Which Brute I/Os best?

This has been bopping in my head for awhile, yet I never asked anyone. Which Brute Armors are easiest to I/O out and get "great performance" from. To be clear what is meant about "great performance" is survivability first, added damage second, extra Mez or Buffs third. the goal is to I/O the armors in as few slots as possible, therefore leaving more enhancement slots available for the rest of the build.

I run theme based characters designed around my wife's stories and my own art, so I have always come at Brutes from that angle. There are a number of reasons I gravitate to the Brute archetype specifically in the cities. Since I am determined to have a Brute, and determined to I/O it out to the 9s, I thought I should check with the community on which set of armors are "best" to do this with. I realize it might be subjective, but there must be 2 or 3 armor sets that really are easiest to work with, and one or two sets that fight you to get them smoothed out, if I know the cities at all.

Thanks for your input folks.

Fire Armor is good with IO's, build it up defensively and enjoy the built-in offense. Shield Defense is the same way, though they go about it differently.

Willpower is good defensively and can be made incredible with some defense.

SR is good by default and only needs a little bit to hit the softcap, letting you focus on your offense for the most part, but it doesn't do much to help you offensively like SD or FA.

Given what you said, I'd suggest SR or SD. Both are relatively easy to hit the softcap with (though it's a bit more work for SD, it pays off with Shield Charge and AoO).

The easiest to work with IMO are Super Strength and Electric Armor.

Super Strength doesn't require you to slot for much accuracy due to Rage, and Elec Armor doesn't require you to slot for much endurance reduction due to Energize and Power Sink.


This is purely in terms of "slots gained", which isn't a good criteria for choosing a character IMO.

With as many brute alts and reasonsd for designing them as I've done over the years efficiency isn't an option? lol. Anyways, looking at Fire armor. i love the classics (literature/storytelling) and there are so many interesting variations on fire beasts. Plus, I rarely run fire armor since it's "squishy." This may be my next Brute for soloing the game. Be a nice break from the trials. If i do want to solo the game, anybody got a prioritized list of Procs I should slot at minimum level? KB protection comes right to mind, but then the question is 4pts or 12pts? And any other Procs i should be eyeing?

12 points of kb on fire armor. You'll also want combat jumping as it has no immobile protection except
for burn which only works when you use the power.

Any armor set has fine survivability with IOs. For damage, IOs don't really add enough to change the performance of any armor set's damage. Mezzes and buffs also do not play a role in the IO sets available to Brutes. Even the chance for build up procs are less useful due to the way damage bonuses are added to each other and Fury contributes a significant portion of Brute damage bonus.

I think you need to re-work your question. You should simply ask which armor set is best for the role you are seeking. If you want to be a damage-dealer, Fiery Aura wins hands-down. If you want to be a tough tank, Invulnerability, Willpower, or the defense sets can fill that role.

My experience with an IO'd out /stone brute is fantastic.

The -run, -rech is VERY easily mitigated by IO's..and /stone is all around tough as it is.

The texturing of the armors is abysmal (the granite form blocks out your costume) but with just the one armor you can drop all the prerequiste armors, freeing up some power choices for other things (and the corresponding slots).

If anyone chimes in with a "you didn't mention the -damage"...all I have to say is..its a brute, we dont have anything that is -damage :P

Just my 2cents..your results may vary

My Stoner has been shelved since inherent fitness and the alpha slot. My SS/WP became so unkillable that the drawbacks of granite just don't seem worth it anymore. This has become even more so with destiny buffs. Unkillable isn't as good as unkillable thats able to run and jump.

I wouldn't recommend /Stone for general purpose builds just because of the penalties for using Granite. It's a great power and all, but you don't need that much survivability in general play. It's for people who want to be more tank-brutes than scrapper-brutes. SD and Fire are more offensive but can be made to be very survivable with IO's, enough for aggro control without gimping themselves.

Once in a while though, I wonder just how massively tough my stoner could be with all the incarnate buffs. Then I go play in MIDs for a bit until I look at the huge number of days he's been offline and once again question if its worth the effort.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for the armor set that requires the least amount of IO investment to get near it's max performance, I would say SR. SR has the most defense from it's actual powers, so gettting soft capped isn't hard, you can do it mostly from pure powers, with a very small number of IO sets to get your def up to cap. It has maxed Def Debuff resistance with very little effort, it doesn't have any major status protection holes.

The downsides to SR is that anything with +to-hit or high base to-hit, like iTrial content, is going to be harder. So the near max performance of an SR toon is good, but not as good as say a well IOed Invuln or WP. It does take less IOs to get it well slotted. On the flip side, it does take a fair number of power choices.

So it somewhat depends on what you are looking for. I have a SS/Fire toon that is my main. I have got her up to 40% S/L and Melee Def, and around 75% global recharge. Add in the the incarnate stuff and she's fairly durable. I wouldn't consider her a main tank, but she is plenty tough for most things. Plus she does a ton of damage and is fun to play. Rage crash takes some getting used to, and is somewhat a matter of taste though.

So if your asking what set is easiest to IO, then I would say SR. If your asking what set benefits the most from IOs, without having a multi billion inf build, then I would say Fire for an offensive set, or Invuln or WP for a more defensive set. Basically the idea is that you can add defense to most anything with IOs, but you can't add resist or high levels of regen/hp really. So invuln and WP both have some def, so it's easier to get capped then say fire, which has no def. But they also have some resist, and either some +hp or +hp and regen. So ultimately they are layered. A WP or invuln who manages to get capped or near capped def on S/L and E/N is a very strong toon defensively.

Once you start sinking time and money into it, Dark Armor goes from middle of the road to flippin' awesome.

DA brutes aren't quite as tough as DA tanks (or, strangely enough Sword/DA scrappers), but they can still get insanely survivable once you start adding IOs. And one IO alone turns DA's biggest end drain (Dark Regen, it takes a third of your end bar unslotted) into an end RECOVERY tool if the proc goes off on enough targets.

I just love DA in general, it's an awesome and very underrated set.