Erratic1

You should be able to solo +1 stuff without IO sets. Not sure how using IO sets is min-maxing while not using them is somehow pure of intent, but you can start into IO sets at least 25 levels earlier. So swap when inclined, you have the resources, and have a plan in mind.

For a given amount of health, regen, and resistance there is an amount of incoming damage which will eventually bring health to zero with higher rates of damage doing so more quickly. Having increased defense shifts that threshold for the amount of damage necessary to see defeat upward. So against opponents which do not debuff defense you are better off. Let's posit defense is absolute worthless versus defense debuffing opponents. You're no worse off against them than you'd have otherwise been short of whatever other survival investments you could have made. If your powersets do not bring you high regen, IOs aren't getting you there. Nor are you getting substantial hp gains. Defense, of some sort, is omnipresent...you just have to configure it for the most part. The place your argument goes wrong things the leap from if you did not need defense to survive debuffing enemies to that suggesting you did not need it against non-debuffing ones. If Cimmerorans debuff me with their spears, there is still 90% resistance to their Lethal attacks. A non-debuffing foe targeting a lower resistance is less of a threat when it has to overcome defense.

Used to, so no longer does now that they are only checked against by Cold as damage type. So going S/L defense does not help any longer and going Positional does not hurt. 👍

Think I found it: Highlighted the ones where Melee positional would serve you better than Smashing/Lethal typed. Rather obviously things like Council machineguns and Cimmeroran spears (which I hope are S/L) would be better served with S/L defense.

I will need to go back and check that then. Capped Melee has been working fine for the character but then you figure a lot of what comes that way would be S/L anyway. Not sure what exactly would be delivering F/C/E/N/T/P via mele (well, maybe Behemoth demons could do F with their swords).

I think your information may be a bit out of date about the majority of attacks having smash/lethal components. That got changed. As for positional vs typed, I wanted to minimize things in melee hitting me regardless of type. Yeah, there is ranged S/L damage, but I am not generally worried about that as it is not hard to get things to come to you and I am at capped S/L resistance (E resistance too, which made the screenfuls of Mu I fought recently with the character on a Scirocco arc laughably easy). What I would like to pull off someday is something like capped resistances and soft-capped Range. Then I'd be set.

My original character in Live was a Radiation/Electrical defender. Many years later, after I was no longer playing the original (for reasons we'll skip past), I made a character who was her son as a Dark Melee/Electrical armor brute, corrupted in the womb by the dark magics used by one of the foes his mother had fought before knowing she was pregnant. Even took the brute around the alignment wheel via morality missions (as opposed to Null) to represent him falling to the corruption and redeeming himself (had to get those Patron powers some way).

Well, there is no singular "right way" to play the game. But as I noted, you are going to run out of content at some point. There are a finite number of different bank and radio missions on top of story arcs and trials. Boy, there is something that is going to be interesting...only going after Hamidon once, win or lose because narratively, you could win or lose and whatever happens is whatever happens. Let me seriously warn you about going after Lord Recluse because I have seen that one fail more than once. OTOH, you could always recreate a powerset combo as the offspring of the previous hero, determined to take down the things that their parent could not handle.

Bank missions repeat. You fight a limited set of opponents on them. Are you going to stop doing them and radio missions after you have done every Bank mission which exists? And if the notion is that Radios are fine to repeat, then what makes SF/TFs less fine?

SF/TFs reward you with merits (double for the weekly once per character per week). Merits are your short path to influence and the things bought with influence. Repeating them is seriously the norm. Though I do have to wonder how far a character could go doing no bit of content more than once. Even radio missions repeat. Only doing something once and never doing it again...strikes me as really limiting.

This is confusing. You say soft-cap S/L with slightly resistance is better but end by suggesting it doesn't feel good to be DDR debuffed, which is a counterpoint to the latter being better.

Definitely Electrical Armor judging by the Negative, Toxic, and Psionic numbers. While Electrical Armor does not have any DDR, I would probably still go for the second build because not everything you fight has Defense Debuff (or at least that is what I am doing with my recently 50 Energy Melee/Electrical Brute and I have no complaints so far, though instead of capping S/L Defense I capped Melee Defense).

A bit of a necro, but just to have it on the record.... The proc does fire in Lightning Field and the number of targets drives up the likelihood of it firing. I tested by leaping into groups of Super Arachnoids in Grandville. But it does not fire that often and you need to be in a crowd to really notice it. However, stick the proc in Stamina and Holy Hannah...it goes insane: 2024-11-16 00:21:03 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. 2024-11-16 00:21:13 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. 2024-11-16 00:21:23 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. 2024-11-16 00:21:33 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. 2024-11-16 00:21:43 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. 2024-11-16 00:22:03 You are healed by your Power Transfer: Chance to Heal Self for 74.96 health points. That is with it slotted in only Stamina. It missed firing at 21:53. Still, 450 health back in a minute. On a build with no self-healing or one which is slow, it seems like a real plus.

