Without_Pause

You literally mention Acrobatics in your first post.

3-Slot Gladiator's Armor in a Res based power and then 5-Slot Gladiator's Javelin into a range ST attack to get 6 mag KB protection via set bonuses. It's not great, but at least it is something. If you grab your ST Immobilization power and a ST ranged attack from an epic, you could push that to 9 KB protection which would be even better.

It depends greatly on the purpose of the build, but I could see skipping on one of the two Fence powers. Some might make the case to skip Static Field, but I found it useful. I would skip on the Rez in EA. Pretty much anything else I would at least try before deciding if you want to keep it in the end.

To clarify, Scott uses beam attacks a lot. The difference is in if he is wearing his shades or not. He does normal blasts with them, and essentially a nuke level blast without them. He should also be required to take numerous powers from the Leadership pool as he's the definitive leader of X-Men outside of Xavier.

Fire/cold or Fire/dark since they are easier to do stealth with. I didn't have room for stealth on mine, but I have a Fire/time at 42. I peeled back the defense on it to get Chrono Shift perma and S/L/E Def are still in the 50s. I want to get some Incarnates done and kick the tires some more before I do a final build.

Stick enough recharge in Claws and your AoE attack chain is FU, Spin, And Shockwave. The recharge Shockwave for my EA Brute is listed at 4.82 seconds. That's cone sized 100% KB/KD at range. Add is Focus and Slash as your ST attack chain and things tend to be on their butts. I do like my Savage/rad Brute so far, but Savage doesn't offer near the mitigation.

Just upload the mbd file.

Not sure what won't condone is implying as TA allow is rather solid. Also, the pairings don't make a lot of sense. Kin/rad not being a pairing is quite the omission.

I can't fathom not slotting for end reduc in a build. Attacks use the most endurance. ST attacks are 1 acc, 1 end, 3 damage, with an optional recharge. AoE is 2 acc with skipping the recharge.

I have a Fire/time Controller actively working on the second one. Leveling that on commons wasn't great. It got a lot more tolerable once IO sets got involved. I actively looked at set bonuses for reducing End cost. The Alpha slot will further take care of the issue. Its rather good right now at 42 though.

Read up on how to use the Market to gain a lot of influence. You can toss @Yomo Kimyata an email in game and they'll send you 100 mill. I only chase purples if I need that much recharge from 5-slotting it, or I want the damage proc. My builds to a default don't use purples and can be done for 500 mill rather easily. I have builds in their 30s fully slotted and sitting with 500 mill on hand. The easiest thing to do is find a build you like, get it to 50, and T4 everything. By the time you do that, you will be swimming in influence. You might even find some purples along the way, craft them, and sell them.

I like Def based armors in general. I like them more on Scrappers. /stone would be awesome, but even trying to minimalize it might not lead to the desired results. /sr, /nin, and /ea are far easier to pull off. /nin, and /ea offer End management. My /nin is too low to really comment, but I have /ea at 50 already twice with a third at 38 covering Stalker, Scrapper, and Brute. It's fantastic. Before getting the Energize isn't as bad as one might think for not having a heal as /ea can put up solid enough Def numbers. For Resist based armors, and yes, I would lean making these a Brute, /bio is going to pump out the most offense, but again, you need to minimalize the effects and that might not be enough. /rad is going to be a rolling nuke bomb via procs. Tough to minimalize, but it can be colored so there might be some colors which make it more tolerable.

I started to work on my Cold/water Def. I have four powers to slot out. So far Def numbers are higher with Res numbers being lower, but this is just me tossing in things versus a finished product, Def is more important than Res, and more so for a Defender. The shields would only boost the Def numbers all of the more. A Cold Defender would cakewalk to being Def capped on a number of types and positions and would be in the 60% range for S/L/E if they had access to the shields. None of that factors in Power Boost or Incarnates. Grab a Thermal friend and steamroll the game. Granted, you should be doing that anyway.

It might explain an uptick in my spam email, but I have filters for that sort of thing. It's all one click of 'Empty Folder' anyway.

I guess this makes me an end gamer as I slot how I'm going to slot in the end as well as I can. I clearly need to sub something else in if my end build uses a set I can't slot until 27 or 50, but the amount of slots I dedicate for it remain the same.

