Without_Pause

Seeds is the primary form of mitigation and DN can do wonders to mitigate damage intake. You don't need all of the Dark powers all of the time. Rotate as needed. Shadowfall is a toggle. Again, if you are spamming the heal, then you are doing something wrong outside of a possible ambush. The learning curve on a FA character is that their KB protection isn't what it is compared to other sets so leveling can be annoying. 1-25 isn't exactly the land of the high difficulty settings. They should be more than fine learning the ropes. Even soloing, I might go x3 at best in my 20s. I don't look for +0/x4 until my 30s. While yes, I IO builds. I'm also doing this solo. Two characters should cakewalk +0/x2 even with basic slotting. That's literally what the game is originally balanced around.

Propel's DPA isn't great. I never took it on a Grav/ta. They said they wanted something on the less complex side see auto powers. I won't say Kin is complex, but it is very busy. If you are spamming TG, you are doing something seriously wrong. /dark is so good it would take until 28 to find a power not worth taking. The only time I even remotely spam it would be on an AV for the -Regen although HT essentially takes care of it by itself. TG is seriously one of my least used powers. While I find Fire Armor to be one of the weakest armor sets, there's no reason to spam TG for it.

While yes, Ill to a default is one of the best sets to make soloing essentially boring due to ease, it is not one to bloom early. You need PA to have a decent amount of Recharge to get it to be more tolerable. Phant also does KB unless you can possibly slot the KB to KD IO in it. I don't know. I haven't looked. KB can be a bit of an issue for Brutes. I settled on Plant/cold. /fire will love the shields. Plant at least offers some regen even though the build lacks the targeted heal you are seeking overall. /fire has it's own quick recharging heal. It will be fine. Really, as long as you have the shields and Seeds, you are basically on auto-pilot and you get those early. While yes, Seeds would impact Fury on some level, I've never really had an issue with generating Fury on a Brute. They literally have an ATO for it. My only issue with the combo is ST damage could be better, but Savage's lack of a worthy higher tier ST attack is less likely of an issue if the focus is on early gameplay.

The Dark Werewolves are genuinely nasty to deal with even on a melee character. I don't really have experience using Dark against the old Council, but the new ones do seems fairly resistant to it.

I think I'll really like Dark when it is all said and done, but Claws is forever "How is this legal?" kind of fun. Seriously, Claws with ranged attacks. The fact that it offers KB/KD in both ranged attacks is all sorts of silly. I think I'm down to SR or Shield. Sure, Shield has more damage, but SR just feels so smooth with the added Recharge and Movement. Plus, I can do Claws/sr.

I don't know how my view is distorted as any build I do is compared using IOs*. My standards for builds are the same. How is the build leveling? How is it at 50? How is it once T4ed? While modifications need to be made to my sig, my one Tanker at 50 still wouldn't make the list. It is still rather high though and should stay there. Duo boxing my Claws/ea Scrapper at +3/x8 going through RWZ story arcs last night was more fun than the entire time I have played my freshly Level 50 Tanker, and yes, I vastly soloed the Tanker without 2x XP boosters. The Scrapper's teammate is a Ice/Stone Brute who I have switched over to in specific situations or to simply change things up. In case it works, I can even have the Brute on follow for the free damage aura. That was so not the case last night. The #1 issue last night was learning about the mob type and what they did. Once I got that figured out, my Scrapper was fine. Not a Brute. A Scrapper at +3/x8 against genuinely difficult mobs and not radio fodder. If I had my Claws/ea Brute doing the same content +4/x8 would absolutely be on the table. I'm pretty sure my Scrapper could have done it. Also, the final mob was all of 5 targets. The one before it with the named boss wasn't much bigger. So again, being the can't be killed thing AoE death machine isn't as an amazing selling point for me. I don't build check other people. Someone struggling in a mission is enough. As pointed out, I prefer Claws on a Scrapper. That still doesn't change the fact that for me Claws is still the most fun melee set in the game. Even if a Tanker gets bigger AoEs, Lethal damage with Tanker values is going to be a snooze fest against certain mobs. It's honestly hard to find sets which are distinctly better on one AT versus the other. I will say Ice is great on a Brute. * If the idea is that the game is balanced around SOs, that died the second the new difficulty setting got implemented.

(Kinetic Melee enters the chat) I've only lightly done dives into DPS for melee, but I've done enough to where I've stopped trying to have it make sense.

It is very rare I see more than 2 for support. I feel that's a fine enough number but still. I can often run into a PuG Blue side that's swimming in support.

