Frostweaver

Ice armor on scrappers is sick. Incredibly powerful. More powerful than any other AT's version, and absolutely top-tier for scrappers. And BECAUSE icicles does not crit, it's a perfect mule for superior critical strikes... You are not going to 'waste' the 50% opportunity on a crappy icicles spike. Little hint... Repec out of fighting when you get to incarnates. Instead, get Melee Radial. Why? Because bastion fills the downtime, Perma-Hoarfrost keeps you topped off, and the most important part, MELEE RADIAL IS A TAUNT AURA!!!! (only 2 about 9-10 targets, but still. kick ass) I cannot emphasize that enough. BTW, the reason Brutes are better farmers than scrappers is not the Damage... On the PBAOE's that brutes and scrappers share, The scrappers actually have a total of about 25% more dps (fully ato'd) and can hold aggro fairly well with melee radial. What kills scrapper is one thing. patrons. It's absolutely retarded that Brutes get so much damned aoe in their patrons that Scrappers cannot even approach HALF of their dps. BLASTERS cannot do more than 2/3rds of their Aoe DPS on a farm. and this for an AT that has tank-level defenses. And the scrapper Epics and patrons SUUUUUCK in comparison. Honestly, so do most other AT's. Brutes should NEVER have been migrated or They should have given tanks and scrappers the same patron pools. I mean, seriously, a scrapper or tanker is forced to take crappy tier 1 ranged attacks just to get a SINGLE aoe? and brutes can immediately step into two ranged cones or targetted aoe's without being forced into any crap to get it? I guess we could just take caltrops 😛

more like: Well I been workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down Workin' in a coal mine Whew! About to slip down Well I been workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down Workin' in a coal mine Whew! About to slip down Five o'clock in the mornin' I'm up before the sun When my work day is over I'm too tired for havin' fun I been workin' in a coal mine Goin' down, down Workin' in a coal mine Whew! About to slip down

Warrior farm was given a timer. imps are 3, ninja temple farm was given a timer, werewolf farm was given a timer, Dreck(? freakshow) farm was given a timer, so were several others I am not personally aware of. new odd damage mobs for banished pantheon, new odd damage mobs for CoT, and several farms were replaced with a new villain group that has disgustingly OP or extreme damage of unusual types, like knives of vengeance who use titan weapons, dual pistols (that can be cold, toxic, or fire) and melee psionic attacks. I don't know, I stopped playing live after AE was introduced. but there IS a post over in the 'guides' section that tells you generally which issue introduced what.

Ice is like stalkers....It was developed a certain way, and people still remember it's original form. Even though, to be honest, it was greatly improved WAY back in I12, the attitude remains. Generally it is entirely possible to get the majority of your resistances into the 50% area, and to perma DP pretty easily. But it doesn't use the 'standard' tanker pool sets that people are used to tanking as LOTG mules, and a lot of the slotting is very different from what people are used to. And yes, Medicine. Also, Like fire, it can be used to blow through a specific type of farm, but no one has made a 'freeze farm' yet 🙂 But it does pretty darned well on a good old fashioned s/l farm too. I DO want to make one thing clear though... It's a hybrid defense set. In My experience, Defense sets tend to be Far more powerful on Scrappers than tankers or brutes. If you Plan on 'experimenting' with Ice, I strongly suggest trying it out on a scrapper first... People have tried to make scrapper farmers before, but they have always been massively handicapped unless they take melee/defense hybrid for it's aoe taunt. In my experience (I have made a LOT of farmers) Ice is hands-down the best scrapper for the job. Ever so slightly slower than a fire brute, but still bloody fast once you get the reds rolling in. I love Ice tankers and have since live, but they are about a mid-tier tanker set. On brutes, they are above average. On Scrappers and stalkers, though, ice is top notch. On sentinels, they truly screwed ice up and it is absolutely bottom of the barrel...I understand why they did what they did to it, but they should have done something else. An ice/ice stalker is a fearsome sight indeed. Ice Tankers are nearly impossible to kill. Ice stalkers/scrappers are almost unkillable PLUS they turn their enemies into half-frozen slush at the same time. However, Fire melee in particular on Tankers is notable because Combust only exists on tankers, and is a savagely destructive pbaoe (Although it was a lot better before people were able to start slotting -res in the crappier sets) My favorite melee sets with ice are fire, Stone (because it's destructive and the 'crystal' hammer matches Ice wonderfully), Rad (because Rad melee is just the best melee set in the game and recoloring it white makes you look like you are freezing everything without having to deal with ice melee's suck), Spines (because icy spines are the one spine set that doesn't look like crap... again the theme) and TW (because Ice is one of the few sets that can actually pair with it without constantly sucking on an empty blue bar or interrupting momentum for a 'press not to die' button). But of course, Fire has a special place because of how rarely it is resisted and theme and rad because...not only does it have some of the better aoe, but siphon eliminates the need for the entire medicine pool. Melting people is also fun.

