Erratic1

As a suggestion, you don't have to monitor blood stacks. You only have to know what sequence of attacks is going to produce full stacks and/or pop Blood Thirst. If you notice in the video clip, I pop Blood Thirst heading in because I want maximum stacks for the Recharge bonus. Thereafter and throughout the clip until I use Rending Flurry I stay at max stacks. And of course if you're at max stacks you're going to have an orange ring around your spenders. What I do not get is the notion that somehow being at max stacks hurts your endurance. Each stack is a savings on endurance cost (to offset higher recharge you get from the stacks). Spending the stacks locks you out of accumulating stacks for a period but you're no worse off than any other character at that point, you just do not get a savings to endurance and extra recharge. Look the clip at 2 seconds in. I keep the power monitor displaying on the upper right. With full Blood Frenzy stacks I am getting +20% Recharge and an Endurance discount of 23%. I grant the negative sign implies (to anyone who sanely uses the language) it is costing your extra endurance, but its a savings, not a cost. [I could rant for some time on how language has shifted since I was a child with such things as "three times smaller"--no, its one-third the size. The use of a negative sign muddies understanding, apparently meaning to indicate lower cost but being applied to the word Discount, implying a negative discount. *shudder*).

One might expect from the above (heavily snipped) that Savage Melee/Energy Aura would be the land of small damage, no endurance, and repeated deaths. With no IOs slotted, at 15 seconds of fighting 4 of 6 opponents are down, two-thirds of endurance remains, and health is almost full. KingsRow2020-12-2604-46-53_Trim.mp4 Seeing two simultaneous hits for 98 on a target may not be as satisfying as seeing 196 fly by, let alone a stream of 20s coming off target as opposed to the entire thing being summed up for 120. I grant, big numbers versus a sea of smaller numbers is subjective. I could post my WM/SD scrapper one-shotting guys and its a great feel. But its not the only feel I draw joy from.

Also, the 6th slot of Superior Might of the Tanker is boosting Smash/Lethal resistance which is already way past cap. Move that to Hecatomb or Armageddon and you pick up 6% Toxic/Psionic resistance.

Minor change, I'll let you be the judge of the improvement. Drops Hurl (You run in and grab aggro, why are you throwing things?) in favor of Rage. Drops Hurl in favor of Rage (because without it Super Strength loses all meaning by comparison to any other secondary powerset). With the slots saved it ups the slotting where you have Unbreakable Guard, giving you more Toxic/Psionic resistance.

If you're not using Kick then the Force Feedback proc slotted in it will never fire. Its doing nothing for you. As for Handclap, I appreciate the use of KB->KD in it but suspect it is unnecessary to your survival for the most part (like 99.5% of the time--made up number but want to get the qualitative sense across). Invulnerability boosts its Defense values based on the number of nearby foes so in a crowd most things probably aren't going to be able to hit you. I seem to recall, long, long ago on my DM/Inv Scrapper leaving trash alive while fighting bosses to maintain my defenses. Of course in a group you cannot really rely on this as your teammates will be killing stuff around you. Even so, with higher resistances than Scrapper get you should be fine. I am not a build god. But I may try to come up with something between doing work today and if nobody has posted anything by the time I'm done, if I have something I will post it.

Actually I think your plan of ranged and the benefit of Sentinel armor preventing Mez makes a lot of sense for no muss, no fuss. The only thing that might be a potential downside is if that results in lack of engagement on your wife's part. To that end, certain powersets are probably better than others. Water Blast is, to my mind, a very fun primary. Might not be the highest damaging one but it comes with a lot of visual rewards (and a self heal). Geyser, Water Burst, Water Jet, and Whirlpool are all visually enticing. That moves you on to secondary powersets to consider. There I would lean to one with low maintenance--turn it on and forget it. Of course that only matters if you're making the character for her. If she's choosing the powersets, then whatever she likes.

That is what I do. You can see it in the video above.

