Brutes and DDR

So the only Brute out of my 20 or so that I've leveled to 50 and gotten pretty well kitted out is my SS/FA, and I'm pretty happy with him. He's got a great AE build, and a solid pve build. I could easily pick my missions carefully and farm pve maps with him. What I'd like, though, is a Brute I can pick random paper missions, or run DA arcs with, or really, anything, without faceplanting to defense debuffs. The build I have currently only has 20% base E/N, which fixing would probably help, but it would eat into his recharge something fierce, and alpha strikes from a full spawn of Banished Pantheon or PPD 'feel' like they'd start stacking the defense debuff anyway (although just not immediately exploding might be good start). I'm also sort of starting to get bored with constant crashes, and while Hasten by itself without Rage wouldn't be as big a deal, I'm considering TW and skipping it. My logic is, you want pretty much every attack in TW anyway to have both good ST and AOE and can hit a boss with the ST after blowing the AOE. Plus, you don't want to be mixing in non-set attacks much because you want to make as much use of momentum as you can.

Anyway, back to the original point. DDR. I can live with the psi hole, or a toxic hole, or probably even both, since FA had the same issue with psi. What I'm definitely hoping to avoid is dropping like a rock to the increasingly common in end-game defense debuffs. It's feeling like my only real choice as a brute is Invuln, as it plays to Brutes strength in having good resists, and built in DDR. But I'm curious what others think about some of the other sets. I was also considering EA, although I don't really feel that it brings much of anything else to the table, and Ice which feels fairly solid, but I'm not sure a Brute can get the resists with Ice to really go nuts soloing. I've actually been leaning towards Ice, but I don't really want to make a big investment of time and inf only to discover I've traded one set of problems for another, and Invuln feels overall sturdier. Any thoughts?

Super Reflexes is of course near-immune to defense debuffs, with its 95% DDR, but also, sets with decent resists across the board (/Elec, /Dark, /FA to a degree) suffer less from cascade failure, even though they have little or no DDR. A primary with hard or soft control to lock down the most dangerous debuffers also helps a lot, although that's more difficult to quantify.

Brutes don't have Ice Armor, by the way.

Personally, I think super reflexes would be best for Dance Dance Revolution.

*cough*

(sorry ... couldn't help myself ...)

As a side note, I don't know if this information was collected anywhere else, but while trying to decide this same issue for a tank a while back I went through and checked the level 50 values for all the armor sets for a tank (and the Brute only ones). Didn't do Fire since I have more /Fire toons than I know what to do with already. It's not necessarily useful for trying to figure out what the 'best' will be, but it comes in handy when trying to figure out what combination will have the least gaping holes in it's defenses.

Dark
Damage Aura
30% resist smash/lethal
20% resist Toxic/Negative
30% fire/cold
20% energy/negative
86.50 Recovery resist
86.50 Endurance resist
50% Psionic Resist
12.63 Stun/Hold/Sleep/Terrorize
Heal
Stealth/5% def/12.63 Immob resist

Electric
35% smash/lethal/Energy
Damage aura
35% Fire/Cold/Energy
20% Negative
12.98 stun/hold/sleep
35% Psi
129.75% resist recover/end
12.5% energy
10% negative
86.5% resist end
15.58 knockback
6.00 Immob
regen/heal
recharge/run

Ice
17% smash/lethal def
30% cold res
12.5% fire res
17.30 res def deb
max hp/20% toxic
debuff aura
knockback whoa
12.98 stun/hold/sleep/immob
60% slow resist
30% cold res
1% all def
17.30% res def deb
30% res cold
12.5% res fire
20% slow res
damage aura
17.5% energy/negative def
30% cold res
17.30% res def deb
end absorb

Invuln
10% res smash/lethal
25% res def deb
30% res smash/lethal
Max HP+
10% res fire/cold/toxic
20% slow res
Knockback/Repel whoa
5% res smash/lethal
10% fire/cold/energy/negatice/toxic
12.98 stun/hold/sleep/immob
10% res energy/neg
25% res recovery/end
AOE +def/hit aura
5% def all but psi/toxic
25% res def deb

Shield
15% def melee
15% res smash/lethal
15% ranged/AOE
17.3% res def deb
+max hp
15% resist fire/cold/energy/negative/toxic
CLICK 12.98 stun/sleep/hold/confuse/terror/immob/ Knockwhoa/21.63% res def deb
AOE +damage aura
5%? melee/range/aoe
17.30% res def deb
30% res recharge
soft crash