1: Fire. except for those stupid swords, you feel like the bad guy from kung-fu panda when he set his hands on fire... Everything is in bullet time while you go all badass all over. 2: Radiation Melee is just friggin' powerful. No two ways about it. The special effects are generic enough that you could recolor it and call it whatever you like. Not very brutelike, but when you are the best Brute set in the game you can do what you like. 3: Savage and dirty fighting (stj) are thematically, along with SS, about as brutelike as you can get... but bleed dps and combo bonuses seem to have a lot less oomph than they do on scrappers, which is a shame. And personally I cannot tolerate the rage crash, and if you remove rage, SS becomes way more Meh outside of farming. 4: Stone melee, while maybe not the most badass set, feels INCREDIBLY destructive, and does it's job well. It's not particularly powerful, but it slots VERY well, helps weak secondaries, and when the screen shakes, you know you just concaved someone. 5: TW is only fun if you pick the right weapon, and the right secondary. I would KILL for sentinel-style regen on brutes, but WP does okay despite it's wimpiness. You do need to invest a ton in very rares and recharge, however, as auto-hasten always seems to always fire off just after you achieved momentum, wrecking your chain. 6: Psi melee would be awesome if they didn't keep throwing massively psi-resistant content at you post 40. Claws are very brutelike, but the animations feel less like wolverine and more like that dude from Street Fighter 2. 7: Wm is surprisingly fun, especially since you can slot +recharge into almost anything. BS and katana are also both fun, especially since at full fury parry does real damage and is not just a filler for adding defense. Stick fighting is just like that, only without the coolness, screen shake, and with a complicated combo system that sucks all the blind brutelock fun out of being a brute. It also feels slow. 8: Electrical melee is useful, and kinda cool looking, and seems pretty solid, but it's striking capability seems better for someone that doesn't have to keep a fury bar full.... I wind up using it's teleport strike in close combat constantly or MAYBE quickly traversing the distance to another pack. It's got lots of aoe up-front but not as much sustained. 9: Dual Blades. Umm... My brute doesn't do a pirouette, thanks. I guess if you want to be "Ballerina Man" that's the set to go for. 10: Spines is spines. Ugly. Decent for farming. Crap against GM's. 11: Dark and Ice are... like getting another secondary. Meh. 12: Axe is like that kid that always gets picked last, and who the team would prefer being short a player than actually putting on the field. It's not bad, it's just like they took BS and WM and combined them, always picking the lesser of two powers. MA is sorta in the same boat now, although I remember it being a lot more fun back in I15.... did they nerf it? 13: EM is... well, I will let the Tankers explain it. And Kinetic Melee I literally cannot take a character past 23 with it... I mean, I work hard, slot it all up with 25 IO's, and then just imagine all those retarded animations and weaksauce sound effects that make you sound like you are slapping them with a wet paper towel. Secondaries: 1: Bio and Rad are obviously OP, which helps make them more fun. 2: Electric, Dark, and Willpower. They all have neat tricks, and unlike some, those neat tricks are useful all the way through the game. They each have a big playstyle weakness, but not any really glaring holes. 3: Invulnerability/Shield defense. Both have kind of awesome potential, but sometimes maximizing that potential can be difficult... not to mention some great big holes that are really hard to patch. Ice. This is an unpopular choice, but I have loved CE since the first time I ever played it. Shield and Ice also lock you into special effects that you might not appreciate, or block access to primaries. 4: Energy Aura/Firey Aura. These are decent sets, but are pretty specialized by default, or can use a primary's help. Not really bad, and under the right circumstances (Like a fire farm for aura) can outclass everything else. 5: Regeneration. It's incredibly powerful defensively on a Brute's HP, but you either spend so much time clicking that you interfere with your attack chains, or you build alternate defensive layers and might as well junk half the set. 6: Stone armor: It's got an amazing trick that worked GREAT in I5. Nowadays, though, you pay too much for the great trick that almost any other secondary can duplicate without losing speed, damage, or the ability to step over a newspaper. It needs some updating. 7: SR. It's complete crap, and shouldn't have been ported to brutes or Tankers. Everyone has a 45% softcap on defense. Only Brutes and tankers have a 90% resist cap. SR does not improve even slightly over the scrapper version, and brutes SHOULD be more survivable... The only advantage SR brutes have is more HP So you get to live longer while you lose all the aggro and watch your team faceplant while you sit at 15% fury. That's my rankings, and it's based on opinion and playing with pretty much every set both live and on HC.

yeah, just for s&g I went ahead and made me a WM/EA brute named StrongPretty. Farms almost as fast as my fire farmer. awesome on BAFs, ITF, and MSR (haven't tried STF or LRSF yet... they are hard to pull together) Doesn't need very much from Incarnates.

