Et Tu, Brutus? The Brute Bible

[Makobola]

You've made a brute. They were the villian side equivalent to a Tanker, but now since all the archetypes are propagated they sort of sit in this middle realm between that and the Scrapper.

 

Pros: Damage buff

Cons: Endurance; Same Resistance caps but lower values

You don't care for criticals, you have a damage buff.

You aren't like a tank, you have more damage, your armor modifiers are like a scrapper though.

This is the middle line where you can build yourself out to be as survivable as a main tank, or have consistent damage like a scrapper(without dependence on crits)

 

The Brute rides this odd middle line, where you could technically do one side better on a tank or scrapper, but where I believe is peak brutality is when you achieve a build that achieves close to the scrapper damage output while being close to the tanker survivability. So far, I think there is some inspiration from Proc-Rocks to have something like that for a Brute; that takes away a bit of the un-killable-ness but brings on way more damage. This middle point finds itself with something like Energy Melee, Radiation Melee, Super Strength paired with Stone; since this is the only set that allows you to cap both defenses and resistances reliably. I sort of contemplated that Rad Melee is the best between them for the AOE and aura, unless you want to focus on single target with EM, or just love foot stomping with SS(And the damage buffs).

 

Generally, aside from specializing particularly in FARMING, which you should go to this thread instead, we're here to get into what the brute is about.

 

 

I'll need to make a picture for this late like the stalker list

 

Primaries:

 

S: Claws, Energy Melee, Savage Melee

A: Katana, Martial Arts, War Mace, Radiation Melee

B: Dark Melee, Electrical Melee, Ice Melee, Titan Weapons, Super Strength

😄 Dual Blades, Stone Melee, Street Justice

😧 Fiery Melee, Psionic Melee, Staff Fighting

F: Battle Axe, Broadsword, Kinetic Melee, Spines

 

Secondaries:

 

S: Bio Armor, Radiation Armor, Stone Armor

A: Energy Aura, Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Invulnerability

B: Fiery Aura, Shield Defense, Super Reflexes

😄 Ice Armor, Willpower

😧 Regeneration

 

Some of the Primaries are fairly straightforward, Claws performs well overall; Energy Melee is your go to for single target damage, Savage's frenzy mechanic is what helps keep up the DPS, as well as some ideas where people are utilizing +range on Savage leap in order to get even more damage...

 

Radiation gets a lot of flack for its animations, but it's blend of AOE+aura and single target actually makes it rank fairly well for damage. It is a late bloomer with it's attacks though.

 

Super Strength, in particular, is in a weird place. You can almost get to your damage cap with double rage+gaussians+fury, and this results in some really hard hitting footstomps and knockout blows; the downside to that is managing the rage crash kind of sucks because you do no damage for 10 seconds with a defense debuff. If it was only a defense debuff, that would be nice.

 

What I'll talk about a bit more, is secondary, since this is where you are going to be meeting the damage potential with a lot of survivability.

 

Bio Armor:

The best mix of Absorb/Def/Res, you can get softcapped defenses, near cap S/L res, 2 huge absorb shields, and nearly unlimited endurance once you're fully kitted out. Bio is good across all sets because it just layers mitigation really well. It also has a good adaptations which help to focus on defense, endurance, or offense. 

 

Radiation Armor:

You can cap out most resistances with a rotation of Sorcery, T9, and Melee Hybrid. Good proc bombing, recharge, but defense is a place that is hard to get up. Usually, you would want to cover that with using a primary that can either kill fast or knockdown.

 

Stone Armor:

One of the best sets now due to the rework; you can softcap defenses, additional endurance, damage proc, HP, regen, and then have a decent amount of res 60 S/L, capped F/C/T, and you also have Granite for difficult fights where you need to tank. It can be built to be nearly hardcapped res to all except psi, but this does come with some reduction in slotting for damage. 

 

Dark Armor:

One of the original sets that actually had resistances to psionic; it needs knockback protection, has 3 auras that can be proc'd out, has really poor endurance management with 7 potential toggles. It's somewhat nice on Brute because you can use superior conditioning and physical perfection to mule PFshifters. However, because it has a stealth, this does affect how you can gather aggro.

 

Electric Armor:

Good endurance management, capped energy resistances, +rech and a heal. This is a pure resistance set, but it can be built to be really tanky. Focuses will be on filling in the gap with defense bonuses.

 

Invulnerability:

The original gold standard, layered mitigation with easy way to softcap all defenses(except psi of course), capped S/L resistances, and okay resistances for all else. This set does go a bit further on tank if you want to raise resistances to everything else, but with only 3 toggles and Dullpain, it is pretty low management needed. 