Stone
16% res smash/lethal
17.3% res def deb
10% res smash/lethal
Max HP+
20% res toxic
AOE slow/immob/damage aura
Knockwhoa
12.98 stun/hold/sleep/immob
86.5% res recovery/end
+100% regen
17.30% res def deb
25% res fire/cold
16% def energy/negative
17.30% res def deb
25% def psi
Confusewhoa

Super Reflexes
18.50% def melee
12.98 confuse
17.30% res def deb
18.50% def ranged
17.30% res def deb
7.5% def ranged
8.65% res def deb
sliding resist
CLICK knockwhoa/12.98 stun/hold/sleep/immob
7.5% def melee
8.65% res def deb
18.50% def AOE
17.3% res def deb
7.5% def AOE
8.65% res def deb
Recharge/slow res

Willpower
max hp
7.5% resist all damage
22.5% res smash/lethal
20% res psi
75% regen
12.98% stun/sleep/hold/confuse/terrorize/immobilize/knockwhoa
10% def psi
aoe regen aura
30% recovery boost
3.3% def smash/lethal
13% def fire/cold/energy/negative
21.63% res def deb
soft crash

BRUTE:
Energy:
12.75% def smash/lethal
1.88% def energy
17.3% res def deb
9.38% res smash/lethal
25% res recovery/end
7.5% res energy
15% def fire/cold/energy
10.5% def negative
17.30% res def deb
Knockwhoa/10.38 stun/hold/sleep/immob
17.30% res def deb
aoe +recharge aura
9.38% resist energy/toxic/negative
20% slow res
stealth/3.75% all def
CLICK AOE drain/def buff

Regen
75% regen
25.95% resist regen
heal
15% res toxic
30% recovery+
Max HP+
Knockwhoa/10.38 stun/hold/sleep/immob
AOE regen aura
stunwhoa
9.38% res all dam
CLICK 600% regen+200% regen
Nocrash

Weave
3.75% def all
60.55% resist immob

Tactics:
7.00% hit
42.38% resist confuse
3.63 confuse prot
42.38% terror resist

Combat Jumping
1.88% def all
10.38 Immob Def

Health:
60% res sleep

Tough:
11.25% res smash/lethal

Manuevers:
2.27% all def

Acrobatics:
7.00 Knockback
2.00 Hold prot
60.55% res hold

Still playing around, switched to playing in Mids now.

Energy Aura, 3 slotted defensive/resist powers, no other slots, 32.5 to 40% all types except psi, 32.7 S/L resist, 26.7 energy, 14.9 negative and toxic. zero F/C (ouch). 51.9% DDR with good status resists, 25 end/recovery resist.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...BECE1F67DFFD40

Invuln, same raw IO slotting just to look at base numbers. 25.6% typed, S/L resist 71.3%, F/C/E/N 23.8%, DDR 50%, end/rec resist 25% like EA, same status
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...DFE01708960422

SR for comparison sake. It intrigues me because I'd like to give positional a try. 40.5% M/R/A, 17.8% S/L resist, no other resist without taking damage. 98.7% DDR, no end/rec resist, no repel resist?

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...6FF00BA3BC0E43

Shield, although I'd have to switch to War Mace. 34.1% M/R/A, 35.7% S/L resist, 17.8% resist to the rest except psi (leverage true grit). Good status (although clickie based =<), 53.1% DDR, no end/rec resist.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...93FF0746011492

So, of the DDR sets (ignoring Willpower which doesn't bring enough DDR to the table to qualify on that strength) only EA has an end recovery tool to avoid becoming sapper bait. Fire had a big issue with sappers prior to high defense, but EA starts with defense, so that's a thought. Invuln feels like it would stay pretty vulnerable to sappers and electric draining, although it does a decent job of being sturdy in every other possible scenario. Obviously every set is going to have a hole somewhere, the game is sort of designed that way. I'm just hoping to find the best combination for my own pleasure that avoids most of them, even if it's at the cost of not being a big AV killer. I can certainly live with the psi or toxic vulnerability. on /Fire carnies can certainly kill me, but it's not the Flop It Like Beckham that defense debuffs from the 3 or 4 groups that do them are. But I do know that without an end recovery tool Sappers can quickly turn into that same issue, so I'm somewhat torn.

The other option is a 'sturdier' straight resist set, meaning basically either Dark or Electric. Alternatively I could try Regen possibly, but I've always wondered about how well it survives alpha strikes from big groups, and since I enjoy solo grinding, I'm sort of disinclined to pay the kind of total attention that riding my clickies would require.

