Werner

Oops, sorry for my confusion.

The two ways I've gotten lots of cash quickly are farming and playing the market. I've heard that TW/Bio can make a decent farmer. I've heard that one can run lots of task forces and use the merits to buy things or convert to cash in some way. I almost never run task forces, so I don't know personally. I'm sure there are plenty of other methods.

And it's trivial to give up some DPS to soft cap fire and cold too on that build. I'm glad it's only around a billion. I may be able to afford my planned build! And I may do something like this when I have my TW/Bio leveled up.

A few more thoughts: An optimal attack chain doesn't always mean the highest DPS. It's good for the chain to have a simple rhythm your fingers can follow without thought. It's good to use fewer attacks where practical. It's good for the chain to provide some active mitigation. On my old Katana/Dark Scrapper, I took simple rhythm and fewer attacks further than most people would, skipping the two big hitters and going with Divine Avalanche -> Gambler's Cut -> Sting of the Wasp -> Gambler's Cut. It lowered my DPS, but saved a power pick and five slots, stacked my melee/lethal defense a little better, was trivially simple to get right under pressure, and the knock up/down of the big hitters wasn't going to help much against AVs, my then prey of choice. I can imagine skipping Crushing Uppercut on a Street Justice Brute, and having a chain this simple: Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Heavy Blow As with my Katana/Dark, I doubt many people would do this, but it saves a power pick and slots, and it makes for a trivially-simple chain and no mistakes under pressure. I also prefer knockdown to knockup. I don't like having to reposition to stay on an enemy I just knocked up. I think faster attacks build Fury faster. You'll get more resistance debuffs out of it. I can't imagine it's enough to equal the DPS of using Crushing Uppercut, but it'll at least help ease the sting of losing it. I would personally give very serious consideration to that simpler chain, probably coming up with top end builds with and without it, and comparing both DPS and survivability before committing.

I haven't bought or priced any high end builds yet, but from what I get selling purples, I would guess a top end Brute build might be up to 2 billion at buy-it-now crafted IO market prices. However, that's far from the only way to handle getting what you want.

I have aesthetic concerns with Fire as well. My solution on my Fire/Shield was enough recharge to make an attack chain using only the fire sword attacks. I synchronized the look of the fire sword and his shield as best I could. Not an optimal attack chain, but I thought it looked great. Anyway, one possible solution if aesthetics are an issue but you like the swords.

Smashing/lethal defense should be doable with some build changes, but it looks like the plan here was to chase what was easy and relatively cheap, and the secondary lends itself to handling smashing/lethal with resistance. Combined with the decent ranged and AoE defense, the build shouldn't be horrible against smashing/lethal. I'd definitely want better, but I'd come in with a higher budget too.

A few initial comments on things that jumped out at me: Download Mids' Reborn: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7645-mids-reborn-hero-designer/ I would take Focus, the highest DPS attack. If you don't want the knockback, I believe you slot the Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown IO in it. I would take Ablative Carapace - huge regen, lots of absorption, up most of the time. If you don't mind fighting while airborne, I would take Hover. It provides a little extra defense, and when IOing, can "mule" desirable IOs.

After a lot of fiddling with splitting Superior Brute's Fury apart to double up on the smashing/lethal defense, I think I'm going to keep the set together and go with the HelenCarnate mod. The only change I made, I think, was to slot a +5 Absolute Amazement: Stun into Rise of the Phoenix. I think more safe time is more important to me than more damage. Hopefully I won't need it often, but it's such a fun power and a time saver when defeated that I'll probably be more willing to push hard and take risks, and that's at least as much the point as the power itself. Time to start placing bids and crafting my incarnate powers. Eager to play it and see how well it works in practice. Thank you, y'all!

