aethereal

And I've soloed TFs with my stalkers. The game is easy. If I need to establish cred, I mained an Ice/Bio stalker for a long time, soloed 20+ AVs and some GMs (though that was before recent GM changes), blahblahblah. I've played other stalkers to 50. I like stalkers and while I don't know that I'm a particularly great player, I've certainly focused more on performance than most players in the game. But you're simply wrong that Stalkers do as much ST DPS as Scrappers, and Scrappers can get Ball Lightning or Fireball too. This is all fairly straightforward and apples-to-apples. Pylon tests have many failings, but they're a good apples-to-apples comparison of Stalker and Scrapper ST damage, and the best Stalker times are consistently worse than the best Scrapper times. But, and this is my actual point, because this is the Brute forum and I'm not here to turn this into a complaint about Stalkers: the fact that Stalkers don't perform as well as Scrappers isn't very salient to most players (as you see here), because Stalkers have enough differences in playstyle and approach, and enough sets are sufficiently different on them, that they provide a different play experience and so they don't fall into the same, "Oh, well, what's the reason to even bother playing a Stalker when you could play a Scrapper instead" that Brutes do -- even though I think that if you took away that subjective experience, there would probably be less reason from a pure performance perspective to play a Stalker over a Scrapper than a Brute over a Scrapper.

People complaining about the fire/ice swords (and/or wanting just the swords) is a tale as old as time. Like, I'm pretty sure that people mentioned it in issue 0 and every single issue since. But the dev team across both live and homecoming have not seemed to have any appetite to take it on. I think that there are a few issues with trying to get rid of the swords: 1. Homecoming seems to have pretty limited capacity for creating new animations. I don't know that it's no capacity, but they don't seem to have much. 2. They've now leaned into the sword-theming by giving the sword attacks -defense (like normal swords have in things like broadsword/katana), and I think that makes them more reluctant to break the sword theming. 3. It's just not super clear what you'd replace the swords with -- there are only so many ways you can punch someone with fiery fists while differentiating the attacks. So, I don't know, maybe the devs are like inches away from creating swordless or all-swords options in fire and ice melee, but we've had 20 years of people complaining about them with no effect, and there is no sign that I can see that that status quo will change anytime soon. Sorry! I also would like some more options here.

Superior scrapper ATO is 4ppm. And of course global recharge increases the effective ppm, though a big and detailed question is exactly how much, which depends on the local recharge of the power. Scrappers also have their other ATO, which (superior version) gives a flat +3% minions/+6% lt+ crit chance. The team bonus doesn't affect the chance of crit from hide (generally 50% for the aoes you'll likely start your attacks with on a team), nor of course the chance of critting with Assassin's Strike, so... I don't know. The crit bonus is big, but there are so many variables on both the scrapper side and the stalker one that I don't think you can just calculate it out and truly understand the performance. I think hide is pretty purely an offensive bonus, not a defensive one. Powerful stealth is heavily available to anyone who wants it, and going into hide doesn't shed aggro if you do it from the ATO (as opposed to via Placate).

a. No. They are worse at single-target than Scrappers (when solo -- I think plausibly they can outcompete Scrappers in DPS on an 8 man team. It's hard to get solid info because you can't really do rigorous tests with that many people doing all kinds of different things, but the +21% crit chance on unhidden attacks seems like it plausibly would make a big difference). b. I certainly hope they're higher single-target damage than Brutes or Tanks, and I think pylon times bear that out.

The extra crit chance on a team is totally valid as a point not often included with Stalkers. I personally think placate is kinda bad even with the buffs it got, but fair enough it does give some mitigation that's hard to directly compare to the other ATs. Everything else is, "even with all that, lower damage than Scrappers."

