Which sets stand out on a Brute?

[Galaxy Brain]

I've found myself unfortunately leaning away from Brutes after the Tanker changes. AoE feels more fun on Tanks, and for general Damage Scrappers and Stalkers feel better as well once you get the ATO's. Brutes to me have felt like an odd middle ground where I haven't had the "spark" to make a new one. 

 

What would you all reccomend for a set that does better on them specifically?

[Parabola]

I like the resistance armour sets with damage auras on brutes. You get the 90% res cap and fury boosting the aura damage which seems a good deal. For melee sets they are all pretty good. I believe sets that use pseudopets or self damage buffing such as elec or dark melee are technically better on scrappers or tanks due to damage modifiers but really go with anything.

[Apparition]

Martial Arts is mostly single target, and the extra defense from Storm Kick on resistance based armor sets is nice.

[Piecemeal]

I am a huge fan of Fire Melee, when coupled with a Shield brute back in the day it felt very satisfying. Nowadays I give all my <3's to Electric Armor for having dope resists and the ability to softcap S/L doesn't exactly ruin much.

[Gobbledigook]

A Stone/Rad Brute... Critical Mass

 

An Electric/Rad Brute.... Chain Reaction.

 

These would do well i think. 🙂

[Saikochoro]

I have mainly been making scrappers and stalkers, but one combination that I found to be very fun on a brute is savage melee / energy aura. 
 

It is fast, has good AoE and single target damage, and is very survivable.  I lost interest in several brutes and gave up on them all except for this one. 

[Troo]

Stone Melee is pretty fun and effective. It hits like a.. well it has big stone hammers.

..and stalkers and scrappers don't Stone Melee.

 

Definitely paired with a resist set of your choosing as others mentioned.

 

When the new changes come out Energy Melee might be a bit better on brutes and stalkers than tanks. ( h o p i n g )

Edited July 22, 2020 by Troo

[Brutal Justice]

5 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I've found myself unfortunately leaning away from Brutes after the Tanker changes. AoE feels more fun on Tanks, and for general Damage Scrappers and Stalkers feel better as well once you get the ATO's. Brutes to me have felt like an odd middle ground where I haven't had the "spark" to make a new one. 

I feel the same way.  I only have 3 brutes and no plans for more.  A dm/fire, stj/regen, and em/elec.  

 

The dark melee/ fire brute was made before the tank changes and is likely going to be remade into a tank.

 

Brutes are my preferred archetype for regen because of the higher hp and the taunt aura.  This is a double edged sword though since more aggro means more incoming damage.  If regen ever ports  to tanks I’ll be done with it on brutes.  

 

The energy melee/electric is a brute because I wanted an energy melee toon.  Scrappers don’t have energy melee and stalkers can’t crit energy transfer, for damage, while fury buffs it just fine.  The single target nature of energy melee, I felt, favors brutes over tanks.  If stalkers get ET crits or scrappers get energy melee I’ll be done with this brute as well.  

 

In short.  Single target sets that don’t exist for scrappers or stalkers, or Armor sets that don’t exist for tanks and don’t offer +dam.

 

However, any attack set that would favor a brute over other melee toons is... better as an assault set!

 

As stand alone powersets and not part of a set combo.

Decision:

Regen?

Energy aura

[Obus Form]

16 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

What would you all reccomend for a set that does better on them specifically?

Super Strength: Footstomp and Knockout blow really deliver the satisfying damage (but not compared to TW)

Stone Melee: The damage/animations are big/crisp (but not compared to TW)

 

Edit: The feeling of the AOEs in SS and Stone really feel "brute" AT.  The damage is high enough to be much more satisfying than tanker damage, but ofc not near TW nor scrappers.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Obus Form

[kiramon]

Go /electric so you dont have to worry about stupid sappers. Ever

[Obus Form]

@Galaxy Brain I like how you liked all the posts, made me feel heard/special 🙂.

 

Thanks for making my day!!

