Great powerset for soloing from 1-50

Preferably 0/+3 difficulty or more if possible at the earliest possible level.

I have a concept for a character that uses a Shield so shield defense would be great to have as the 2nd or primary powerset depending on the Archtype you guys think is better. Or is there something much better than SD?

I heard and have been reading about Brutes and they seem to be the best AT for melees to get.

I was thinking of SS/SD but I need what you guys think especially for those who has the same powersets.

Also, I wanted to have a hero character but was disappointed to find out that I could only get it through Tanker as SD/SS on the hero side and that means I would have to wait a lot more levels to get the best powers on the SS set. And I wasn't sure if that was just as good or better. But Brute is always fine by me.

Only reason I want a hero is so that I could finally have a hero character (most of my characters were Praetorians and one is villain) so that I could unlock the other epic archtypes but this is the least of my priority. I just want a melee character that can solo really well from 1-50 possibly at least 0/+3 (the more the better) difficulty.

Also, I'd rather not take Electric / SD. A friend already has that and I want to be different when we play together.

Thank you in advance.

For great powerset combos for soloing from 1-50 pick any combination of:

Claws
Dual Blades
Kinetic Melee
War Mace

and

Dark Armor
Fiery Aura
Willpower
Shield Defense

The abovementioned powersets are all early bloomers so you'll have a great experience right from the start. The other sets are merely "good", because they're a bit of a pain to get to lvl 30 or so - they don't get any AoE attacks until then (or at all), their defenses are relatively weak compared to the above until that point, etc.

I'd also recommend that you avoid Battle Axe (War Mace is just plain better), Electrical Melee (NOT for soloing), Energy Melee (no AoE and there are much better ST sets), Energy Aura (mostly has a bad rep but is a very late bloomer and a bit quirky) and Stone Armor (sloooooooow).

You're gonna be dying for endurance on a SS/SD character until you can get some serious slotting done. After that it opens up into a strong combo. If you hate rage crash (and who doesn't) you can go DM, which is probably the best solo primary for /SD.

For the record, SS/SD is fantastic. But it drinks end, has kind of a malformed attack chain early on due to the recharge times on its ST attacks, and you won't have the best parts (stomp and charge) going full speed until the high 30s.

If all you want is a nice easy ride to 50, go with willpower. It's pretty survivable out of the box and and will keep your blue bar up basically no matter what you pair it with.

If you're set on /shield, I would pair it with dark melee. Gives you some healing and some end recovery powers and a nice ST chain early on.

Claws in my opinion since you get spin so early.

etc.

I'd also recommend that you avoid Battle Axe (War Mace is just plain better), Electrical Melee (NOT for soloing). [/QUOTE]

Lisa sits straight up in her chair, puts her cup of coffee down, and blinks.....Electrical Melee not for soloing....Exxar, is this why out of all the Scrapper and Brute primaries I like Elec Melee the least???

Whew.

I thought there was something very wrong with me because I dislike my Elec/Shield scrap

However..my fav secondary for soloing is not on your list.../elec..however, for me at least, it does take about 15 levels to find it's sealegs so I guess that is why it is not on your list

Lisa

Claws
Dual Blades
Kinetic Melee
War Mace

and

Dark Armor
Fiery Aura
Willpower
Shield Defense

So these are all great solo powersets? Most of them, except for Dark Armor, I'm interested in, not because I think it sucks, it's much more because I like cool effects and I don't like DA's visual effects. I'm going closer towards Kinetic Melee because it has the coolest animation (for me) out of all of them and Fiery Aura as secondary because it's like getting a free Aura early on.

But I'm not sure if I should go Scrapper or Brute, some people I talked to in game say it's better for Scrapper as a whole instead of Brute and it kinda makes sense in a way to me because there's no Kinetic guide on Brute Forum and I'm hearing it's a weak power set when it comes to Brute AT? Is this true about it being weak? It's important because I really plan on grouping with others once in a while especially end game and I don't want people pushing me aside because my powerset is weak.

I'm also thinking of War Mace / Shield Defense. A friend of mine lvled it on his character before and he said it's a good combination. He later decided to change to Elec / Shield because he wanted a much wider range of AoE attacks than War Mace.

Fire Armor
Electric Melee

That's all.

Honestly, just about anything can be amazing on a Brute with the exception of Energy Melee and Energy Aura.

Here are some great soloers I've seen:

Fire/Fire (Burn it!)
Elec/Invul (Unstoppably shocking)
SS/Elec (Hits like a train, siphons endurance, never dies)
SS/Fire (Orange numbers everywhere)
Elec/Fire (It burns in two ways!)
Dark/Invul (Murky and iron solid)
Dark/Will (Regenerate, eliminate!)
Dark/Dark (Late bloomer, but a GOD of power; read my guide in my sig!)
DB/Will (Slash slash heal)
Mace/Fire (I call him the welder)
Claws/SR (the force fielded rotary saw)

You know, no one ever listed a dm/fire brute. And really is about as good as dm/invul. One because of soul drain + fire embrace + burn followed with smite, midnight grasp, siphon life, and shadow maul if you like. I've only ran a dm/invul brute to 50 before IO life. Burn is the beauty of fire armor and you can use this combo with brute or scrapper but I would go with brute for the shear surviving aspect.