Erratic1

I'd rather watch paint dry, or go fishing than farm. Crafting is slightly more tolerable. Of course I am not poor either, even if I am not rolling in enough spare influence to kite out a dozen characters. I merely appreciate that people play the game in a variety of ways and some of those ways are not going to generate influence willy-nilly.

I don't know...sounds like the same argument is being applied in game that is applied in real life....something about not working hard enough.

Now you're assuming the amount of time they spend on their higher level characters and how much of what that character generates is spare to spend on other characters.

Assumption of influence that many people don't wallow in. Also a question of knowing you'll like the character enough to know you want to invest in them at that level. I have characters I have soured on for other reasons at double that level.

Part of that is because if you're still experiencing endurance problems as you near 50, even on SOs, people drop the character. Unless you're hardheaded like me.

To be fair it was a tradeoff. A bit of a trim from max potential but an increase in ease of maintaining Fury.

Tankers had their damage dealing capabilities increased, Brutes had theirs decreased. Have you checked the Trapdoor thread and seen some of the times Tankers are managing? I admit I sometimes wish for half the modifier Tankers get on their defensive set powers. Not because Brutes have a hard time surviving with a proper build as is, but so that fewer slots had to be plowed into getting that survivability and more could be dedicated to damage. But that's probably being greedy. Let's invert that...What role do Brutes play which is not better served by a Tanker or Scrapper? Well you have been sparking flint in ground left burned from the last great Brute/Tanker Confrontation. 😁

Bio generates endurance (in Efficient stance it does even more) and Shield is not particularly endurance hungry. Nothing slurps down endurance like Dark Armor as goes secondary powersets. But if you want true misery, you could go Rad Melee/ Dark Armor. *shudder*

I am not looking at pushing more than S/L resistance. Fire/Cold could probably be pushed to an equivalent place but the tradeoffs would not be worth it.

Tankers get higher returns on their protective powersets than do other melee ATs so pushing towards capping both defense and resistance is considerably less work for them.

I have never really noticed SS being endurance intensive. But then I have it paired with Bio and generally play in Efficient stance.

Crafting level 25 basic IOs will save you a very nice chunk of influence over the course of leveling a character to 50. I used to do level 30 basics but then realized there was not that much difference in effectiveness between 25s and 30s and of course you can get into 25s 5 levels sooner. Because they do not expire like generic SOs do you never pay to upgrade them as your character levels. If you really want to save going forward, when you get around to replacing them (with set IOs or simply higher level generics once you reach 50) you can use a respec to unslot all your enhacements (and let's face it, you probably will want to reconfigure your power/slotting choices once you hit 50 anyway) and either keep them in your character inventory/mail/guild storage for future characters to use.

I play a mix of solo and group and am not too worried about Pylons beyond survivability. And while I will not deny a certain joy at the scale of the numbers thrown around by either my DM/EA scrapper or EM/Shield Stalker, there is quite a bit of joy wading into a crowd with the SS/Bio or Elec/Stone brutes and hurting everything nearby. The question really is how reasonable it is to forgo the higher resistance cap Brutes offer when playing a Defense secondary.

I tend to agree about Granite's aesthetic properties, which is why I am going non-Granite. Though I half contemplated making another Elec/Stone brute who uses Granite so I could take the name Shock Rock.

I will feel no shame about my SS./Bio brute...NONE!

As I was fiddling with the most recent version of my non-Granite using Elec/Stone brute's build, pushing up Defense values on her, it came to me to wonder, "Why am I not playing her as a Scrapper or Stalker if I am going to let her highest resistance value languish beneath 75%?" So I boosted her S/L Resistance to 80%, which while not much more than 75% is backed by Scaling Defense from Reactive Defenses--I can feel like I am trying to make use of the Brute's higher resistance caps compared to Scrappers and Stalkers. So am I weird for wanting to make use of the Brute perk even on Defense based secondaries?

