Erratic1

Bio and Rad are hybrid sets. Arguably so too is Invulnerability. Also looks like Energy Aura got left out. For that matter, Ninjitsu too.

Found it, and I misremembered. It was Savage/Shield Scrapper vs Savage/Electrical Brute in their mid-20s. Scrapper edged Brute, 13s to 16s.

DoTs do not scale with crits do they Damage over time scales with Fury. I forget if there is a mechanism scaling crits to damage over time or not. I do know I made both a Savage Melee/Electric Scrapper and Brute. I think after testing Brute performed better but let me get home and confirm before I say for certain.

So your original response should simply have been, "I'd go with scrapper", or, "Scrapper, because I don't like Brutes".

Fury builds because you are attacking or being attacked. Fewer things attacking you due to being focused on other players and spending time moving because your target got killed faster due to others attacking your target is less Fury. The reason Brutes move off on their own is often due to a team denying them Fury opportunities.

You are positing it being easier to keep fury up on a team?

I was fighting Tsoo and against Mr Cyclone was whiff, whiff whiffing. Someone using Build Up might just have gone ahead, popped it, used a big attack and been done with the matter. Is there any upside whatsoever in building up a damage bonus over time? Particularly on ATs with no reset mechanism?

How do you know what people are doing with posted builds? I've looked at dozens upon dozens of builds over time to see what someone has done (in this game and others) and have NEVER copied a build. As goes COH, there are a couple of slotting tricks I've picked up.

Dawns on me another strike against Power Siphon--it has to build its damage increase over time but only gets a 7.5% To-Hit bonus, unlike Build Up's 20%. So unless you have something else boosting your To-Hit, against higher level opponents you're likely to whiff, whiff, whiff and get little out of the power, which already was waiting to deliver big damage.

Just noticed that Brutes and Tankers get higher damage debuff from the various powers of the set than do Scrapper. Pretty minor advantage, but I guess better than nothing.

Any updates here? Have to say, when I came back to the game after a few month's break and saw they had added Storm Blast, this post inspired me to make a Storm/Ninjitsu sentinel (who is plenty fun). Based on her, I am now trying out a Storm/Atomic blaster and loving it. Still, I wonder how much fun Storm/Ninjitsu is on a blaster.

While I would NEVER suggest KM to anyone, you do know I am currently working up a KM Tanker. Why? Apparently I want to suffer.

Given DDR I probably would not chase, it, just take what comes naturally. Been a while since I last did a straight up Resistance build (as opposed to Hybrid or Defense). I got into Brutes after playing my first, a DM/Elec and it was pretty survivable, but go figure with two heals and two endurance recovery methods. Maybe +Rchg/Healing is the way to go with Resist sets?

I have moved from the camp that sees Def>Res>Heal to thinking a character isn't really suitably protected until they have covered two of the three in their build, regardless of what the armor set provides. Yeah, adding Defense to a resistance set does mean your Defense can be stripped, but you still will have all Resistance and it should be at high values. While Defense sets from with DDR, that merely constrains how much Def they lose.

If you are playing a Defensive set you are aiming for 45% at a minimum, regardless of the set being positional or elemental focused. If you can reasonably push into the 50s, you should do so (because defense debuff is a thing), though some of that comes down to the particulars of the set and how much Defense Debuff Resistance the set comes with. You will also want to raise your resistances as well, but that is less efficient for you than getting your defenses up to snuff. Positional has fewer categories to work towards improving, but Elemental is not horrible to work with. I would not generally choose to skip one Defense armor set over another because one is elemental vs positional. Resistance will want S/L/E/N/C/F covered at a minimum, T/P as you can (typically hard to max out). Historically S/L have been the absolute must haves at 90%, but frankly you're going to want to get all of them up into the 80+ range if you can. While you can only have 90% effective to damage, your resistance resists being debuff based on its value, so having 100% means not having to worry about being resistance debuffs. However that is not generally something to build towards on a Brute, just if you happen to go past 90% on your build there is benefit to be had there. I cannot say I recall being taunted in PvE all that much (if at all). Mez resistance is typically tied to one of your armor set powers and is pretty binary (with certain powersets being an exception--say Fiery Aura).

