Best single-target Brute

Hey folks,

For a concept I want to do, I'm trying to figure the Brute power set with the best single-target damage to pair with Super Reflexes. I've been advised that Energy Melee is a good way to go. Thoughts and comments?

Regards,

Heff.

Fire > Energy for damage output but Energy will give the the chance to stack some major stuns if you choose to go that route.

I had thought Fiery Melee was an AoE set? Not that I have anything against AoE, I just want this guy to pack massive single-target hurt.

When FM was ported over from tanks to brutes, combustion (an aoe) was turned into cremate (a single target attack.) Scrappers got brute FM when it was ported to them.

A while back I did a rather extensive pair of comparisons for single target damage output of brute and scrapper primaries, and brute fire was on top.

Even the rikti pylon thread in the scrapper forum has fm/sd being top dog with competition only coming from dm/sd, but that's only when the dm/sd can also keep saturated soul drain up and running with 10 enemies.

Brute FM is better than scrapper FM because fury buffs FM's damage over time portion while that same DdoT is not affected by crits.

So, if you want a character that never gets hit and rips through a single hard target, FM/SR is the way to go. If you want even MORE ST damage, go FM/SD... but then you have that shield getting in the way of looking sexy.

Extremely awesome, Fiery works for the backstory even better than Energy anyway. Thanks for your input Bill.

Anyone have a link to a recent overview of Fiery Melee for Brutes? I'm reading the guides available in the sticky, and checking the same in the Scrapper forum, but it seems the sticky hasn't been updated in some time.

Try Dark/Shield or Dark/SR if you want good ST damage and a lot of survivability.

When you get into single target damage many people just think "hitting for huge numbers." Fire and Dark are both great (the best) single target DPS'ers but it's because they have an efficient attack chain.

Energy Melee has very hard hitting attacks and does a lot of single target burst damage. However, while I don't know the numbers, I'd be willing to bet that Stone Melee is better than Energy for single target burst damage.

So pure single target - Fire. Single target burst - Stone.

Yeah, I'm more interested in sustained DPS than burst. I want this guy to be able to eat through an AV in the minimum time possible, not be able to 3-shot EBs and then sit on his thumbs.

I went with Firey Melee.

Didn't stone come out on top of our theoretical discussions? Although it's chain is an endurance hog.

Secondary is Super Reflexes.

Stone is like the only set that wouldn't work for this guy.

For a Primary? I played Dark Melee as a Scrapper back in the day. It was fun, not interested in redoing it though. As to a secondary, Super Reflexes has been it since the word 'go' for this guy.

I would think it all depends on how much fodder there is to fuel AAO.

Yeah, cost is no object with this build. I'm thinking I should be able to nab perma-hasten with soft cap defense with SR.

And don't forget gloom. It has higher DPA than every one of the fire attacks.