The thing is, Ice is a pure ranged set. It's nuke is a gigantic ranged SLOW, for pete's sake! It's designed to function best at about the extent of it's cone, to be able to solidly keep enemies at that range. To play to that 'keep them away and under control at all costs' Tactical arrow is almost frighteningly synergistic... Locking down groups so your blizzard and ice storm can tear them to shreds, giving you the kinds of defenses you need, and even adding more long-range toxic aoe goodness that just stacks a ton more slow and -rech on top of your icy evil. (as well as a hefty dose of proc potential) I know they do not... umm... 'look' pretty together, but they are really brutal combined.

You don't need anything for 50+4 content. Any random level 50 team can breeze through it, even Tanker Tuesdays. What could possibly make you think that was what I was talking about? To be honest, EVERY AT is more or less superflous at that level. You won't suffer even slightly if you don't have a particular AT on your team, and it is not a controller problem. Anything can faceroll. It's incarnate content that controllers don't offer much for, and thus what needs the buff. universal containment could help (maybe too much) or even a -10% resistance debuff to contained content if you are on the same team. It's incarnate content that has controllers heavily dependent on their secondaries, and incarnate content where every little skosh of extra dps helps.

I can offer the Point of view of a DP/time. It tends to be extremely 'blappery', and runs extremely well in +2/8 s/l farms. To be fair, however, it is no rad/fire brute. Mostly because that maddening 'pulse aggro' effect which makes them start to run away after a few seconds and then come back... although this behavior stops being so aggravating after you get your melee radial hybrid to rank 4, because rank 4 provides a taunt effect that blasters lack. Unfortunately, however, that means that I needed a resistance epic, and so I used aging touch as a superior blistering cold mule to bring s/l defense to reasonable levels even out of melee hybrid. Pre hybrid 4, my clear times on s/l comicon asteroid maps were about 6 minutes, and afterwards about 4 minutes. Ageless 3/4, also, tends to work vastly better at keeping your heavy end usage from slowing you down too much and overall increases your DPS due to not needing to slow down and being able to auto-convert everything to reds and stay near blaster damage cap. Spring attack is an unusual choice, but it almost always gives you a +100% recharge buff for 10 seconds as well as breaking up the spawn's alpha. The typical attack chain involves starting off with spring attack to get in the middle of a group, maximizing the resistance buff from melee radial, and then unleash hell with hail of bullets, bonfire, and end of time. I occasionally layer in time shift to help with the flopping if I need a little more mitigation, and then use bullet rain as a filler and empty clips to tug in closer groups. Because of my extreme range compared to most brutes, I can pull three quarters of the map without leaving my bonfire patch, and when i do need to shift groups. spring attack is almost always there to break the alpha. Again, it's no farming brute (sorry, I tried) but it's absolutely capable of dragging itself up to high vet levels farming. It is also EXTREMELY capable as a team blaster dishing out endless pbaoe damage with very little care needed from team buffers, as well as being able to stealth and solo ouro arcs with ease.

Bassackwards is appropriately named. That is utterly opposite of how they work best. Absorb works best for slow incoming damage, like a sustained minor sort of damage, while +regen halps better to recover from spikes, like taking a small alpha. Regeneration helps more solo where you have fast damage and recovery time between fights, and absorb works better there there will always be a continuous rain of incoming potshots, like tanker/brute aggro overload on a team. Regen uses your whole health bar to recover, while Absorb just recovers it's own pool. And Uun is acting gormless. Everyone knows what you mean by regen-based or absorb-based. Some folks just have to double down. Metabolic decay from atomic offers a nice regeneration buff, and energize, from energy manipulation offers both a heal and regen bonus. Such healing buffs tend to assist Soloing more effectively while the absorption from ice's Frigid protection and Time's temporal healing tend to help better against low-grade spillover from a Team's efforts. Both, however, offer HUGE bonuses for survivability compared to the old school blaster. Don't let naysayers tell you that 85 hp absorb every few seconds is 'nearly useless'. I play both on homecoming and Goon, and can tell you that absorb offers a HUGE survivability edge. Slot it for healing and end recovery. Love it.