I'll say this for @Maelwys's point (not about ATOs, but about trying to find a niche for brutes that's not just "midway between Scrappers and Tankers"): Stalkers are actually pretty much as badly off as Brutes? Like, Stalkers do less ST damage than Scrappers. They have fewer hit points than Scrappers. And they never have a taunt aura. And they give up a ton of AoE to achieve... "less ST damage and lower mitigation than Scrappers." But why don't we have constant 100 page threads about how badly off Stalkers are? It's because they feel different from Scrappers, and their sets are different enough from Scrappers that people are like, "Oh, well, I want to do Electric but have a decent ST hard hitting attack" or whatever and that creates a niche. I think that if Brutes were more differentiated from Scrappers and Tanks, people would find the exact details of their performance less germane. (Now: is that a good thing? I mean... I think people would be happier. I think though that Stalkers also sort of don't get attention for the fact that they do in fact underperform Scrappers. So mixed blessing I guess, but ultimately it's a game and people's happiness is the main thing.)

Y'know, you came in hot from the start, and I get the feeling that you're kinda threatened. So, some warning signs here: suggesting that you only get hit 5% of the time... I mean, softcapped defense doesn't mean that. You get hit 5% of the time by the least important class of enemies that you need to worry the least about. I get that sometimes people just use that as a shorthand, but I think also people with a poor grasp of the mechanics think it's literally true. In any case, reading between the lines, it sounds like you're treating Invulnerability like it was SR -- like you want to make it a pure defense set -- and then finding it doesn't perform that well as a pure defense set. You are of course correct that Invul is not as good a pure defense set as SR is, but that's neither here nor there. With invul, you're looking for a nice thick layer of resistances, then getting solid defenses on top, plus maxing your hit points. Is the defense layer more vulnerable to debuffing than SR's defense layer? Of course. But when your defense is debuffed in Invul, you've still got your resistance layer and your hit points, and those aren't vulnerable to debuffing in the same way. If you get targeted with an attack that you're fully softcapped defense to and have Scrapper maxed resistance to, you take 2.5% the normal damage of that attack (as opposed to 10% the damage of that attack when you have softcapped defense and no resistance). It's okay if some of that defense layer is ablated away after the alpha. And if you do want more mitigation than invul itself provides, the advantage of DM is that it shores up being shy of softcap in a lot of situations. The way that defense and to-hit debuffs work is that they aren't very powerful if you start from zero defense, they aren't very powerful if you're already at or over softcap, and they multiply strongly in efficiency if you already have 30+ defense but shy of softcap. I don't know what to tell you other than yes, passive healing (regeneration plus things like the power transfer proc and so forth) can handle the healing that you need from SR. This is simply incorrect and is another sign that you don't know very much about what you're speaking very confidently about. DM with Soul Drain hitting only one target has garbage-tier basement damage. DM with Soul Drain hitting max targets has mediocre-to-poor damage. And, like, absolutely, the OP should make the character he wants to make. People don't need to pursue the power combos. But when he asks for things like slotting and power choice advice, it's a little hard to say what he's looking for here. Like, if we say, "Lean as heavily as possible into epics, because DM does bad damage," is that cool? Or is it also a violation of whatever premises he's holding? I don't know, and my answer is generally just give him the info he needs and let him choose what the constraints are. I don't mention the way that this is not a particularly good combo because I'm trying to convince the specific OP that he shouldn't pursue it -- god knows I do not only take the best combos -- I just mention it so he can make informed decisions (and so can anyone else who comes across the thread).

I mean, I assure you that SR doesn't need a heal. But the fact that it doesn't need the -to-hit is, I mean, it's a strength of SR, but it weakens the synergy between DM and SR. You're basically "paying" for that -to-hit, and not benefitting from it. I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about, but if you want to explain your thinking here, go for it. I feel like the OP is probably a big boy who doesn't need people to condescend to him. He can just hear the basic facts on the ground, which is this: DM/SR was an old-school combo from back when it was impossible for SR to softcap everything or expensive to the point of being out of reach with most players. If your defense is high, but not softcapped, then DM adds an enormous amount of survival. But in an environment where SR can solidly softcap every defense without any real trouble, then the synergy goes away. You're left with one of the lowest-damage Scrapper sets in the game and an okay-ish heal that you really don't need because SR can be plenty durable without the heal. If you want to find synergy with DM, look to a set that gives you good-but-not-great defenses and plug your holes with the -to-hit and wants the okay-ish heal (like, say, Invul, or maybe Bio). If you want to make SR more durable, probably look to a set that gives you lots of knockdown. If you want to just play DM/SR because you like the theming or visuals or whatever, then cool, absolutely do that. You'll have a viable character. But understand that it's not a particularly good combo.

