Et Tu, Brutus? The Brute Bible

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

Just curious if you have any algorithms for measuring 'fun'?

 

Course not. Still waitin to here how ya did against those +4 ITF AVs, though. 🙂

[Troo]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Course not. Still waitin to here how ya did against those +4 ITF AVs, though. 🙂

 

My efforts were over multiple sittings. Want to squeeze a run all into one sitting and share results in the other thread.

I did get distracted by the easier trapdoor testing and then football took over this past weekend.. my excuse bag is HUGE.

[IronJuke]

I don't get why Psionic Melee gets rated poorly.  If you go into MIDS and do powerset comparisons... it's the second most damaging set behind Energy.

 

The animations are all super snappy, no Jacob's Ladders there.  Mass Levitation and Greater Psi Blade are the slowest at 2.5 seconds which I believe is in line with other Powersets. 

 

Please educate me!  I created a level 50 Psionic Dark Brute that I am testing as a fully built toon (Winter and Purple IOs)

 

This seems to bear out in play.  Once I got my Alpha slotted with base level Cardio, endurance issues with Dark Armor pretty much went away. 

 

Was testing it in my S/L Farm on 4/8 and it did OK there. 

 

Not trying to tout it, per se.  I've played several Brutes as my main.  

 

I've gotta start testing in the PTR here with different builds, since it's so easy to do.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by IronJuke

[Sovera]

22 minutes ago, IronJuke said:

I don't get why Psionic Melee gets rated poorly.  If you go into MIDS and do powerset comparisons... it's the second most damaging set behind Energy.

 

The animations are all super snappy, no Jacob's Ladders there.  Mass Levitation and Greater Psi Blade are the slowest at 2.5 seconds which I believe is in line with other Powersets. 

 

Please educate me!  I created a level 50 Psionic Dark Brute that I am testing as a fully built toon (Winter and Purple IOs)

 

If you compare DPS in the Mids Powerset comparison it's the same as Claws. 

 

This seems to bear out in play.  Once I got my Alpha slotted with base level Cardio, endurance issues with Dark Armor pretty much went away. 

 

Was testing it in my S/L Farm on 4/8 and it did OK there. 

 

Not trying to tout it, per se.  I've played several Brutes as my main.  

 

I've gotta start testing in the PTR here with different builds, since it's so easy to do.

 

 

It's been repeated often enough: animations are not particularly snappy, and when we abandon the low/early mid levels we start finding psi resistant enemies which neuter the damage by a hefty amount. The damage of the set is not particularly good either and the mechanic needs a tuning.

 

It does not change that if you like playing it then do carry on of course.

[IronJuke]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

 

It's been repeated often enough: animations are not particularly snappy, and when we abandon the low/early mid levels we start finding psi resistant enemies which neuter the damage by a hefty amount. The damage of the set is not particularly good either and the mechanic needs a tuning.

 

It does not change that if you like playing it then do carry on of course.

 

I found the animations plenty snappy but of greater concern is enemy resistance to Psionic damage to an unbalanced degree.  

[ninja surprise]

3 hours ago, IronJuke said:

The animations are all super snappy, no Jacob's Ladders there.  Mass Levitation and Greater Psi Blade are the slowest at 2.5 seconds which I believe is in line with other Powersets. 

 

 

I've only played it on Test for a few hours, but I didn't like how Mass Levitate made it so when I had an enemy on auto-follow I spazzed out following it as it ragdolled. And it was more difficult to hit the levitating critters.

I think it's a cool set though and looks neat-o when other people on the team are playing it. Once teamed with a Psi/Shield dude who Hovered everywhere and did amazing things.

[InvaderStych]

22 minutes ago, ninja surprise said:

And it was more difficult to hit the levitating critters.

 

Yeah, one of the more annoying things about my scrapper before switching to hover/EvM was ML throwing my target out of range of my next swing.  I'm also not a fan of the delay on the damage, but at least a critical will fire on activation which reduces corpse-blasting on teams a tiny bit.

 

The upside to that was that following ML with PBS sort of inverted the "Hop Then Cone to get a 3D cone instead of 2D" trick by tossing the target it in the air.

 

Using ML while Hovering is great, except when it's not:  Tossing Goldbrickers above my head and they never come back down (ASF) comes to mind as an example.  Pretty sure I never noticed this with Sky Raiders, but I can't remember now for sure.

 

4 hours ago, IronJuke said:

I don't get why Psionic Melee gets rated poorly.

 

Resistances are real, and where they exist they can be quite severe.  I ❤️ my Psi/SD scrappy, but she's not going to be much use on a BAF: Not enough AoE for prisoners and both Siege/Nightstar resist Psi at 70%.  Council bots resist it at 50%, but who really cares, they're still lol-worthy and even without the smashing component from fists they fall fast enough.  IDF soldiers with the room shaking packs can be annoying, but only when they drop a drone and that resists everything; IDF Bots, Neuron's Clocks, Anti-Matter's Clocks, all of those don't resist Psi at all.  Psi Melee shreds an ITF though because the EB's T9 clone powers are irrelevant.  That Psi dmg bypasses things like Unstoppable deserves to be part of the conversation if we're talking resistances at end-game.  While Marauder is laughing at my Kat/Rad's lethal damage he's crying in pain to every ounce of Psi that cuts through when facing my Psi/SD.

 

In general, Psi Melee is better than it's reputation, but all of the problems people cite regarding it are real.  Barring some attention paid to Insight and Boggle getting it's activation time dropped significantly if it is to stay single target, it's going to remain a subjectively fun/sexy, objectively middle to middle+ set that is boosted more by some secondaries than others.