How about I give an example, a basic flow of thought of me trying to figure out a good attack chain. I've never looked at Street Justice before, so let me work with that. Pull up Mids. Options -> Configuration -> Effects & Maths -> Use ArcanaTime for Animation Times (if it isn't set). Brute. Street Justice. Window -> Power Graphs -> Damage / Anim. Now I'm looking at a graph of all the attacks, and their basic damage per ArcanaTime, which is a very good initial pass at the relative amount of DPS they'll contribute. That's where I'd probably start every time. Crushing Uppercut is the clear winner, followed by Shin Breaker. After that there's a bunch with similar DPS. Heavy Blow is best of the rest, but I bet the best chain will come down to using Crushing Uppercut and Shin Breaker as close to the recharge maximums I can get as possible. However, there may be special considerations for why I might want to include specific other attacks. So maybe it's time for me to look at the attacks themselves. Ah, hmmm, a combo system, huh? All right, Crushing Uppercut is a combo finisher, combo level 1 or 2 increases disorient, 3 turns it into a hold. It also does knock up. OK, but that's active mitigation, not DPS. Still, I'd probably rather a hold than disorient. I hate my enemies wandering around. So now my goal is probably Crushing Uppercut at recharge limits with combo level 3. Recharge is 25 seconds. Eeesh. This build wants recharge, recharge, and more recharge, and you're still looking at a long attack chain. So let's say we're running a very high recharge build, with Agility Core, perma Hasten, and Ageless. Let's estimate for now that we can get up to 350% recharge in Crushing Uppercut, taking it to 7.14 seconds of time we have to fill with lesser attacks. In that time we want to get to a combo level 3 and spam as much damage as we can, but waste not much more time than 7.14 seconds on the lesser attacks. Cast Rech 2.376 7.14 Crushing Uppercut, knockup, finisher How about Shin Breaker? Recharge 8 seconds, 1.584 seconds ArcanaTime, adds 1 combo, has -7.5% defense so can slot an Achilles Heel for -7.5% resistance as well. Very nice. At our super high recharge, we'd expect it to come back in 2.29 seconds. So the hope is to use it twice. (1.584 + 2.29) * 2 = 7.748, so that's good timing for Crushing Uppercut. Well, Crushing Uppercut is one of those 2.29s. So we just want to fill one more. Except that wouldn't allow enough for Crushing Uppercut to recharge. Anyway, now we have a fairly awkward time we want to fill. And I'm being premature because I really should see what the other attacks have to offer before even halfway committing to anything. Cast Rech 2.376 7.14 Crushing Uppercut, knockup, finisher 1.584 2.29 Shin Breaker, +1, -7.5% def, -40% speed, AH proc We're forced into Initial Strike or Heavy Blow, so those are of particular interest to me as I don't like taking more attacks than I have to. Initial Strike is a basic light fast attack with a disorient. It won't fill our gap without help. Heavy Blow is also a basic light fast attack, but with knockdown. I prefer knockdown, both in terms of damage mitigation, and perhaps slotting Force Feedback since recharge looks so critical to our performance here. It's kind of looking like Shin Breaker -> Heavy Blow -> Initial Strike -> Shin Breaker -> Heavy Blow -> Initial Strike -> Crushing Uppercut at this point, but we haven't even looked at the other powers yet, and that chain "wastes" combo points. Sweeping Cross is a cone and a finisher. Meh. Rib Cracker is a 7.5% resistance debuff for 13.6 seconds, OK, now we're talking. 1.584 seconds, 6 second recharge, or about 1.71 seconds in our proposed high recharge build, also a combo builder. We'd really like to spam that one too. Cast Rech 2.376 7.14 Crushing Uppercut, knockup, finisher, disorient or hold 1.584 2.29 Shin Breaker, +1, -7.5% def, -40% speed, AH proc 1.584 1.71 Rib Cracker, +1, -7.5% res, -11.25% dmg Spinning Strike is an AoE. Probably not. OK, so we basically want to spam those three attacks. Can we make a chain of just them? I'm not seeing it. There's just not enough recharge. And now I've become more curious about what procs I can put in Crushing Uppercut. With its long recharge, I think that gives us good proc chances. Well, if we're using Crushing Uppercut in its finisher role for the hold, Lockdown has a chance for 2 hold, so then probably it's a 4 or 5 hold? I don't know if that's helpful. What does it take to lock down bosses? I'd have to research. Hello, paragonwiki. OK, it takes 3 to lock down a boss. So what's the power itself got? Mids isn't telling me. Probably 2 or 3. If 2, a hold proc would be nice to lock down bosses. If 3, we're already there. Anyway, problem for another day - we're talking about DPS, not active mitigation. It'll take a Force Feedback proc. Might be a good place for a purple proc as well. OK, so I think what I need is one more attack. I think I need to go Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> ????? -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Crushing Uppercut. And I want to minimize the time spent on that extra attack while getting some sort of useful benefit. Well, the minimal time attack is Initial Strike at 1.056 seconds. And that's plenty of time added to allow Shin Breaker and Rib Cracker to recharge. How about Crushing Uppercut? 1.584 + 1.584 + 1.056 + 1.584 + 1.584 = 7.392, and Crushing Uppercut is recharging in as low as 7.14 seconds. Perfect, but Heavy Blow at 1.32 seconds is a perfectly good option, with slightly better DPS itself, and a longer recharge to help make procs in it work if any, and it does knockdown so can take a Force Feedback proc where Initial Strike won't, and I prefer knockdown to disorient. So it looks like we have our winner. Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Heavy Blow -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Crushing Uppercut Cast Rech 2.376 7.14 Crushing Uppercut, knockup, finisher, disorient or hold, FF proc, maybe damage or hold proc 1.584 2.29 Shin Breaker, +1, -7.5% def, -40% speed, AH proc 1.584 1.71 Rib Cracker, +1, -7.5% res, -11.25% dmg 1.320 fast Heavy Blow, +1, knockdown, FF proc I don't want to count on Force Feedback to run gapless, so let's see where we stand on required recharge. Shin Breaker = 8 / (1.584 + 1.32) = 276% recharge Rib Cracker = 6 / (1.584 + 1.32) = 207% recharge Heavy Blow = totally no problem Crushing Uppercut = 25 / (1.584 * 4 + 1.32) = 327% recharge So we have our work cut out for us on recharge, but that is a number we can hit. Figure 100% base + 100% enhancement + 20% Agility + 10% Ageless + 70% Hasten + 42.5% from 5 Luck of the Gamblers and you're there. You're past there. Is it the best chain? I don't know. So let's see what other people came up with. Mind you, that might be the place to start, but I like to do my own thinking, and the whole point was to show the thinking, not just give the answer. So I'm looking at the spreadsheet that has chains at 275% and 200% recharge. We're rocking a required 327% recharge for our chain, but let's see what we see. OK, the 275% chain they picked was my chain with an extra Heavy Blow to reduce the recharge required for Crushing Uppercut. That's a good sign, and that's a good idea for if we're recharge debuffed - just throw an extra Heavy Blow in there. How about the Pylon damage thread in the Scrapper Forum? Anyone using Street Justice? There's a Stalker, but Assassin's Strike throws everything off. Ah, a Scrapper, that's better. Built by Nihilii. That's good too. Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Moonbeam -> Shin Breaker -> Rib Cracker -> Crushing Uppercut Moonbeam? Otherwise the same chain, but with Moonbeam instead of Heavy Blow? Huh. Well, we don't have access to Moonbeam on our Brute, but it points out that we should look at our Epic pools just in case there's something that would fill the role even better than Heavy Blow. But I'll call it good enough for now. If it were my character, I'd probably do the due diligence of checking out every possible attack going where Heavy Blow is now, but I'm also betting that we're right we want to be.