Edited July 22, 2020 by Obus Form

[Hjarki]

Honestly, I'm in much the same boat. Brutes remain great for afk-farming, but the superior AE of Tankers and the superior single target of Scrappers/Stalkers doesn't leave a whole lot of room for them 'in the wild'.

[Parabola]

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

Honestly, I'm in much the same boat. Brutes remain great for afk-farming, but the superior AE of Tankers and the superior single target of Scrappers/Stalkers doesn't leave a whole lot of room for them 'in the wild'.

I've recently been doing a load of testing comparing the same builds across scrappers, brutes and tanks. It hasn't always been desperately scientific but it did give me a good feel for where the AT's are at in relation to each other (and the differences in performance of a bunch of armour sets against tough content).

 

The upshot was that brutes really did seem to be where you'd expect them to be. They are significantly tougher than scrappers when res caps and healing/hp/regen are involved. And for all that tanks do good damage these days with wide aoe they didn't seem to keep up with an annoyed brute in hard single target or even hard aoe spawn clearance. It's this last part that is the heart of the matter I think. I doubt anyone would dispute that brutes are tougher than scappers but there is some debate about how much damage tanks do vs brutes, particularly in aoe.

 

Powerset selection is probably the key variable. I can only speak for the sets I tested which were combinations of war mace with bio, rad, wp, dark and elec. These powerset selections may well have been favouring brutes from the start but the brutes were consistently better overall with them (although the bio/mace tank was the best of the bios). The content I was throwing them at was things like rularuu, carnies, arachnos, praetorian clockwork, itf (all at 4/8) and taking down the odd pylon.

 

So I do think there is still a good place for brutes with attack sets that aren't based around self damage buffing or pseudopet attacks, and armour sets based on res, particularly with damage auras.

[Hjarki]

5 hours ago, parabola said:

Powerset selection is probably the key variable. I can only speak for the sets I tested which were combinations of war mace with bio, rad, wp, dark and elec. These powerset selections may well have been favouring brutes from the start but the brutes were consistently better overall with them (although the bio/mace tank was the best of the bios). The content I was throwing them at was things like rularuu, carnies, arachnos, praetorian clockwork, itf (all at 4/8) and taking down the odd pylon.

Where you really get the advantage for Tankers is with Cones. Going from 90/8/5 on a Cone to 135/12/10 on a Cone is a massive upgrade, especially if you're Hover-tanking. You're going from "I hit maybe 2 - 3 targets" to "I hit 6 - 8 targets regularly". Going from 10 to 16 targets on the PBAoE isn't a huge upgrade because you don't spend much of the battle with that many targets anyway. Moreover, those Cones tend to be higher damage/target than PBAoE (or target AE).

 

 

[Chance Jackson]

On 7/21/2020 at 5:56 PM, Apparition said:

Martial Arts is mostly single target, and the extra defense from Storm Kick on resistance based armor sets is nice.

This is what I came here to say

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

Where you really get the advantage for Tankers is with Cones. Going from 90/8/5 on a Cone to 135/12/10 on a Cone is a massive upgrade, especially if you're Hover-tanking. You're going from "I hit maybe 2 - 3 targets" to "I hit 6 - 8 targets regularly". Going from 10 to 16 targets on the PBAoE isn't a huge upgrade because you don't spend much of the battle with that many targets anyway. Moreover, those Cones tend to be higher damage/target than PBAoE (or target AE).

 

 

True but the jewel in the war mace aoe crown is crowd control which hasn't been buffed for tanks. Shatter hitting more enemies is a big buff though. Most fights seem to end up being really limited by how long it takes to bring down bosses rather than the lower tiers. Whatever aoe you have is going to clear the dross before the bosses and then it become a lot more about single target damage. Tanks will outdamage brutes in a 'sea of minions' scenario but in regular play I still give the edge to brutes.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, parabola said:

True but the jewel in the war mace aoe crown is crowd control which hasn't been buffed for tanks. Shatter hitting more enemies is a big buff though. Most fights seem to end up being really limited by how long it takes to bring down bosses rather than the lower tiers. Whatever aoe you have is going to clear the dross before the bosses and then it become a lot more about single target damage. Tanks will outdamage brutes in a 'sea of minions' scenario but in regular play I still give the edge to brutes.

