Sovera

You don't dump defense and become stronger. This implies you weren't running with 90% resistances to begin with. I've had this talk in the past. The IO system is not terribly flexible. We can increase defense, but resistances are much harder to push up (I can work around 30%-ish resistances (out of 90%) but I can push defenses to 40% (out of 45%), we can not significantly push up damage (at best about 20-30% really pushing it). Neither can we push up regen to more than statistically significant numbers (100%-150%-ish percent? Something like 10-15 HPs? Melee Radial Hybrid testing giving me 700% regen was still unable to prevent deaths). So what do I do with my slots? Aim for even more recharge? I'd rather have some debuff protection and 40% defenses adding to Barrier when I have to click on it. Personal tastes and opinion here. But yeah, I agree putting defense up is not terribly important in the sense that 90% is already a very tough wall to overcome.

Or you just pair Martial Arts with any resistance armor and you get 90% to most and 45% to melee/ranged/AoE 😛 It's not particularly hard and I've builds for Dark Armor, Fire Armor and Radiation Armor that achieve it. But it does not solve the DDR problem though like the mythical 'Ruularu crush SR' it's more a perceived flaw than a practical flaw. I'm still tanking the ITF which is the motherload of defense debuffs and I might have to kite to get a breather but I'm not dying. Now -some- might take it as shameful about having to kite, but, it's a bad habit CoH instilled where we plant our feet and mostly ignore strategy. And anyway, it's ridiculously easy to make any resistance based armor reach 90% thanks to the near 20% from the ATO so once that goal's achieve what is left but add more layers of defense? It's not like we can increase offense like we can defense other than a few damage procs and recharge.

Surprisingly it does. A FF proc in Dragon's Tail increases the number of Burns-per-minute and being an AoE it nearly ensures they procs happen back to back (slight hyperbole). It also animates faster. Anyway, I tested it, same time to clean a farm test as the Claws version (and Spin is so much higher damage....) but able to reach 45% defense to melee, ranged and AoE.

Yeah. Willpower is great to survive passively but it's not going to add more power to a build. Bio is the go to, Fire for something a bit out of the box. We can say something like Tankers have great survival out of the box so they don't need to be tailored towards it more. That's my Fire Armor approach. But not everyone agrees or even has to. Playing the invincible meat shield has its appeal too.

It also depends on how many different types of -res you can fit in the build. I'm vocal about -res only being useful for pylon tests, but most of the 'best' times were people cramming a lot of -res effects on top of -res IOs. Not sure if you placed any of those in the Katana test for example, but it can fit two of them. Replacing two different -res IOs added one minute to my Tanker tests, so as you can see... But they also made no noticeable difference in tested map clearing and very small difference in AV testing. Still noticeable and it counts for every person in the team. But since they don't stack all it takes is one person having them.

Getting old sucks when you can't find the hole even in broad daylight, Bill.

It's a matter of doing a Trapdoor testing. I got consistent 6 minutes with the Fire Armor/Martial Arts. I never did get to try Claws.

Some more testing, and since I tested I might as well share. So the Melee Radial that gives +defense and +regen did make a difference when testing using an ITF +4. Not enough to stop dying, but definitely an upgrade in survival. The regeneration made a difference even though the defense got quickly whittled out. Also tested Rebirth in Destiny. That one did not do nearly enough as -60% defense easily overwhelmed the decaying regeneration. While at it I also tested Ageless with the debuff protection just to see how it compared to Barrier. The answer is not well at all. The decaying debuff protection did not stop the defense whittling for an appreciable enough amount of time to count as a panic button. Being able to combine Barrier and Ageless would be otherwise a good pairing were they not in the same Destiny slot but a bit of coordination with a regular team mate allows for it. Also in practical testing I prefer the double hit Assault to the +damage one. While the numbers on a pylon were about the same the double hit added a burstier effect. Math may not back me up but it felt better in terms of killing things faster in the shortest amount of time. So to conclude and to no one's surprise the combo of Melee Radial and Barrier will be very very tough to take down. We are merely stopped by what in the game actually asks for it when outside of extreme debuffs like the ITF the build already survives pretty well. On the other hand I was in a lowbie ITF team and we started a +3 and I had to kite to survive. Then we went down to +2 and again I had to kite (the extra defense the romans got messes up with things and our poor Controllers felt useless as the +resistance shouts relegated them to second string DPS and buffers). On the third hand a Brute, especially a Fire Armor + Energy Melee, already sweats damage and Assault does not seem to add much. My recommendations are thus: - You are playing an Energy Melee/Fire Armor Brute, you feel you have the damage part covered. You solo or do difficult content (next patch is also meant to bring more difficult content) = Barrier as a panic button/team wide buff + Melee Radial for dat scaling defense + regen (Melee Radial is more of a group thing since a single enemy in range only gives 1.5% defense and 45% regen. Jumping into the middle of a group bumps this to 15% defense and 430% regen. If not for the 430% regen then Support could give 12% defense, but the 12% damage and accuracy are negligible. Upside is that it would give it to the full team). - You are playing a Energy Melee/Fire Armor. Come on, you picked this combo to do damage! There is no such thing as enough damage until you can one shot an AV! Teams usually bring buffs and debuffs to help stay safe and things die fast anyway = Barrier as a panic button and kiting is free + double hit Assault. Tbh with the all the incarnate materials that we get you can also just craft both and slot according to the situation. It is not a life long ultimate choice.

