Werner

I run 11 toggles on my main and have sustainable endurance. It's a Brute, but same idea. I handle it by being fully IO'd plus Cardiac Core Paragon, but here are some easier ideas for helping your blue bar: Three blues and one Performance Shifter proc in Stamina Panacea, Numina, and Miracle in Health Slot endurance reduction liberally Sets or frankenslotting in attacks The Atlas Medallion Portal Jockey Conserve Power Physical Perfection with Performance Shifter Proc Know which toggles you can afford to turn off against which enemies

Katana/Dark/Soul Brute Golden Dragonfly -> Gloom -> Soaring Dragon -> Divine Avalanche T4 Degenerative Radial T4 Assault Core no Lore pets, Musculature, or Ageless 2:40 2:45 2:45 2:37 2:39 2:40 2:42 2:48 2:55 2:39 163 seconds average = 363 DPS Hit Hasten, Assault, started the clock. Used The Lotus Drops as filler when Hasten was down. Just the pylon, no additional enemies to buff Fury. Chain has 3 -resistance, 3 purple damage, and 3 regular damage procs. Slotted minimal recharge enhancement for the highest proc chances. Endurance is OK - no blues needed in over 25 minutes fighting 5 L54 AVs.

I don't have a Super Speeder to easily test it, but I'd assume you could Sprint and Super Speed at the same time to get invisibility while freeing up a slot. I'd probably put a Winter's Gift in Super Speed, but same idea. Simpler to just toggle on one power, of course, and simplicity is a virtue.

Posted by Hjarki above, under "Reveal hidden contents". Builds are often posted like that.

I love my Katana/Dark Brute, but the lower resist caps on a Scrapper make it much less appealing. I’m not as familiar with Bio, even if I have a Bio Scrapper at 50, but that’s probably the direction I’d go - sufficient survivability plus a big damage boost.

I'm not sure I fall under the banner of "serious farmer" since I farm with my general purpose SS/Fire, but yes, I'm eating reds all the time, with my ~ key converting all other inspirations to reds and eating them. I only bother buying reds if I need to hit the vendor anyway to sell some trash. I believe I'm rejecting rezzes and mezzes. I would guess that 6 minutes is good for no inspirations.

Thank you for testing!

It does? I wouldn't have thought this to be the case, but I suppose I don't know. Bah! Why does it say oldskool? Why can't I delete the post? Why can't I delete the quote and try again? Stupid forum! 🙄

I think you may be unaware of an aspect of how damage resistance works, which is that damage resistance resists damage resistance debuffs. And if you were aware, it's worth at least pointing out for anyone who isn't aware. If you have 50% damage resistance, for instance, you also have 50% damage resistance debuff resistance. They go hand in hand. This has rather important implications for the validity of damage resistance debuffs in our DPS testing. Let's say we hit an enemy with a 100 HP attack. Here's what the enemy takes for a few damage resistance values. All very straightforward. 0% = 100 HP 10% = 90 HP 50% = 50 HP Now we hit them with a 20% damage resistance debuff. The enemy with 0% damage resistance takes the full 20% damage resistance debuff. The enemy with 10% damage resistance takes only a 20% * (100% - 10%) = 18% damage resistance debuff. The enemy with 50% damage resistance takes only a 20% * (100% - 50%) = 10% damage resistance debuff. So what are their new damage resistance values? 0% - 20% = -20% 10% - 18% = -8% 50% - 10% = 40% Now we hit them with another 100 HP attack. Here's what the enemy takes in damage this time for those new damage resistance values: -20% = 120 HP -8% = 108 HP 40% = 60 HP Now compare the damage we did before and after the 20% debuff. What percentage more damage did we do? 100 HP -> 120 HP = 20% more damage 90 HP -> 108 HP = 20% more damage 50 HP -> 60 HP = 20% more damage It is just as if our second attack had simply done 120 HP instead of 100 HP. And that is why we can treat -damage resistance the same as additional damage, no matter what damage resistance the target has, so we can take the lessons learned about damage resistance debuffs on a Pylon and correctly apply them to AVs, say, regardless of the AVs' damage resistance. We can perhaps make a similar argument about hit point debuffs, though I'm not clear if those can be resisted, and if so by what. If they're affected by the purple patch, for instance, then hit point debuffs wouldn't help much against level 54 AVs. I don't actually know, though. Hopefully someone can say. And regeneration debuffs are possibly not as applicable. I'm not sure, but I think they are affected by the purple patch, so wouldn't be the equivalent sort of buff against a level 54 AV. Again, hopefully someone knows for sure. So you may have a point about those debuffs. I'm actually not sure. And even with damage resistance debuffs, you'll have less time to apply them against lesser targets, so they won't be as effective as raw damage most of the time. Same with Brute's Fury. Same with Assault Core. Time to ramp up is a factor with a lot of things that help our damage out. But I suspect that many or most of us are viewing the Pylon as a proxy for an AV, not as some measurement of how fast we can clear minions. Anyway, yes, raw damage is raw damage, other sources that take time to ramp up or apply debuffs are not exactly equivalent, though damage resistance debuffs are close. But I hope we're all aware of that. If not, maybe it's good for it to be pointed out now and then. Just not in what felt like a "y'all are clearly missing something very important so it's good I'm here to enlighten you" sort of way. Even if you're trying to help us out, that sort of presentation may annoy people and keep the core message from getting through. I fear I may have just indulged in the same thing, though. But I did worry that you might not understand that damage resistance resists damage resistance debuffs, and how that affects things. And even if you understood that, I'm sure some people do not.

