Sovera

Atlas is jam packed with Hellions. Or do you mean because it was named? I have fun spawning Babbage on top of Positron when I solo Synapse. All it takes is teleporting out of mission instead of exiting it and it appears where I appear, which is on Positron when I go get the immobilizer. It's actually soloable then because Positron and Valkyrie hit hard.

As someone who was just shown an interesting tidBit of these new emOtes I must say: thank yOu dev who lovingly crafted that small detail. If you'll oBlige with an account I'll tranSfer some inf as a tip.

Funny enough I hate Freaks because of their heals and ressurections. But I do wonder why people farm the AE when the first mission of the Market Crash is a farm map thinly disguised as a TF. Full XP, but I suppose not full inf?

Instead of trying to lift Fire/Cold defense you should work on Smash/Lethal which is the single most common type of damage. You'll never get your E/N resistances very high though, but it's not bad trying to get it as high as you can. Something like this then (change powers and travel choices to what you'd like). Despite Offensive Adaptation being toggled on it's on the razor's edge of having 90% to S/L with two stacks of the ATO and Barrier's 5% (71.39% + two stacks equal 13.4% + 5% from Barrier equal 89.79%), and since having Barrier E/N defense was also balanced at 40% like S/L defense so everything gets softcapped when Barrier is used. If the content is not hard enough to require barrier then those last 5% are not needed either. Recharge debuff protection is nearly capped too. But it's going to rely on DNA Siphon for endurance which should not be a proble msince you get it pretty early, but for long single target fights you might find your endurance does not keep up so keep a few Recovery Serums at hand on the off hand chance you fight something for a minute or two instead of several somethings you can DNA Siphon off.

I wouldn't go Claws on a brute tbh. The set is great but loses its edge on a Brute and turns mushy between Follow-up and Fury not mixing well, and the extra recharge on Spin and Shockwave. It's just min maxing though. Claws/Energy Armor has my vote.

Something like this then. Doesn't mean it's better than the other build though, it's just what I'd use:

Something like this. I didn't order the levels at which slots should be taken.

Ice/Fire Armor is still my favorite. Blooms early and mocks pretty much most challenges via a simple line of sight break and Ice Patch, then it burns things down because dead things don't hurt back. See all those tricks they were pulling? Kiting, carefully choosing which mobs to kill first and leaving others until the end? Ice/Fire just laffed and burned stuff.

Pretty much. It still has a CC component but I found it less useful when not on a Scrapper who can chain it and mobs barely have time to get up before being knocked down again. There's a post with Shockwave in though.

Everything works if you're a Brute. You need to be more specific. It would be difficult for any AT not to solo stuff at 0x1 with no bosses, so you must want more. x4? x8? +1x8 with bosses?

Went to the test server to try the Rad/Fire build. First try 2:15. Better than my EM/Fire Brute who got 2:30. Next try I got 3 minutes 😄 Oh CoH, never change... Third try 2:39. ...of course the Rad/Fire cheats outrageously since it has two -res procs in IG which work very well for pylons. So for the sake of testing I exchanged those two procs for damage procs. It's not something I would condone but just to see the difference in numbers, aaaaand... 3:40. More tests could be ran but its enough for now.

Ops, my bad. I'm so used to Fire Armor I duplicated the slotting. No need for extra KB protection, distribute those slots as seen fit.

Tried to respect power choices. Couldn't quite squeeze in the numbers I got from the Rad/Rad I posted a bit below but you can look at the slotting there for ideas. Overall I'd say Rad/Rad might fit him better not just because of the numbers but the rotation is simple and forgiving and Irradiated Ground works passively.

Plenty to change. I tried to respect your power choices but pumped your resists up as well as the energy/negative defenses. +5 every slot has little value btw.

...actually I never ran the numbers on EM's cone. Lemme check. So it's about 237 damage. Good news is that it can be chained with Power Crash, Whirling Hands, Power Crash, Total Focus. Repeat. Might not win awards but it's decent.