If you want to sacrifice damage for survivability, then DM/Inv sounds better. Inv wants a heal just as much as SR does, and can better leverage the -to-hit of DM.

Dark melee does bad damage, SR doesn't need the to-hit debuffs, everyone can get plenty durable. This is a combo that trades lots of performance ceiling for an easier levelling experience.

Well, break frees give mag 10 protection from hold, but yes otherwise.

They give you Mag 5+ protection from all status effects for a period of time depending on the size of the insp. Luminara linked them for you. It's certainly possible for the game to layer on enough of a status effect to overcome an insp, but in my experience, it's unusual for the game to throw a status effect on you that exceeds the protection of an insp, besides maybe knockback (and things like Ghost Widow's mega-hold). What is an example of a situation in which you need more than one break-free?

But if Brutes didn't deal any damage, they would obviously suck at the optimization targets that actually matter: Hard Mode, solo performance, pre-50 performance, small team performance. I mean, I'm not advocating for intentionally trying to make Brutes as unbalanced as possible on a 8-person level 50 team. I'm just saying, let's handle the optimization targets that matter, and not go down a rabbithole of arguing obsessively whether a PI Radios team would prefer to have a tank that does 12% less damage but was 9% better at handling aggro versus a Brute, and recognize that the actual answer is that they completely don't give a shit.

I am also unsure of it. But I do think that it's notable that Stalkers get +21% crit chances in that circumstance. But also... Who cares about your performance on an 8-player level 50 team that's not Hard Mode? Seriously. What is the content that is mostly gated by performance on such a team rather than by, like, whether you stealth missions or whether people are joking in team chat or whatever? Maybe LRSF or MLTF? It just seems like for the most part, 8-person high level teams make non-Hard Mode content very easy. I don't know, maybe some of the revamped or new enemy groups make that less true? This is a genuine question, but it seems to me like it's just not that rewarding to optimize whether it you're contributing 12.5% or 15% or 10% of the damage that takes down a spawn in less than 20 seconds. It seems to me that places where people actually care about the performance of ATs are: 1. Hard Mode 2. Solo at fairly high difficulties 3. Low level 4. Maybe small teams at high difficulties, especially below level 50 And for whatever it's worth, I think those are very different optimization targets, and it's plausible that an AT that excels in one of those targets will suck in other ones. It seems to me that people get upset over the idea that a Brute might underperform in an 8 person non-hard-mode ITF or Peregrine Island mission team or TinPex, but actually it's going to be very hard to tell whether they over or underperform and also the team will be very successful regardless and also nobody will ever say, "I can't take you, a Brute, I need a Tanker or Scrapper instead."

Savage Melee is perhaps the melee set that is most uniquely best on a Brute (due to the emphasis on the DoTs that are improved by Fury). Savage/Psi seems like a thematically weird pairing, but it probably plays just fine.

The recent patch nerfed Tankers, so Brutes seem like they probably in almost all circumstances now do more damage than Tankers did (where before that wasn't true if you leveraged Tanker target caps).

My understanding is that basically the DPS check of Hard Mode is in fact high enough that people do want characters to each bring a lot of DPS, and that because of team buffs including rolling Barriers and the bonuses that HM enemies get, the difference between the mitigation of "an indifferently slotted armored class" and a "go for broke maximum mitigation armored class" is de facto very small. But this is all hearsay, I may be missing nuances.

I mean, I think that Brutes are perfectly capable of tanking sufficiently well to handle an AV or GM in most situations (so are Scrappers. My experience with several Stalkers indicates that they're also sufficiently durable to handle the aggro of an AV/GM, but can't hold its attention). Of course, AVs and GMs are hardly a speedbump for a well-optimized 8 man, level 50 team under most circumstances, so who knows. I have no experience with hard mode, so I can't comment with any authority, but the fact that hard mode players are vocally extremely against building lots of mitigation suggests to me that the durability of a Tank isn't super important there, either.