I've noticed little difference in feel between leveling Brutes vs. Scrappers, unless the Scrapper doesn't have a taunt aura, and then I'm sad. I used to play mostly Scrappers with an occasional Brute. Now I'm mostly Brutes with an occasional Scrapper. I like having a taunt aura. I like the higher resistance caps and HP. I miss having criticals. When I'm on a team with a Brute I miss doing damage. A friend always plays a Tanker, and he's very serious about keeping enemies off the squishies, and forgets that the Brutes he's playing with aren't squishies. Well, in comparison, I suppose we are. But it means not a lot of Fury to play with. I've never played a purpled out Brute, though. Soon. I know my purpled-out Scrappers were really, really fun solo, and very hard to kill.

John Printemps, if I recall?

What a delightful coincidence! 🙂

Ah, sorry. 65% fury, so 130% damage bonus.

I've heard 65% solo, but I haven't paid too much attention myself. I think I'm around 85% farming until I have to start going to the mobs instead of them coming to me. And I'm usually well under 65% in groups.

And I almost feel like I should apologize for not answering the question. I saw it and thought about answering, but knew a good answer would take more time than I had to give. Fortunately 5099y_74c05 took the time and gave probably a better answer than I'd have given. 🙂

OK, let's check the actual recharge speed of Hasten with the updated build. Ageless is 10 seconds at +70%, 20 seconds at +30%, 30 seconds at +20%, and 60 seconds at +10%. Hasten's normal recharge with Hasten up is 100% base + 119.55% enhancements + 143.8% global = 365.35%. 450 seconds to recharge in only 120 seconds for perma 10 seconds * (365.35% + 70%) = 43.535 seconds recharged 20 seconds * (365.35% + 30%) = 79.070 seconds recharged 30 seconds * (365.35% + 20%) = 115.605 seconds recharged 60 seconds * (365.35% + 10%) = 225.210 seconds recharged total = 463.42 seconds recharged in 120 seconds So yes, Hasten should be slightly better than perma if I got the math right, without even worrying about Force Feedback. Though I ignored the cast time of Ageless itself. But a few seconds either way isn't going to make much practical difference.

If I put Foot Stomp after Ball Lightning, and if a single Force Feedback fires, and if I calculated correctly, then it cuts the yawn and stretch time exactly in half, down to 1.452 seconds, and adds nearly 20 DPS to his AoE output at 65% Fury. Nice.

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you!

