My travel through levels (SS/FA)

This thread will be completely uninteresting to most of the Brute community since i mostly state very known facts. But since it has informations I have lately been looking for it might help some players.

So, I'v been looking for a good character with less weaknesses than my DM/SD Scrapper. I hardly farm but I run a lot of +Alot*Many missions, kill AV/GMs in a duo+bot team (EarthKin mate, Cold Fender bot and I).
DM/SD is great, soft caped def and nearly caped DDR, DM brings debuffs, healing and both have huge +damage abilities but I had very weak spots. Dev Earth were CRUSHING me with Guardian's Quartz, Nemesis were distroying me when I was in a team with uncontrolled AoE, +4 lvl Carnies with multiple Master Illu were blowing my butt away and also Incarnate trial bosses or very hard psy AVs and GMs. All in all it was always safe but pretty much anything that passed through my defense made me bite the dust, or at least giving me very hard time.

So I decide to roll a more resilient character, but since I am pretty much main dps and tank I wanted a brute more than a tanker.
For secondary I wanted a +res set because def cap is easy to reach with Cold buffs and brutes have a very high +res cap.
At the first glance Dark Armor has the least weaknesses but I dont like the idea of stealth. Elec also looks good, mostly because these Praetoria LOVES energy damage but toxic is at 0. Fire has weak Psy but damage boost is incredibly supperior, Fiery Embrace goes over damage cap, burn is priceless and let you pick a primary without AoE, Blazing Aura is also more damage/aggro than the 2 others. A good point too is that FA's relatively low cold resist was completely removed by Cold Domination's buffs.

For primary my main concern was single target damage since FA is quite enough for AoE. I considered at first going for DM like my scrapper but I dislike how Soul Drain works, it doesnt works good with my playstyle. Here is the problem. On large packs Soul Drain and AAO were giving me huge amound of +damage, but so was Fulcrum Shift and I was widely over the cap most of the time, but on single AV/GM all 3 were very weak compared to other options. Build Up and Rage are always good, arguably worste than Soul Drain on multiple targets but obviously better on single target.
My second choice was Stone Melee (at might end up regretting my last call on this). DPA is overall quite good, On Seismic Smash its godly, so extremely better than Knockout Blow. But when I heard (and tested) that rage crash doesnt drops you def when it double/triple diped I went for Super Strengh. Of course I dont regret having Foot Stomp but I mostly went for SS because of Rage and single target damage. With my current haste and speed boost I can run KB/Hay/Gloom/Hay/Gloom/Hay/KB...
Now it is no secret how better Rage is compared to build up. Tho, one reason I might regret my choice is that Build Up curve with haste is linear, whereas Rage curve isnt due to haste not reducing the ragecrash time. For exemple, at a purly theorical level of haste when Build Up last as long as it refreshes than Ragecrash is permanent. So at some point of haste (probably impossible to achieve) build up becomes better than rage. Also the highest your +damage is at the more you lose when rage crashes. Making rage scaling very less than build up with both haste and damage buffs. Than again, the level of overall damage buff needed to make build up better is probably impossible to achieve.



I leveled from 1 to 50 in about 20 hours, its not an achievement, a lot of ppl have done half this time or faster.

Level 1 to 8: Took me less than one hour using my brother's EarthKin troller on RWZ's strory arch missions. Thats pretty uneffective and can go extremey faster with better PL toons on better PL missions. It also takes about one or two hours to get lvl 8 doing solo street hunt/missions.

Level 8 to 16: Took me a buttload of time, alot more than I thought. I strated to run AE fire ambush farms but with only Fire Shield and later Temperature Protection I was pretty much getting smashed all the time. So I loged a /Thermal on my bro's account and my Cold bot and I buffed myself for 4 min before entering missions and ran out everytime to get rebuffed. It was long and painfull and boring.
Again, my Scrapper could have power leveld that extremely faster.

Level 16 to 28: Was still pretty long without any AoE beside Blazing Aura and Sand of Mu (woohoo). I could log off /thermal with SOs in my +res powers and get Speed Boost instead, Cold defense was still needed since insp drop wasnt great without AoE.

Level 29 to 32: The first time you push Burn you are like "Seriously?" while your insp box goes full in a couple of seconds. I still needed Cold buffs to have a safe start before inspi starts raining but I wasnt going out for rebuff any more. At this point Power Level is about the same speed if your toon has Judgement and level shift.

Level 33 to 50: Now we'r talking about it. Once you have Burn and Footstomp slotted with x3 dmg and x3 recharge you dont go to the trainer anymore. You are at like 2 or 3 hours from 50. Burn - Stomp - Headbutt keyboard for insp - Burn - Stomp... Zone in zone out, pick new farm, raise level to +2 or +3.

I just did this too all solo relying on insps, yeah 30s to 50 was great fun. I took him to lam and baf as soon as I hit 50 and found him great in lam but not so much baf. Instead of softcapping him I think I'll leave him as a farmer and roll an /SD or /SR.

In my experience SD is great fun but when ennemies start going through def (either with huge accu buffs or the non compressible 8%) its very frustrating because you may just die on a single blow. Dunno about SR, looks even worste

/sr is just easier to soft cap and doesn't give the boost to +damage although it does add to overall damage via +recharge. I have ran my Kat/sr on both trials and have little issue on them.

EDIT: I will say I find it interesting you picked the least defensive armor as the one to have less wholes than /sd.

Well going from Scrapper to Brute changes things a bit. But from the trials I'v done I'v very much more healable when I tank AVs. My scrapper goes dodgemissdodgemissSPLAT.

I went with DM/SR. I like a lot of positional defense and the heal and end drains should help plug holes a bit. Hopefully it will be fun on the iTrials.

Thanks!