Certainly not going to this is good as I took my Fire/Bio Sentinel, swapped Water for Fire, then danced around some powers and IOs to end up with it, but maxes S/L resist while in Offensive stance, not horrible F/C/E/N defenses. I offer it more for ideas you can mine than anything else: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1550;708;1416;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EFB43394B6148A144AE993525EA5D41670AF086CB49168A| |2CB4903431D53A6A4AD09FA31DCA0F1B5E64B181F5B9F0908AE8DD185A8096BACA7| |73FE97626692C96FEEB9F73CEE794C697BA9676363E5A2507A2F57CB8D867EC3B09| |AA66554BB4B779BE5A659B3043DBE9269ADA716ABE5FB868796517948BF5EB62AC6| |7AFE56B969D475DA6F34D3A77B4BC68661358CFCA259D3AFD52B65CB5CD32FD5376| |B75E15FADD5AAF995AA59B9DD0CF077FBD3B42A217BB5BCBD65D4CD4D326447C047| |4AC6BAB9468623CB5BE65AFED4CB6AC3D44BE4D7A8DF1BA6D0A6E98D4D09F9B454F| |194505485EB19F89CA9EEABCC0366B8ADA9B092260A8A2DEC2A82F3CCEE05304C8C| |ABC237E7B6D771F2A8405955760869DA7CC8EC79043E66F63E612648C92D3DBA4F3| |88CE05FE639A1311566C8057E678F110A57931EB5208735D40F0E7078C3217090E5| |7E2A9E0789119E285BDA254B5E586A252926BF4C9D1FA91B41EA4690BAD81EC718F| |BCC1C260B01581081141F1A254B7DF2767D5E8E3EE103FD600F3315007B996952EE| |97CAFD6FD94DEA1D73F43DF801FCC81CFB847314CE00EEA00CFCE05B8EFD647AE9F| |E8332D641E42545EEC25CFC9608EFBA84089106092332C31194670CE5C9A03C1994| |2783F2A4C977549A8FB6E8110A798CCBA4C76D51864C27E5F592876C72E20BA8B1A| |9892EE6A40744E5DD642F2DE34AA35127D1A8D373201A761A0DAB92D2B8541A3F11| |765B6443BC993D66CB59A423770539A3CB4C49A52978CAC1530E1E66E161F602F32| |B29CD48A59917D87CC93CFF0A7C0DBE617E23A53C72E4CEEFB9ECF08AFBE00178C8| |1CA1C30599E3C24DB67087C757B3BB38A6767E00ED35A5FCAA53B4AACA812791628| |B8E7C9D3986E89753F4FB8C4851DA0D3649537DC4FCF3DFE603174FF50E33EB8CA2| |E014159DA279A768C129F206E98F02512BDA9E6BB9889D5D24CE4EBC18EA4C7CEB1| |F1608FEE6| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Oh my...throw in Cardiac and your ranges become somewhat silly. I kinda want to see Steam Spray with 72 range.

Not an opinion on builds, but at least on the third one, if you slot Moonbeam with 3 IOs from Thunderstrike (Acc/Dam, Dam/Rchg, Acc/Dam/Rchg) and 3 from Exploit Weakness (Acc/Dam, Dam/End, Dam/Rchg) you end up with higher F/C/E/N Defenses, more damage on Moonbeam, and it recharges faster.

Back on Live I made a KM/Shield scrapper and got him to the point of having his T9 power... ...where you spend so much time waving your hand around that your team has killed what you are targeting already and moved on. It is deeply frustrating. It is not like you have a wealth of AoEs to compensate for a nearly useless T9 power or some other special gimmick. And that was on a Scrapper where in theory you might recharge the power on a crit hit. On a Brute you don't even get that. Can you have fun with the set? Yes. Got a KM/Bio scrapper despite my initial experience. But don't kid yourself that you would not be better off playing even one of the other powersets that people find lackluster.

I am trying to not make new characters until I get a couple of existing ones to 50 and kited out. Even so, I think about costumes. I was really wanting something along the lines of Ikaris from Marvel's Eternals but circular chest badges and hanging cloth from the front is hard to replicate (darned Terra robe is basically mono-color). Even so, I kept dancing around and somehow ended up at a different Marvel hero--Quasar. A real shame the character modelling it has his costume's colors dictated by his bio. But perhaps a future character?

The thing about SS/EA is that with EA solving all your endurance needs and boosting recharge while you're standing in a crowd, you could pretty easily achieve and sustain being in perma-Hasten. Darn, I'm going to talk myself into building it at this rate. My SS/Bio (who serves as my avatar) was targeted at his v2 build but I got to v4 before getting all the IOs bought so he's in a weird (though quite functional) in-between place. I'll attach v6 which is the current target he's not far from.

I had an SS/EA back on live and have an SS/Bio now. I knew more about building a character (and had the resources to do so) on the SS/Bio but I think either would be really good (well, know SS/Bio is since I play it now).

Yeah, you can be some other guy. 😄

Nope. The website the link goes to has an invalid certificate which causes problems for people who dislike disabling security to see your build. The hex code will import and doesn't risk a thing. If you want me to look at your build in Mid's, there had better be hex.

Shield done right doesn't really need it but you could always make a DM/Shield or Rad/Shield character if you want healing. The charge is a pseudo-pet which derives is damage value from class base damage values. Brutes have a low value which gets augmented by Fury for their normal attacks but does not impact Shield Charge. That is what makes people point to Scrapper/Stalkers/Tankers (higher default defense values) for Shield over Brutes.