Claws / Electric armor vs Invu, build critique
By
Centurion_A,
Posted on: 2011-09-06 11:24 in Brutes
SO I saw your claws/electric armor build in another thread, liked it and started to play around with it.
Some things I have tried tweaking (just thoughts... I am interested in discussing):
1) Drop slots out of brawl and maybe boxing. I understand using boxing and brawl as mules to boost up smash/lethal defense... but man, it is painful to put slots in stuff I won't use in combat. Is there some other way to protect ourselves in melee?
2) YES! What about relying on Dark Obliteration's to-hit debuff to effectively hit the smash/lethal soft cap? We can add a hami to-hit debuff/acc Hami to Dark Obliteration for a 6.75% debuff. Defense drops to 38%... but that puts us at the softcap against melee attacks using smash/lethal. I think.
I dropped all of the slots out of brawl. Gained 3. Put 1 in Dark Obliteration, 1 in Energize and 1 in Health.
With these new slots our Regen hits 435% with energize up and makes energize a 48% heal.
Please challenge me on this.
3) Have you considered 5 slotting Gloom with Siphon Insight? You gain 3.75% smash/lethal defense. You can get a huge to-hit debuff (8.5%) to use on AVs (since AVs resist to-hit debuffs). Also, it does good damage.
4) My various tweaks also increased your accuracy. I did drop the +3% resist PvP resist proc mostly because I could never afford that. I also am not sure if 3% resist is worth billions. 3% defense may be since you take no damage when it works.
5) I also traded out the -res proc (PvP) in Spin and put in a much cheaper Psi damage proc from the taunt set. Seems like Psi damage is not resisted very much and that proc causes direct damage. Seems like a fair trade to me.
6) It would be great to put a -res proc (Achilles Heel) in Slash, but I need to find a slot somewhere.
7) Dropped slash and focus. We have enough attacks already.
8) Move the powers around to ensure the best ones are available early (lightning field).
What do you think?
Code:
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I don't really pay much attention to the order of which I select powers in mid's long as the slots fits I'll just pick em ingame 
I think slash and focus is great additions to Claws, the -def from Slash, and the knockdown from focus is awesome. Not to mention the occasional force feedback proc I get from focus is pretty nice. I would most certainly miss them if I did not have them in my build.
About slotting Spin, I don't really know whats best, the -res or the straight up dmg proc. This time around I wanted to try with the -res since Claws is as far as I'm concerned a relatively low damage set I figured the -res would be worth the try. If some math geek has done any calculations on this I would love to see them.
I did grab two Enzyme Exposure's for weave and manuvers for the final build, which pushed the def to S/L to 43.1%. But as far as relying on obliteration for defense, I'm not sure I would, theres LOTS of times I jump into a group of mobs where it's not up yet, but I do see where your coming from. EA is a resist set and that's the biggest strength by far, same reason I went with Cardiac from incarnate.
As far as slotting weave and manuvers for the accuracy bonus, I think it's a bit of a waste. You only gain the equivilant of 4.1 ToHit from the 18% accuracy, whereas if you keep "Follow Up" up, you get 10, slotted with just one ToHit buff you'd get 2.6 ToHit more from it though, much better bang for the buck
I'm not sure about slotting energize much further then it is allready, without decent set bonus I think it's kind of a waste. Don't get me wrong, bigger heals is nice but more isn't allways better and I just couldn't justify it to myself to spend any more slots on it.
I do like your Gloom slotting, and I was thinking about removing a slot from stamina and Power Sink to fit it once I get the Cardiac slot all the way up.
Hey guys, I finished up my previous brute a DM/SD but im not really happy with either set so it's time to respec him and get my IOs out from him. I figured the heal from DM might help offset the low resists and lack of heal from SD but it didnt, and while shield charge is nice I find that half the time it either misses or I forget about using it because of the relatively long recharge.
So I figured it's time to go back to the tried and true at this point, what I'm after is a toon which can stand up to most if not all while still being a powerhouse. But frankly I'm not sure what is needed for this, at what point in resists does it feel like mobs/AVs is tickling you vs you faceplanting everytime you have to step up?
Looking over the invu build, it doesn't seem all that much better then my SD in regards to resists, it has quite a bit higher S/L resists but the rest is in the same ballpark as my SD.
At this point I'm seriously leening towards the Electric Armor, both because how it plays and the fact that the resists on average is a bit higher then the Invu build. I really like the added utility in the set with dmg aura, EndRdx, +Recharge & Power Sink. Only thing holding me back is the fact that defense is quite a bit lower on this one, can't have it all I guess.
Anyway, I would love some more insight into how Invu plays compared to Elec because it's been quite a while since I've played it. Also if anyone want to tinker around with the builds, see if I missed something or can optimize them in any other way I would appriciate it.
My old DM/SD build: