My first recommendation would be to wait for i19 and inherent fitness.
You will get Hurdle, Swift, Health and Stamina for free.
This is currently scheduled for Nov 16th, which is 4 days away.
I can't stress how much this will improve the low level experience for any brute, especially a build like SS/SD.
Now, to my recommendations:
1) Take Battle Agility much, much earlier. It grants both Ranged and AoE defense.
2) I would highly recommend dropping Soul Tentacles in favor of Gloom. Gloom will dramatically increase what is an otherwise lackluster ST attack chain (the nature of SS), and Soul Tentacles is a fairly poor attack power overall.
3) I would hesitate to take Darkest Night. I love darkest night, it's a fantastic power. But you should be softcapping your SS/SD, and between that, some resistances, true grit, and 2 AoE KD powers - you're usually covered on mitigation.
That doesn't mean there aren't times when Darkest Night could be valuable, but you usually will have enough issues with your endurance bar from your attacks, rage & hasten crashes that adding one more problem to the pile can simple exacerbate the situation. I'll leave that to you to play with and see if it's something you want to incorporate in your build.
SS/SD is an excellent offensive Brute, but lacks in the 'tanking/survivability' department when compared to other builds.
Greetings.
I usually play Scrappers but I feel it's time to check out the Brute.
I recently discovered the joys of massisve AOE damage and the idea of fully saturated AAO, Rage and a rising Fury bar just make me happy.
I just wanted to get some opinions on the power selections for this build. I'll mess around with IO's later...right now I'm more interested in which powers are useless and when should I take the ones that aren't.
I solo most of the time and do some teaming and TF's here and there. PVE only.
I'm not concerned with having a travel power right now but I'll probably pick up SJ when I19 comes out.
Any suggestions are welcome!
Thanks in advance.
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.81
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
SS SD Brute 1: Level 48 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Super Strength
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Punch -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Deflection -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Haymaker -- Empty(A)
Level 4: True Grit -- Empty(A)
Level 6: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Knockout Blow -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Active Defense -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Against All Odds -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Rage -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- Empty(A)
Level 22: Battle Agility -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Phalanx Fighting -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Hasten -- Empty(A)
Level 28: Taunt -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Foot Stomp -- Empty(A)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Tough -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Weave -- Empty(A)
Level 44: Soul Tentacles -- Empty(A)
Level 47: Darkest Night -- Empty(A)
Level 49: Dark Obliteration -- Empty(A)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run