The idea to pick the animation times was sound, but that's the problem of spreadsheets and math: it is only as good as the data. And that's a problem that happens a bit too much with attempts at doing pure math with something clunky like MMO mechanics: there are too many under the hood mechanics. This isn't even taking in consideration mob resists which further increases the value of EM compared to Claws. So, first off and most important: you're correct that War Mace is stronger than Claws. It hits hard, it has good places for FF and the AoE is decent (but held back by Whirling Mace and animation times), and Clobber is the Spin of single target attacks. But we can't just look at the stronger attacks though. The whole attack chain is needed. Taking WM for example: Clobber (1.5 second animation, 583 damage), Shatter (2.5 animation, 461 damage), Jawbreaker (2 second animation, 380 damage) = 6 second attack loop for 1423 damage. Claws would be (with two Follow-up stacks which distorts thing since it means it is on its second loop, I won't take it against you if you call foul): Follow-up (1.1 second animation for 175 damage), Focus (1.3 second animation for 344 damage), and Slash (1.6 second animation and 386 damage) = 4 seconds and 905 damage. The difference is large, right? But it only took four seconds. So we can still use Follow-up and Focus a second time for a 6.4 seconds (that 0.4 seconds is cheating since its exceeding the attack loop of War Mace) which adds another 519. 519 + 905 = 1424. Now there is some cheating done. The maths assume Claws already has two Follow-up stacks (ergo fight has started and four seconds have elapsed) and that 0.4 is in favor of Claws. This seems to put Claws on par with WM but WM benefits of those big fat crits because it hits in big chunks where Claws does lots of little hits. Then things get absolutely muddied by the above WM rotation not taking in consideration its own Build-up, and how the longer animations when they fail are a bigger loss than Claws where if a hit fails it just launches the next one where WM is still swinging, and how the Superior Critical Strikes 3.5 second duration proc can fit a whole rotation for Claws (the proc counts as long as the animation started before it ended, even if the proc ends before the animation has finished animating). This is why I don't do maths. I just poke at a pylon, then switch slots, then poke at a pylon again, then jot down the results. My only math involves plus and minus signs. Which brings me back to my first post: Claws is not as good as WM, but it blooms early. Level 18 for Focus which means the ST attack chain is done. Spin is idiotically strong with 384 damage against Whirling Mace for 225 and Shockwave may not hit as hard as Crowd Control (231 damage VS 284 damage) but it animates much faster (1.2 second animation VS 2.3 second animation). That said both are left behind by Energy Melee. Now personally what I call my 'best' damage character is a EM/Fire Brute. Because it is a Brute it is weaker in damage than a Scrapper (thank you crappy ATOs) achieving only a a two minute and a half pylon time. Compared to Scrappers who do things in 1:30 or 1:45 that's slow. But, it is well rounded. Burn shores up the weaker AoE of EM allowing the character to blitz through regular missions both chunking bosses but also melting the surrounding minions. Burn also fits nicely because EM has an awkwardly long recharge for Total Focus (I don't want to use slow Energy Transfer) which I can neatly fit it in. And because it is a Brute it is sturdier than a Scrapper which is important to me but not to everyone.

My first trash talk in the forums! I demand a badge. Saying Claws has the lowest damage output is a bold strategy, lets see how it pans out.

Your defense is at 29% instead of 40%. That also explains it. Probably lacking some IOs still. Nvm, I see you didn't have Weave and Combat Jumping toggled. What of the resistances? With S/L at 90% and E/N at 65% (with Barrier) the gains of Meltdown/RoP aren't exactly shining. Might as well keep medium oranges and with one of them E/N goes to 80% instead of taking and slotting and rotating two powers for 25% to E/N. If I was to do that I'd rebuild everything so that I'd be at 90% taking in account those two which would loosen up the resistance goals and perhaps allow to pump E/N more too.

