Scrapper or Brute?

You're right and I was a jackass instead. Between the two classes, I tend to lean more towards Brutes. I dislike Fury making Brutes initially well below the base damage of a Scrapper, but love the higher resistances, hp, and Epics over the Scrapper.

Shadowmeld is awesome, yes scrappers don't get gloom, but scrappers aren't really hurting for damage though are they?

I like superior conditioning over conserve power, but I suppose the outcome is 6 of one and a half dozen of the other between the 2 powers.

Higher resistance *caps* can be a boon (the base values are the same), but only in situations where an armor set would cap you. Otherwise you gain a brief advantage in Barrier, and powers like MoG, but generally it's a very *slight* advantage defensively.

Higher HP are good, but this is likely based on the fact that brutes must chase fury, and to do so must take damage...so you literally need it.

Scrappers get crits, which make their burst damage insane, with Fury, Brutes can come close to getting to similar levels, albeit only in sustained damage, and scrappers will still have more burst damage in the mix with criticals going off at regular intervals.

Taunt is an edge to brutes, but only in some cases, shield makes a scrapper as effective as a Brute otherwise would be in aggro control...but other sets don't work the same way.

Tanks are still the aggro control "Aces" though with more HP and more effective taunt via gauntlet.

How much Fury does a Brute need to equal Scrapper damage?

roughly +/- 70% which you can get to in standard play...but it's tough to sustain that full time...you need to be head hunting ALL the time to keep up around 70-80%. Farming you can get to 90-95%, but that's another animal all together.

well scrappers do supposedly do more damage but i wouldnt mind a buff/revamp like they did to stalkers and soon blasters to them, brutes can come so close to scrapper damage its very hard at times to tell them apart but the brute has way more health and resistance, its more like "do you want to sacrifise a small portion of your damage for better survivability? or do you want to deal that berserk damage instantly?"

btw mauk2 is getting owned on this thread

It amazes me that people worry about Brute versus Scrapper but never look at Scrapper vs Stalker because it seems to me that Stalkers, with the right build, can utterly leave Scrappers in the dust as goes dealing damage.

Based on the set bonuses I saw in the most recent patch notes it looks more likely that you'll be close to 90% F/C at all times...most of the sets give out those bonuses instead of S/L and that will really be a waste...there might have been 2 or 3 sets period that gave S/L resists and those numbers were approximately half what they were before too. A great deal of the ones that gave S/L or Melee defense are even giving F/C bonuses now...not much S/L to be had...

I assembled a build for my StJ/FA on beta, just earlier tonight, with capped S/L/F resist, ~60% E/NE resist, ~38% S/L defense, ~2200 hp, and ~70% global recharge plus Hasten. And this was already a pretty tight build on live. And I think there's still room for improvement. I'm not just guessing.

But yeah, all the F/C bonuses allowed me to drop Temperature Protection

Here's the build, if you want to see it; the empty slots are for Preventive Medicine in Healing Flames (plus some enhancement boosters on the pieces with recharge), Superior Unrelenting Fury in Shin Breaker, and 4 pieces of Unbreakable Guard in Tough.

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My Katana/Dark is a Brute now, mostly because I got sick to death of runners. I24's resistance buff makes that decision an even better one.

Old thread is old.

I think I'll remake my Elec/SS Tank as a Brute. The Tank went for maximized Psi resist + some recharge, and I'm debating whether to focus on Recharge for quicker Footstomp and Energize, or to go for the S/L Def softcap.

I don't want to give the impression that Scrappers can't benefit enormously from the changes too, though.

How about my TW/WP, for example:

Or my WM/SD:

That one doesn't have TF Commander yet, which would make a total of 2162 health. The S/L resist isn't quite capped, but the Reactive Defenses unique gets you there once you drop to 97% health or below. Might be possible to cap it without the scaling buff, using some enhancement boosters.
(Note that both the StJ/FA and TW/WP builds were made without the Reactive Defenses proc, which I only just found out scales from 3% to 13%, rather than 0 to 10, which is way awesomer.)
(Note also that I'm posting very high-end, spare-no-expense builds, but that's NOT required to get such resist numbers. Those are just the kind of builds I happen to be making, because the characters I like enough to plan builds for months in advance are also the ones I like enough to make top-end builds for. In fact, since most purple sets provide no defense and no s/l resist, removing them would make it *easier* to get comparable resist/defense values. You'd just be giving up some recharge and some procs.)

Both those look pretty solid. Care to share the builds?

EDIT: Oh, nm these aren't on Mids yet

Personally I think that brutes with resistance based secondaries get the edge on the set IO changes in I24. Anything with resistance past 50-60% currently will easily be able to get to 75%+ which obviously benefits brutes more due to their higher resistance cap.

For reference, unbuffed numbers from my TW/Elec brute on beta. By unbuffed I mean no outside buffs and only what I run all the time while playing: toggles, Hasten, Energize, T4 Agility and the passive boost from T4 Melee Hybrid. These numbers will get slightly higher if I24 goes live as is, my ATO1 set isn't catalyzed yet and I will get a set of the new healing IOs in Energize (more +rech and another S/L and F/C res bonus).