If you want to improve your single target DPS, I’d go Soul and take Gloom. If you prefer AoE, I’d take Mu and paint it black.

Maybe this? Knockout Blow -> Haymaker -> Cross Punch -> Punch -> Haymaker -> Cross Punch Take both Boxing and Kick in order to buff Cross Punch. Knockout blow needs to recharge in 8.58 seconds, requiring 292% recharge. 100% base, call it 95% from slotting, 70% from hasten, 37.5% from five Luck of the Gamblers and you have more than enough. only while Hasten is up, so I'd want more recharge than that, but you could also just throw more Punches in there while Hasten is down, since it will recharge faster than the duration of any of the other attacks. Edit: Eh, if it were me, I'd probably use Foot Stomp instead of Punch. Then Knockout Blow has to recharge in 9.372 seconds, which is 267% recharge. And I'd want to be able to do it even with Hasten down, so about 72% global recharge with Hasten toggled off.

Yeah, there are some things that can kill you that are hard to reduce to a simple calculation. I used to have my own survivability spreadsheet similar to but not as nice as yours, but I've abandoned it to work by experienced intuition once again like I did in the beginning, because what kills my main builds these days is rarely straightforward DPS overwhelming my defense, resistance, and healing. There are usually some sort of debuffs or drains involved. Still, I've plugged some numbers into your spreadsheet before. It's nice to have that data, even if it's only part of the picture.

I believe it uses a center rectangle from the first image. So to get a better image, post an image prior to any others where that center rectangle shows what you want to see. Or use text rather than images, but with all the formulas, the images are a lot easier to see.

I find the solo grind to be soothing. It's my happy place. So if it takes me over an hour to take down some AVs, it's only my fingers that are getting tired. That said, faster is certainly better, so I'm experimenting on beta with a build that brings me from 280 DPS to 350 DPS. That should dramatically speed up L54 AV fights.

351 DPS and better endurance management by tweaking Soaring Dragon. 172 seconds average on 16 pylons. I had 5-slotted Hecatomb for the 10% recharge bonus, but that left me with too little endurance enhancement, and too much recharge enhancement, which reduced the effectiveness of the procs, most importantly Achilles' Heel. I removed two Hecatombs to lower my recharge enhancement, and added a +5 Crushing Impact acc/dam/end for better endurance, and a Force Feedback +recharge proc to more than make up for the lost global recharge enhancement, at least for long enough fights. I lost 15% global accuracy in the trade. I feel like my to hit and accuracy are marginal. While I never drained out, I did get low on endurance by the end of a few of the pylon fights. Maybe I need to break down and take Ageless Radial instead of my beloved Barrier Core. Ageless Radial should be a better solution for defense debuffs, my primary weakness, and nice to have for a few other debuff situations. And filling my endurance bar every two minutes if needed should be more than sufficient to address my remaining endurance worries. But it fails to address my Energy and Toxic damage holes in any way. After the pylons, I fought some incarnate Tsoo and Talons of Vengeance on beta and never needed to hit Ageless for endurance. I hit it a few times for debuffs, though more to get an idea how well it worked than because I needed to. It seems to do the trick, but I need to see what happens with ranged energy enemies like Praetorian Clockwork. I was doing enough damage for a 54+3 Tub Ci AV, but then he started flying around. I gave chase, but it became clear I wasn't going to make any more progress with him flying away constantly. Definitely tempted to respec into this build on live. I think I have enough Empyrean merits for T4 Ageless Radial, though I can hang onto Barrier for now I suppose, wait to see my endurance become an actual problem rather than a theoretical one.