 

Energy Aura:

Great mitigation, defenses to all, with some amount of resistances. Has really good endurance management with both a conserve power/heal equivalent and an endurance drain. It's certainly up there, but the downside is that because you will end up being more squishy in general for attacks that do get through, it has some DDR.

 

Fiery Aura:

SSS for farming, but resistances lag, you can cap S/L on a brute, but will always be lacking in defenses. Really good damage from burn and fiery embrace, if you wanted to make something that does as much damage as possible; but you'll need some support buffs in order to shore up some sorely lacking defense and DDR.

 

Shield Defense:

Good defense, damage buff, but because of smaller brute res/def values doesn't get to the same place as a tanker. You can still softcap all positional defenses, but the resistances don't really get there. (A tanker would have 70%+ resistances before OwTS) While shield defense is generally good across the board, for what it does for brute, there are some redundancies that make it arguably better to make it for the other archetypes because damage buffs help them more. It feels like you can't easily main tank(from strictly your own res/def) for harder content.

 

Willpower

Decent layered mitigation, can softcap defenses and get respectable S/L resistance, and has some psi resistances built in. Very little DDR though, although regeneration can be built up really high, this set sort of needs a primary that can mitigate e.g. footstomp. Cascading defense failure and -regen really hurt this set.

 

Ice Armor

Really good at resisting cold; I believe it has some of the best slow resistance, some DDR, softcap defenses, basically limitless endurance from absorption, +HP, and hibernate that's good against instagibs. This is a set for aggro, because it has two pbaoe auras, but the downside is that it doesn't have much resistances to shore that up.

 

Super Reflexes

The hardest person to hit around; with the ability to cap defenses, as well as have really good DDR. The downside is that there isn't many layers on top of that; there are however scaling resists that go up as your HP goes down. You can build +absorb from Prev. Medicine and Entomb, and regen or +HP, but the other sets have these more readily. No inherent endurance management.

 

Regeneration

This is ironically one of the best sets for tanking Hamidon, but for general content, it is difficult to make it tanky enough for content; you will mainly be a damage dealer that has enough survivability, which could be your choice as a brute. 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Makobola
Moved Tiering around

[Makobola]

*Going to rotate this to be a build repository

Edited January 27, 2022 by Makobola

[Makobola]

*Saved for Secondary discussion

 

There's typically a choice between Resistance or Defense based powersets(As well as regen, but talking about it usually gets it nerfed). The goal then for survivability is either building close enough to the Resistance cap of 90%, which, with the lower values that Brute has means you can only realistically cap a few of those resistances. Exceptions to this is Stone Armor. The other side of it is building Defense; which is getting to the soft cap of at least 45% defense values. The best thing for survivability then is to layer these Resistances and Defenses, which, on top of either healing, absorb, or regen, provides a very tanky toon.

However, this survivability is usually at the cost of recharge bonuses and proc-slotting potential; which arguably could be a better choice if you want to strictly focus on maximizing damage. Slotting for recharge is fairly straightforward; but for information on Procs I'd suggest taking a look at these other posts to get an idea of it. It usually means slotting for strictly Damage and as many procs as you can fit in an attack power as possible.

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Here, we'll take a look at our powersets with a few things standardized in terms of power selection and slotting.

 

This means using 2 Res, 2 Def, or 2 Heal IOs where applicable. As well as adding in certain global procs: Steadfast Protection, Gladiator's Armor, Shield Wall, Reactive Defenses. One Def/+Rech LoTG in Maneuvers/Combat jumping to reflect usual slotting choices. This will let us see how far each set gets right before slotting set bonuses. (This helps us decide which way to move towards for the set). There are some builds which don't get represented well by this, and I'll try to note them as they come along. 

 

Here's a side by side of all the armors with the requirements from above.

These aren't in order, but they are a visual cue to help determine what is worth building and slotting for. I hope this comparison can give a good reference point for everyone's Brute builds. 

 

 

Example Builds for Survivability 

SS/BIO - Softcap SLFC, almost EN; near cap S/L resistances

Spoiler

https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1555&c=700&a=1400&f=HEX&dc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

 

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Makobola
Add info

[Makobola]

*For builds that synergize well

[Snarky]

Dark Melee / Invulnerability on a high recharge build is a thing of beauty.  The synergy is mind boggling.  
 

