Any other options valid options besides SS/?

I feel like every brute I run into in game is SS/. I understand the farming potential it has, but personally, I dont care for the set. Rage is nice and all, but I never liked the downtime when rage wears off, along with the endurance you lose from rage, the set just isn't all that fun for me to play.

As far as AoE's go, im sure SS is top, but how close is Fire Melee? I have a 50 fire Melee brute, which I really enjoy, but how far behind SS am I?

Im sure this has all been discussed lately, but im interested in hearing what everyone has to say. I was thinking of making an /EA brute, and was considering playing Fire Melee again, because I really enjoyed the set.

So, how far is fire/melee behind SS for Aoe/ST?

SS isn't actually terribly noteworthy by itself. It's the way Rage boosts damage auras, Burn, and epic attacks that puts it over the top, mostly. So yes, there's lots of other valid options, especially if you're not pairing with /Fire.

Fiery Melee is a solid set. It doesn't have control or mitigation, but FSC is a very strong AoE (comparable to Footstomp + Rage, other than its radius), and it has good single-target attacks (better than SS, if you don't include Burn/Gloom), and fire damage is generally less resisted than smashing.

As Cyb and Hopeling already mentioned Fiery Melee is very viable in terms of both AoE and ST dps when compared to SS. As is Titan Weapons and to a lesser extent (mostly due to radius), Claws.

Dark Melee doesn't have much AE, but it does have Soul Drain (a better version of Rage for your purposes) and you can just grab Mu Mastery if you wanted AE.

Just pick something you like. It's not like there is such a big difference you can kill with one and not the other. Just pick something "you" like.

I'll throw in a shout-out for War Mace. Great ST dmg as well as AoE. Only downside to it is the slow-ish attacks and the redraw (depending on your secondary) which may or may not bother you.

But in the end, as others have said, it all comes down to whatever it is that you define as fun.

So what I'm hearing is:

Comparable over time.
Fire is really not that far behind.
Slightly / Ahead

...for damage.


It seems that the damage is delivered a little differently between the two. Fire is a smooth flow of damage. Meanwhile super strength seems to come in spikes and then the opposite of spikes for a bit, before spiking again.. Super strength can be a bit of a roller coaster. An experienced SS'r is just managing the ups and downs to an extent that those around might not even notice.

As has been mentioned SS's advantage is that the targets aren't hitting back as much.

Rage, I've never liked it either. Great boosts but nasty penalties. I have a couple SS 50s but it's love / hate. I've even tried to build them without taking rage.. less to love.

In PVP on a /regen character I could easily go toe to toe with a SS healing after each of the big blows. Versus a Fire I could stand there for a bit but it would just get too hot and damage taken would eclipse regen and healing. Fire - definately strong.


For AOE these days Electric and Titan feel strong.

The sets are all pretty dang good with a handful that have great min/max potential.

If someone isn't into the whole min/max at level 50+4 it really is just play style preference. What we individually like and even if it's visually appealing. Spending hours making the ‘clinched fist pose’ of doom may be effective but man it can get old..

As an alternate. If you are looking for the BOOM BOOM BOOM damage without rage crashes checkout Stone Melee.

I'm a new player. I've got a SuperStrength, a Fiery Melee and a Street Justice Brute to about level 30.

I was wondering how the Street Justice stacks up against the other two, which I understand are good choices. Or any tips on how to slot it going forward. somehow I find that I need more accuracy to be effective, compared to my other two brutes. I like the moves and animations a lot so was thinking on focussing on levelling the SJ to 50 first.

A poster above already said that each powerset is able to kill things, the differences aren't very big. I wondered what people think about it.

My Super Strength character was the first I made. She happens to be green skinned. This was long before I understood how SS worked. Now every time I use Rage, I feel like "Hulking out". It gives a very nice flavour to the character, RP wise.

[QUOTE= somehow I find that I need more accuracy to be effective, compared to my other two brutes. [/QUOTE]

Level 30 - See if you can get yourself some Single Orgin enhancements. Use the 'black market / wentworths' and you should be able to get them for a decent price if your not in a hurry.