I think it's just been traditionally a hard balance to hit, not that there's anything inherently conceptually wrong with it. At least until recently, Tankers have been "pretty good damage, actually," and Scrappers were and are, "actually quite survivable and do a decent job tanking if they have a taunt aura," which has not left a large and fertile ground for Brutes to be actually functionally worse at tanking than Tankers but still actually functionally better at tanking than Scrappers, and similarly with damage. A big thing about mitigation is that all the armored classes are capable of a ton of mitigation, so being "more durable than a Scrapper" often doesn't cash out to much. Like, having overkill survivability isn't necessarily a meaningful advantage. With the recent Tanker changes, I could see Brutes resuming the function of the premiere AT for "if you need something tankier than a Scrapper without giving up more damage than you have to," which was their role before the Tanker buffs. But who knows, maybe this time they actually hit the dynamic of being well-situated in the middle of Scrappers and Tankers.

I think it's helpful to consider the way that Brutes functioned when they were introduced: where they were a risk/reward class, pushed by Fury to barrel ever onward in an environment in which it was common to rest either with the power or just by taking a 15 or 30 second wait for blue and green bars to recover -- maybe to wait for a heal to come off cooldown. The Brute, in an environment where Fury was harder to build, was instead trying to keep forward momentum as long as they had the absolute minimum viable endurance and health. That world is long, long gone, and without that dynamic, Brutes are in an awkward place, with Fury not really so much serving to push a style of play, but merely to be a damage bonus of whatever the current level of sustainable fury happens to be. And this isn't a thing that you can bring back -- we'd have to rewrite almost everything about the modern game in order to recreate the dynamic of early Brutes. But it's helpful to look at the current conversation as it would look if that dynamic still existed. The Brute was not originally intended to function as "a scrapper with slightly lower damage and slightly higher survivability/taunt." It was supposed to have a whole different style of play.

I do think that benchmarks tend to overstate Scrapper performance slightly: again a consequence of the ATO2 proc being, like, "The entire class's power budget." A big downside to Scrappers if you kinda have to choose whether you're AoE focused or ST focused. If your ATO2 is in an AoE attack, then that's great for clearing spawns, but your DPS gets catastrophic in ST situations. If your ATO2 is in a ST attack, then alpha-ing a crowd gets hard -- you kinda have to alternate between ST and AoE in order to get good performance. This certainly leads to Scrapper overperformance in pylon tests (where you can brutally optimize totally ignoring AoE and eking every last tick of the proc window out of your ST chain with no concerns about repositioning), but I think it also leads to milder overperformance in Trapdoor tests, and certainly these solo tests make Scrappers look better than their team performance (though I'm not sure that Scrapper team performance is that much of a concern). Anyway, none of this should be taken to mean that Scrappers don't overperform even adjusting for this -- I think they do. But it is true that Brutes offer more reliable performance once you have basic damage mitigation and endurance concerns sorted out.

Interesting further difference between Stalker KM and Scrapper KM: On stalkers, the "recharge build up" effect of Concentrated Strike works with one of the stalker crit mechanics: it is 100% from hide. (It is not, however, affected by the crit chance bonus from being on a team). On Scrappers, the chance to recharge Power Siphon is not a crit and does not interact with any Scrapper crit modifiers.

Dual Blades comes online late with lots of recharge to help stack Blinding Feint. Sweeping strike is the gem of the set, a cone that does the damage of a ST attack.

I don't think that having the crit proc in Quills makes sense because then you only have a chance to proc every ten seconds. You've built for perma-hasten, that means that your proc rate can realistically be way higher than six per minute. Spines doesn't have an obviously great place to put that proc. Of the various compromised choices, I'd probably go with Ripper. Ripper has a base 11 second recharge time. With perma-hasten and the recharge in the proc, you should have it off cooldown in less than four seconds. I didn't do the proc math, but the rate shouldn't be too dismal, and you should easily be able to use the power 8 or 9 times per minute. While enemies are crowding you, the respectable cone should have a good chance of proccing. Things won't be great when you're down to just one or a couple of targets, but that's true of all your options, and at least Ripper is okay against a single target.

According to City of Data, Aura of Insanity gives a mag 2 mez (enhanceable) plus a mag 0.5 mez (unenhanceable).