And of course, I could consider primaries that give more tools as well, Dark being an obvious one. I really like the idea of TW, being as I sort of want something with the AOE stomping power of SS, but without the crashing. I've tried electric and it just feels a lot slower, even though the DPA on Thunderstrike says it should be good despite the long animation. War Mace and Claws are good, but the shorter range cones somewhat annoy me. TW really shines because of the extra length of it's aoe cones, imo, not just because of the # of aoe attacks.

Anyway, just sort of rambling/thinking out loud at this point.

Fire has enhanceable endurance drain resistance in Consume, so it can be effectively immune to sapping. You're still vulnerable to -recovery, so Drain Psyche sucks, but that's less common and less instant-death-inducing.

If you plan to Incarnate, I know most people do Barrier but Ageless can give you DDR immunity and very high DDR for the remaining time.

http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...adial_Epiphany

If you have solid resistances to begin with, as with Elec Armor, a Melee Core hybrid power can nicely bolster those resistances for 2 minutes at a time. Especially if you're using Cardiac or Resilient. +16% or more resist to all is pretty significant when you're sitting on 40-60% in the first place. This can make cascade failure pretty much a non-issue.

Personally, I prefer Rebirth for Elec Armor, at least for general use, but having an Ageless Radial to swap to for certain situations would be helpful.

I forget, what does ageless look like? Does it put a barrier on you?

To the OP, I have an 2 Inv brutes, and end reduction isn't much of an issue. I mostly ignore sappers. The only place where it has been an issue for me is when soloingArachnos x8. A group full of Mu can hurt. During those times though, I have plenty of inspirations, since I rarely ever use them.

The higher the debuffs, the better Ageless is compared to Barrier. Here are the break even points of the tier 4 after activation:

seconds debuff
00-10 106%
10-23 38%
23-30 76%
30-45 18%
45-60 35%
60-90 24%
90-120 infinite

Here's the info I had:

Ageless Radial Epiphany: +100% end, +70% rech first 10s, 40% next 20s, 20% next 30s, 10% last 60s (120s total), +85% debuff RES first 22.5s, 42.5% next 22.5s, 21.25% last 45s (90s total), 60ft radius

Barrier Core Epiphany: +90% RES/DEF first 10s, 32.5% next 20s, 7.5% next 30s, 5% last 60s (120s total), 60ft radius

Dark with Ageless Radial = Unstoppable...

Went that route on a TW/Dark brute with S/L/E/N @ 45-46% Def and it has been a monster...

Dark is a conglomerate of REALLY good tools for survival...it is FAR more survivable than Fire...

Dark gives you much stronger composite resists than fire does across the board, and has the highest psi resists in the game...

Dark has the most powerful heal in the game, and it's up about every 10-15 seconds...it costs a lot of endurance but good slotting and a theft of essence proc goes a long way to mitigating that issue

Dark has Cloak of Darkness, an inherent +DEF power on the same level as weave with +DEF to ALL...and this power also decreases the perception of foes around you.

Dark also has 2 different mez toggles that can be used for soft control Cloak of Fear is excellent mitigation in melee...it is endurance heavy and needs lots of accuracy, but I find 3 slotting it with the nightmare set gives enough end redux and accuracy to make it viable and not all too costly. Oppressive Gloom is a PBAoE stun aura, and also can be good for mitigation, it does minor damage to you, but costs no endurance and you can 1 slot it with an accuracy IO and be fine.

Dark also has the best self-rez in the game, I am not big on rez powers as they go, but this one leaves you untouchable and puts a mag 30 stun on everything around you. That's right MAG 30 STUN...

Dark also gives you a less resisted type of damage in your damage aura, negative energy is not all that commonly resisted much like fire and cold.

In my mind Dark's survivability is really only surpassed by a stone armor in granite...and you don't have the hefty debuffs to your character to deal with either. Electric can be close to Dark if you build for defense, but I give the edge to Dark because of the soft controls in the Auras and the +DEF power.

Thanks for the answers, I definitely appreciate it. I spent a lot of time the other night building various versions of a TW/?, and some of what I'm basing my perception on is based on those I guess. The big issue is that I ended up 'settling' for going for 32.5 s/l/e/n as the baseline I was shooting for, and then stacking damage or health or whatnot with what I had left over. So maybe I wasn't really playing to the strengths of the armor sets as I tweaked different builds.

