My first brute...

I play 75% Blue side and love controllers and blasters. I've got a few scrappers and a WP/MAce tank and a Fire/ICE Tank

I've never tried Brutes, not sure why, in fact I only recently tried tanks.



So what's a fun brute? I know fun is subjective, I like active builds (which is why I like powerful squishies like Controllers and Blasters and Dominators. If you don't play smart, you're dead). I also really tend to gravitate towards AoE damage.

I'm looking for something that has some SMASH to it without being boring or repetitive, any thoughts?

hm; active mitigation brute...lots of options. You might vibe with a /fire, /dark, or after I21, /regen brute. maybe a claw/oneoftheabove brute, very active mitigation with the click heals and focus/shockwave.

SS/fire, if you have the cash to get it IOed a bit. Imo, its one of the worst defensive sets out there with just SOs. But it also comes with a ton of AoE dmg.

Otherwise, as telperion said /dark and /regen (once it comes out) would be your best bet. I had an SS/regen on beta and damn is that fun (had an sj/regen before that and that was the most fun i had ever had on a toon in a long time)

I'm a brute-a-holic. I have tons of brutes. I can't stop rolling new brutes.

In terms of feel, here's what I think about the primaries, I've played:

Super Strength- some heavy hitting punches, but very little AoE until 32. Not sure that'd be your cup of tea. It feels smashy though.

Stone Melee- So far, this has one of the best SMASHY feels to the set. Lots of screen shake and when you hit something you HEAR and FEEL the hit. Not much AoE here either, though (my Stone/Willpower is only 15 so I haven't got far with the set).

War Mace- I love my WM/Shield brute (although /Shield is a more passive set, so probably not your thing either). Three AoEs (if you count Shatter- which I use like Shadow Maul, line up a few and smack em). A nice crunch when things hit and it hits pretty hard.

Claws- A fun set, with early AoEs, but it still feels scrappery. Not much screen shake and some fast animations/snicky snacky sound effects.

Dark Melee- Lots of tools and stuff to use here (Fear, Self Heal)- but, like claws, it still feels like a scrapper set. I'm smacking things, not SMASHING. Also, virtually no AoE, so probably not your thing.

Kinetic Melee- Not smashy like stone, mace, or superstrength- BUT it has an interesting gimmick in Power Siphon. About average AoE, maybe a little below.

Dual Blades- Another scrappery set, rather than an SMASHY brute set. But the combos could keep it interesting. Fair amount of AoE as well (maybe a little less than Mace, in my subjective opinion).

So, of the ones that I've tried, I'd say look at War Mace or Stone- maybe Super Strength.

Active Secondaries

Willpower and Shield are pretty fire and forget- so probably not something you'd want.
/Dark- is endurance heavy and your survivability revolves around a high endurance cost but powerful heal. The theft of essence proc is essential in my opinion.

/Fire - Not as endurance heavy as /Dark and more offensively oriented. More squishy though and definitely more vulnerable to endurance drain/fear.

/Electric- This starts out as fire and forget, but there is an active component to your mitigation as well. Energize is imporant and it's on a longer timer than other heals, so deciding when to use it is imporant. I use Power Sink as a mitigation tool on my /Elec brute, so that's another active component.

/Energy Aura- It's fairly fire and forget so far. I've only got up to level 37 on my Claws/EA. It's stealthy, which is a bit different for a brute. The native defense isn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be (once you get SOs anyway). I find that my only major problem with /EA is the lack of a taunt aura makes it hard to keep agro on teams. Of course, that's changing when Freedom goes live. It's not very big on active mitigation though at the moment.

/Regen should be more active than anything else, once Freedom goes live.

Long story short, SS/Dark can be pretty fun, once you get around the endurance issue (which is better now than it was before inherent stamina). I know other folks have had fun with Claws/Dark too. Combos I'd say that'd be worth trying for a bit would be:

-Kinetic Melee/Dark Armor- Some gimicks in your attack set, active mitigation in your defense set through your big heal, stuns/fears, etc.

-SuperStrength/Dark Armor- A good smashy feel. I have one at level 35, and he's pretty fun to play at this point, he feels like an indestructible engine of doom. Earlier it was a bit of a slog with having to stop and rest or buy lots of blues.

-Kinetic Melee/Fire Armor- I have a baby at level 20 or so. She's fun so far. Doesn't have the smashy feel that SS had, but puts out a lot of damage, that's for sure. And /Fire makes up for the smaller amount of non-knockback AoE in KM. Actually, this might be a winner.

-Stone Melee/Fire Armor- SMASHIEST primary combined with a nice AoE punch from your secondary? Sounds like fun, to me.

As SMASHY as Stone Melee is, it's so boring and slow. If I were looking for a SMASHY primary, I'd probably go for Super Strength.

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

Stone/Electric - excellent synergy (recharge/AoE/end from Elec reinforce Stone very well), lighter on AoE than some, but SMASH and ST are good, Fault + Tremor will improve survivability by a mile.

Electric/Fire - Blazing Aura + Fiery Embrace + Build Up + Lightning Rod + Burn, what's not to like?

I've never played Stone Melee so that is possibly attractive. I only played SS a long time ago and didn;t really like my Invuln/SS Tank, but that was years ago, so I'd consider it again.

/Fire is really attractive to my playstyle, which is why that's what I have on my only lvl50 tank.
I may go /Elec for variety, I only have it on a baby scrapper I play with my kids.