Pros:  Endurance issue is a Brute thing?  Would not know.  If mobs drain me I just drain them right back and get a full bar. Health, one big heal that also raises your health pool…and a combat heal you spam that does good damage. Damage, an exotic Damage type that is one of the most effective in the game when you discuss mobs that resist it and their resistance levels to it. Very nice ST damage chain that also debuffs a mobs to hit!  Also, finally, what I consider one of the best build up powers in the game 
 

Cons: not a ton…errr not a lot, um almost no AoE.  You get Shadow Maul…. And a couple of your buffs are AoE damage, but not great and not often.  Psi hole, like Shadow Maul not going to talk a lot about this.  It is real.  Stop playing with it (do not try to “fix it”). Move on. That’s it.  The grand list of what is wrong.  
 

If you want a insanely sturdy Brute that can lay into hard single targets like a Scrapper then welcome to the world of Dark/Invulnerability 

[Erratic1]

36 minutes ago, Snarky said:

If you want a insanely sturdy Brute that can lay into hard single targets like a Scrapper then welcome to the world of Dark/Invulnerability 

 

I lucked into DM/Inv on a Scrapper back on live in the first month of Live and he was a thing of beauty. Not wanting to repeat myself when I got to making Brutes I made a DM/Elec instead. A lot of the same beauty applies as goes what high recharge does for the combo. One thing which is different is you have healing on both sides and endurance recovery on both side. I suppose one could go with whichever one felt was most useful and save power slots for other purposes. What I did at the time however was use Dark Consumption for damage which incidentally recovered endurance and likewise mostly focused on the damage aspect of Siphon Life.

 

As goes the ranking of powersets, not sure I would consider Energy Aura to be inferior to Electric Armor. For that matter, not sure any armor set which provides healing, endurance recover, and +Recharge should remotely be at B tier as opposed to be argued about being S or A tier.

[Aurora_Girl]

I take firm and staunch insult to your placement of SR on this list. 

 

SR has easy softcapped and more and DDR, But don't forget scaling resists (without IOs, then more with Reactive) so you can focus on Max HP and Regen.

[SuperPlyx]

15 hours ago, Makobola said:

Poor end management because you'll have so much +recharge

First world problems 

[Uun]

21 hours ago, Makobola said:

Radiation Armor:

You can cap out most resistances with a rotation of Sorcery, T9, and Melee Hybrid. Good proc bombing, recharge, but defense is a place that is hard to get up. Usually, you would want to cover that with using a primary that can either kill fast or knockdown.

If you have to resort to pools and incarnates to be survivable, you're playing it wrong. Having perma Particle Shielding is much more useful. You don't mention that it has a big hole to cold damage, which can be an issue fighting BP in end game. I like Rad Armor, but no way is it sturdier than Dark or Electric.

21 hours ago, Makobola said:

Willpower

Decent layered mitigation, can softcap defenses and get respectable S/L resistance, and has some psi resistances built in. Very little DDR though, although regeneration can be built up really high, this set sort of needs a primary that can mitigate e.g. footstomp

Does fine against straight up damage, but folds like a wet noodle when hit with -defense or -regen. I would place it in the C tier.

21 hours ago, Makobola said:

Super Reflexes

The hardest person to hit around; with the ability to cap defenses, as well as have really good DDR. The downside is that there isn't many layers on top of that. You can build +absorb from Prev. Medicine and Entomb, and regen or +HP, but the other sets have these more readily.

Placing SR in the C tier is absurd. Its definitely sturdier than Willpower or Fire. Not many layers? How about the scaling damage resists that can cap resistance to all damage types. Really doesn't need +absorb or +regen.

21 hours ago, Makobola said:

Poor end management because you'll have so much +recharge from all the defense mules, needs ageless, support, or maybe Superior Conditioning+Physical Perfection

You do know you can slot other defense sets than LOTG? My SR has none, nor does it have Ageless, Support, Superior Conditioning or Physical Perfection.

[PyroBeetle]

SR is basic and boring and...damn effective. Pairs extremely well with claws, but does very well with most primaries. The lack of an end management tool and the late AoE defense are cons, but small ones. I have never felt the need for a heal on my SR toons.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, PyroBeetle said:

SR is basic and boring and...damn effective. Pairs extremely well with claws, but does very well with most primaries. The lack of an end management tool and the late AoE defense are cons, but small ones. I have never felt the need for a heal on my SR toons.

 

I've long stated that the power order for SR should have been toggles, pb, passives, quickness, elude. Melee, Ranged, AoE, in order for toggles and passives. <shrug> At least on tanks you can grab Evasion at 12.

 

I do run CP/PP-SC/PP on my claws and sr using builds but I also don't do procmonster builds and I do strive for equality amongst damage, mitigation and sustainability for long AV fights.

