Spaghetti Betty

Oh, definitely. It's unfortunately one of the last things I end up slotting in my build. Don't plan on fighting too many +5 AVs without backup sub-50.

ATOs are not seeded. Super Packs are. Packs will always be 10m and you have a chance to get 1-2 ATOs from them.

The Katie Hannon team decided to tackle it at +2. You know what that means, time for a +5 AV! The last couple of Mary spawns had us whiffing pretty hard. Mary's Hurricane was hitting us with a -62% Tohit debuff. We have solutions for this, and they are called Inspirations. After one team member ducked out and promptly nabbed several yellow team insps from the AH, we wrapped up the first mish. Everything after this was essentially a victory lap! Of course, Amy had to spawn in the cake room. Wurmtail went pretty swiftly too. That just left rescuing Katie's spirit. We opted for the usual flyby, but guess who didn't bring a jetpack? Good going, useful people!

Instant Healing will probably serve you better as a preemptive tool. Clicking it pushes your Regen to a pretty high level, which is good if you know you're about to absorb a ton of hits. Using it in conjunction with DP can function as a pseudo T9 until you get MoG.

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Breakcore, Sonic Blast/Fiery Aura Sentinel The Sacred Duster, Street Justice/Ice Armor Stalker The Shattered Hourglass, Earth Control/Time Manipulation Controller Cookies and Cream, Stone Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper

Glad to see the Claws brute is working out better for you. I can understand SFX breaking a powerset for you. Savage Melee really should sound more visceral (and it at least did a bit before they nerfed the SFX on Shred and Rending Flurry). If I could I'd just like to offer some comments and friendly advice for your journey. Yeah, I agree. When you get a solid AoE early on like Claws does, you can start clearing mobs pretty quickly by slotting it up. That and Follow Up I would probably dump some slots into, but I think the other attacks will be fine with 1-2 slots until you get closer to 30. Mobs don't have that much HP early on. Unfortunately, neither do you. That's why IMO investing slots into your Regen powers as soon as you can will go far. That's because your actual secondary is Inspirations! You want this to be coming back as quick as possible to get some real mileage out of it. 3 recharge SOs, 2 more for healing if you can spare it, and you'll be in pretty good shape. Dull Pain is really there to make Reconstruction (and all of your healing honestly) stronger by giving you a huge green bar, so this is something else you also want on as short of a cooldown as possible to maximize uptime. Yes, RES goes far on a Brute. As for something else to bolster your defenses, might I suggest picking up Rune of Protection? It's a giant spike of +RES to all on a fixed cooldown, so you don't have to worry about it's performance changing based on your global recharge. This makes it really good as an early pick, as early as 20 depending on how much you wanna push back for that (which, I'm assuming your End might be fine without QR if we're being really frugal on picks. But that's what happens when you make an assumption. You make an ass out of u and mption. This is a long parenthetical statement.) Drop a Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge in Focus! It'll give your recharge a nice boost during combat until you start slotting IOs. Looking forward to hearing more! And don't forget Slow Resistance!

Oh, darnit. Sorry guys, I forgot I equipped HC with one of these so I could work on Effort Values.

I have specifically scoured almost every map added with GR for herding spots just for this reason. More than you think, but still few and far in between. Yes, even the huge tunnel maps.

Brute ATOs aren't game changers like they are for the other Melee ATs but they still get exceptional bonuses.

I got some pics of tonight's MC team. Although, they're mostly of the carnage and not of anyone in particular. Unforunately, Crimson Prototype had perfect timing on a huge explosion for the one pic I took.

Skip Hemorrhage and get Cross Punch (or an epic blast) if you can!

I'm really happy with AE as we have it now. On Live, it was a miserable experience (IMO) trying to make anything really custom. You put a custom mob in your mission? There goes 80% of your data usage for the whole arc. Blech. Yes! IDs are in my sig. I wouldn't say they are "story driven" (they all have Nintendo Plots), but they are all Task Force length. Yes, 100%. It's just like creating alts, so of course I have to. I tried to dabble with a little bit of everything the system offers when creating. Except file manipulation and custom powers. That's a little over my head. Sure! They are pretty tough. I'd say the difficulty starts at "tough to solo" and goes up to "bring some friends". TBH, my difficulty benchmark for a while was "Can my SR/DM Tank breeze through this at +4x8?" And so as I scaled up the challenge in my arcs, it became specifically to punish that one toon. Let's just say I succeeded. I really just wanted to create interesting combat scenarios that would incline players to bring a friend or two and pay attention to what was being thrown at them.

My advice would be to focus on RES first since it's your primary mitigation. As TW/FA, your layered mitigation would be healing, then KD spam. I would consider any DEF built to just be a happy accident on top of that.

I always figured it was cumulative just based on some of the numbers being slung around in game. It's hard to tell at face value, considering most of the Regen debuffs you get hit with or are either inconvenient at best or -a million. Where is the nearest Numbers Wizard?

Well, if you get 100% RES on any RES-based armor, it becomes immune to RES debuffs.

All of my toons start the game at +0x8. Of course, this leads to some progressing way slower than others, but by the end I feel like I have a deeper understanding of how the toon plays. I have very few toons that can't handle +4x8 by the time they're 50+.