Just for yet another set of examples, I'm going to go ahead and link those various builds. I think it's pretty clear from the answers that I really didn't 'get' Dark, so the dark example especially is probably really off. But I do think that they give a good example of various resist levels and status protection available using similar slotting, so maybe it'll help someone else compare them.

Quick note, pretty much all of these builds are planning to replace the Eradication in Titan Sweep with the 5 piece summer set (minus proc, for the 5% energy/negative defense if I'm remembering that right) and the proc in follow through with the upcoming Brute ATO2 proc. Neither is a big issue, just a note. I'm pretty happy with the procs set up I finagled, so I wanted to clarify those.

First up, Dark. 32.5 s/l/e/n, resists at 58.4% s/l, 43.3% F/C 26.5% energy (Frownie faise), 53.1% negative, 26.5% toxic, 45.4% psionic. 13 points knockback, think I put in acrobatics though for /Dark. Neither Cloak of Fear nor Oppressive Gloom were selected, my original thinking was that with TW I've got knockdown in almost every aoe, and saving on endurance would help. I think my slotting on Dark Regen is decent, although it could be better, under the current build it's a 58% heal every 12 seconds for 18 end and a chance to proc 10 end.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...5BE3FF6DC5E913

Since this is where I was confused, here's the /Fire version. Likewise 32.5% s/l/e/n. Resists are 58.4% S/L 90 fire, 29.5% cold (honestly never seen it as a big problem, unlike Energy), 38.2% E/N, 18% toxic, err..3% psi. Healing Flame is slotted with 5 pieced Doctored Wounds, not optimal but a decent set bonus, resulting in a 45% heal every 12 seconds.

Apparently both armor sets have much the same problem (Banished Pantheon and not much else ever), although I can imagine Dark would handle Arachnos at +4 a fair bit easier. I know on SS/Fire I have a lot of problems with +4/x8 PPD in tips, I would think with lower Energy resist /Dark would have it worse. But, I mean, you can see how other than psi it doesn't feel like a major difference on paper, right? I'm honestly very interested if it feels like it's sturdier in practice if you have experience with both.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...D6F83FBBABE711

Electric, 32.5 s/l/e/n, resists 64.2% s/l, 49.1% F/C, 90% energy, 34 negative, 3% toxic (frown), 32.7% psionic. On paper this really does look pretty hot, and while the heal is a let down comparatively: 47% at 40 seconds, it's also adding a hefty +regen and endurance reduction for 30 seconds.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...C6F83FB0CCEA57

I actually did a 45% S/L electric armor build first, but felt I really wanted to maximize all of the Titan Weapon attacks I could, which meant dropping either everything non attack/defense and using mules for kinetics and eradications, or cutting back to the 32/32. Here's the 45% S/L build, though, for comparison. It loses out on recharge, some hit point bonuses, and a bit else, but the BIG difference is in actual raw power of the attacks between the two.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...CEF81FEBFDE415

And for comparison purposes, TW/Invlun, hitting a whopping 49.4% S/L, 32.5% F/C, 45% E/N, with resists standing at 76% S/L, 31.5% F/C, 26.5% E/N/Toxic, and 3% psi. Plus it comes with 50% DDR.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...E7FF0076C9EB63


These are all just kind of rough concept builds, that could no doubt be improved on. But I spent a fair while on them, and maybe they'll help someone else make up their mind. I know they didn't help me at all, I'm still confused as all heck. But it was fun working on them.

And with all that numbers gibberish spouted, back the subject at hand. Now that I've shown my work, like I said, it still doesn't feel on paper like /Dark has that much over /Fire. The heals are fairly close, and the resists are within the same ballpark other than Psi, with Dark taking the lead on toxic at the cost of the, in my opinion, more dangerous energy. Meanwhile on paper Electric Armor really does look as amazing as it's Flavor of the Month status would indicate, and Invuln stacks up really well in terms of what kind of totals you can manage between defense and moderate resists, but doesn't really bring anything else to the table.

As a side side side note, I also tried to do Energy Aura, because it seemed like it doesn't get much love even after it was apparently tweaked a while back? It just felt light in every possible category, and the sort of build gymnastics I had to go through to try to make it feel as sturdy as any of the others didn't leave the kind of room I wanted to maximize TW.

So I still haven't made up my mind on a new PVE aoe machine, but in other news I started a Dark/Regen brute and an electric/shield scrapper after chasing after bits of data or power combinations while working on all this stuff. lol.