How do you set the + level on individual IOs? I poked around but didn't figure it out, only how to set it globally. I also wasn't sure what I could and couldn't +. One possible problem is that for the "single-target" chain to be gapless, Knockout Blow has to recharge in the Arcanatimes for 2 x Haymaker (1.716) + Burn (2.244) + Punch (1.452) = 7.128 seconds. I had it barely under that, and now we're showing 7.18 seconds, so I need to be sure we'll be OK by spamming Ageless, which has +10% on the second half, so... 25 / (100% + 104.49% enhancement + 143.8% global + 10% Ageless) = 6.978, rounding up to 6.996. One clock tick to spare! OK, good, we're still OK! And if I don't spam Ageless, a 0.132-second gap won't make a practical difference, while the other improvements you made will make a practical difference. I hate watching my Psionic resistance go even lower, but I'll be hopeless against psionic enemies either way, and lowering the difficulty, so I might as well play to my strengths. So yes, I'll be making at the very least your changes to the build. Thank you!

Current Mids can be configured to show Arcanatime as the Cast time. It's not technically the Cast time, but as far as attack chain calculations, that's the number you want to use. I don't know if this is the default setting. In any case, it makes the calculations easier.

I agree. And even if you have no other resists or defenses, slotted out Tough and Weave give you a... erm... Besserwisser said 70% of blue side damage was smashing/lethal... 1000 output damage of average percentage by type without any resists or defense, 500 gets through... add 6% Weave and only 440 gets through your defense, of that 308 is smashing/lethal, 18% of which is blocked by Tough, so 55 points, so 385 points actually hit you. 385 points of damage vs. 500 points of damage is a 500/385-1 = 30%. You can handle 30% more enemy damage output. So in the worst case scenario, if slotted up, the Fighting pool gives you about a 30% average increase in survivability. Worth what you have to give up to get there? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's significant.

I have Rage in my cheap IO/SO build right now. I do use it, but only rarely and situationally, rather than trying to perma-Rage like I used to. I wouldn't mind having it in the build for those situations where I actually use it, but when I so rarely use it, I might as well take something else. I do think people should at least try it - the numbers are good. It's just, eh, not for me anymore. An over-simplified summary of build differences might be, "gives up some AoE damage for some smashing/lethal defense", but it'll take a little time to digest since it's not that simple.

Kind of a random note, but my initial intent was to go for positional defense, with melee at 46.5%, followed by as much ranged, and then as much AoE as I could get. But the new sets make it very simple to stack up substantial smashing, lethal, fire, and cold defense. So it would have been silly to stick with the original plan. But energy/negative defense wasn't so easy to come by, and I'd still have a big toxic/psionic hole. So that's how I landed on a hybrid approach with melee defense where I wanted it, but then smashing, lethal, fire, and cold defense replacing my intended ranged defense. It's still comparatively weak to energy, negative, toxic, and psionic, but at least the positional defenses help some, and having some resistance to them helps some.

On paper the build has significant toxic resistance, at least in a sustained situation, due to stacking of Healing Flames. But I should review any of my toxic/psionic bonuses since I've let them slip so far from where I had them in previous build iterations. At this point, a few percentage points are only that - a few percentage points. So other things may be more advantageous overall, such as the Force Feedback proc. After all, I went to some lengths to get recharge, then didn't slot any of those. I'll fiddle and see what happens. I did consider splitting up Superior Brute's Fury to double up on defense bonuses, but I was also very interested in the 10% recharge and 6% smashing/lethal resistance, especially in the context of incarnate content, and stacking with the scaling resistance proc. There will probably be enough cascading changes from splitting it up that there's no reducing it to that simple choice. But it's definitely worth another look vs. when I first went, "nah, I want the full set bonuses", so I'll fiddle with it and see what happens. And if it lets me slot some Force Feedbacks, I'll need to do some calculations to see what that buys me in average recharge. One concern is that if I slot them in my single-target chain, my single-target chain can't lose any recharge without creating a gap or adding another lower DPS Punch. So even if my average recharge is improved, my single-target DPS could still drop a little outside of debuffs, all other things being equal. That said if one ends up in Foot Stomp, it could improve AoE DPS, My builds also typically prioritize defense and resistance more than this one, but I was willing to trade some of that for more damage in this case. My plan is to set up my Katana/Dark Brute as my tankier build - I had a very hard-to-kill Katana/Dark Scrapper on live for performing Stupid Scrapper Tricks. At least on paper, the faster recharge of Healing Flames does a lot for survivability. But if I'm spamming Healing Flames due to insufficient defense and resistance, that's definitely cutting into my damage output, and it's only a matter of time before I don't hit it at just the right time and I faceplant. Which is why I wanted Rise of the Phoenix. 😉 Thank you! Looks like I have more fiddling in my future. 🙂