Highest Brute DPS Primary

Regardless of appearances, I just want whatever will provide me with the highest DPS Brutes can muster. Presently, I've only been looking at the numbers for Battle Axe, Claws, Electric Melee, Kinetic Melee, Street Justice, Super Strength, and War Mace as those would be my preferences for thematic reasons.

Super Strength followed by Claws appear to both have a clear advantage over the rest since they can easily maintain double stacking Rage (160%) and Follow Up (60%), respectively.

Kinetic Melee and Street Justice were both tricky for me though. Due their special effects, Mids couldn't give me the information I needed. Is the 25% Damage Boost on KM attacks always active or does that apply only when Power Siphon is up? If it's always there, how high are you able to maintain its damage boost on average? Also, what damage percentage does each stage of Combo Level provide?

I don't know first-hand, but I hear that SS/Fire is tops for DPS. I imagine that SS provides the most DPS regardless of secondary, but if a combo edged it out then SS would be close behind.

This is predicated on expensive builds, of course.

Oh, I'm going with WP for my Secondary.

Now I know. However, I figured Soul was a given. :P

SS/Fire/Soul will be very high, but not the top. The key in that combo is the fire/soul, not the SS. SS is actually pretty bad for DPS, with rage taking a ton of damage away during its crashes and having a fairly lackluster attack chain. SS/Fire/Soul is a great combo however, dealing amazing AoE damage and great single target damage, but it shouldn't be the best, despite being able to use a buffed Gloom without causing redraw.

I would highly look into TW/Fire when that combo is available. It would take a lot of recharge, and probably wouldn't be incredibly sturdy, but it should be tops for DPS from the numbers I'm been running. However, I would warn that Gloom may actually slow the DPS because of the redraw.

You shouldn't be double stacking rage for DPS. The more often you use rage the more often you are crashed and unable to deal any damage, the only reason to double stack rage is Burst damage.

Don't forget to factor in the -res from rib cracker when you're doing SJ's numbers. The -res debuff is applied after you calculate your DPS. Let's say you had a DPS of 200 damage per second, the -7.5% debuff would make your actual DPS 200*1.075 = 215 DPS. Also, the Achilles proc is worth considering in the calculations too (Katana, especially)

I did a lot of numbers on tanks in a thread I have going in the tanker forum, so I am experienced with doing these calculations, but not so much for brutes. What I did find for a tank was that Stone Melee provided really impressive numbers. I don't know if you're willing to go with that set but Stone Fist, Heavy Mallet and Seismic Smash provide very good DPA and can take a lot of damage procs for additional DPA. Just a thought, but with reactive and musculature and bruising, a tanker can get about 250 DPS on a high end build using SF-HM-SF-Gloom-SF-SS as an attack chain. I'm curious to know what a brute could do.

If you would like to see the numbers for Stone Melee that I did on a tank, here is the post.

Edit: To add, Stone Melee is extremely endurance un-friendly. I recommend Electric Armor for Stone Melee Brutes/Tanks as it will give you plenty of endurance (Energize and Power Sink) plus the damage aura will only add to your DPS. The Lightning Reflexes is gravy as well. Energy Aura would take care of the endurance issues too, but you'll have no damage aura.

Stacking Rage is always beneficial to your DPS up until you hit the damage cap, Rage crashes factored in and all, before any vet or incarnate powers are added into the mix. Once you consider all that, in real gameplay, stacking Rage is a no brainer for DPS purposes.

I have a claws/wp brute hits like truck took muscular alpha hits like a truck took fireball also great aoe and st and no endo problems lol

Just to be clear, double-stacking rage means you are sitting out a sixth of the time (10 seconds of every 60). That means you can take your nice little double-stacked DPSs and multiply them by 5/6. And showing the base dps of various attacks and then double-stacked DPS of another is simply misrepresenting the damage boost, because of the way damage buffs work.

For instance, take SS versus fire. In your example, fire wins hands down. Here's the numbers if both SS and fire had 3 level 50 damages in each attack and 75% fury, and the SS double-stacked.

Scorch- 132.4
Fire Sword- 150.7
Cremate- 173.1
Incinerate- 197
Breath of Fire- 84.23
Fire Sword Circle- 93.75
Greater Fire Sword- 188.1

SS (Ragex2)
Jab- 109.4
Punch- 146.2
Haymaker- 202.9
Knockout Blow- 318.1

Note, this is without multiplying by 5/6 for the rage crashes. Now, this still seems to benefit SS, but if we look closer we realize that SS doesn't have a chain. KO Blow is great, but unfortunately it takes forever and a day to recharge, and meanwhile that fire melee guy is using incinerate, greater fire sword, etc, which will up his DPS up because he doesn't have to rely on punch or jab to make a chain.

SS does gain more benefit from Gloom than others, as I mentioned before, which allows SS/x/Soul to deal a lot of damage, but it still isn't top. In case you are wondering, Gloom has a DPS of 281.3 with double rage and 3 damage IOs. For the fire melee guy, it would just be 194.1. So the combination of Gloom, rage, and FE (and using burn as a single target attack) is what makes SS/Fire/Soul Brutes so damaging. However, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily the best, but they are still top-tier.

On a side note, if momentum cancels out redraw, then TW/Fire/Soul might put out some EXTREME numbers. For instance, if you use BM-SA-FT-Gloom-CB-FT-SA-Gloom-FT as your chain (BM being Build Momentum, this chain is only used during the extended momentum period), with musculature and FE active and good slotting/procs, it is patently ridiculous.

For instance take follow-through. It has a base damage of around 104 for a Brute, and has an activation of 1.188, for a DPA of 87.62, which actually even better than Gloom. If you put a total of about 357% damage buff through enhancements, BM, and fury (357% is just the number I get in my spreadsheet with a certain enhancement loadout), that damage increases to 474, for an astounding 399 DPA. With similar numbers in the chain used above, the total damage goes to 3731 in 10.56 seconds, for a DPS of 353 under Build Momentum.

Now, if we remove musculature that number will go down a little, to roughly 290ish. And that's okay, because that is 265 without FE, without procs, without reactive, and without -res. Adding in all of those, we get 530ish, assuming an average -resistance of around 20%, which is easily possible if we consider reactive's -res, crushing blow's proc, fire aura, and shatter armor.

What would that be like with Musculature? 680 DPS. You read that right.

Now, of course, this is while under Momentum, and it isn't a sustainable chain. The chain I'm going to use for sustainable isn't much better though: SA-FT-CB-Gloom-FT. That chain deals 1987ish damage in 7.66 seconds (using musculature again), which translates to 388 after everything is accounted for. Which is over 500 with FE up.


So yeah, I fully expect TW/Fire/Soul to be the new damage king of the brute world. However, the numbers I posted are completely unreasonable in the real world, and would require a build basically focused only on offense. Still, I suspect great things out of that combo.


Edit: fixed some numbers

It gets even more complicated. During the Rage Crash I have 3 vet attacks I use. Also a great time to Taunt. If taunting is a rgular activity (it does build Fury after all, indirectly) I am doing it during a "free time" while it is taking away from everyone else's DPS. So many things to consider in this argument.

For me, personally, SS is just the funnest and easiest, and therefore that is what I chose to use for my main over the next period of gameplay.

Hey, in a related question, for the Vet attacks. Since you are attacking while 1 Rage crashes, but have a second Rage running, do they get the benefit of the second Rage's +Hit/Damage bonuses?