Nice! I threw together a quick damage-oriented Dark/Dark/Mu Brute build for a friend, and it looked like it might be fun. He's still leveling, though, and I only spent a few hours on it, so I'm sure it's not my best work. Nice to know what it's capable of if built and played well. 🙂

To be completely fair, that Tanker build was min/maxed to hell and back and it was definitely not my "first" take on it. Katana/Dark could definitely get higher DPS without possibly sacrificing *too* much survivability and gain substantial AoE Here are the "highest damaging" IO slottings overall for Kat/Dark to squeeze out its DPS <snip> - pretend that the damage IO here is Bombardment proc <snip> That right there will land you solidly in the 300-400 DPS range with fury keeping up and give you -40% res to your enemy. I recommend putting the Fury bonus in Death Shroud :), this will really help you to get more ST DPS and AoE out of your brute 🙂 In my first pass at improving my DPS without sacrificing too much survivability, I swapped Melee out and Assault Core in. I picked up Degenerative Radial rather than... I forget what I had. I slotted the -resist procs in Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. Probably some other minor tweaks. More recharge I think, allowing me to run Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's cut with a tiny gap not worth filling. Anyway, it brought me up from about 180 DPS to about 280 DPS. Enough for level 54 AV soloing, but still quite the slog. In my second pass, only on the beta server so far, I was following more of your advice, experimenting today with Gloom like you suggested. I'm chaining Soaring Dragon -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gloom -> Gambler's Cut. I didn't fit in more AoE, and I'm still fighting to get my endurance back to sustainable, but it's close, and it was just fine for the time required to solo a Pylon. I wasn't able to slot Gloom for maximum damage due to my need for set bonuses and keeping my endurance burn under control, but I still ended up in the range you expected at 338 DPS. Thanks! T4 Degenerative Radial T4 Assault Core no Lore pets 2:58 2:49 3:02 3:04 3:06 3:03 3:13 3:03 1458 / 8 = 182.25 seconds = 338 DPS I did lose a little survivability, but nothing too bad. And I'm still using Cardiac and Barrier rather than Musculature and Ageless. Those would certainly boost the DPS significantly higher again, but that would be losing way too much survivability for my tastes. Still, 338 DPS is enough to make L54 AVs go much faster.

I ended up playing with friends last night after work, but I just went and tried this +4x8 on my DM/SR Brute. Probably a different map. Comicon S&L Outdoor Edition. Outdoor map, ambushes to keep you at the aggro cap, at least for a little while. It wasn't as bad as I expected, at least for the 15 minutes or so I punched things before giving up because it was just so slow. I think the lowest my hit points got was maybe 1/4 or 1/3, and not often, and it was moving slowly enough I wasn't too worried. I never took an inspiration. If I'd had Rebirth like planned, it wouldn't have been used either. I think the biggest difference between our experiences are Brute hit points and Siphon Life slotted for healing. Your Siphon Life heals 134 hit points with a 2.63 second recharge and 2.112 second Arcanatime for about 28 hit points per second of healing. Mine heals 304 hit points with a 3.19 second recharge for 57 hit points per second, so double yours. More than double when we're just using it in the attack chain rather than every time it's recharged, as would be typical. I have more passive regeneration at 25 vs. 19, mostly due to the extra Brute hit points. I have a Power Transfer proc, which is another 4 hit points per second. Anyway, all taken together, I'm probably taking about the same damage you are, but healing it twice as quickly, which was enough to keep up. Not that you want to take up a career in farming on DM/SR, but targeting bosses first is probably the way to go when ambush farming with a mostly single-target build. I didn't do that, I just hit whatever got randomly selected, but where things might get more dangerous is when your aggro cap starts getting saturated with bosses. You want to keep it mostly minions and lieutenants. If Mids was right, you still need to pick up the hit point accolades, and that may help a little. Slotting Siphon Life for healing in addition to damage would help even more.

