Should Broadsword and Kanata buffed for Brute?

One of my friends made a lvl 50 Mace/Shield and a 50 Katana/Shield. He said War Mace is so much stronger at lvl 50.

I looked at the numbers and I think I agree with him.

My friend always IO his toons so Parry's defense isn't that big of a deal.

Golden Dragonfly is supposed to have a bit higher critical chance for Scrapper but Brute's version doesn't seem to include that "bonus".

I know they re-vamp Claw for Brute to make base damage higher. Should they have done the same for Broadsword/Kanata?

What's your thoughts? Can Kanatan/Broadsword compete if you put procs in them?

You don't really get to say "well I IO therefore parry isn't worth anything." If you don't IO, or choose to IO in a different direction, parry is an incomparably huge bonus. WM is nothing like as survivable as BS/Kat, though it does get better aoe damage in exchange. If you plan to have defenses softcapped to your liking then by all means go mace instead. Do so with the recognition that someone else might be happy to take slightly reduced damage for scads of easily available defense.

They don't balance for IO usage. And there's not a single brute in the world that needs a buff.

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Your friend has a 50 katana/shield brute?

Well he made a Broadsword/shield because you can't make a Katana/shield.

And obviously he picked a set that doesn't benefit from katana's +def like regen, elec, da, etc. My kat/regen scrapper is the only toon that I started soloing at x3 before any slotting, and it's not like she had a secondary before SOs since regen requires decent recharge to function properly. 30% melee def after two DA stacks is nothing to sneeze at, and a lot of secondaries can slot IOs in other def types and get softcapped with one DA/Parry.

Even ignoring Divine Avalanche, Katana is great with fast attacks, low end cost, great attack chain with or without recharge, you can have a good attack chain on SOs. Remember that the scrapper min maxers have soloed itfs and tons of AVs on kat/da, kat/wp and etc. So why would it be different on a brute?

I don't see anything in Katana that would make Brutes benefit less than other sets, the higher crit chance on one attack is not as big a deal as KM's Power Siphon recharge and +dam bonuses or even follow up and blinding feint's +tohit and +dam powers. Most sets have something that theoretically benefits scrappers (L. Rod's damage cap, all the BU-like powers including Soul Drain) but they work just fine on Brutes.

BS is a different story since it's considered a bit underperforming among the scrapper primaries but even then it's not by a big margin. And if you're not a min maxer caring about the best dps chain/av soloing, BS might even suit a Brute better than Katana after properly slotted since it has higher rech and more damage than Katana per attack, BS only falls short when considering the top end ST scenario. Remember most attacks follow an end/rech formula except for some outliers like Energy Transfer. And you won't get a +def attack that helps basically every non-pure defense secondary with Mace.

The only set that really stands out to me as lackluster from a non 'min-max ST dps' perspective is Battle Axe, both on scrappers and Brutes, since after the buffs to WM, BA has less reliable KD, doesn't stun, the AoEs are a bit worse and less survival (no def power and as I said, even the set's gimmick, the KD, loses to WM and TW).

If you're comparing purely defensive sets you may want WM, TW or Stone Melee for more mitigation but Katana's damage is plenty good and it's more end friendly than most other primaries.

You can't really be trying to compare katana's damage to war mace's, can you?

Katana trades burst damage for dps and defense.

War mace trades that for the best melee cone in the game.

Sorry, I think it's Katana/Willpower. His other 50 is Mace/Shield.

It's just that the Katana number looks really small for Brute but I guess Brute's base damage is really low.

Now that I think about it. I think the reason he thinks katana build kills a lot slower than mace/shield is that mace hits harder and there is shield charge. He would herd a big group and smash. In that situation, Katana can't compete with Mace.

(By the way, you can't have Katana/Shield due to the two-handed animation?)

Anyone here has a lvl 50 Katana? How do you like it?