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I hope this question makes sense, but if not, another way to phrase it would be: If you have ever told someone "hey, if you only play [insert name of powerset here] once in your lifetime, you should play it on a brute, they get the best version of it" - what powerset(s) was that? A bit of clarification: It seems to be generally agreed that where the same powerset can be played on several different AT's, it is better on some of those AT's than on others. Regen and elec melee are the only two I really know about, but I assume the same holds true for most if not all powersets, primary as well as secondary. For myself, I haven't done very well with the few brutes I have played (eng/eng back on Live, elec/elec, kin/elec and db/fire on HC). That is a me problem, not the AT's fault; for whatever reason, brute is one of the AT's that just I just can't seem to gel with. I wonder, though, if the lack of gellling is because I was playing powersets which are more difficult to play, especially for someone like me for whom the brute playstyle is not intuitive. And before anyone says "don't follow the meta, just play what you enjoy", the problem is that I have tried that 4 times already and failed to enjoy it, so maybe it is time to see if "the wisdom of the crowd" is better at picking brutes for me than I myself am 🙂 Oh, and this would be intended for PvE only, an even mix of solo and PUG teams, levelling on story arcs and TFs, maybe some itrials but no starred content or other hard content. So, what powersets live their best life on a brute? 😉 As usual, many thanks in advance.

Lots of good advice already in this thread! A few things I have not seen mentioned and which might be relevant and/or useful to you, OP: 1) You mentioned preferring Praetorian content. I happen to agree that goldside (i.e. Praetoria) has some of the best storytelling in the game, but it is also tougher content than blueside or redside.(*) What this means to you is that levelling takes a bit longer than it would if you played in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles instead. So if you really want to make it to higher levels, you will find it easier on blue- or redside. You will also find more teams to play with there than in Praetoria, and teaming makes the levels fly by. (*) Admittedly, not everyone agrees that goldside is generally tougher, but at least a non-zero percentage of the game's population think so. So take that statement for what it's worth. 2) Which server do you play on? At the risk of stating the obvious, you will level much more quickly if you are on one of the servers which have double exp. You can move your characters to a different server for free, you only have a limited number of tokes to do this but they refresh within a few days. 3) You don't need to get all the way to level 50 to feel like your character is fully matured, skill-wise. Opinions vary, but personally I usually find that a character feels woefully incomplete until the low 20s, then it gradually begins to come together, and somewhere in the mid 30s it feels pretty much complete. Yes, you get more skills and a lot more slots from the mid-30s up to 50+3, but they don't make the char significantly different, they just make it better at what it already is. YMMV, of course, but my point here is that you are closer to your goal of "sticking with a character until completion" than you might think. If you have played several of your characters to the mid-teens levels or maybe even close to lvl 20, you are only a few hours' teaming away from that 30+ level range where (according to me) you will feel like you have arrived. And just to be clear: I am not saying you HAVE to level up quickly. Most of us old-timers here will advise you to take your time and enjoy the ride. But if you are frustrated about your characters being stuck in low levels, then the above points might help you with that. Whatever you end up doing, I hope you enjoy it.

Great info, thanks for all those details, guys 🙂

Playing the actual game, and pretty slowly at that. The char is lvl 20 and is part of a fixed RP-light team where we don't allow ourselves to buy IO's from the AH, hence my expectation of building with only SO's and generic IO's. If a good set-IO drop, I will slot it, but can't realistically expect that to happen.

Looking in Mids I see that Ablating Strike and Sweeping Slice have a higher DPA than the rest of DB's attacks. So getting to use those two as two of the three attacks in Attack Vitals makes that combo good because one does not sacrifice DPA to get the combo benefits - right?

Is that the general consensus - that Attack Vitals is the best combo in most situations? Good thing you said that, I had in my head that Sweep was more useful; maybe because I am just stuck in the old "Must Have Moar AoE!" mindset. I am trying not to have too many different attack powers, since each one takes up enhancement slots. So need to focus on only 2-3 different combos. If Attack Vitals is one of them, I expect that either Empower or Weaken will be the other, since they both use Nimble Slash and I am forced to take a t1/t2 whether I like it or not.