Three click powers: Ablative Carapace-Base 90s recharge DNA Siphon-Base 90s base recharge Parasitic Aura-Base 270s recharge How are you spending significant portions of combat clicking defensive powers? Comparatively, nobody ever calls Radiation Armor clicky and yet it has just as many click powers. And as for not dealing damage when you are clicking those powers, sure Bio is not, "Its just own and works" like Willpower. But then it has a damage aura and a stance both of which are adding to your damage the entire time you're fighting. One suspects that whatever damage you are losing for taking animation time for a click power to engage is suitably compensated, especially if you are in a fight long enough to be clicking any of the powers multiple times.

You have three clicks, one of which is on a longish recharge. What rotation are you engaged in that is meaningfully taking time away from dealing damage? As goes the longer recharge on Parastic Aura, I wrote elsewhere: Mind you, that is from a Brute perspective. Still, significantly boosting your Regen and Recovery and debuffing the damage of everything around you at the beginning of a fight is a straightforward proposition and you have 45s of use before its duration runs out. Elsewhere in that post I noted:

Yeah, psi is somewhat dangerous to my SS/Bio Brute. It is the reason when facing Carnival of Shadows the bosses have to be taken out pronto (especially if you're running +4x8). I am surprised that your Defense values were so low, unless you were running pre-IO. It is strong from beginning to end and some debuffs you do laugh at. "Oh, you're going after my endurance?"--but that is from the standpoint of playing it as a Brute designed to operate in Efficient Stance. My Bio/Rad Tanker is (somewhat obviously) designed to operate in Offensive, so things may work out differently there (I should play him more, but he's my villain side character and I do not play him as much).

Even if it is, do you wanna be right? * If you're not old enough to get the reference, too bad for you.

So many confrontational ways to respond to this, but you know I will just make this short and simply: FINE. BELIEVE WHATEVER DELUSIONAL THING YOU WANT. I have three times tried to explain how you are wrong, and I am fine with you having a persecution complex. I am not falling into the following with you:

@Snarky give me strength... You do realize anyone can provide an answer to a question on an open forum? If you only want one person to answer a question you can send direct, private messages.

Or you could weight the freeing up of names based both on how long the holder has been absent and both how new the account trying for the name is and how many names the account has tied to it. So new players would get a jump on getting a name but only to a point.

You asked a question. Here, let me remind you, as apparently in your rush to accuse me of lying you have forgotten: THAT IS YOU ASKING A QUESTION. I gave an answer with explanation of the initial question: How desirable is the name Frostbiter? I then delved into how even with it (quoting you here), "...not [being] the best name I could have come up with..." it is still something someone would likely try and be willing to settle on. Had I some secret agenda to be hostile to you, why would I have thumbs upped your explanatory post?

I am an active (on again/off again) player and upthread I displayed the character slot of a character I have not touched in 4.8 years. I do not think my activity on a subset of characters should immunize that character from having its name stripped in favor of someone who wants it because if I truly, really wanted to keep the name, I could login on it ever so often like I do with my character who holds lead on the SG I inherited when my friends stopped playing. I agree, one should not be stripped of a character name quickly for a life circumstance change, deployment on military duty, etc. So oddly, I would argue greater protection for someone whose account has remained completely untouched (up to a limit) than for characters on account like mine, because it is so very obvious that I am not using the name.

I do not think you did something wrong. You explained the tie to your forum name, which casts things in a different light, but even if it hadn't...there is nothing wrong with you fulfilling a desire to uniquely have the name. I am just noting the name space for obvious names for various character concepts is limited, so people are going to hit on the central set of names and the easy variations quite quickly. So 'Frostbiter' is not really something so unusual as for it not to be a name someone would likely seek to get at some point. I attempted to illustrate how people latch onto increasingly non-obvious names by referencing my character Ghosthammer. What with the history of Black superheroes (and now villains--Black Manta was not originally Black, but someone decided to lean heavily into the trope), I really wish I had been able to get the name 'Black Ice'. 'Black <anything simple>' though is probably completely camped at this point.