Shred Monkey

Lucky for you, they do not have very good defense against your -HP powers. You see an eyeball, you punch/kick/stab/blast it. Problem solved.

I was looking for some posts about brute ma or brute /shield as well since I'm playing one up currently. I was surprised I had to go this far back in the forums to find anything. But I think that's because brute forums seem to be mostly about farming. This isn't a farming build... it's also not a Single Target specialist, but if that's what you want then a scrapper or stalker will be better anyway. From my theory crafting (and the reason I'm playing one) is that MA/Shield Brute should be able to reach very extreme survivability, while doing about 15-20% more DPS then a tank version. Also, IMHO, MA/Shield is a solid winner in the "looks cool" category. I considered MA/invul like Werner mentioned above, but if I was going to give up Defense Debuff Resists (DDR), I'd just go back to one of my blasters.

I like MA/Shield brute for this task. Brutes do really well at low levels due to fury providing damage when you don't have a lot of slots. MA/Shield has really nice synergy with storm kick giving positional defense to make mid-late levels go smooth without needing much for IO sets.

I'd like to see: a P2W vendor a vender that sells what Luna (from oro) sells in the SG base. if the /ah command isn't going to work there, add an AH vendor (but really just make the /ah command work?) A training dumby (something we can target and hit forever) Or maybe even better, some targets that have fixed numbers of hp so we can time ourselves killing them. It'd be sweet to be able have customized trainer costume rather than have to pick between Vanguard, Arachnos, and Midnighter. Any others?

I'm 100% behind buffing blaster damage.

Reading this makes me want to pull out that Kin/DP defender I started a while back with the intention of playing in melee/pbaoe range most of the time. Basically the same playstyle, but with bigger AoEs.

You might look at Martial Combat as the secondary. Inner Will is a neat power that allows you to break free of a mez protection that you're currently affected by. It's recharge is long enough that it won't be up 100% of the time, so it's not as "all or nothing" as the melee mez protections. Similarly, the attacks give knocks, so that's some ghetto CC without being a full hold/mez. Animations look good too.

The attack chain I recommend for that level is blinding feint > attack Vitals combo. The best thing about this is that the biggest hit is a cone that also applies a DoT, so while you're targeted on that boss, you'll be killing everything else within the cone attack as well. I also usually have typhoon for additional AoE, but that will decrease your single target DPS, on the bosses, so, it's really not critical to have. Blinding feint stacks, so with proper recharge you'll have it perma-double-stacked during sustained battles. It's like having build-up at all times without having to stop your attacks to click it. <<Points to his Avatar>>... that's a screenshot of my namesake back in the good-ole-days... the upper right you can see the light reflecting off the black colored redcap dagger in his right hand.

Anything can cap S/L and Ranged at level 50. You'll have a TON of knockdown/knockbacks with this combo. Both with Ki Push (which even knocks bosses) and dragon's tail and basically all the energy attacks. Also you'll have a PBAoE slow always toggled on, so when things try to melee with you enemies should have a really hard time getting to you through the slow and knocks, which makes it a really fun solo toon because you are actively in control of the fight. Probably the biggest complaint I hear about energy blast is that the knockbacks spread everything around which some team members won't like. A few people are very vocal about it, but my advice is to ignore those people; they are jerks.

I don't think there's 1 ultimate answer to this... but you should look at Archery. That T9 nuke has a really low cooldown time. Plus there are no PBAoEs, so the cone and Ranged AoEs can all be used on a center target from a distance without having to move around to line things up mid-fight. I feel like Assault Rifle might also do some fun stuff, but with such long animations, I've never had a desire to play one. Also, just throwing another fun option, DP/Martial does very good splash damage, and is just a lot of fun to play.

The "other guy's" superhero game has "lunge" attacks that basically do the same thing except their lunges are all thematically animated to the powerset. I wish our animation was better or customizable because, IMHO, the "other guy's" version is cool as heck. And to be honest, a "no animation" option might be enough as it could feel more like you're "blinking" around the map in a normal stance (and not put away your weapon)

You can buy a decent keyboard/mouse and a monitor for around $150 and turn your laptop into a desktop. Or splurge and spend 250 on some higher quality components. This is what I've done in the past to give my old broken hardware to my young (and highly destructive) kids.

Much has been said already.. Just adding my vote for hard mode, with the caveat that is has to be done right. The goal should be to create an increased challenge for level 50 incarnates to work together as an 8 man team who all have important roles and responsibilities. But I don't want just bigger numbers like most of the current AVs. And I don't want effective debuffs like making things +7 so all the numbers go wonky. I want new Bosses and Elite Bosses's introduced into the game for each enemy group that have unique and interesting mechanics to raise the challenge level (and not just give them a T9 defense power like the Minos and Cyclopi). Also note, you may have to do another pass of balancing when this is done. Consider, if you make an enemy that has greatly increased +tohit and damage that gives them 1-hit damage capability vs squishies, suddenly you've made tanks and healers more important which is great. But you also might have just made defense and regen based tanks fail, which is bad. That said, I am very impressed with the the new arcs that have been added since Homecoming was released. Very well done, and I would love to see more!

Just guessing, but maybe it's based on Map Location and not alignment, and these people are in co-op maps?

Disclaimer: No good guys were hurt in the completion of this mission arc. (not that it would have stopped me) Seriously, though, I've always thought that good guys should be fighting in Rogue Isles and Bad guys should be fighting in Paragon City. I mean, when CoV came out, I was surprised they set it this way. I thought we already lived in a city totally overrun with bad guys. Gold Side, on the other hand, was done right (and brilliantly so, imho.)

I'm all for the smaller footprint. But with issue 27, since I have to go to a base portal to use the transportation bases anyway, I just updated my personal SG. I crammed everything except my enhancement storage into a 1x2 entry room (4 portal orbs).

We 'mericans done cast our pods any damn way we please if that don't snag lightning and leave ya like a ball in high grass.

Just a quick note... Invisibility suppresses 100% of it's value when in combat. If that's actually Stealth you're showing then it suppresses 1/2 of it's value in combat. Somewhere there's a setting in Mid's to show in-combat values. Plus, if I were doing this, I would also include showing the values with 3 level 50 IOs enhancing the power, perhaps on it's own sheet.

Considering how quickly fireball can come off cooldown, and the fact that you also have a rain power, I don't feel any need to get the power. For theme, isn't there an alt animation where you can change it to a hand animation? Or am I thinking of something else?

I'm still waiting for someone to port me to the end of the last mission of LGTF. I swear it takes me 20 minutes to stealth to the end of that nightmare map.

Thanksgiving is a holiday where everyone celebrates staying home from work for 2 extra days in the same week. This, in a year in which I haven't gone in to work since mid-March, doesn't seem so special.

Well, web grenade used to do 0 damage. I can't say I really thought about it much after the change.

wait... so that also means you can keep anything from closing to melee, including flyers.... obvious as it seems, that's a hugely powerful tool.

I cannot imagine the level of annoyance of having to chase rom and req all over the map at level 54. Nicely done!

For AT, I would role a Brute. Brutes have a huge advantage at low levels because fury makes their damage skyrocket compared to others prior to full-enhancement. For powersets, I'd go with Katana, so I could take full advantage of stacking Divine Avalanche. For secondary I would go with /Rad because it has a low level regen/recovery auto power. Other sets' low level powers just suck endurance and are generally not worth turning on in a sustained fight. As an alternative to Katana, I might consider Martial Arts and throw in Air Superiority as a pool power.