Is Electrical Melee/Shield Defense the wrong pairing?

[Palehood]

I'm currently a lvl 7 Science Brute who decided to use Electrical Melee/Shield Defense as primary and secondary powers based on this guy's build.

https://guidescroll.com/2011/07/city-of-heroes-electric-melee-shield-defense-brute-guide/

I only realized too late that this page this guy wrote was from 2011. 😓So is the Electrical Melee/Shield Defense considered "outdated" or is it still a good pairing?

[Dark Dove]

There aren't any combinations of powersets that won't be able to do all of the content in the game currently within reason. I wouldn't consider any powerset combination "outdated".

 

Elec/Shield is still a pretty durable AoE damage combination. It lacks in single target damage and can be endurance heavy without proper attention. It statistically works better on stalkers because they gain a better single target attack and critical damage among other perks, but this doesn't make the Brute version bad, it just means that stalker version has more incentives.

 

With a proper build these sets will function very well together on a Brute, I wouldn't worry about it being an outdated pairing. I would probably look for some builds that are more current, however.

[nebber]

Still a top tier combo--great survivability paired with great AOE damage.  The double-nuke of Lightning Rod and Shield Charge is a beautiful thing.

Single-target damage is good but not great, Mu lightning from Mu Mastery is good to pick up to help with this.

Mine is a tank instead of a brute, so perhaps someone else can give you an updated brute build.

[Sovera]

Wrong? No. A good pairing for a new player? My opinion is subjective, but also no.

 

No means to recover health or endurance coupled with low single target damage will be something that veterans can work around but a hurdle for new players.

 

I would recommend a Fire Armor/Claws Tanker to plod through content. Good low level AoE, good low level single target, and an early heal and endurance button. I have a build for it in my signature plus some means to make influence while playing.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Sovera

[nihonsean]

Still a good build. As you level up you'll want to look into IOs, specifically Performance Shifter: chance for +endurance and/or Power Transfer: chance for +healing. You can slot these into Stamina, and, more importantly, into any of your electric attacks that take endurance modification enhancement sets. 

 

Good luck and have fun!

[Outrider_01]

Savage/Shield.  Savage has a AoE teleport attack, half the recharge of lighting.

[DreadShinobi]

You may find better results playing shield defense as a scrapper or tanker. Against all odds and shield charge are very defining abilities for shield defense and both scale poorly for brutes that have low base damage and use fury to bring their damage up to par. This muddles the damage bonus from AAO and shield charge suffers even more because it has a 400% dmg cap not the 775% cap the rest of your attacks have. Of that 400%, 100% is your base damage, about 100% is typically slotted enhancement value, and about 180% is your buff from fury, with AAO on top of this your shield charge damage is already capped and cannot benefit from any external damage buffs, build up, gaussians, or red insps. 

 

Shield defense for brutes is also likely not going to take advantage of their 90% resist cap unlike tankers and will still need IO investment to hit softcaps unlike tankers that need significantly less investment. Tanker shield charge will ultimately hit harder and even moreso for scrappers. Scrappers do very well with the set due to their AT dmg modifier, the set being defense based and not resist based, and having one of the best taunt auras available to the archetype. Brute over there would really just rather have an actual damage aura as found in fiery dark or electric armor. You will find no advantage to giving a brute a shield compared to a tanker or scrapper.

[Mortimer]

Shield is soooooo easy to get to baseline defense numbers that make you feel downright untouchable.
Well, unless you run into certain mobs.  Cascading defense debuff is a real problem even at 50+.

That said, by like 40 you're pretty much untouchable, with the right sets in Shield, which has mad def anyway,
and your primary, which you'll have to plan out, but many mele sets have some +def
and even mele sets have a long range and most likely a cone, so there are those sets too. 🙂

It's MAD fun. Have a typical Elec / Shield Scrapper that will just chew threw 90% of the game.
And where it fails, (Cimerora, mostly) can still help mightily with those more -def resistant / resistance based teammates.
Watch  out for that one special enhancement that does Defense Resistance. It is a life saver and must have.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Mortimer

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, Mortimer said:

Shield is soooooo easy to get to baseline defense numbers that make you feel downright untouchable.
Well, unless you run into certain mobs.  Cascading defense debuff is a real problem even at 50+.

 

Let your 'Active Defense' stack and it will make DR a non problem. Each Active Defense adds more DDR.