeed with rooted running , but you don't care much for that (:

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Wavicle CoH players are stupid and incompetent compared to WoW players.

Quite honestly I'd go with GW or MU for an extra AoE attack instead of PP and SC for the extra end you probably won't need.

Also, I know whatcha meant but EE isnt on a 38 second cooling (cool down) but instead a 38 second down time. Just clarifying so someone who DOESNT understand what you meant doesnt blast ya

If you're gonna 6 slot taunt, I'd suggest perfect zinger instead of mocking beratement. Gives higher def with the 6th slot anyway, plus a damage boost and some extra regen (to go with rooted's). Granted, you lose a lil recharge (2.5%) but it's all how ya wanna flavor it.

Hell, if you stay with PP and SC, you could take a slot out of it, stick it in mud pots, and slot the armageddons in there. more revovery to help ya out, some extra acc and 10% more recharge time.

Yeah Lyger, is true .. but it was just a build I quickly threw together to see if it would "work". OP can decide what he's doing, I just picked up stuff I myself would want . (:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wavicle CoH players are stupid and incompetent compared to WoW players.