Best Brute for fighting really hard spawns?

I've been thinking about trying a Brute again (never stayed with villains long pre-GR), and I'm wondering what would be best for really high end mobs since that's what I'd want a Brute for. Ideally, what I'm looking for is something that can survive +4/x8 spawns of as many different enemy types as possible (ideally all of them). AV soloing isn't a big concern, since I find that a bit tedious... I just want to be as tough as possible against all damage types while still packing enough damage to kill things. (Preferably not Stone Armor since Granite's penalties are a pain.)

Does anyone have any suggestions? Obviously this won't be cheap, but it's more of a long term project. I'd prefer to avoid purples and PvP IOs but aside from that I'm willing to buy expensive sets and uniques. I suspect a softcapped SS/Shield with lots of recharge might be a good start, or possibly SS/WP or Stone/WP. Or is fighting all factions at +4/x8 even possible on a Brute? I know some are, but things like Malta, Carnies or Rularru might be a bit tricky. I know Ill/Rads can solo anything in the game that can be soloed, but I'd really like to see what a good Brute can do...

You won't have to worry about someone suggesting stone armor. A lot of the late game groups eat granite for breakfast. Especially at the 'what was I thinking?' +4/x8 level of diff.

The scrapper forum swears by /sr for this task. I would think a stone melee/softcapped sr, while being an endurance hog from hell, could take just about any group. Fault drastically lessens the numbers of attacks made and delays problem mobs: SR dodges the lessened amount of attacks.

In a similar vein perhaps stone/softcapped shield. The reason I keep suggesting stone is because at that diff I don't think any brute armor set in the game is up to keeping you alive by itself, no matter how much money you've thrown at it, and stone is by far the most damage mitigating primary available to a brute.

You'd need a build with healing, defence, resistance, enough mitigation to bring the incoming damage down to managable levels, and enough offence to be worth creating in the first place.

Gotta say stone mele / willpower / soul. Multi-layered damage reduction (resistance, defence, damage reduction, and hit rating reduction), saturated regeneration aura, with 2 aoe knockdowns on moderate cooldowns via stone for synergy. Its single target nuke also applies a mag 4 hold, so any can openner type of boss, lt, or minion can be held without slowing your pace.

Some miscellanous advantages are one of the higher health pools as far as brutes go, and doesnt really favor fighting any particular groups over others, and due to multi layered defence it probably has fewer can openner counter classes.

For IO's I'd say you want to max out your health pool, fairly high mele defence, and otherwise aim for the most bang / buck from your slots. Don't try to softcap, inspirations will do that, and defence reducing mobs will negate it as a strategy anyhow. Take taunt at lvl 49 with just a range IO in its default slot, and use it for pulling ranged mobs in to mele range.

edit:

Willpower has a few other benifits too. Nothing about it is 'clicky' so you dont need to pay any attention to your secondary while fighting, unless detoggled, but that goes for any type. It's also the easiest secondary as far as covering your endurance needs. It's conceivable to get more endurance from a couple other sets, but again, you need to actively click spells. With willpower you create your build to cover your endurance needs while slotting, and never think about it again.

Sm/wp/soul is tough as hell. I have one. It's my favorite brute.

WP does have a few counters. -Regen and -Recovery. Either one or both are common late game (longbow, malta, carnies, vanguard I think, circle of thorns, Mu). The +4 ensures that those debuffs will be landed more often, and once Rise stops helping out WP can be taken out by burst damage - and like anyone else an empty end pool doesn't help either.

Even IOing out isn't a guarantee - the random number generator is against you. One in twenty attacks should hit you, and a +4/x8 spawn can make that many attacks every second or three.

No, a defensive set with less 'holes' is SR. SR's hole is non-positional attacks (rare) and bad luck (common).

I doubt RttC has enough to-hit debuff to matter, especially against purple con enemies. Even fully slotted it's only about 3% against +4s and not much better against +3s, and it's far more likely to be slotted for regen. I've always looked at the to-hit debuff as more of an extra source of threat since mobs don't like debuffs...

I think Stone Melee is probably the way to go due to the higher mitigation, but I'm not sure if WP, Shield, Electric, or SR is the best secondary. I looked at Dark Armor (specifically going for Dark Regeneration every 10-15 seconds with a Theft of Essence proc) but even with the massive healing I'm not sure 50% resists and 15-20% or so defense (at best) would survive for even 10 seconds against a horde of +4s. Stone/SR might be the best approach, simply because SR laughs at defense debuffs and high end mobs have quite a few of those...

How do late-game groups tear through Granite Armor? I have yet to see anything but heavy defense debuffers affect my stone brute. Even psionic enemies aren't a big threat because I have 30% psi defense from IO sets. Granite has the most status protections, total defense, and total resistance. On top of all of that, the regeneration from rooted can put Stone Armor close to half of what Willpower has. Sure, it won't be doing damage like a shield brute, but it is definitely the most survivable defense set in the game.