[DarknessEternal]

On 1/21/2022 at 1:36 PM, Makobola said:

B: Energy Aura,
 

Energy Aura:

Great mitigation, defenses to all, with some amount of resistances. Has really good endurance management with both a conserve power/heal equivalent and an endurance drain. It's certainly up there, but the downside is that because you will end up being more squishy in general for attacks that do get through, it has some DDR.

 

 

I'm not sure how to respond to this indignity.

[Obsinious]

9 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:

I'm not sure how to respond to this indignity.

Yeah he also put shield in B which is pretty XD

[Krazie Ivan]

@Croax?

[aethereal]

I'm dubious that Savage Melee should be rated anywhere near so high.

[Erratic1]

12 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I'm dubious that Savage Melee should be rated anywhere near so high.

 

Could try out Savage/Regen against say SS/Regen. 😄

[Greentea]

25 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I'm dubious that Savage Melee should be rated anywhere near so high.

Savage melee got bugs fixed a while ago. It's really good now, especially on Broot due to DoT and Fury.

[aethereal]

28 minutes ago, Chargestone said:

Savage melee got bugs fixed a while ago. It's really good now, especially on Broot due to DoT and Fury.

The bugs that it had fixed had little to do with Brutes.  I disagree that it's really good now.  It's, like...  fine.  Middle-of-the-road.

 

EDIT:  Also, OP suggests using +range on Savage Leap to get more damage -- that won't work.  There's a max applied to the range bonus of the damage calculation, your range bonus damage caps out at 65 feet (base range of the power is 70 feet).

Edited January 23, 2022 by aethereal

[Bill Z Bubba]

When is powerset X good?

 

When compared to the other powersets while slotting SOs?

Or with a standard set IO build?

Or when procmonstered?

Or when backed by amplifiers?

Or when spamming T3/T4 inspirations?

 

I used to think I had pretty solid builds using what I thought were great (or at least fun and concept fitting) powersets but it's become quite apparent that they're all grossly inferior to what the procmonster crowd is pushing.

 

Threads like this are gonna go round and round until we start laying rules for what's being compared. But knowing that we'll never agree on the rules... just... bah.

[Erratic1]

13 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I used to think I had pretty solid builds using what I thought were great (or at least fun and concept fitting) powersets but it's become quite apparent that they're all grossly inferior to what the procmonster crowd is pushing.

 

So you watched the video of the Rad/Rad Tanker doing Trapdoor in 4:28 eh? 

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:

So you watched the video of the Rad/Rad Tanker doing Trapdoor in 4:28 eh? 

 

I've watched them all. And everything in the pylon thread. We've gone through so many variations of City of X ... now it's City of Procs. Actual powerset combos and base values mean nothing. It's all about which powersets can leverage damage procs the most.

[Troo]

Oooo someone made a new account for this topic?! Hahahahahaha

 

I agreed with about 50% of the OP..

..the rest could be described as hubris.

"Hubris, or, less frequently, hybris, describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance."

 

Put in the work and I'll give you props.

 

I'll edit this with more thoughts

Edited January 23, 2022 by Troo

[The_Warpact]

I'm going to mark this thread as an opinion piece.

[Sovera]

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I've watched them all. And everything in the pylon thread. We've gone through so many variations of City of X ... now it's City of Procs. Actual powerset combos and base values mean nothing. It's all about which powersets can leverage damage procs the most.

 

Not quite so, but yes. Sacrifices are made for more damage. There is nothing new to this. If the sacrifices can be lived with then it's all a gain, or you might need to spam Recovery Serums or Amplifiers or inspirations.

 

For example I always pick Focused Accuracy because I loathe being debuffed, but how often do I run content where I am accuracy debuffed? I could take Gloom, but I don't, thus my damage is hurt for the sake of lazy security.

[Greentea]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

The bugs that it had fixed had little to do with Brutes.  I disagree that it's really good now.  It's, like...  fine.  Middle-of-the-road.

 

EDIT:  Also, OP suggests using +range on Savage Leap to get more damage -- that won't work.  There's a max applied to the range bonus of the damage calculation, your range bonus damage caps out at 65 feet (base range of the power is 70 feet).

What? There were so many bugs, in fact it was probably the most borked of all sets.

 

It's not in middle of the road. You can get your attack chain really early, it's ridiculously strong at early levels. It's light on endurance and recharge, the lockout is really stupid, but you can bypass it using BU. Thanks to the fix, Shred is monstrous. As a Broot, you get savage leap early, it's really good with procs [3 is enough].

 

I have no idea where you're getting this opinion from. Such a shame.