The Good, the Bad, and the Uncommon... combos.

I want to make another brute but I'm stuck.

The Good:
I'd like to know what powerset combos are awesome right out of the box and stay good till 50 and beyond, and are only made better with IOsets but can do well on only SO's and basic IO's.

The Bad:
I'd also like to know which combos either never work without heavy investment into IO's (plastic surgery), or combos that need to AEfarm for their only chance to display how good they are (having to hide in AE cause everything else kills you means you're not very good). Combos that suffer from constant endurance issues no matter what is done are not very good either.

The Uncommon:
Browsing the forums I never see threads about certain combos. I'd like to see you guys brag about how your characters' powerset choices are odd but end up pwning. Basically /fire and /wp no need apply, the rest of the brute forums already know about you

A Little Extra: I'm curious in particular to see if anyone has tried out an ElM/DA, Also is /EA good? last time I played it, it wasnt, but I've been seeing good things lately. Was it changed again? /INV also, over the years Ive seen threads saying its terrible, others say its amazing, what is it?

I have rolled Electric Melee on several toons, it is good. I paired with Invuln and Shield on those, I particularly like it with shield. But as Dark Armor is just about my favorite primary (on par with regen)...I could see that the 2 together would likely be a winner, especially with something like an Agility Alpha, as your attacks that give endurance would get a free 45% boost to end mod.

My favorite "great out of the box to 50" combos would be the following:
Staff/Dark
Dark/Invuln
TW/Regen
Claws/Dark
Elec/Shield
Elec/Ice (Stalker)
StJ/Regen

I can't spek for the rest, but Inv is awesome.

I made my Fm/Inv brute as a kind of homage to a few of my fave comic characters.
Havok from Xmen and Heatwave from Cyberforce.

He was fun from the beginning, and takes most of my play time now.
Inv is nice and sturdy, and the way he is with IO's is just plain silly. Soft capped to s/l/e/n/ and 42% to f/c with just 1 enemy in range, perma DP, 73% res to s/l and 25% to the rest.

Fm doesn't really add anything to mitigation. Hell, it adds nothing, but it kills fast. Especially since fury boosts the damage to the DoT.

The Good:
SS/Fire - Everyone is going to say it. Might as well just put it up first.
SS/Elec
Elec/Fire
Elec/Shield
DM/EA
SS/EA
DM/Shield
SS/WP
Stone/WP

SS/, Elec/, DM/, TW/, Stone/ are some great primaries that can go with a lot of things (haven't touched Staff so I couldn't tell you anything about it). Claws/ gets honorable mention as well.

/ElA, /Fire, /Shield, /WP, /EA are very good with many primaries. They don't need too much IO help to really shine. Some may say /Inv, but I find it a bit dull as a secondary (this is purely preference speaking).

The Bad:
(a lot of sets)/Regen - Yes, in another thread I'm asking for tips on my Stone/Regen. But in my opinion, /Regen needs a lot of love. IOs can make it workable, but without them I think /Regen under-performs.

EM/(a lot of sets) - Energy Melee was nerfed into obscurity. The lengthy animation times on it's two heavy hitters left a lot of people frustrated with dead targets. And for the little AoE that it has, nerfing the Single Target like that was a bit much.

The Uncommon
Anything with Broadsword, Axe, Mace, Dual Blades, Street Justice, Katana, Kinetic or Fiery Melee. I just don't see a lot of builds with those sets. Nothing wrong with them, of course. This is only my observance though, so take it as you will.

Stone Armor, Reflexes and Dark Armor aren't that common either. Though I will say Dechs has probably improved the number of DA's out there. All fine enough sets on their own (with maybe Stone at the bottom)

For something uncommon I went with a stone/shield. Right now he's around level 40 and using so's. So he's a bit hard on the blue bar but he's been fun so far. He does pretty good ST damage. On teams I can focus on the hard targets while using shield charge, tremor and fault to try and keep the other enemies flopping. I've got nice defense and ok resistance and with the baddies flopping most of the time my team mates isn't in much trouble. Went with this combo for a concept build and also because I can't remember the last time I seen a stone melee brute running about.

DM/Elec is in the uncommon category and comes with an incredible number of positives.

