You've made a brute. They were the villian side equivalent to a Tanker, but now since all the archetypes are propagated they sort of sit in this middle realm between that and the Scrapper.
Pros: Damage buff
Cons: Endurance; Same Resistance caps but lower values
You don't care for criticals, you have a damage buff.
You aren't like a tank, you have more damage, your armor modifiers are like a scrapper though.
This is the middle line where you can build yourself out to be as survivable as a main tank, or have consistent damage like a scrapper(without dependence on crits)
The Brute rides this odd middle line, where you could technically do one side better on a tank or scrapper, but where I believe is peak brutality is when you achieve a build that achieves close to the scrapper damage output while being close to the tanker survivability. So far, I think there is some inspiration from Proc-Rocks to have something like that for a Brute; that takes away a bit of the un-killable-ness but brings on way more damage. This middle point finds itself with something like Energy Melee, Radiation Melee, Super Strength paired with Stone; since this is the only set that allows you to cap both defenses and resistances reliably. I sort of contemplated that Rad Melee is the best between them for the AOE and aura, unless you want to focus on single target with EM, or just love foot stomping with SS(And the damage buffs).
Generally, aside from specializing particularly in FARMING, which you should go to this thread instead, we're here to get into what the brute is about.
I'll need to make a picture for this late like the stalker list
Primaries:
S: Claws, Energy Melee, Savage Melee
A: Katana, Martial Arts, War Mace, Radiation Melee
B: Dark Melee, Electrical Melee, Ice Melee, Titan Weapons, Super Strength
😄 Dual Blades, Stone Melee, Street Justice
😧 Fiery Melee, Psionic Melee, Staff Fighting
F: Battle Axe, Broadsword, Kinetic Melee, Spines
Secondaries:
S: Bio Armor, Radiation Armor, Stone Armor
A: Energy Aura, Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Invulnerability
B: Fiery Aura, Shield Defense, Super Reflexes
😄 Ice Armor, Willpower
😧 Regeneration
Some of the Primaries are fairly straightforward, Claws performs well overall; Energy Melee is your go to for single target damage, Savage's frenzy mechanic is what helps keep up the DPS, as well as some ideas where people are utilizing +range on Savage leap in order to get even more damage...
Radiation gets a lot of flack for its animations, but it's blend of AOE+aura and single target actually makes it rank fairly well for damage. It is a late bloomer with it's attacks though.
Super Strength, in particular, is in a weird place. You can almost get to your damage cap with double rage+gaussians+fury, and this results in some really hard hitting footstomps and knockout blows; the downside to that is managing the rage crash kind of sucks because you do no damage for 10 seconds with a defense debuff. If it was only a defense debuff, that would be nice.
What I'll talk about a bit more, is secondary, since this is where you are going to be meeting the damage potential with a lot of survivability.
Bio Armor:
The best mix of Absorb/Def/Res, you can get softcapped defenses, near cap S/L res, 2 huge absorb shields, and nearly unlimited endurance once you're fully kitted out. Bio is good across all sets because it just layers mitigation really well. It also has a good adaptations which help to focus on defense, endurance, or offense.
Radiation Armor:
You can cap out most resistances with a rotation of Sorcery, T9, and Melee Hybrid. Good proc bombing, recharge, but defense is a place that is hard to get up. Usually, you would want to cover that with using a primary that can either kill fast or knockdown.
Stone Armor:
One of the best sets now due to the rework; you can softcap defenses, additional endurance, damage proc, HP, regen, and then have a decent amount of res 60 S/L, capped F/C/T, and you also have Granite for difficult fights where you need to tank. It can be built to be nearly hardcapped res to all except psi, but this does come with some reduction in slotting for damage.
Dark Armor:
One of the original sets that actually had resistances to psionic; it needs knockback protection, has 3 auras that can be proc'd out, has really poor endurance management with 7 potential toggles. It's somewhat nice on Brute because you can use superior conditioning and physical perfection to mule PFshifters. However, because it has a stealth, this does affect how you can gather aggro.
Electric Armor:
Good endurance management, capped energy resistances, +rech and a heal. This is a pure resistance set, but it can be built to be really tanky. Focuses will be on filling in the gap with defense bonuses.
Invulnerability:
The original gold standard, layered mitigation with easy way to softcap all defenses(except psi of course), capped S/L resistances, and okay resistances for all else. This set does go a bit further on tank if you want to raise resistances to everything else, but with only 3 toggles and Dullpain, it is pretty low management needed.
Energy Aura:
Great mitigation, defenses to all, with some amount of resistances. Has really good endurance management with both a conserve power/heal equivalent and an endurance drain. It's certainly up there, but the downside is that because you will end up being more squishy in general for attacks that do get through, it has some DDR.
Fiery Aura:
SSS for farming, but resistances lag, you can cap S/L on a brute, but will always be lacking in defenses. Really good damage from burn and fiery embrace, if you wanted to make something that does as much damage as possible; but you'll need some support buffs in order to shore up some sorely lacking defense and DDR.
Shield Defense:
Good defense, damage buff, but because of smaller brute res/def values doesn't get to the same place as a tanker. You can still softcap all positional defenses, but the resistances don't really get there. (A tanker would have 70%+ resistances before OwTS) While shield defense is generally good across the board, for what it does for brute, there are some redundancies that make it arguably better to make it for the other archetypes because damage buffs help them more. It feels like you can't easily main tank(from strictly your own res/def) for harder content.
Willpower
Decent layered mitigation, can softcap defenses and get respectable S/L resistance, and has some psi resistances built in. Very little DDR though, although regeneration can be built up really high, this set sort of needs a primary that can mitigate e.g. footstomp. Cascading defense failure and -regen really hurt this set.
Ice Armor
Really good at resisting cold; I believe it has some of the best slow resistance, some DDR, softcap defenses, basically limitless endurance from absorption, +HP, and hibernate that's good against instagibs. This is a set for aggro, because it has two pbaoe auras, but the downside is that it doesn't have much resistances to shore that up.
Super Reflexes
The hardest person to hit around; with the ability to cap defenses, as well as have really good DDR. The downside is that there isn't many layers on top of that; there are however scaling resists that go up as your HP goes down. You can build +absorb from Prev. Medicine and Entomb, and regen or +HP, but the other sets have these more readily. No inherent endurance management.
Regeneration
This is ironically one of the best sets for tanking Hamidon, but for general content, it is difficult to make it tanky enough for content; you will mainly be a damage dealer that has enough survivability, which could be your choice as a brute.