I personally would rather hit more often than hit harder and miss sometimes. 2 Single Origin accuracy enhancements is my normal minimum. Then an endurance reduction or damage depending on the power with the goal of 2 Acc 2-3 Dam 1 End or 1 Recharge.

This could change when you get into Invention Origin enhancement sets but for now 2 single origin accuracy enhancement would be a priority for me starting out.

If Rage with it annoyances is the only thing stopping you from rolling a SS Brute, you can leave it out of your build without much concern.

Even truer now with the Brute Fury proc.

WARNING: I bold names.

Sad face.

There isn't an invalid option in the game. On any AT.

If you don't mind weapon sets, Claws, War Mace, and Titan Weapons are all great sets for differing reasons, but Claws has 3 AoEs, one of which (Spin) is impossibly overpowered. War Mace has 3 AoEs and Titan Weapons has 3 and a half AoEs (lol Defensive Sweep) so you can choose to not pick SS but still have not only many powerset options, but many COSTUME options as well. Weapon customization is a big deal to a costumer like me. If you hate redraw of any kind, Dark Melee, Stone Melee, and Fire Melee are all great sets as well. You may find Perma Soul Drain to be the thing that really does it for you; It DOESN'T crash like Rage, and it doesn't require constant active management like Follow Up, Blinding Feint, and Power Siphon. The disadvantage is of course that Soul Drain is only at peak effectiveness when fully saturated with mobs, but in conventional gameplay you'll find that's not a problem.

Claws has ALWAYS had good ST DPS, back when this game first came out Claws/SR was THE AV killer if you wanted a Defensive set...Claws/Regen was another good option too.

If you like the idea of rage but hate the crash...Take Dark Melee...with no apologies...seriously. Slot Soul Drain with 2 Rect Ret, and about 3-4 of say...Multistrike or Sciroccos and it becomes a VERY nice AoE that also boosts your damage...add in that you can turn Dark Consumption into an AoE that does about half as much damage AND gives you endurance...plus you get Shadow Maul...really...this set is great!

Brute Claws has different damage scale, endurance, and recharge numbers than Scrapper Claws. I only vaguely recall the outcome of that discussion, but I think it was that the Brute version is at least reasonably competitive with the Scrapper version, if not outright better, and is definitely not just weaker, despite Follow Up's diminished effectiveness for Brutes.

Also, Bill Z Bubba himself, who made that thread and the whole analysis behind it, prefers Claws iirc (it's in his avatar), and presumably he is aware of his own results, so it must have something going for it.

Claws also gives some good mitigation with Focus and Shockwave. Also, it's stylish.

It's true. If you like the nature of Follow Up, make a Dual Blades toon. Blinding Feint is much the same as Follow Up. Go for high recharge, and you can pull off the attack chain of:

Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike.
(I don't know the global rech% required for this off the top of my head)

Though this is very similar to a Claws attack chain, Ablating Strike is a much better attack than Slash is, and Sweeping Strike is better than Focus (higher DPA and it is a small AoE). The Dual Blades attack chain completely stomps the Claws one. Claws has that great AoE in Spin and is still a viable powerset, ecause EVEN THE BAD SETS IN THIS GAME ARE GOOD. Nothing is actually "bad" stuff is just better or worse, it's all relative.

I would never suggest Claws for "soloing AVs" as was mentioned earlier, but any melee powerset could do it because that's just how the game works. It would be really difficult to build a Spines Scrapper purely to solo AVs, but you can be someone out there has done it. Supposedly there's still stories floating around that the current fastest Rikti Pylon solo kill is a Dual Blades / Elec Armor Scrapper, but that's not something I can verify. Obviously a Dual Blades / Elec Brute wouldn't fall far from that tree.

Electric is my all time favorite, but as someone mentioned earlier it's not very solid on single target damage. Fire is great for both ST and AoE if you don't need any mitigation in your attacks.

I've also made a rageless SS brute. I paired it with electric armor and went for perma-hasten, managed to get the recharge on foot stomp almost down to 5 seconds. I used to have rage on this character, but with that much recharge the crash was just happening too much and killing my endurance, which is hard to do on an /elec brute. I stopped using rage for a while just to see how it would play and honestly I didn't even notice the difference once my fury built up.