Does anyone still auto-brawl?

Pretty straight-foward question. In these days of massive amounts of recharge, do brutes still keep brawl in their chain, much less on auto?

Seems like a combination of fury changes and more ways to go faster (both happened during my hiatus from CoX) have made brawl less of a necessity. Or would that only be true at "top-end chain" levels of recharge?

I would expect it to still be useful in the lower levels. And it is very efficient for keeping Fury going when you are low on Endurance.

I tend to do it, more out of habit then anything else, but it's still useful in the lower levels...I tend to drop it around level 20 or so.

Lower levels certainly -though some powersets I find I have an attack chain quite early (and sometimes I take boxing early for theme and tend to put that in instead).

You don't slot it, so it starts to miss too much as you ramp up the difficulty.

I am also amused in seeing how high Brawl can damage with fury going -does anyone know the theoretical max, now I write that I realise I have to go to Tomax and see if I can work out what I would hit at Lvl 18 with decent fury.

I still Auto it in my SS Brute. 1-slotted, it pops between 50-70 dmg per hit, depending on fury, and hits most of the time due to all my Accuracy bonuses.

I guess the main reason I like it Auto is, while inside a mob, when I toggle to a New Foe it automatically pops them, giving me a moment to gauge which attack I want to continue to use against that foe. Otherwise, I too often do things like use Knockout Blow against a minion with only 1/3 Health left.

Plus, many times after a few footstomps, many of the minions will only have a sliver of health left. I've killed 3 or 4 in a row just by tabbing to next foe, and Brawl alone finishing them off.

Finally, if your recharge is high enough and your fighting high Hitpoint things like AVs, Brawl often won't even fire.

Bottom line it doesn't really hurt to leave it on Auto, and it provides a few QoL things, so why not I say

good point Socorro...if you care about endurance efficient attacks..you can't get more efficient then brawl with it's 0 end cost. If something has a sliver of life left, it is much more 'efficient' to kill it with brawl then anything else.

Now that I think about it I've probably killed a surprising number of things with brawl with it on auto due to this.

Thanks, sounds like the state of brawl is about where I thought it was.

Back when CoV came out I remember using it on a few brutes through mid levels, but I think my highest toon before I bailed was around 38 or 39 (em/elec iirc). I had a DM brute that auto'd it for a long long time. Frustrating toon that one, I blame /ea.

I definitely use brawl for a lot of the reasons above, but less often as recharge improves.

Well, it's actually two issues, Brawl itself is useful to Brutes for all reasons given here, but also there is the question of how useful it is to put Brawl on auto. It would still be as useful as it was before, assuming Brawl is as useful as it was before.

It's a matter of personal preference, really. I know I like to do it because I don't have to think about it, which Brawl is on auto, all I have to do is hesitate between attacks and my End usage goes down. As long as I keep queueing up new attacks first, it will never go off. So it's a convenience. You might as well ask why put Taunt on auto on a Tanker, the main reason is so you don't FORGET to use it. (Or have something to go off automatically while you decide)

Honestly, I use it the same way I use auto-Taunt on my Tanker. I have a keybind set up to say something to taunt in chat. It makes it fun. So there is a purpose to my keybind, it also sets up auto-Taunt for my Tankers and auto-Brawl for my Brutes. (And I still have the normal Taunt key to taunt on my Brutes. I don't want to spam chat EVERY time I taunt, but that way I can open the fight with a comment that's good for a laugh)

No, I auto a useful clicky instead, like Haste, Fury, a click mez power, or something like that.

Also, I use the t1 attack or boxing in place of brawl. I get enough recharge going as a by blow of general design anyway so that its a non-issue, and I don't mind slotting those powers for set mules / general usage as opposed to brawl which will never get a single slot.


Generally, brawl is gone somewhere between level 6 and 10, depending on how long it takes me to get a solid chain going. Same with the archetype power. With Sands of Mu and Blackstaff / Nemesis Wand in the mix it doesn't take long to get a decent string of attacks.