After finding my Fire Armor/Rad tank was slow I slotted the Rad/Fire Armor Brute with a slightly altered build. And then went to solo stuff to test it. It really melts things despite having had to sacrifice Atom Smasher due to lack of slots and finding Burn + Irradiated Ground is enough AoE. I then decided to run the Yin test just to see the difference with the -res procs in IG. Now, granted, it's not a perfect test since A) Amplifiers ran out, and B) the character is in the upper 40s instead of lower 30s so there are a lot more slots. But with that said I'm surprised at a 40 minute run. Same as the Tanker I felt as 'slow' (but lets keep in mind it had Amplifiers and Fiery Embrace at Yin's level) and only four minutes faster than the Rad/Rad Brute and six minutes faster than the Stone Armor/Rad. How it -feels-? It feels like the Brute melts everything at a much faster clip be it ST or in AoE. One BU and a Burn kills a whole spawn compared to the Tanker who feels a lot more anemic.

You should not be incarnated at your level which makes a difference. Even just having Barrier and that permanent 5% to defense will make a big difference. Farms need defense since the enemies never stop and the resistances keep most of it out, but since it never stops coming... That's why you see farmers always with 45% defense on top of 90% resistances. It may not be much of a difference but 40% and 85% adds up. Out of curiosity can you screenshot your defense and resistance from the Power attribute window? Without Defensive Maneuvers toggled on.

I don't see the same numbers. Did you click on Suppression? Options, Configuration, Effects&Math, then on the Suppression bit check the ActivateAttackClick and HitByFoe. I'll have to be honest that you got the resistance goals at least, but the slotting is butchered. Three slots in Burn, unslotted (for their purpose) heal and endurance, and others makes clicking on them barely worth it. I tried to fix it a bit but unfortunately there are not enough slots to go around to reach all goals. I'd suggest doing it on a Tanker who has more freedom in slots. A Brute pays for the extra damage by being a lot tighter in slotting and that means the epic Fire pool has only one free slot for it. Which is drab. But you get a framework and now you can decide what you'd like to sacrifice. You can kill the defense slotting to get the slots for the epic pool for example. Don't touch Tactics IMO as it is providing a much needed boost to accuracy (if you go to Optiosn, Configuration, Exemping&Base Values you can change the ToHit to 48 which simulates hitting +3 enemies which is where the T3 of Alpha leaves the enemies at). Even so the first two attacks 'only' have 89% chance to hit (can use the last free slot for a Kismet's unique but it's not really necessary).

Probably Claws/Bio. But honestly? Pure damage? Energy Melee. I'm talking as seen from a rounded experience where between leveling and exemplaring and max level Claws is a nice classic that has its full attack chain by level 18 instead of 32. It also has a self contained blending machine of an AoE chain and all animations are blistering fast. on top of having FF procs in the important places that speeds up all cooldowns. EM is great and nothing currently hits harder than it, but you level to 26 without a heavy hitter and the build is only complete at 32. Then you need to work out a rotation that tries to let you pull ET only after TF which is... not easy. Most of the time you'll have to rely on slow ET which is fine since it hits like a truck, but between TF taking 2.8 seconds and slow ET taking 2.9 plus the risk of whiffs it can feel like molasses. Pretty-much-old-TW-damage-levels though? EM.

You just buy them off the auction house. They are expensive-ish but not more than the rest of the build. And they will exemplar down like everything. Level 50 HOs are fine too, 53 is just min maxing and probably cheaper to combine level 50 HOs yourself than to buy 53. As for why they give the best bang for the buck. Because of Follow-up you can get away with just one and then slot the +5 damage. Slash can become really heavy with the procs since its endurance cost is low enough that it doesn't need it reduced, and it recharges fast enough it does not need recharge either. But you can either slot 5 Hectacomb and a touch of Death proc (or the -res proc), or slot the 5 Blistering Cold and the Hectacomb damage proc, That last option lets you remove all slots from Strike and be able to spread them around the build as you see fit. You're not going to break anything by changing the slotting around some so go wild.

Done o/

Re-uploaded the thing, let me know if it works.