Razorback

The real question here is: what are your goals? Beasts are okay. They're fun. They're not the toughest or the most damaging, but they're mostly functional. I feel like you need to make a particular commitment early on with them, though: are you here to pump damage or survival? I think Beasts are a lot more fun when played offensively, with a secondary like Kin or Storm, because they have certain strengths as damage dealers (they run fast, decent single target dps) whereas, defensively, they don't stack up to primaries like Necro, Demons or Robots. So if you're trying to build a wicked solo machine pushing max difficulty, I wouldn't go Beast. You could do it, but you'll be locked into a defensive secondary and you'll be working more against the nature of your critters rather than with them. Same could be said for Ninjas, maybe even moreso in their case. You can build them tough, but I think it's way more fun with both of these primaries to just stomp the gas and redline it. Sure, your dudes'll be squishy and it might get tedious resummoning if you hate that, but you'll be able to kill stuff in a much more timely manner and you'll have something to offer fast-moving teams who don't need any defensive support.

The synergy on paper is solid, but in practice there may be complications. Namely, Shield's lack of a heal combined with Savage's total focus on DoT based offense. Typically, people favor /Bio for juicing up the primary. That said, it'd be crazy fun and put out good numbers. You'd be vulnerable to attrition, but not in any way that can't be fixed with inspirations and incarnates. /Shield is usually considered subpar on Brutes (relative to other ATs) due to class modifiers and Savage is not the most popular, so that may explain the silence. PS: As a diehard fan of Savage, Brutes, and Savage on Brutes... this is one of the few iterations I would consider rolling on a Tanker. Their version of Shield is seriously beefy and their enhanced AoE is nice for an attack set that claims sustained AoE as its most unique niche. It would still be great on a Brute, better in some ways, but for most Savage builds I wouldn't even look at a Tanker. This is a rare exception.

A quibble: Rage is an ability in Super Strength, Fury is the Brute damage buff. Yes, Savage's DoTs scale with Fury. No, they don't generate it. However, Savage's fast attacks, short cooldowns and native recharge buffs will help build Fury quickly. IMO, Savage is strongest on a Brute due to its interactions with Fury. Best paired with a secondary that offers some damage of its own. Savage/Fire if you want to play like this:

Scrapper if you want to max out damage from your primary, Brute if you want to supplement it with self-immolation.

The Scrapper class mechanic works at cross purposes with Savage's design, whereas Brutes benefit twice: Fast animations with short cooldowns and a recharge buff help build Fury DoTs scale with Fury IMO, Savage is strongest on a Brute, and especially with a secondary that packs some offensive punch. It *used* to be strongest on a Stalker, but crit Hemo got... fixed. Snip-snip.

How would you rate this pairing on Brute vs Tanker? It seems synergistic, but Savage seems best on Brutes ( DoTs + Fury ) while Shield seems best on Tankers. Do you feel the DPS gain of Savage on Brutes outweighs the durability loss compared to Shield on Tankers?

Savage just isn't very popular. At the height of its popularity, it was considered best on a Stalker due to Hemo's interaction with crit mechanics. Now that's gone and Hemo is widely considered a garbage power across the board. It can still pump out some solid AoE, but the exhaustion mechanic is a hindrance the set doesn't need. That said, it can be a lot fun and I think Brutes actually do best with the set because Fury scales up the DoTs. There was some discussion about Sav/Bio in particular a while back here.

I've been considering this particular combo for a while, and while I typically play Brutes I feel SD benefits from Tanker modifiers in a uniquely strong way due to its layered design. My suspicion, which I think you've just done the charity of confirming, is that -- in extreme content -- the innate toughness of the Tanker is more valuable than a Brute's Fury, because EM brings enough damage to bring to take down just about any hard target. Edit: To clarify, my main goal is in building a melee monster capable of feats of extreme soloing.

Do you feel this pairing is stronger on Tankers than other melee ATs? If so, could you please elaborate why?