@AyamSirias, what did you end up doing with the character? Whatever you decided to do is cool - it is your own char and all the Iron Man/hardcore/permadeath rules are completely voluntary anway. My CDO just demands that a thread like this gets proper closure with a conclusion to the OP 🙂

I am a pretty experienced CoX veteran, but Brute is one of those AT's which for some reason have never clicked with me. And combo-builder powersets in general are outside my comfort zone, too. But I signed up to play a DB/fire brute on a themed team where set-IO's are not allowed unless the pieces happen to drop from killed arrested mobs, which means I have to "build" with no set bonuses in mind. So in order to suck a little less than I already do, the question to this forum is whether I should chase DB's various combos (Empower, Weaken etc.) or just string together my highest-DPA attacks and not worry about combos? Thanks in advance. PS: I have tried to search this forum to see if this has been answered before, but did not find anything. If I missed a post about DB combos, perhaps someone can just point me to it - thanks.

Great idea! As usual, I have no idea whether this would be a relatively simple fix for a dev or a prohibitively huge change, but a feature like this would be very handy.

You had me at "...down the line button pushing..." 🙂 I like an easy-to-use rotation. And I, too, would like to continue to use my E/E in general play as well, so this works out nice. Thanks!

What is your attack rotation when farming? Some of the PBAoE's seem to slotted as IO-bonus mules rather than for active use, but maybe I am overlooking something there. I am hoping to learn something here to use my own elec/elec brute better, so any feedback will be appreciated, thanks.

@Lindharin While the oft-repeated statements are both true - yes, you can play whatever AT you want and yes, you will always contribute something to your team whether you feel confident about it or not - I assume you would like something a bit more concrete than that, otherwise you would not have started this thread in the first place. So here is my advice on the simplest/most straightforward ATs to play while you get familiar with CoH. These are listed in order from most simple to least simple, but all of them are pretty straightforward to play: a. Blaster, sentinel, stalker and scrapper are the most simple choices. All you do is use your attack powers and hit the enemies, and that is all your teammates expect you to do. Stalker and scrapper play pretty similarly to each other, so don't fret too much over which one to try first. Sentinel does a bit less damage than blaster but is more survivable, so a good choice for a beginner. b. Corruptor is a good compromise AT. Even if you all you do is use your primary powerset and attack the enemies, that is enough to contribute meaningfully to the team, and pretty soon you will start using your secondary powerset (buff/debuff) as well, which means contributing even more. Some secondaries are more popular with teammates than others, but that is a concern for later when you want to join "elite" teams, so don't even worry about that right now. c. Tanker might sound a bit intimidating, because teams sometimes have high expectations for their tank. But again, that is for higher levels and more difficult content, so don't let that discourage you from playing a tanker early on. By the time you are expected to be an experienced tank, you will have learned enough to be just that 🙂 For a new player, tankers have the advantage of being nicely sturdy, so if you screw up you might still survive. Re. your question no. 3., it helps to tell the team you join that you are an inexperienced tanker - that way no one expects too much of you, and very likely they will give you advice along the way to help you improve. d. Bonus info: Arachnos widow is seldom mentioned in these advice threads, but at its heart a night widow is just a scrapper with some team buffs and a few utility powers which you can simply choose not to use until you have gotten familiar with your widow. I LOOOOOVE widows, so take this advice with a grain of salt, but it is definitely worth trying the Way of the Widow. Maybe not for your first/starter character, though 🙂

By "offensive oriented builds" do you mean the build in your post named "StJ Ena WaterSpout - Alpha T3"? The "Waterspout" build takes 6 attack powers from the primary, one more than the "ShadowMeld" build. Is the additional power just for a set bonus or do you use all 6 attacks in your usual attack rotation?

Your Tankers probably would not take nearly that much damage, because they (presumably) have much higher resistance than your defender, so most of the damage won't reach them.

Very true. But then again, does anyone really know what this thread IS about? In fact, CAN anyone ever really know what a thread by this OP is about? (The latter might be a more philosophical/existential question than a practical one).