I'd recommend some kind of /Time MM. Pretty simple setup. Summon and buff the pets, set them to Defensive Follow. Tab out every few minutes to buff yourself and keep the heal on auto. This should make any toon significantly stronger while providing backup DPS and damage sponges.

Here's a fairly simple take for you. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1697;740;1480;HEX;| |78DA75945B4F135110C7FFDB5D04DA42B99582502837A1452B555FBC258AE083422| |4D1F85A0BACB5A174495B1379F7FA66BCC4574D4441FD183EEAAB31FA05BC012ADE| |2F59A73B3BE414C3266D7E67CE9C99FF9939E78C5F18F13F7F3676089AFF4836552| |8244FA5723366BE6AFC7C3155CC5839D0E71BB6ACB4998F0C5BB39395348EB04F72| |C43C6BE60A667C3863254FE4D3A95C662A79383F6BE55B5D8771336B9AF1D19C994| |FCFF300FE09CBCAC6C7CCD45C2697F63A839373A6395DE3E0D14CFA5C91267C3CCA| |96868DA37399A9F520A942D1CCCFB7908A3EFA7DEEA13F0DF2D915C01E1A260C346| |04820C1D08CDD0CFDD8A53B1045882C6103D55EA85F29CC35C371317055E00AC316| |5C16B8C4508B8B0C5F488DA6A8D1350435D7658553D66155E013839772EBCA2243C| |719383331A4042605A618B6639AE12BA5AC5056DB3FC950A956A412CB9CA80A1F04| |DEBBA9F14EE02D831F6F187CA4AA5AA9080D6CFAD04CFDF729E13D3ED9A21FC775B| |7BC6B0C21F2AD5163D4A08D677E91C880B6DE38DB1390B6B548DB5AA46D7E5252AF| |4431EA71D0E3CCF4E280C07E817D1E57C35E86DF94A951D5DB8806DDE97913822CA| |60901B67493DEA0E2AB053158AA72351D1D17EA484C481513C22027DA8A984094A1| |070302FD0CB5B4BA55ED4D2B963C6E3F17051E32ECC003810581FB0C7F684F6DEA3| |16BC30BDE4A3B5E09BC64E8C06B8600E50EABB9C3B86EB82E37046E327461062E24| |09FA4B5B2870EEBF94BB532D4027229C20827681B04087EE86E964D0A8C2DD6A85B| |B718B53EEC46D069D5CFAD4CDF5394783346C738E86030901F7461BB46840EDF280| |9CCA289A04EA18EE929441C5975ADBC5CDBD473371F526C6B128EA96041E3124F05| |8E009C31A556648DDDB10EE785C975E4ED06E943F33CE85A54B1535CA5F317B6C13| |C70943F523BBC6F6656F7900F15FDD60273D5DDC090F4E6B2E1CE362AE6C12E3E3F| |F76775F0BB17295F6F7D263A41ABE6D34FCD868781A2B7F23EC205DAF845A8B7F7F| |95DFCE| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Xandyr's guide covers all of the elements of Bio perfectly. I just wanna reinforce some points. As tough as your toggles alone will make you, the aspect of your mitigation that will put in the most work is Ablative Carapace. If things are hitting your Absorb shield, they are not hitting your HP. If somehow attacks manage to break that layer all the way down before Carapace is recharged, you can use Parasitic Aura to bolster your Absorb right back up. The nice thing about being a Tank is Adaptations are more or less an afterthought since all of your bases are covered naturally by a Tanker's higher defensive scaling. If by some machination you find you are dropping fast, Defensive mode will essentially make you immortal at the cost of damage. However, Tankers can also more or less sit in Offensive mode all the time and deal with the penalty without breaking a sweat. When you make it to 50, I recommend going Vigor Core for survivability or Musculature Radial to pump up your damage (and make your recovery a bit better).

Inexhaustible does a pretty good job on its own without any additional slots. I wouldn't be hard pressed to add anything to it unless chasing specific build goals. Environmental Modification is a lot like Heightened Senses from Willpower. It provides DEF to Nrg/Neg/Fire/Cold (and I think Psi). You should slot it accordingly, as this is your main form of protection against those types of damage. I'm a little tied up at the moment, but I can look at a Bio/EM build the next time I'm free.

What is your secondary? Any build goals in mind?

Some other suggestions for a primary: Stone Melee Has a lot of the same synergies as SS without Rage crash. Provides AoE KD spam at a low lvl (8 IIRC), pumping up Recharge will not only benefit your attack speed but your defensive clicks as well. Might feel end heavy and low dmg for a little while. Titan Weapons You can give yourself a decent foundation of DEF to build off of with Defensive Sweep. Pretty much every attack does KD in some form. Lots of AoE. Will be tricky to balance Momentum mechanics and click mitigation, but can become poetry in motion with some practice. Staff Fighting Will probably provide the smoothest ride from 1-50. You can start building DEF super early thanks to Guarded Spin at lvl 2. Tons of built in AoE. Stances allow flexibility for whichever stat you feel is hurting the most. Not as KD spammy as other options, but still provides some. Claws This is still a classic combination that fares well. It'll start slow but flourish once you get into the 30s. Leverage Shockwave and Spin with a KD proc for consistent crowd control. I wouldn't go with Dark Melee either way. I've tried this and it also spawned a whole thread where the only solution I (and some great minds) could come up with to make it work was to leverage Whirlwind to inject some KD spam into its gameplay.