DM/Inv - Scrapper vs. Brute?

I was looking for something tough to take into the new endgame content and DM/Inv seems to fit the bill but should I go Scrapper or Brute.

Brute's higher HP will be good with Dull Pain and Siphon Life and Gloom and Darkest Night won't hurt damage and survivability.

Against this Scrapper's higher base damage will take things down quicker and be great with Soul Drain. I was also thinking Shadow Meld could add a layer of defence to IO defence bonuses and Inv resists for any really bad spots.

There are some great game brains and builds on this forum so I posted wondering:

a) if I missed some factors out and

b) what the general consensus was on Scrapper vs. Brute for DM/Inv?


Many thanks to all who reply.

i would go with a brute hands down, higher resist and dmg caps

scrappers top out at 75% resist while brutes can get up to 90% and brutes dmg cap is 650% while scrapper is only 300%

scrapper crits are nice, but i much prefer brutes due to the rising dmg output due to fury + higher dmg resist caps

The scrapper damage cap is 500% (or +400%, which is how the combat attribute window describes it - the first 100% is your base damage). not 300%.

Corrections aside: As it stands, the characters would be almost identical in actual performance most of the the time, with brutes having a small statistical edge via fury, their higher hitpoints, and higher res cap... but fury creates a set of tactical advantages and disadvantages that tends to favor the scrapper in teams, unless you play your brute with near-sociopathic selfishness.

Brutes rely on 'defensive fury generation' (ie, multiple things attacking them) to be able to achieve higher than 50-60% fury rates; with sufficient defensive fury most brutes are able to pull down 70-80% fury, at which point they mildly outdamage unbuffed scrappers. In most teams achieving and maintaining that level of defensive fury means 'soloing in the team' and leapfrogging spawns or rushing ahead. Assuming your survivability can handle it (and for either a brute or scrapper, it can), you gain a small damage advantage over an identical scrapper. But you'll tend to leave your teammates twisting in the wind if you do what you have to here.

Scrappers have consistently high damage with no ramp-up time or need to grab big chunks of aggro, and that is fully available all the time. Scrappers can play more or less identically to brutes of identical build, with near total disregard for their teams. They just aren't rewarded for it (or, arguably, aren't penalized for staying with the team).

Brutes lose damage if they perform as tanks and gain damage if they perform as psychos. Scrappers just truck along at the same damage either way. Whichever fits your personal preferences and playstyle better is what I'd pick. Resist buffs are so uncommon and you have so far to go to get to the resist cap on anything besides smashing/lethal as a brute or scrapper that I would not consider the res cap an issue, other than brutes gaining more from Unstoppable.

Brutes would absolutely get more out of barrier, but even a brute invuln would have to be some kind of maniac to take barrier and not rebirth. I think the survivability aspect is basically a wash except under unstoppable. The HP advantage isn't insignificant but at some point you have to ask just how survivable you need to be, and in my opinion an invuln of either AT is so far past any requirement you might have for that that the scrapper's damage advantage becomes all the more appealing.

To put it another way, it isn't like the invuln brute is going to be soloing Malaise and Mother Mayhem at the same time while the scrapper can't. Neither of them can do that* and, honestly, would either of them ever want to?

*I just remembered what forum I'm posting this in, I should specify that I mean brutes and scrappers that are not operated by crazy people.

If you want damage go with a scrapper
If you want survivability go with a Brute


No difference in terms of resistance outside unstoppable but you can get 500+ more HP under Dull Pain on a Brute




So I guess I'm saying go Brute

Edit:
Yeah I think it's about that time to get my level 46 DM/Inv Brute to 50

Brute is better.

Does equivalent damage, and is waaaay tougher.

Scrappers, though, have STYLE.

I struggled with the same problem and ultimately went scrapper.

I wanted consistent performance across the board, all the time, no questions asked. The Scrapper provides that. The issue of survivability came up, but invincible is invincible. I'm sure the newer content favors the brute since those enemies can bypass the defense soft-cap by quite a margin.

Besides that, I vote scrapper!

Actually, the new enemies just raise the soft-cap 14% to 59%.

If you design either your scrapper or brute to softcap at 45% to smash/lethal with 1 invincibility target, you'll nearly hit the 'incarnate softcap' with invincibility saturation alone. And while there are a number of non-S/L attacks in the trials, most of the really dangerous ones at least have a smashing or lethal component, reaffirming the primacy of 'defend against either s/l or positional' as a main build strategy.

Against just 1 or 2 enemies, meanwhile, DM/inv has more than sufficient survivability without being softcapped, as DM's -tohit will help close the defense gap, and siphon life is a very powerful source of 'cost-free' survivability (ie, it's a power you'd use anyway as part of your attack chain, as opposed to a nondamaging heal or a less-damaging attack like parry).

If you want to do damage, Scrapper. If you want to be a hybrid damage dealer/tank, Brute. Where brutes really show their mettle is in terms of their higher base health and resist caps. Properly buffed, a Brute is just a hair softer than a pure Tanker, and nearly as damaging as a Scrapper.

While I want to say Scrapper...something to think about now when it comes to end game content, which is what the OP has mentioned.

DM/INV with Barrier = 90% Resists across the board!

90% resistance and oodles of def is great but I don't see why you would ever take that when tier 4 radial rebirth gives you an effective... According to my calculations, four billion hitpoints. Huh, how about that.

But really, only one of them helps against untyped damage, and would you really take permanent 5% def and 5% res over permanent 200% regen on an invuln?

What Werner said and Take the Void Radial Final Judgement (-dam right?), how much survivability do you want!? My DM/SR is decked out like this (and with rebirth radial) and jumps right in, *bam!* no probs.