Are both top tier? Yes. The differences is how they feel. Energy is a single target death machine with one overly long animation time. It's AoE is okay. I will just point out you will lose count the amount of times you overkill various things. Having a damage aura will help in the AoE department. Energy also has some decent mitigation with its stuns. Savage pours out some of the best AoE damage, and more so for Brutes as Fury loves DoT. It's single target damage is okay. Part of the issue is that Hemorrhage isn't worth taking so you are pushed towards using both of the first two attacks as where other sets can skip one. You can take something like Gloom from the epics to help out with single target damage, but that also locks you into taking that pool. It is worth noting Savage Leap will help you keep Fury going as downtime between mobs is cut down as you zoom between mobs. I prefer it on sturdier armors as mitigation is minimal and Stone covers that. Me being me, I would pick Savage because I loath TF's animation time, and if I describe to you a Brute, Savage feels the most like what its primary would be about.

I two slot Stamina on my /stone Stalker and Brute. Using the +End Proc in Dark's heal goes a long way to fixing it's end issues. I do need to relevel a DA based character so I can further explore it at higher levels, but End honestly wasn't that much of an issue the last time I leveled it. For me, iIt partly depends on the AT and what powers they have. It also depends on how many slots I deem I can afford to put into them. I would outright question anyone saying they need to be 6-slotted. It feels like someone who never understood ED happened. If you 6-slot both, then your build is underslotted elsewhere.

I would suggest popping a respect in Beta and trying out Hurricane. If you want to be the bull in a China shop, that option is there. I used it on my Earth/storm far more as to paint the mobs with the debuff and leave it at that. Once Hurricane touches a target, that debuff sticks for 10 seconds. As does reducing their range by 60%. Your AoEs are ranged and the only PBAoE thing you have is your nuke, so running Hurricane outside of that shouldn't be an issue. I only leveled to 32. Look at it for the slotting or even IO ideas. I intentionally went on the cheaper side in certain cases. I did load up on one offs. You get some baseline def, and hopefully enough End management. Changing Tactics to an End Reduc helps as well. I also might favor a lower level build, and then a more end game one as I would weight the later ST attacks higher. If currency is an issue, I would start looking at threads on the Market forum. @Yomo Kimyata does a great job covering how he generates currency. You can also email him in game and get a free 100 mill if for no other reason to help with getting the Defender ATOs. Even on the high side those shouldn't be more than 96 mill. I prefer more in the 84 mill area. Defender (Storm Summoning - Psychic Blast).mbd

I might later pop an attempt and doing a quick run at the build. I kind of assume the level 32 area here. The biggest thing which stands out is the lack of Hurricane while taking Thunder Clap. The only way you have to stack the disorient currently is with the nuke so by itself it is rather lackluster. Hurricane is a huge To Hit Debuff. The second other thing is how poorly slots are done. Yes, Maneuvers is nice coming from a defender, but you have it slotted more than any Storm power or attack outside of Subdue. Similar in how you have slotted Tactics.

Damage type would also matter. I feel like I can always tell when a Fire blaster is on the team.

I was on a Posi 2 TF a few weeks ago and a player couldn't find Faultline. I do mean after instructions, and then I came back and gave even more detailed instructions until they figured it out. They literally went to a wrong zone even after being told where to go. I do remember doing a SF for the first time about a year ago, it was such a blitzkrieg I always felt behind. and what we did was a blur. I think it lasted all of 15 minutes due to the speed run nature. It finished, and I went, 'Well, that happened.' I get speed running various things, but I don't think I enjoyed that SF even 1% and again, that was my first time running it.

Single Target: 1 Acc, 1 End, 3 Damage, Optional 1 Recharge. Multi-target: 2 Acc, 1 End, 3 Damage. This is on a basic SO/common IO level. EA offers +Recharge so that will help in that regard. You can pick up Hasten as well and 2 slot it with Recharge. I would say for combos, Attack Vitals will be the best one with adding in BF to get the benefit of it and Typhoon's Edge for more AoE.

In the end there are no best combos for max DPS for DB. I forget what the ideal chain is. I just know it needs a high amount of recharge. By no means can this be copy/pasted, there are some ideas here to look over. I would skip over 1K cuts and its ridiculous animation time.

I also found this thread fairly informative although as always, any data which is based on pylon and Trapdoor testing should be taken with a grain of salt as they use non-general gaming builds.

Savage stands out on a Brute more due to the DoT nature of Savage. End reduction is universal for any AT and the +dmg technically works better on a Scrapper. It's basically S tier on any AT which has it despite Hemorrhage being skippable.