I think your hopes may be a little high. A typical Brute fire farmer probably has both 45% defense and 90% resistance to fire. You're taking 6x that much damage on fewer hit points, at least until your hit points start to dwindle, at which point it slows down due to scaling resists, but it never draws close to even. But I wouldn't be too worried if AVs are your goal. You may already have enough survivability for many even-level AVs, though I do suggest slotting Siphon Life for healing in addition to damage. It's a key power and you have to make it do everything. And then I'd go fight some AVs, and only get worried if they pound me into the pavement. I'm still working on incarnates on my DM/SR Brute, but I can give the farm a shot after work. I suspect I'll live, but I suspect it will be painful. It might kill me, though. And that's with 700 more hit points and Siphon Life slotted for healing. It should be easier once I pick up Rebirth.

Right, all five missions, including time between missions. Everything allowed, basically, as long as you're solo. You can load up on inspirations. Summon your Lore pets. Do base empowerment buffs. Temporary power boosts from pay to win. Email inspirations to yourself. Incarnate powers if you have them. Use macros and pop menus. Whatever you have. However you farm. Run what you brung. The idea of "equal" here is that we're measuring against a standard yardstick of actual farming, not that there are a bunch of other rules of what is and isn't allowed. Doing all five missions helps make sure we're looking at our sustained ability to earn influence, such as allowing Lore pets to recharge before you can use them again, and making loading up on inspirations between missions likely impractical, but if you think it'll help instead of hurt your time, that's allowed too. I realize some people might actually farm with a second account in tow for whatever reason. I think that's about the only thing you can't do here. And doing all five missions shouldn't be a headache, since it's actual farming, and you're earning actual influence. Anyway, that's the idea.

I believe the standard farming metric, if there is one at all, is to run the comicon fire farm on the asteroid, start the timer when you appear on the map in the first mission, and stop the timer when you click the glowy in the last mission. Check your raw influence before and after, without selling any drops. Convert to influence per minute. I haven't checked numbers in a long time, but dividing the pre-inf-nerf numbers by 2, I'd expect the fastest inf/minute with that metric to be in the neighborhood of 1.25 million influence per minute. Someone with more recent experience might be able to give better information. My own Rageless SS/Fire should be 1.05 million influence per minute if I'm right about just dividing old numbers by 2 to get new numbers. So not at the top end, but I think not bad for a Rageless SS/Fire not specifically built for fire farming.

I did that once on my fire Brute! Every time it recharged, I'd face plant as Vengeance fodder for the team, then Rise of the Phoenix to stun nuke the enemy and quickly get back in the action. There was another Brute holding aggro on the team, so it didn't seem too risky. Optimal? Maybe not, but totally worth it - we were all laughing and having fun. 🙂

Which I skipped! LOL. But I didn't skip it for numerical reasons. I skipped it because I have more fun playing without it, which isn't at all the same thing. Rage is numerically good.

I haven't played it, so I'm definitely not speaking from experience. But a 33% damage buff to (apparently) base damage for 15 seconds with a 2.244 second cast sounds like a really bad idea for a Brute. However, it also gives you +5 Blood Frenzy. I do not know how useful that is, and it might make it worth taking. Building it through attacks I imagine would be the better option most of the time, though.

My SS/Fire/Mu Brute "farmer" (he farms, but it's not really a farming build) doesn't have Rage. Skipping Rage on an SS/Fire Brute doesn't hurt farming as much as it does other content. Yes, it's arguably suboptimal. Numerical analysis linked below. Super Strength itself doesn't seem to be optimal if maximum fire farming efficiency is what you care most about. But Super Strength is at least still reasonably competitive with or without Rage. As far as raging or not raging, this was my conclusion from a numerical analysis in this long ago post... "I monitor my damage bonus on farms, and I'm going to guess that I average about 450%, but with wide swings around that number. At that level of damage, Rage might still help me just a tiny bit on average, but it would often hinder more than it helps. Double-stacked Rage hinders even more often, and might not even be considered a help at all on average."