Another in the series of Its Not Mine, But Its Aweome! (permission granted to post):

Not that your point on Defenses is not something to keep in mind. I do not generally notice it on my Brute but that is probably because Bio comes with a number of survivability powers--Ablative Armor, DNA Siphon, and Parasitic Aura. Electrical Armor (Tankers don't get Energy Aura) doesn't have the same up its sleeve. Arguably Radiation Armor with Beta Decay might be the best option here if a rebuild is in mind and sticking with Super Strength. Of course could go Rad Armor/Energy Melee too.

His complaint was about the endurance crash. That is what I was addressing.

The other option is to pair Super Strength with a powerset which will make you not care about the endurance crash--Bio, Electrical, Energy, or Radiation.

The clip below is 13 seconds long. At 2 seconds I use Foot Stomp, which has a Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge IO in it. At 7 seconds I use Knockout Blow which also has Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge slotted. No Recharge IOs are slotted in either power. At the end of the clip Foot Stomp is ready again. You can see when the proc is applied (blue icon of a guy lying prone with an up arrow). If you pay attention to the countdown timer, you can see it leaping around based on when the proc is active and where it runs out. The time to recycle corresponds to no Recharge bonus and two back to back procs of the Recharge proc. ForceFeedbackWorkst.mp4 I know you have one in Kick but you don't have anything else slotted in the power. Do you actually use it? The benefit in Foot Stomp is its being checked against everyone hit by Foot Stomp. Knockout Blow is single target but has a fairly long recycle time. Not sure if you can scrounge up the slots for it (video is of a Brute with Bio Armor).

I've never used axe. 😛 And I note in my character with Mace that he has to restrain himself (against the cursed mace's desires).

Shouldn't that be:

I believe there is a thread up currently questioning Dominators vs Contrllers. Corruptors and Defenders act sufficiently differently--one being a stronger buffer the other being a stronger damage dealer. There is no Defenders get to have extra area on their attacks to fix their solo experience, they were given extra damage only when they were alone and I noted this upthread. (Would it have been fine for Tankers to only get their extra area when they are playing solo?) Otherwise Defenders and Corruptors are so alike I suspect they are much more in the play the favor you like mode. Stalkers and Scrappers oddly, to my mind anyway, are different enough. Stalkers don't appeal to me near so much as Scrappers (weird I know). But yeah, I play both Tankers and Scrappers and enjoy them both for their differences mostly.

Look at what I written. It was not that Brutes were inferior damage dealers it was that Brutes are neither the top damage dealers nor the top survivors. The statement was that if role protection has prompted changes then what role is the Brute supposed to excel at. I happily grant that Brutes are fun to play (to me at least). However I do not remember at any point there being a shortage of Tankers either.

All clear here.

Of my 50ish or so characters, all but one or two have bios (I generally have a backstory in mind as I start the character, the one or two that don't I'll get around to a backstory for). Titles are less important to me, so perhaps a third of them have one intentionally set. If I am not using the default animation (which is a lot of the time) then I will choose color effects for the powers and/or alternate animations. The most involved of my characters, a color mage, had different colors set for every power.

You responded to me, so what you were talking about was not the topic.

Right now on a team with 3 Brutes and a Stalker for melee. It is brutally fun.

Damage and tanking would be biathalon, no?

Which mostly works for me. Just it seems that other ATs got role protection. Of course that might come down to defining the Brute role as, "2nd Best at Both"

I am not sure how this came back around to Tank damage/survivability versus Brute damage/ survivability. The question is what unique role does the Brute serve on a team that is not eclipsed by other ATs.

I would never have imagined the Council dealt so much in Negative. I am not so surprised on the S/L for the Carnies between Strongmen, the various jugglers, knife throwers, fencers, etc. Phasing is annoying with the added downside that while it pays to wait for phase in something else that phase may be shooting at you. They are however mostly an annoyance faction. Hatred is reserved for others.