If you're just comparing War Mace across archetypes, you're not going to get a good impression of Tankers/Scrappers because it's not a particularly set to exploit their benefits.

 

In terms of most fights, I find that the bosses are less problematic than you're making them out to be. Either you've got teammates who take care of it - far better than a Brute could do - or you simply drag them to the next spawn.

[Parabola]

33 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

If you're just comparing War Mace across archetypes, you're not going to get a good impression of Tankers/Scrappers because it's not a particularly set to exploit their benefits.

 

In terms of most fights, I find that the bosses are less problematic than you're making them out to be. Either you've got teammates who take care of it - far better than a Brute could do - or you simply drag them to the next spawn.

Ah yes. I have been specifically trying to find a really hard content soloer. I was focused in on war mace because I don't get on with TW and smacking down +4 bosses as quickly as possible is right at the top of my priority list. It's not that I have a particular agenda with tanks and scrappers, I have plenty of both (including a lv50 war mace scrapper), but for this purpose brutes came out on top.

 

I rather like the way that some sets are better on some AT's than others. It adds an intetesting element to the meta. I do think that any statement about 'AT A being better than AT B' needs to be qualified with 'depending on what sets you are using and what content you are trying to beat'. Since the tank buffs they are considerably more damaging and I love my recent shield/dark tank but she would be terrible at taking on 4/8 rularuu.

[marcussmythe]

If you really want to be challenged, I suggest searching AE for 801.2 (or .3 or .4), setting it to 8/+4, and queuing up the old Leroy Jenkins video.

 

If you've already kicked around in there, then I’ll hush.

[lightpunch]

On 7/21/2020 at 8:57 PM, Troo said:

When the new changes come out Energy Melee might be a bit better on brutes and stalkers than tanks. ( h o p i n g )

Are there announced changes, or just the general idea that EM is getting looked at in the nearish future?

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, lightpunch said:

Are there announced changes, or just the general idea that EM is getting looked at in the nearish future?

2nd part is the case. We know it's being looked at. We've no clue what may, if anything, come of it.

[Crysis]

On 7/21/2020 at 8:00 PM, Piecemeal said:

I am a huge fan of Fire Melee, when coupled with a Shield brute back in the day it felt very satisfying. Nowadays I give all my <3's to Electric Armor for having dope resists and the ability to softcap S/L doesn't exactly ruin much.

I now have three different /Electric Armor brutes.  I see a lot of people abandoning them in the upper 30’s and low to mid 40’s because they are rather weak to Arachnos and Toxic ranged damage.  But once you power through those levels, they are literally almost unkillable in the late game with capped S/L/E and Melee defense and very high resists.  

[Apparition]

Is it just me that is amused that some of the key arguments in this thread in favor of Brutes are "Make Brutes because Scrappers don't have Energy Melee and neither Scrappers nor Stalkers have Stone Melee?"

 

Brutes... even less reason to play them than a year and a half ago. 

[Erratic1]

There were other arguments.

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 hours ago, Apparition said:

Brutes... even less reason to play them than a year and a half ago.

 

Deleted a slightly incarnated level 50 shield/mace tank specifically to rebuild him as a mace/shield brute just because I didn't have a shield brute and my shield/nrg tank is considerably mean enough. Got to lookin at it in Mids and rapidly found myself annoyed/saddened as it became apparent how much offense I was going to have to give up in order to get the shield brute softcapped. It'll probably still be funnish to play, and thus a worthwhile change, but holy crap it's going to be SOOO damn much flimsier than the tank and the extra damage output, thanks to the ridiculous tank overbuffs, is going to be piddly in comparison.