The be-all-end-all of Brutes?

[damnimgood]

SS/Fire. I keep hearing about it with high praise. I haven't tried it yet,but I'm thinking about trying it today. What does everyone think of this combination?

[Heraclea]

Fire Armor is a good choice for a DPS oriented brute, but its survivability is not top tier and if you want your brute to be tanky you would do better with something like Bio or Electric.  Fire's endurance recovery power is also late in arriving, slow to recharge, and needs mobs to hit.  The self-heal is much better. 

 

I have not been interested enough to do much with Super Strength on homecoming, having mained it on a tanker back on Victory.  It does heavily resisted smashing/lethal damage, then again if you're Fire that's not much of a worry.  You basically will be spamming Foot Stomp, which means that exemping below 29 may not be much fun. 

 

If you just want to fire-farm I understand this combo works well.  For a whole-game brute I'd try something like radiation/electric. 

[Oubliette_Red]

You can also find info in the Brutes section and farmer build guides down in the Guides section.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/22-brute/

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/44-guides/

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[Sakai]

My Claws/Fire does great for all content.  Little flaming ball of death running around. 

 

Built for Def and a bunch of Res just came along with it  

[Shocktacular]

My elec/WP is my favorite character so far.  Elec has good AoE, and Lightning Rod is just awesome.  It just feels super to teleport into the middle of a mob and zap them to death while a thunder sound effect plays.
Today, using many, many temp powers and inspirations, my elec/WP brute SOLOED the "Ten Times the Victor" badge, which felt like an incredible achievement to me (is this actually a big deal, or do people do this regularly?).  Overall, I just find elec/WP to be a fun combo that's good all around.  I absolutely LOVE getting on teams that are complaining about fighting Carnies and just taking them all out while barely breaking a sweat (WP is pretty good against psi damage), and having everyone go 😮.  With Incarnate powers, I can run pretty much anything at +4x8 difficulty (although some groups are still somewhat challenging), and I'm not really much of a min/maxer.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Shocktacular

[Coyotedancer]

I've had great fun with my Bio/Broadsword broot, Semnai. She makes quite a mess of things, even though Broadsword is a very slow, rather "old school" attack set.

 

Back in the Live days, my hands-down favorite was a guy named Anigan. He was Willpower/Street... Not the toughest guy ever, but Street is just gloriously punchy/crunchy/stompy on a Brute.

[SwitchFade]

Since no one has said it yet...

 

...Brute meta is.....! *Wait for it*

 

 

Scrappers.

 

There, now you know. 😁

[Gulbasaur]

5 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Since no one has said it yet...

 

...Brute meta is.....! *Wait for it*

 

 

Scrappers.

 

There, now you know. 😁

... who are the crayon-eating cousins of Stalkers. 

 

Want some crits with those crits? Stalker all the way. 

[Neiska]

I think the answer will be largely subjective as whats fun or best will vary from person to person based on preferance, style, favored sort of mission/activity and so on.

 

Personally I like my TW/BIO brute. True, a lot of folks say scrapper is better, but I like being able to do many different activities with 1 character, so they are multipurporse. First she can tank if needed as well as deal damage, both AoE and good ST. And with her I can do ITFs, Radio missions, +4/8 farms of either Fire or S/L,  and more. Really any sort of activity that I want to do with my time, I can do with my brute.

 

For me the biggest difference between scrapper or brute for that powerset is simple - the taunt aura. It stops things from running. I hate chasing down runners in any mission. Its a matter of convience. Plus, I have tried a scrapper version, and I just liked brute better.

[Shred Monkey]

9 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

... who are the crayon-eating cousins of Stalkers. 

 

Want some crits with those crits? Stalker all the way. 

Actually, all the cool kids are blasters.   Why go through life wishing you had a nuke?

[Gulbasaur]

23 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

Actually, all the cool kids are blasters.   Why go through life wishing you had a nuke?

Okay, I'm going to let you in on a super-secret secret - the least-rolled archetype and my main squeeze, Arachnos Widows, are scrappers* with nukes. And holds.. And AoE confuse. And ranged attacks. And team support. And, curiously, they don't really have any downsides other than your first costume slot is a weird one.

 

* or arguably old-style stalkers

Edited May 14, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Riverdusk]

On 5/13/2020 at 10:31 AM, Neiska said:

For me the biggest difference between scrapper or brute for that powerset is simple - the taunt aura. It stops things from running. I hate chasing down runners in any mission. Its a matter of convience. Plus, I have tried a scrapper version, and I just liked brute better.

The scrapper version of bio also has a taunt aura.  Maybe not as strong, but usually enough to prevent too much issue with runners in my experience.   Why I tend to only play scrapper secondaries that do have a taunt aura (several do, several do not), so I'm right there with you. 

[Jaguaratron]

On 5/13/2020 at 2:21 PM, Shred Monkey said:

Actually, all the cool kids are blasters.   Why go through life wishing you had a nuke?

Fire/Fire stalkers are a nuke, really weird I havent seen another.....

[Coyote]

On 5/13/2020 at 2:21 PM, Shred Monkey said:

Actually, all the cool kids are blasters.   Why go through life wishing you had a nuke?

 

Eh, roll a Ele/Shield Stalker, and BE the nuke 😉