I love Brutes, and my first 50 Brute was Super Strength/Willpower. I ran 1-50 in about 3.5 weeks, with no PLing, just taking missions as my contacts offered them, and getting in on Villain Task Forces as people ran them.
Fire/Shield is a popular combo for farming, but more people tend to make them as Scrappers.
And while I'm not a big fan of Tankers (mainly because they have reversed powersets, i.e. Defensive sets are Primary, Offensive are Secondary), I really do enjoy my Fire/Fire (soon to be Fire/Fire/Fire) Tanker.
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My Inv/Axe tanker feels like a very very tough broadsword scrapper, from day 1 untill now i still like to play him alot. Even on farms he can do pretty good, due invincibility hitting softcap is very very easy and with nearly capped SL majority of mobs are hardly a problem.
Although i do like shield, it has (for me) 2 drawbacks, clickly mez and behind the defense is just avarage resistance. Anything that hits through it, can be pretty painfull (specialy on farms).
Willpower is a very enjoyable set, the tank version being slightly better on farms (SL based) due higher resist/defense, the tier9 with minor crash helps alot breaking through the harder parts of the game.
Melee, my current favorite is dark. It has a lovely heal (wich sync great with inv, shield and in case needed willpower), has very nice single target damage and decent AoE (though long recharge, the acc/dmg buff per mob is very nice to have). Ice comes roughly second, having less 'raw damage', it has the equal version of footstomp (dmg/recharge wise) and if you have a set with no DoT-aura, mobs stay mezzed for quite a bit (= survival).
My tanks that farm quite decent are WP/fire (you need extra defense though), Inv/Axe (pop a green once in a while) and stone/SS (huh? Yup, thats my afk farmer). Those 3 also do very very well in PvE tanking. Shield is my followup, having the aoe dmg buff (65% for tank) is very usefull, but with lesser resistance as backup, farming somethings can be annoying.
For brutes, those 3 can do pretty much do the same, both Inv and Shield can hit softcap (Inv nearly by his powers alone), WP and Stone have equal regen.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
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Ok, I have been trying to decide on what to make next. I came back a month or so ago after a hiatus just before going rogue. Its taken me a bit to get everything and in truth I am still relearning some old and still a few new things to learn.
Currently I am playing a DB/FA Brute. He is fun and farms ok, I can run the Fire Trolls in about 2 hours, yea I know thats sorta slow but I can do it. Anyway DB abilities do sorta butt heads with FA ones so am looking into a new character to mess around on. I did make a Plant/Elec Dom, have not played much yet with it but the character is there.
That said I enjoy both tanking and farming and was trying to see if anyone had any ideas for brutes or tankers I wouldn't. If the build is fun enough I would even try scrapper or stalker. I dont need THE best but I do want a good combo that is fun to play.
Thanks for the help guys
Kreaven