I go for Recharge. My Brutes all have some form of self-heal. That said, I don't have a Willpower Brute. I find Willpower both boring and weak. I know it's considered one of the best armors for melee classes but I can't bring myself to play a secondary who's main point of survivability is rampantly outhealing any incoming damage. One regen debuff and you're toast.
Defense only affects how often you are hit. Recharge affects all powers you have that have recharge. More recharge means more smash, more self-heal, more Hasten, more usage of everything you have.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
Generally a mix of both is often best. But if you want a more "specialized" brute you could opt for hp/def to make a tougher brute or go for rech so you have lots of "SMASH!!!!!!!!!!!!" (thats kind of what you wanna do on a main farmer, imo) It also depends on your powersets for example, A /WP brute wouldn't benefit from +rech as much as a /fire brute would.
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Fiery Aura is only good for farming, I'm cereal
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Depends largely on the secondary.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Okay, most of us are here cause we like Brutes. Most of us have at least one 50 brute, probably a few. At one point or another a lot of us have had Brute mains. Some of us blow a ton of time/money I/Oing are Smashtastic creations.
The question is when you are spending a ton on a Brute, is it better to go for huge Recharge to get your powers/heals/attack chain up more, or do you try to make your Brute tankier? |
But generally, I build for defenses first and recharge second.
The amount of defense I plan to build for is, again, dependent on the secondary.
Even on resistance sets that rely heavily on their self heals, and any other utility powers they might get - I will plan for at least something like 20-30% defense if I can get it.
My reasoning is that recharge is no good to you if you're dead.
With that out of the way, I see no reason to neglect one or the other and tend to strike a balance point between the two of those build needs.
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Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Defense only affects how often you are hit. Recharge affects all powers you have that have recharge. More recharge means more smash, more self-heal, more Hasten, more usage of everything you have.
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The combination of "enough defense to survive" and "as much recharge as I can fit after" is generally what I build for.
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Fair enough, but to clarify my position, here are my Brutes built for Recharge:|
Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
Yes you do get your attacks/powers/hasten up quicker - but I always look at the fine details to see if that handful of seconds I might have shaved off of a recharge time was worth a sacrifice in survivability.
The combination of "enough defense to survive" and "as much recharge as I can fit after" is generally what I build for. |
Dark/Dark/Soul
SS/Elec/Soul
Elec/Invul/Energy
Fire/Fire/Energy
All of those guys benefit from lots of recharge, to say the least. I'm also in the minority of players who don't believe they need gobs of defense to survive. In short, I don't.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
My DM/ELA takes advantage of the dual build system. One has about 100% Global recharge, with descent max hp and regen as secondary qualities. It's easy to pair recharge with max HP/regen because these two bonuses come so early. This is my SMASH! build because his attack chain and DPS are top notch, employing near ED capped stats and multiple damage procs throughout his attacks. He is also the superior sapper, because Power Sink is cycling every 17 seconds.
My second build runs soft capped Smashing/Lethal and 20%-25% to everything else. This is my Tank build, and it only has about 40% global recharge. I play the SMASH build about 90% of the time, but have the option to become more of a Tank/damage sponge should the team need that quality.
Some players prefer having a more balanced approach in a single build, but I went with two separate builds taken to the extreme.
There are no inspirations that up your recharge.
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Okay?
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Originally Posted by all_hell
There are no inspirations that up your recharge.
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My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
He's saying you can use insps to fill a defense/resist hole, but the you have to build for recharge.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
I have upped my Recharge. Up yours!
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No that's true, those builds benefit very much from recharge.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Fair enough, but to clarify my position, here are my Brutes built for Recharge:
Dark/Dark/Soul SS/Elec/Soul Elec/Invul/Energy Fire/Fire/Energy All of those guys benefit from lots of recharge, to say the least. I'm also in the minority of players who don't believe they need gobs of defense to survive. In short, I don't. |
I like to have my cake and eat it too, so I usually build for defense first and then use whatever it takes, LoTGs, Purples and as much min/maxing as needed to get my desired recharge.
Once I have my ST attack chain seamless or near-seamless, and hasten with 5-10s downtime, I'm usually satisfied.
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Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
He's saying you can use insps to fill a defense/resist hole, but the you have to build for recharge.
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Again, there is a diminishing return with chasing recharge at the expensive of all else. Eventually, even an extra 20% recharge might not shave enough time off of any particular long recharge power to justify any build sacrifices you made.
An example would be my Night widow, currently sitting at 185% Global recharge with perma-hasten and a seamless attack chain.
When i19 goes live, and the fitness pool is inherent, I could conceivably spend another couple of billion and push to 208% recharge.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to make that extra recharge work and would force compromises elsewhere that seem needless.
In a similar vein, perma-hasten, while nice - simply isn't a requirement. it often requires sacrifices in the build elsewhere, for what amounts to a few seconds of downtime.
Unless you are specifically dedicated to the absolute best pylon time the character is capable of, or soloing AVs instead of things like TFs - there's simply not enough of a driving factor to make those sacrifices worth it imo.
Now if you can get both high or even softcapped defenses - and massive recharge - then yeah, I'm right with you. I spare no expense when that is an attainable goal.
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My main brute is named Mr Smashtastic, so I'd say you nailed that one!|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Some of us blow a ton of time/money I/Oing are Smashtastic creations.
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| The question is when you are spending a ton on a Brute, is it better to go for huge Recharge to get your powers/heals/attack chain up more, or do you try to make your Brute tankier? |
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
I am really glad I started this topic. I got the responses I was really looking for, thanks. For myself, I am going to take a blend of what you guys said. I will be looking at a ton of recharge from Purples and LOTG. I am running a Dark/Invul, so the goal is to get Soul Drain near perma, Dark Consumption and Dull Pain up whenever I need them (a lot), and to pump my limited attack chain to be ASAP, then I can slot Siphon Life (which I currently use as part of the attack chain) as a spammable heal in emergencies. In this way high global recharge will both increase my damage by making my buff always available, bringing my big attacks up fast, giving me an end restoring power to pay for that up fast, and fast heal powers for the tough fights. I will still have some problems with spike damage, which no brute is completely immune to. Rather than addressing the spike damage through the build, I will lean on inspiration management and the heals as my survival tools. Also, with a high recharge build Unstoppable will be up very regular for a true emergency spike damage control (although I hate the drop).
Pretty much what the other guy said. I build for about 30% S/L defense to get into a comfortable zone and then go for recharge the rest of the way. How much recharge depends on the set combinations, but the defense is always the first order of business. I dislike dying and S/L defense is pretty easy to get these days.
I am a big bang for you buck kind of guy. I look for the best balance of the two. I generally Focus on le/Sm or mellee def to the point where I just dont have to think about dying. Then I jack up recharge. I think not having to heal or hit an inspiration gives you more time to focus on SMASH and hence you end up doing more damage when you dont have to be concerned with how much damage you are taking.
Okay, most of us are here cause we like Brutes. Most of us have at least one 50 brute, probably a few. At one point or another a lot of us have had Brute mains. Some of us blow a ton of time/money I/Oing are Smashtastic creations.
The question is when you are spending a ton on a Brute, is it better to go for huge Recharge to get your powers/heals/attack chain up more, or do you try to make your Brute tankier?