Almost certain some would not see those things as incompatible. And certainly others would not see a need for the clear derision packed in the question.

I don't dislike cones a priori. But Proton Sweep does not cover a particularly large arc at 75 degrees. With 12 o'clock directly ahead of you, 60 degrees would be from 11 to 1. 75 degrees being 25% larger makes the range go from 10:45 to 1:15. And Proton Sweep only has a 9% chance at contaminating what it hits.

Has anyone yet found a reason to take Proton Sweep from Rad Melee?

Going to revise this to its usefulness depends upon crowd size. Been playing more x6-x8 lately and it is quite handy there.

Hmmm...I almost never take Build Up on Brutes, and when I do its late with little investment.

I am unusually satisfied with the latest costume for my red side Brute, Dreadshock. Not a complicated costume but I like the lightning bolt striking upward out of the darkness on his chest.

A lot of times yes, sets will get used in a repeated fashion across attacks or defensive powers. But it is all constrained by the limit of 5 set bonuses of the same type and of course the needs of the build.

You get one bonus for each extra piece of a set you slot in a power past the first. By slotting from more than one set, you are paying the initial cost of not getting a bonus more than once--slotting two 3 pieces of two different sets in a power gets you two bonuses from the first set and two from the other for a total of 4 bonuses as opposed to the 5 you could have had by slotting from one set. The other drawback to split sets in a power is some bonuses only come at 5 and 6 slots. But there are times you will do so because you do not need the higher bonus (either you have maxed out on the attribute, or it does nothing meaningful for you) and/or because you can get the lower bonus of high value twice by splitting the pieces across two powers. As example, Superior Brute's Fury gives +5 Defense bonus to Smashing/Lethal. You are going to be hard-pressed to find +5 Defense anywhere else on non-special sets at only a 3-piece requirement. Do it twice and you now have +10 Defense bonus to Smash Lethal and 3 slots in the two powers who are available for use. Splitting Superior Brute's Fury that way loses 4% Damage Buff, +10 Global Recharge, and +6% Smash/Lethal Resistance but there the character in question was already at max Smash/Lethal resistance, is not missing the 4% Damage Buff, and difference of 10% Global Recharge is minimal, even applied to all powers compared to the gain for the character in terms of defense.

Well it has a very limited damage boost via crit from stealth, no? I am currently working up an Energy/Ninjutsu Blaster and enjoying it. An Energy/Ninjitsu Sentinel would trade some damage but be a better protected. Might consider a Ninjitsu Sentinel (with some other primary than Energy) at some point.

That you can change stance doesn't mean you have to and a click heal and damage shield are pretty obviously better to have than not have and easy to determine when to use. I never take my Fire/Bio out of Offensive Stance. While a properly built Bio can stand in melee pretty well, if you treat them like a ranged class with status protection the one remaining click power on Bio doesn't see much use. SR doesn't click anything? Well that also means no healing if it comes to that. You can play Bio as Invulnerability, just with an added damage shield.

I am not particularly inclined to lookup set bonuses and do the math to figure out your global numbers because you didn't post them and didn't use Mid's, but Energy Aura is a top tier set and it has holes just like every armor set does (e.g. Shield is beloved by many yet does not heal you, provide endurance, or increase recharge while Energy Aura does each of those). I believe the last comparisons I made between Scrapper and Brute yielded faster kills for the Scrapper but they were not identical guilds, but rather builds to lean as heavily as possible into the defensive sets which best benefitted from each AT's mechanics--damage auras for Brutes and shield for the Scrapper for extra damage-backed crits. I have a Savage/Energy Scrapper from my early days on Homecoming, when I was less adept at building. I think I was leaning heavily into the +Recharge aspect of the Blood Frenzy stacks coupled with Entropic Aura. You're never going to get the sheer numbers of something like Battle Axe/Shield but the idea was to try to maximize the volume of the crits performed. I have four charters I am currently focusing on with another four waiting behind them (though there is a chance some of these may fall to the wayside), so it could easily be next year this time before I could find time to seriously go at retooling my Savage/EA. OTOH, he's got the influence and mats...shouldn't take much time or effort....

I almost strictly PUG and have done countless 4*s with the overwhelming majority of them proceeding without a hitch because most people do not set things that high without the capability to back it up and advertise how they are running so the people coming know what to expect and judge if they are a fit. But I do not have a problem with people going off and forming groups to fit their taste. If that floats their boat, that is fine...they do not owe others anything.