Staff Secondary: Elec, Fire or Dark?

Hey all! New to the brute forums, so I apologize for any ignorance in advance.

When Staff Fighting comes out, I'm hoping to roll my first ever brute. I've played an invul tank to 50 and I've done shield, reflexes, regen and willpower on scrapper. Frankly, I'm sick to death of those powersets and I'm hoping to try something a bit new.

Has anyone tried elec, fire or dark with staff? I've been told all three can be challenging, costly or squishy but I'd love some more opinions on what would work best.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated!

I think Im going with SF/Ela.
For Titan weapons I went /Invul when going /Ela was the trend and most common combo because its powerful.
Since SF hits hard too for AoE, I will give it a try.

Staff/Fire Brutes rock at farming if that is something that interests you.

Don't discount /Regen either. Staff has the ability to increase both defense and resistance. That should make it an optimal pairing for /Regen which is great at healing but lacks both of those things. A softcapped Staff/Regen will be a force to be reckoned with.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

I couldn't answer the OP's question until Mids is updated. But for a first staff build, I would go Fire just so you could farm it up to 50 ASAP and expore the powers. After that build, who knows what synergies people will discover.

I am still holding out for Psionic Armor/Melee.

I'm going to do a SF/WP myself. WP is like peanut butter. Goes with everything.

Looking like /Dark to me, I had to pick /Elec with TW because it needs the endurance, but /Dark is just a more survivable version of /Elec assuming Staff isn't to endurance hungry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Go against the flow. Go Super Reflexes and use the Regen/Recovery stance in Staff Fighting to help with SR's common weaknesses.

I've been playing a Staff/Ela Brute on Beta to try to decide whether I want that combo or a Staff/Ea Scrapper. I am really enjoying it so far. Especially with Form of Soul for early leveling (to combat blue bar issues), Ela is a lot of fun.

I've decided on a Brute Staff/Electric Armour char and have absolutely enjoyed playing it so far! Can only recommend that.

My top 4 recommendations (in no particular order):

Regen - Regen is amazing when well built, and it's even more potent on a Brute...more HP is more Regen at the same percentages as a Scrapper...a Regen Brute capped out can match AV regen numbers...(In panic mode that would put you around 340-350 HP/sec!!!)

Dark - Dark is an amazing powerset, it has a built in defensive power, strong resists to many things most notably psionics where it has more resistance than any other set, and a powerful heal that can be made available every 10 seconds. It needs KB protection so slot at least 8 points 12 if you can find room for it.

Invuln - Invuln is the original survivability set, it gets defense bonuses, it has strong resists to the most common damage types, and gets a heal that boosts your Max HP.

Super Reflexes - SR is a great set and gets overlooked sometimes, it has resists built in as your HP drops your resists get stronger. It has the highest Defense Debuff Resists in the game. It is easily built on the cheap to softcap, and if you want to put some money into it, you can even softcap to incarnate content. It also has some built in recharge, which means you attack even faster. It does benefit from a heal, and it likes some endurance recovery because it doesn't have a tool to help with that.

my 2 cents

If you don't want your costume obscured then turn off pulse/fade in the power color customized at character creation...issue solved.

I just can't decide between elec or dark.

If you want Better resists and more defense go Dark...if you want less resists and no defense...but an endurance drain power...go electric...

If I am considering electric at all for a build, I go with Dark armor everytime...

6% is alot...think about it this way...that's 1 bil inf worth of IO's if you did it with 2 slots in other powers...

Because of Dark's inherent defensive power, I was able to softcap all positional defenses with my Kat/Dark brute after 1 divine avalanche lands...you cannot do that with any other resists set, with the exception of perhaps invuln...though you lose your damage aura that way.

Also, I consider the control aspects of Dark Armor to be far more useful than many give credit for...the enemy flat out will not hit you if he is cowering in fear...Oppressive Gloom, I don't personally care for because of the incessant wandering it causes...but I suppose if you built for the 2 running at once...that would be mighty potent.

You also mentioned the Rez, being a Mag 30 stun is extremely useful if you just died in the middle of a mob...

-E- 59.4% Psi resists? What AT are you using for these calcs? My psi resists are into the 60's on my brute...63% iirc...and I know I don't have any extra psionic resists slotted... They are right at 79% on my Dark/Fire tank...

No, I am using Agility, not Cardiac, don't have the SW unique and I don't count Barrier in base resist numbers.