Immune to Endurance Drain
Mostly immune to Energy Attacks
Endurance Regain
Endurance Sap on enemies
High resistances
Heal
Endurance cost reduction to self
Recharge bonus
Long duration +Damage boost
Slow resistance
Damage Field

There are no real holes though there are two areas where you will be less than stellar by default and will have to work a bit to move up to the big leagues--area damage and defense capping. You have no base defense to speak of. Getting to 32.5% isn't too terribly hard though. As goes area damage, you have Shadow Maul, a cone, and Lightning Field. Beyond that you will have to acquire them from pool choices.

The recharge bonus lends towards working towards perma-Hasten, and with this set of powers, the faster you can cycle them the crazier things become.

I wish I had the patience to level a Stone/Dark Brute lol.

While I like Electric Melee, keep in mind that it does less damage on Brutes. Same for Shield.

I did have the patience to level a dark / stone brute, and a stone/dark tanker. (EDIT: Just realised that the above comment was for Stone/Dark brute. Ah well) They are fantastic fun. They lack a little in AOE, but not as much as you would think. Shadow maul is back all the time, and I usually manage to get three targets in it, and anyway the minions just die in the mud pots, while I ignore their pathetic attacks, and pound on the bosses with extremely effective high damage single target attacks. The self heal is fantastic, the to hit debuff good, the self heal is really fantastic (did I mention that before), the single target damage is good, the self heal is really really good (I think I might have emphasized now just how good it is), the self heal also does really good damage. I have a few stoners (elec/stone, energy/stone - now that did require patience, TW/stone, Staff/stone), none of them are a patch on toughness to the DM/stone, and few seem to do the same damage.

My other favourite toon is super strength/ shield. Without a kinetics along the self damage buff often gets to over 400%, with a forcefeedback proc I am down to around a 4 second footstomp. The joy of leaping in, foot stomp, pause, Shield slam, foot stomp, and watching them fall over three times without hitting me and mostly just dying is indescribable. Hitting single targets with knock out blow / haymaker at 400% damage is also very satisfying. The toon is however extremely fragile. Fragile can be fun though, as most of the survival comes to foot stomp / first aid / foot stomp, so that the baddies are falling over and not interrupting your self heal.

Staff / Dark armor I have enjoyed as well although I had to rest quite a lot. The synergies are very good. Staff gives melee defence, extra damage resistance, and lots of stun. There is also the Rule Of Cool, Cool things are more fun. The staff graphics are quite fun. When you get to obscuring gloom and are stun locking bosses, the fun just increases.

I note the enthusiasm above for invulnerability. I don't share it, it seems seriously lacking in .. well .. invulnerability. High end content seems to be loads of psi, plenty of toxic from those annoying arachnos, and huge amounts of energy plus defence debuffs. I am always worried if the main tank is invulnerability, and play much more defensively.

Want a ridiculously uncommon and stupidly-hard-hitting combo?

Stone/NRG.

mace is amazing

"Doing well on SOs"... Anything/Willpower comes to mind.

Good on SO's- SS/Nrg. SS doesnt need as much acc because of rage, nrg provides some rech and some endo tools. Good mix of ST and aoe, and you can focus slotting as you see fit because of fury and rage. I did a lot of rech and dmg when I had mine slotted with SO's. A lot of fun on a cheap build IMO.

Good with IO's- Stone/elec. Slap in as much rech bonus as possible, and seismic smash everythings face in. Endo tools to keep going, mitigation built into the primary to lessen the need for slotting def bonuses. Or spend billions and get both rech and def. I can not play a non-rech intensive stone melee after this brute anymore. Seismic smash every like 4 seconds really is that much fun.

Good in AE- I dunno, I dont really use AE. I hear a lot about claws/xxxx, where xxxx is a dmg aura set like dark or fire or elec. I do have a claws/elec brute, but I dont think it fits the criteria of "weak outside AE" from the OP. I played mine mostly through hero side missions, had a blast with him in croatoa gutting pumkin faces and witches. Focus on a witch that decides to try to fly away- watch the little slash fx fly through the air and chase her down, and then see it hit and do a knock back fx= priceless.