Brutes -- the perfect AT, or what?

I figure I'd start this thread before Dugfromtheearth does.

Simply put:

1. I'm a fan of melee. I like to be surrounded by enemies, I like to punch the AV in the face. Scrappers used to be my favorite AT.

2. All of my builds are high-end these days. I can afford to build my top toons however I want, just takes a little more time for the expensive builds. Top-end scrappers and top-end brutes are quite similar, but I've recently decided that the brute wins out for crowd control (taunt) and being even more survivable. So now Brutes are my favorite AT.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy playing other ATs. I'm working on a new Widow right now in fact. Widows are great fun to play, a support toon that plays like a scrapper with less hit points (and no real aggro control). I really enjoy the 50 Widow I already have, which is why I decided to make a second one.

So, in conclusion... yeah, I think Widows are the perfect AT. This week.

I don't like Brutes. They only do well if they are doing well. If you have trouble in a fight and need to rest, you start the next fight with no fury and do poorly at that one.

I have no high end characters, I never get IO sets, never play level 50's. So to me brutes are just tanker wannabe's that hit like a defender.

That may be true at level 20. At level 20, the perfect AT is probably a willpower scrapper.

But a fully tricked out level 50 brute is a beautiful thing to behold. ^_^

Brutes are BETTER than scrappers at low levels. It's not until 20+ that scrappers begin to catch up. That's not to say scrappers are bad, even at low levels. There's a reason I have more scrappers than anything else, after all.

A brute played badly sucks compared to other ATs played badly? Or compared to other ATs played well?

No, Corruptors are the perfect AT. Defender primaries as their secondary, and damage primaries. 'Nuff said.

Despite my weird love for Stalkers, Brutes are the best melee AT for me, they can tank, protect squshies, which is something I'd like to do with my db/elec scrapper which I like tons.

But as Hopeling said, Brutes are easier to level, you can slot a ton endredux till level 30 on your attacks and a scrapper suffers greatly wit the lack of slots. Both my TW toons (scrapper and brute) are in their 20s and the scrapper still suffers from the feeling of low damage (minion sliver of health syndrome making me use some other attack), the brute does a ton of damage since he left DFB because of Fury.

While I like scrappers, I even rerolled my first 50 scrap (dm/da) into a Brute due to better aggro control since the even though scrappers may outdamage Brutes on IOs at later levels, it's not enough for me to be noticeable and I love the extra brute perks. My 50 Stone/ELA and 50 Elec/Stone were shelved and now I like them again (well the /Stone not so much... ewww Granite) because it's so damn easy to maintain Fury now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugfromthearth Yes, but that's the point. if a brute does badly they totally suck, much more than other AT's (except Dom).

lol have you played any Brute after the Fury change? Dive into 3 mobs, deal 3 blows, 50% fury with any primary/secondary on TOs. At the end of the fight you're at the usual new ma fury (70% iirc). Walk down a hallway alone, you still keep most of your fury when you get to the next mob. I suggest you monitor your damage bonus in combat attributes (if you ever played any brute after the change which seems unlikely).

I find Brutes and Scrappers to generally be a bit too frail for me to really enjoy them.

I'm going to go with "or what" on this one.

i just started playing this game less than a year ago, and brutes are crawling into one of my favorite ATs at first i though MMs were the best, but they were too fragile for my play style, i also like stalkers over scrappers because i can hide in the middle of a mob and they wont see me 95% of the time, i really like a titian weapon/dark armor brute because of the massive AOE attacks that allow me to level mobs with insane speed, i have never any other power set get rid of mobs as fast as titan weapons, the dark armors self res is just impressive as a self res power

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

My biggest issue with brutes is that it really feels like I'm doing it wrong if it isn't a confirmed villain with the Frenzy power.

Cold starts on a non-villain brute really suck.

I think I prefer Scrappers steady damage with Crits to Brutes up-down variable. It works for some concepts, but not others. I tend to approach it on a per-character basis anyway.

And I love Titan Weapons. Titan Weapons is WIN.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Meh. I build my scrappers and brutes to tank. There are few situations where the fact that a tank has more hit points and guantlet actually makes a difference -- iTrials mostly. For basic builds, a tank is the most survivable, but for a good high-end build the difference between a tank and a brute in terms of survivability is fairy small.

I ran an old ambush farm yesterday on my shield scrapper Sparks Fly, and when you're surrounded by level 53 enemies that can debuff your defense, and a lot of them are bosses that are going to hit you hard regardless, THEN you start to notice that you're not playing a tank. But I still didn't die. ^_^

If we're talking pure gameplay preference, I'll always take Scrappers over Brutes just because of the way Fury works. It's like Magnum Magnumsson: "Pulls like a train, and fast, once it gets going. And once its going, it's not gonna' stop." That, however is a double-edged sword. Once Brutes get going, they're great, but once they stop, they're crap, not to put too fine a point on it. The trick to playing a Brute well is to play to the Brute's strength, which puts a time pressure on me, and I'm a laid-back kind of guy who's easily distracted by TV, other people in the room, exploring the map, chatting over Global and so forth. That doesn't make them a bad AT - far from it, especially since the I18 Fury changes. That said, Fury bugs me, while Scrapper Criticals do not.

If we're talking about concept, however, I see things like this: Any character who is defined first and foremost by being incredibly dangerous becomes a Scrapper. Any character who is defined first and foremost by being hard to kill a Brute. It's somewhat simplistic of an approach, but the simpler the rules, the easier the decisions. I do play Stalkers, too, but Stalkers tend to be characters I'd define as "cheaters." They're the ones who may or may not be able to win in a fair fight, but just don't like fighting fair for whatever reason.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Tankers and Defenders seem to be going the wayside, since their benefits over Brutes and Corruptors respectively are, in a lot of cases, negligible. RPers will still roll Defenders because they like the name better than Corruptor, but at the end of the day the old-fashioned Hero tank and support classes are excessively specialized and not well-suited compared to their old-fashioned Villain counterparts (yes, I know the Brute was designed to be the Villain Scrapper).

This isn't a problem with design; it's just how the game has matured. At launch, when there was no such thing as Brute or Corruptor, you'd pick Tanker for tanking and Defender for support. And it worked well, you could do a lot with it, everyone was happy. The Villain classes were designed to fill the same roles as the Hero classes, though in different ways. Heck, Stalker's still going through core revisions six years later, but I'm hopeful this next round will finally make them the melee equivalent to Blaster they were always intended to be.

Blaster's good. Scrapper's good. Peacebringer and Warshade are good. Brute, Corruptor, Dominator, Mastermind and the VEATs are good. Stalker needs help, and I think it's getting it. Tanker, Controller and Defender are kinda stuck; they don't need help, but there's not really any place for them to go. They have limitations by design that simply aren't present in other Archetypes.

And that brings us to Brute. Decent aggro control, good survivability (with mez protection), good damage, some wonderful AoE opportunities in the epic sets... Give 'em Spines to pair with Fiery Aura and Mu Mastery and it'll be hard to argue that anything else can perform better in the competitiveness department.

Doms > Brutes for me.