Erratic1

Pretty sure when I look at character's Info I do not see 44% of them with lists of IO powers showing. I would imagine that players who generate hundreds of million of influence weekly account for most of the AH activity in the IO market while not necessarily representing a large portion of the user base. 3.6 billion shares of stock are traded daily on the New York Stock Exchange. That does not mean that 47% of the planet is involved in trading stock on NYSE, nor that the average American is involved in a thousand trades daily.

Leads to children with the Insmouth Look.

On the current Brute I am working on I did not slot any powers until 21, and then only slotted Accuracy SOs in his attacks until level 30. Over that run he was a non-stop engine of beating things down, only having to be a bit judicious when joining groups running at +3 or more. I am not sure you should judge all Brutes based on sets which provide limited Resistance/Defense.

nihilii covered the facts (while I was busy editting a screenshot of Critical Strikes in action): My understanding of the "rules of PPM" is there is a negative factor to likelihood of a proc based on the width an area attack power and a gain to the likelihood based on the base recharge time of the power. I keep mine in Savage Leap--a 40s recharge, 360 degree attack--as it tends to be an combat opener for me. For purposes of the image I used single target follow up attacks but in theory I should have pre-popped Blood Thirst before Savage Leap to follow up with Rending Flurry.

I am awed and more than a little terrified.😲 Did get a chance to repeatedly test Rage crashing and yeah, it just wasn't painful (at least at +2...nowhere near built enough to contemplate +4/8). Where it would be dangerous, at least with how I have to approach harder content currently, would be if I were in Defensive stance and hence might be lower in endurance, and experienced the crash. However I have been following advice I got somewhere along the way and only running Accuracy IOs atm, so no Endurance Modifications in Stamina or Inexhaustable.

It may very well work on a Tanker, but I started an SS/Bio Brute this past weekend. I was thinking, "Offensive Stance + Rage, what's not to love?' Well, Rage is complicated and Offensive Stance...move over, because your master is Efficient Stance. The thing I discovered is that I take little enough damage that so long as I have endurance, I can continually be on the go, not pausing to recover health or endurance. If you stay on the go, your Fury stays up. And Fury significantly trumps the damage bonus from Offensive Stance. A thing I am going to have to test is the Rage crash. I was using Rage and running between spawns above and did not notice the crash. Maybe I was moving between spawns, so I am going to have to specifically test this though. Moreover it was nothing special in terms of difficulty, so the crash may be more significant when trying to gear for +4/8.

Brutes have higher damage than Tankers and hit higher resistance caps (when that is what your protective powerset is focused on) than Scrappers.

Impressive story. I would not sully it by claiming any tie to it.

I usually try to tie to CoH lore, but in this case I am pulling from real world history. Its a dark and recent chapter of history:

I have a sufficiently large stable of characters I want to play up languishing in their 30s and 40s that I really should not have done it, but I really wanted to try an SS/Bio Brute. As I noted upthread, most times I decide on the character I want to play, put together a workable outfit, and usually later, if the character seems like one I want to play past level 21, I usually return and give the costume some reconsideration. So odd are the following will not be the character's final costume. Even so, I am currently pretty happy with it because (a) I got that blasted chest piece to work finally and (b) the colors.... I'd started out with very different colors, then thinking on the background for the character it occurred to me to do an homage to the Argentinian flag. I think the colors work really well together. Not sure if I am going to name him Birthright or Unconquerable. Which one do you think is the better name?

I ended up with the Crit Proc in Savage Leap and tried out Overwhelming Force in Rending Flurry instead. I have been quite happy with how that's worked out.

That worked perfectly. Thanks!

Doing so produced an error message which was unclosable. The only way to do anything was force closure. Now trying to run Mids returns: Problem with Shortcut The item 'Mids Reborn.exe' that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved, so this shortcut will no longer work properly. Do you want to delete this shortcut?

Darn you biostem! You got me thinking of ram-horned characters and now I have put together a costume for a character I have not even built: There does not seem to be sufficient love of Malaise in costume designs. I am leaning towards a Super Strength Brute concept involving mystical armor. But don't think I am forgetting you are to blame biostem! Wrecker.costumeWrecker 2.costume

With the name Power Siphon, it seemed a reasonable extension. That the power is auto or click should determine the penalty and scaling. Since auto gives you no choice the penalty should be less and because it is all the time the bonus should be smaller. As a click power, with the ability to choose when best to use it, the bonus can be higher and likewise the risk of the penalty higher too. Hmmm...both of best worlds? A power which when taken gives a permanent lower effect and clicks for augmented effect?

Agreed. My KM/Bio Scrapper has slotted the Overwhelming Force set and converted the Knockback to Knockdown, making it a very useful power.

Sandbox thinking... What if when Power Siphon is activated not only do attacks made generate stacks but also incoming attacks that deal either Smashing or Energy damage? Or maybe go further and make Power Siphon an auto power where incoming attacks (taking damage) builds stacks, Kinetic Melee attacks spend stacks, stacks build to 10 but at stack values greater than five incoming damage is increased by 20% per stack. Or maybe it should remain a click power if 10 stacks will scale you to taking double damage, you just have great incentive to spend stacks quickly.

As I noted upthread, Shield disappointed me back on live (and Shield is awesome) but Bio has kept me excited. Also might consider Rad or Energy Aura.

Riffing off Mjolnerd's excellent design (and in full agreement about having to work with what the designer has), a slight variation you could easily get to:

Back on live I found it highly annoying when other people's attacks would go off and kill things while I was still animating on my KM/Shield scrapper. Been a bit happier with my KM/Bio scrapper this time around but I also solo more.

Guess I should be happy my character concept fits with taking Psi as epic, though I will have to figure out if it fits better than going Fire.

I would imagine just about anything */Bio is going to do pretty well. As Fire was designed to be the highest damaging set Fire/Bio should do particularly well and is a popular combination (I have one myself). I am half tempted to make a Sonic/Bio, which would capitalize on debuffing the target's damage resistance in combination with the damage boost from Bio's Offensive stance. But since I dislike repeating sets on ATs and already have a Fire/Bio sentinel, it is not a combination I would expect to get around to soon.

Would Overwhelming Force: Chance for Knockdown be worth it in Savage Leap? Its only 20% chance and on a radius 360 power... ...may have answered my own question.

Handy thing is you have lots of costumes to fill slots with.