It's the same build for leveling and for exemplaring. The bonuses mostly stay in place for the later and with the exception of Shockwave the full single target and AoE kit is up and ready by level 20. For leveling and while you have no money you can use this. It's mostly the same just much cheaper. It can be transitioned into the expensive end game gear little by little.

Not to put your enthusiasm down but you might find a Shield/Stone tanker a difficult beast if only because of the endurance demands that Stone Melee has and then coupled with Shield that has nothing to recoup endurance. Might I interest you in a Fire/Stone Melee? You can color the Stone Melee with the lava skins which goes trés bien ensemble with the thematic of Fire Armor. And it has Consume which will help greatly with the endurance demands of Stone. Despite this you can still work Shield/Stone though, but carry Recovery Serums and slot endurance reduction and the recovery uniques as soon as possible.

While I don't want to fall into the groveling some people fall into when talking about HC devs I have to say that me staying here is as much the server itself as the professionalism being shown. It is very much like watching 'real' (excusing the word) devs at work. The care for balance, the reworking of the architecture to 64, no wild piece meal 'improvements', that insta 'we have enough donations to keep the server afloat so closing donations now', showing where the money is going (and sure, they could be lying about the money is going, the more cynical amongst us could say, but none asked to be shown where the money was being used and it came from the devs themselves). Someone mentioned how one of the other oldschool servers pushes for multiple accounts to get the veteran rewards. Ew, ew ,ew. That's like we are still paying for the game and being time gated and having to scrounge. It's just so F2P. Kudos for those who like it because there's room for us all, but not me, thanks. Things I -would- like: more recruiting. Someone passionate for bases to handle bases for more items being imported and perhaps re-working the UI (It's an abject pain trying to place things down as it is), someone passionate for the character creator being recruited to handle making/bettering/importing more costume pieces.

In theory any Scrapper should be able to replicate a Brute's slotting. It's Tankers who get bonuses who make the same skills do more with the same slotting.

I have no dog in this fight (as we'd say here), but I don't understand the 'hate' that @Voltak is generating. If anything he is of the same mindset that I am which is fie on spreadsheets and lets go and test it out. Spreadsheets have a bad habit of not taking into consideration some under the hood mechanics or what. Voltak tested, presented results, seems good. Heck, about same time as my EM/Fire Brute with Hybrid toggled on. Slightly better even. What is there to dispute even? Or is it a case of believing he is lying about his testing? I'm not saying it is not the case but it is easily replicable if he posts the build used. OP's case seems just either using a different secondary, or a different epic, or a build not as min maxed. All things normal and bound to happen.

Whiffing is terrible. Two runs is not nearly enough. I was testing the Support Hybrid to see the damage difference and kept getting worse times than the usual. Almost as if using it made times -worse- but I know it's just whiffing.

Here I was giving the example of a Rad defender in another thread the OP made and didn't even realize how apt it was.

Probably because anyone who has endurance problems beelines for an incarnate that will fix it. Regular choice is Ageless for the recharge as a bonus but Cardiac as well. Anyone who does -not- have endurance problems will not notice an endurance boost. I did look at those numbers and they seem like a nice compromise considering neither Assault nor Melee add much to us personally. Yes, it's worth considering as a third choice. Damage boost is negligible but unlike Melee and Assault the numbers are shared for the team. And 12% defense is nothing to sneeze at.

*shudder* No... thanks... That has all the trimmings of playing a F2P game.