This is good information, thank you.

unfortunately both of those maps are not the same mission as the asteroid comicon farm, which is the yardstick by which most brutes measure themselves. 😛

Does anyone know if there is an exemplar version of the s/l farm? I have been playing with a farming blaster, and he is FAST, but I'd like to compare him with farming brutes on a more level playing field before throwing up the build and patting myself on the back.

You know, if EVERYONE on a team with a controller got containment...

I happen to really like elec/storm. Not just because of the thematics, but because they complement each other well

I see, I am just wondering about the viability of Illusion control that doesn't even try to make PA perma

How much of this is theorycraft and how much tested?

Very Tough Fire/Ice Brute Near Tanker level HP, Perma-Hoarfrost(Dull Pain), ignores slows. This next build is the Brute I am currently running through Dark Astoria. She is exceedingly tough, and is actually my namesake toon, although admittedly I have to turn her difficulty down to about +2/8 or spend half my time on her clickies. She is a Fire/Ice named Frostweaver, and was my first Ice armor Brute. Definitely not theorycrafted, she's also been through Itrials, ITF's, and MSR's, as well as a little s/l farming for vet levels. She's run the initial DA Arc a LOT of times in Ouro, although I am really not terrifically comfortable with her in most ouro content (No stealthing).

Solid Farmer, Solid content, can run inc content. Okay, big time non-theory crafted build: This is how my brute farmer, Holly Caustic, a Rad/Fire started out. I still have this on an alt build, it is primarily a farmer and I got to vet level 99 with her before I added an alternate build slightly better at farming speeds. This build, however, has earned almost Two billion influence singlehandedly as well as PL'ed dozens of toons at +4/8. and it has also been used for MSR's, ITF's, Itrials, and almost ever4y single piece of ouro content in the game. It is clearly not the toughest brute in the game, but she's very tough regardless, especially for /FA

I am less concerned with getting 'my' builds here than I am with keeping trash builds out. Don't get me wrong, there are some trash builds, and some of them are surprisingly popular. How about specialty builds? I have a brute that doesn't do incarnate content at level 50, is not very team-friendly, but is a master of ripping her way through ouro content all the way down to level 12. I would hate to have you put up a build like that and have people think it's meant to be a 'good' build for general post-50 content...Just like I have a build that's specifically designed for MSR's and incarnate stuff, but could barely function in an environment where 48 or less is the level cap. Will there be a section specifically for farming builds or farm/msr/itf/itrial hybrids? Or ones that are specifically designed as part of a 'duo' with another character, where they each reinforce the other's weaknesses? (my spouse has a claws.fire farmer that farms with sick speed, like 1:30 minute $comicon$, but requires the assistance of my Ill/traps troller...they were designed to farm together, reinforce each other's incarnates, and with team bonuses, they make sick inf/hour as a team) If it's a duo like that, do you want the other non-brute build? Do you want a Blurb on how to play or how it's used most effectively? Or will it just be a list of builds?

ack! never spend Merits on ATO's! Merits are worth approximately 200,000 apiece. ATO's only sell for something like 10 million. Or less. Who's your farm Brute? What Server?

It's a % chance based on the base recharge of the power. your quick attacks gave like a 50% chance, while your slower recharge attacks quickly stack up to 100%

What exactly do you mean by finished builds? And what kinda QC are you talking about?

Note that common resists and DPS vs DPA are really a thing for stalkers. the 'best damage' Can Vary based on which Supergroup you are fighting, as well as whether you are hitting Pylons, beating +2/8 Freakshow, Or taking out +4/1 groups of Arachnos. I mean, StJ is great against small/Medium groups, and has a big single-target crit from hide, but Ice packs a heck of a Wallop and is far less resisted, and Psi can be absolutely disgusting unless you are facing council robots. BS can smash when paired with shield, but NB overtakes it with other combos, and both are amazing at level 30 but fall off sharply at level 50 with more lethal-resistant enemies and late-maturing stalker sets. Electric can pwn groups, but has a little more trouble against a hard target. KM can, with careful attack chains, put out insane DPS, but it's big hitter has follow-up damage rather than a big crit, and with poor management it doesn't do good damage. Savage and staff are in much the same place as KM, but do much better against medium groups. And some sets like dark, staff, and the swords have extra mitigation that allows secondaries to add VASTLY more shine... you cannot do damage when you are faceplanted. And some sets leverage the game-changing ATO's better than others. Stalkers are not simply about DPS. "Best" is a very difficult, very flexible question for stalkers. and that's WITHOUT adding in the nightmarish complication of how much you can leverage -res, +rech, and other IO procs, which can elevate a mediocre set to a top performer.

Plant/rad, fire/rad. and electric/rad all perform extremely well.