Invulnerability comes in a distant second place for survivability. It does not have heavy resistance to damage types other than smashing and lethal.

Willpower is favored for the extreme regeneration values and endurance recovery in the power set. The base defense of the set is nowhere near capped and the resistances are laughable. Properly IOed, it can perform well, but I don't think it will come close to what a stone or invul can do.

Shield and Super Reflexes can cap positional defenses and defense debuff resistance. This works great against most enemies. However, there are some attacks that don't have positional flags and bypass your defense every time. Carnies are one of those enemy groups to avoid.

Dark Armor has a lot of psionic resistance and defense, and a good amount of resistance and defense to everything else. I think Dark Armor is one of those underrated and underused sets that can perform well against just about anything, once you get past the endurance issues.

In general, the biggest problem with defense-based sets is the to-hit code. Higher-level enemies will hit you more often no matter how high you raise your defense beyond the soft cap. Enemies with to-hit buffs will effectively ignore your defense and make you feel like a squishy blaster. I was fighting level 46 Resistance the other day and they all had targeting drones. My soft-capped defense character showed a 58% chance to get hit in the combat log. Our group was getting torn apart by them...

My recommendations for nigh-unkillable Brute combos (ranked in no order):

Electric Melee/Stone Armor: This is the elemental baffler, as a roomie of mine called it. It's made of stone and flings copious amounts of voltage at you. While it is slow and has much slower recharge, Fury will negate Granite's -Damage penalty. Lightning Rod also works well with Stone's "must have teleport" playstyle. As that same roomie once said, "Dear lord! I can't kill it and it keeps draining my endurance! WHY?!"

Super Strength/Electric Armor: A dynamo of resistance, speed, and damage. Putting Hasten and ED-capped Recharge in all attacks, coupled with Lightning Reflexes will make you feel less like Super Strength and more like speedboxing. I'm 2 bars from 50 on my SS/Elec and there's damn near nothing that can stop him. While /Elec is a resistance based set, the resistances it offers are beefy and it has two excellent utility powers in Energize and Power Sink.

Dark Melee/Dark Armor: This was my first level 50 ever. While both sets are somewhat late bloomers, when you finally get the build you need this beast of blackness is almost unstoppable. The biggest thing to remember is to slot for end reduction on your non-armor toggles and to couple Touch of Fear with Soul Mastery's Darkest Night. While you may find yourself dying often, you have a magnitude 30 stun self-resurrect power at your disposal. It'll rip the living daylights out of anything near you. The biggest plus to Dark/Dark is, the more enemies you surround yourself with, the stronger you become.

Electric Melee/Invulnerability: I have one of these juggernauts at level 41. With the proper slotting on Invincibility and Tough Hide (along with Combat Jumping) this combo can dive head-first into battle, drop a Built Up Fury-boosted Lightning Rod and sweep everything below Bosses to the ground. With the +ToHit from Invincibility, your massive amounts of AoE are able to land more reliably, and your hefty resistances will lighten the pain of anything that gets through your defense. Dull Pain is available to negate any big damage, and Unstoppable is just a load of fun.

My two cents.

Thanks for the build. That looks extremely tough, though it seems better suited for tanking or boss killing than wiping out hordes since Dark Melee has no real AoE damage. Does Mud Pots do enough damage to take care of the minions in the time it takes you to beat down the Lts and bosses, or is it a team tanking build where you assume other people will do the AoE damage?

I think DM has enough AoE for /stone to survive and pound out tough minions. Given it gives everything what others say is needed in terms of survival. Heal, check. Strong resist/def to all damage types and positional, check. AoE, between Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, Mud Pots, I would assume things die but not as fast as everyone is used to. Maybe if you're not satisfied with it squeeze in an epic pool AoE in there. But in terms of fighting off tough mobs, I think it has the potential to be a great Power set choice.

That build was meant to be an example of what /Stone could do. I'm not advocating Dark Melee as the best combination for it. I just happened to pick that for the heal several years ago. If I could respec power pools, I would probably go with something with a bit more AoE, like Dual Blades or Electric Melee. Mud Pots is really just a taunt aura and kills slow at 20 damage per tick on +2s. Real AoE damage would make up for the damage and recharge penalties for being in Granite Armor.

My SS/Shield Tank is...well...dissapointing to say the least against 54's @ the aggro cap - and I'm definitely not the first to say so. Shield IS a one trick pony. I definitely wouldn't solely rely on Defenses, so I'd say nay for Shield and SR. They rely on luck to a certain degree when you're fighting 54's, and I tend to find I'm very....well, unlucky.


Not a fan of Stone because of the obvious consequences to running that armor set, so I'll name a few:


/Dark, on the other hand, covers many bases and gives you some defense to help your IO slotting get closer to the soft-cap.

/Invul is also one that gives you great resistances and some defense to assist with set bonus slotting for S/L or melee defense.


Those, and Willpower are the only ones I think I would recommend- and even with WP you have to be very smart in your build to get the right bonuses.