After some more exploring I can't say I got a good answer. The best option seems to be Melee Radial Embodiment as it adds defense and regen. With a saturated 10y 10 person aura it pushes defense to 55% and regen to 700%. That seems like it has a use as a possible second panic button when Barrier is on its last legs but not yet recharged. At a more conservative 5 person in the aura it still leaves defense at 47% and regen at 479%. If I was to do another solo ITF on buffed enemies (but screw that with the new defense values the romans got) it would be a good choice. It's definitely a possibility as a second anti-squish button for a squishy-ish build. The truth is that the game is not (yet, page 3 when??) hard enough and I'll be the first to say I wander around eating alphas and face tanking things even as a squishy Fire Armor on a squishy(er) Brute. That means there is a good chance using it just has no purpose since the build is already surviving well enough on its own. On the other hand despite in a test that favored it (two minute ish test for something that has a two minute duration) the Assault test was only a 25-ish second improvement. Once we add jumping from group to group, the need to build up stacks, the two minute downtime, the impact of Assault appears minimal. Things are already melting anyway? Overall it's not very complicated though. Like Degenerative the long term effects appear minimal. This is doubled because we either use the power on CD instead of when needed and then it's not available when needed (it speeds up killing AVs or helps surviving when in danger, unless we used it at random and when we reach the AV or need to survive after Barrier's initial boost is over it is not available) or we save it for when we need it and then there is a good chance it gets little or no use (wait for the hypothetical panic that requires a button but it never comes). So because of this I'm just going to take Assault. I'm surviving well enough. If I was just... 20% squishier then I feel the Melee Radial would be a good option to alternate with Barrier much like squishies used to alternate Rune of Power with something else. As it is best leave the Hybrid slot be a mindless clicky minor damage boost.

As a follow-up from the previous post it makes me ponder if Assault is really a good use for the Hybrid slot. I am all for damage increases but T4 and all I got was a 15-20 second improvement? Not particularly interesting or decisive. As a whole I have not found Assault impactful. I will run some tests but like Degenerative it might not be something with a huge impact outside of niche situations. The one that does regen could be useful but 90% of the time survival is already good.

I wasn't sure which Assault to take since Br00ts don't much care for +damage buffs, so I've tested both and since it's tested I'll leave the findings here for others. +damage assault: 2:10 2:05 Double Hit: 2:20 2:20 Welp, minimal difference and what there was might have been from whiffing. I'll take the +damage.

You morbidly invulnerable (see wut I did there?? ;D) people need to take a whiff of danger instead of playing unkillable sets!

Not sure if serious.

As someone who always levels by playing and who had a major stint as a Tanker I can't say I felt the lack of Taunt. There were times, yes, where two spawns were close together and agro overflows, but I can count those on the fingers of one hand. More power for those who like and use Taunt though, but the number of times I see people jump into the middle of a group and then use it on the group is amazing though. Again, nothing really -wrong- about it. Just useless since they were already agroed. But again the game did not get worse because they did it. The -range of Taunt is where I find Taunt more useful. So many annoying ranged mobs who will plink from afar with the biggest culprits the protean clockworks we get in Tinpex. but again, in a team it all melts. It's solo I would like having it. Tbh I have the free power slot to take Taunt but was disgusted in realizing it did not work on Battle Maiden and that was that with my Taunt experiment.

Same, but, it's a package deal. To get the costumes they neglected other areas. We got the other areas here but not the costumes. It's easy to focus on the costumes or power sets the other servers have but not the... well... everything else.

Quick update. I've been climbing the vet levels and incarnating. The character behaves very very well. It's become a favorite for max level play though lower than Yin and I'll still take the Fire/Ice melee since nothing beats low level Burn + Frost at Synapse and lower. The squish of Fire Armor is not altogether too different than on a Tanker in that throwing Barrier when things are going badly works the same between both ATs with the bonus that the greater damage of the Brute plays well in the Brunker spirit of killing before being killed. I've been doing ITF for vet levels and it's silly how a build that makes big booms in ST also razes a spawn by BU + Burn + WH. Fire Armor covers EM's AoE weakness and balances it out. The squish remains but I'm holding point in whatever TF and yet to die (almost did the last one when the squid ocean showed up and I delayed Barrier trying to squeeze more damage). In AoE situations Total Focus + Energy Transfer + Burn + Whirlwind is -this- close of being a loop but sometimes I need to throw an Energy Punch as a filler. It's honestly pretty good since AoE's nice but bosses need murderizing so I can drop my super heavy hitters. Most of the time it's just a ghetto Rad Melee gameplay though. If I count 3-5 mobs around I just do the ST rotation and let Burn kill the extras.