Related, I feel like I see very few Defenders Red side. I think pretty much the only heroes I have who can go to Red side are for support.

I have one for tracking the Accolade Stat boosters for Heroes and Villains. I also track where they are at in their builds and finances. I still need to fill in the columns for Villains in regards to the Accolades yet.

What are SOs? Seriously, I don't slot them. Again, I soloed the Brute at +4/x8 before hitting 50, so no Incarnates either. I literally have to actively find maps which gives that build issues. Also, I actively said Tankers will have an easier time. My point is what is more fun. You know, the point of gaming.

Seems like @Snarky should be involved.

I would stick it with an armor which offers +Recharge. Getting a flat +20% Recharge is nice. On a Def based armor, you could even reason skipping Parry at some point.

Builds can be tried out in Beta so you can get a feel of what the build is like at 50. You can simply import the build from Mids, auto level to 50, gain the needed enhancements, and go from there. I'm likely at the point to where I will do a Beta run with a build before I even roll it live.

There are absolutely maps, see caves, which make it harder for larger mobs to be generated. I've seen all sorts of mobs where it hardly felt like it was actually x8. Tankers will be slower to take down a boss, see pylon times. Even if the trash mobs are quicker to take down, I feel the longer time to take down a boss even if the overall time is faster. Hell, I've carried bosses to the next mob so I can continue to work on them while taking on additional targets. Tankers are absolutely easier to make so they can't be killed and run on a higher diff. I have a build check arc, and so far not only will my Shield/fire do it at the intended diff setting, it will cakewalk it. But here's the thing. I can make a Brute which is more than durable enough for a high 90% of the content, and I just find being the can't be killed AoE death machine isn't as fun for me as it is for others. If you want to talk about soloing where being closer to doing any map at +4/x8 is a benefit then I get it even if soloing at the setting I don't deem being fun. In terms of teams? That durability is vastly wasted and practically any Blaster is going to make a Tankers bigger AoEs irrelevant. If being the can't be killed AoE death machine is your jam. then great. It's just not even remotely needed. I made a Ice/stone Brute who soloed Council at +4/x8 before even being 50, and Ice Patch wasn't even needed. We can talk all about numbers about what is the 'best.' The best for me is Brutes as I actually feel like I need to be engaged in what I'm doing. I feel like I actually have to look at my health bar on a Brute. 😀

If I was the lead, that's an instant kick.

I updated the build for this as I finally got a chance to play it on Beta at Level 50. I cakewalked soloing at +0/x8 which is a bare minimum for a level 50 build if I build it for soloing and pushing the diff level. When it is all said and done, I aim for +2 to +3 x8 for a solo build across 'any' map, and this should work well for that. It should be essentially unkillable on a team outside of specialized content or laziness.

RE: Eviscerate versus Shockwave. Eviscerate is 49.64 DPA. Shockwave is 55.29. Add in the KB/KD, and it offers a bunch of additional mitigation. Re: Hasten. As long as you can cycle FU + Slash + Focus and FU + Spin + Shockwave then you are good to go. You can min/max your DPS with taking a snipe, but I never have.

All I'm saying is there have been studies about how poorly we recall what actually happened. My guess is this is what is happening with Ultimo.

I recently leveled a character without slotting anything until 27. I have done the same but until 22 for numerous characters. That build at 27 was terrible. It was sucking wind all the time. No one said anything and teams didn't feel all that hindered by it to my knowledge. So yeah, I was being rude by waiting that long to slot a character. It also saved me taking the time to do a respect at 27.

They have another recent post about using a Level 4 Dom. I see no reason to be soloing at anything beyond +0/x1 at that point. It is likely the only way to take on a single minion.

That's due to Elec versus Claws though. I have Claws/ea at 50 for a Scrapper and a Brute. Claws is absolutely better on the Scrapper even if the Brute is more survivable.

No Domination mode, and I'm not sure how you make the DPS stand out. Sents struggled with this as they can't compete with Blasters for pure DPS so they had to be unique in some way.

I prefer Claws on a Scrapper although yes, it works more than fine on a Brute. The #1 issue for Claws is how heavily resisted it is. Scrappers get Crits, I would lean on the idea that they take Musculature more often than Brutes, and Spin recharges in 9.2 seconds for Scrappers versus 14 for Brutes/Tankers.

Been a while since I read something so hyperbolic. If a single minion isn't being perma held then I have no idea what you are doing to encounter said minion. Do I find Elec control to be on the rather average or below below average set? Yes. Would I pick it as a set to solo with? No, I would not. But claiming a Dom goes down to 20% health fighting a single minion is just quite the shoveling of B.S.