Edited January 26, 2022 by InvaderStych

[Makobola]

On 1/24/2022 at 5:19 PM, Troo said:

 

Just curious if you have any algorithms for measuring 'fun'?

 

 

Player, build, etc all can have large impacts on a time. I do agree that it is a good measure against one's self. (I see now Hjarki has similar reply)

 

 

@Makobola I see you've added some more details. This is encouraging.

 

 

I've combined the comparison of different armor sets into a single picture to be more visually appealing. I think that it provides a pretty nice picture of how each armor looks right before set bonuses. 

[Makobola]

1 hour ago, InvaderStych said:

Resistances are real, and where they exist they can be quite severe.  I ❤️ my Psi/SD scrappy, but she's not going to be much use on a BAF: Not enough AoE for prisoners and both Siege/Nightstar resist Psi at 70%.  Council bots resist it at 50%, but who really cares, they're still lol-worthy and even without the smashing component from fists they fall fast enough.  IDF soldiers with the room shaking packs can be annoying, but only when they drop a drone and that resists everything; IDF Bots, Neuron's Clocks, Anti-Matter's Clocks, all of those don't resist Psi at all.  Psi Melee shreds an ITF though because the EB's T9 clone powers are irrelevant.  That Psi dmg bypasses things like Unstoppable deserves to be part of the conversation if we're talking resistances at end-game.  While Marauder is laughing at my Kat/Rad's lethal damage he's crying in pain to every ounce of Psi that cuts through when facing my Psi/SD.

 

In general, Psi Melee is better than it's reputation, but all of the problems people cite regarding it are real.  Barring some attention paid to Insight and Boggle getting it's activation time dropped significantly if it is to stay single target, it's going to remain a subjectively fun/sexy, objectively middle to middle+ set that is boosted more by some secondaries than others.

 

I think it's interesting that psionic kind of has this fun space where it can tear through certain T9 mobs, but at the same time get messed on, there seems to be a good mix of content that your damage can actually be strong/weak against, whereas other sets don't have as much variety.

[Marshal_General]

It might be good on a set like SR where you can pretty much get all the defense you need from SR powers and be able to put procs in the attacks to add non psionic damage.

[Lazarillo]

So, legit curious, why does Spines rate so low for Brutes?  I mean, I know it's popular for farming, but outside of that, it seems exceedingly rare, and the initial post here ranked it an "F".  Does it really do that abysmally?  And if so, can someone explain, perhaps, how it malfunctions so badly?  Just sort of looking at it, it seems like it should be pretty nice and Brute-y to me, but I don't have any firsthand practice with it...

[Bill Z Bubba]

20 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

So, legit curious, why does Spines rate so low for Brutes?  I mean, I know it's popular for farming, but outside of that, it seems exceedingly rare, and the initial post here ranked it an "F".  Does it really do that abysmally?  And if so, can someone explain, perhaps, how it malfunctions so badly?  Just sort of looking at it, it seems like it should be pretty nice and Brute-y to me, but I don't have any firsthand practice with it...

 

For me, I found the single target damage to be abysmal. And the animations ugly.

[Lazarillo]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

For me, I found the single target damage to be abysmal.

Hmm, it seems to be about on par with others, though maybe it's more about the animation times and/or the lethal/toxic damage combo (or now that I think about, the fact that it's on par...after factoring in the DoT damage?).

 

4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

And the animations ugly.

That's fair.  I actually like most of 'em (not Spine Burst, admittedly), but that's always gonna be kinda subjective (like I don't enjoy Axe/Mace because of recycled animations within the set, among other things).  I'm guessing that's not where the F-rating comes from in this case, though, but maybe we're all more slaves to style than I was thinking!

[Makobola]

30 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Hmm, it seems to be about on par with others, though maybe it's more about the animation times and/or the lethal/toxic damage combo (or now that I think about, the fact that it's on par...after factoring in the DoT damage?).

 

That's fair.  I actually like most of 'em (not Spine Burst, admittedly), but that's always gonna be kinda subjective (like I don't enjoy Axe/Mace because of recycled animations within the set, among other things).  I'm guessing that's not where the F-rating comes from in this case, though, but maybe we're all more slaves to style than I was thinking!

You can kill the Minions/Lieutenants in a quick cycle of TAoE epic + Throw spines, but when going against bosses you might cycle Ripper, Impale, Lunge, but those animations are really long for the damage. Comparatively, a radiation melee can almost delete a boss with devastating blow, which I think is around the same cast time as ripper. On a scrapper you at least get crits, and a tanker gets more target cap

[Bill Z Bubba]

30 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

lethal/toxic damage combo

 

 

Yea, that ain't helping. And originally it was supposed to be THE goto AoE set, so the gimped ST damage was by design.

 

I had an ice/spines tank once. Was awesome at holding aggro...

[Lazarillo]

Appreciated, guys.  Doesn't talk me out of it, but helps me understand what I'm in for! 🙂

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Doesn't talk me out of it

 

As it always should be.

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Makobola said:

Comparatively, a radiation melee can almost delete a boss with devastating blow, which I think is around the same cast time as ripper.

Ripper is on odd comparison since it is a cone. However, Ripper has a arcana cast time of 2.376 as where Devastating Blow is 2.907 so not really around that time. DB is only behind Sky Splitter and Concentrated Strike for slowest ST animations unless I missed something, but I have been going through data on melee sets and haven't even finished round one of passing through the data. It does hit like a truck though.

 

Bah, missed the point of Spines having DoT and DoT and Fury are a wonderful pairing. There's reason to use the set on any AT although Stalker is less exciting.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Without_Pause

[Parabola]

27 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

Ripper is on odd comparison since it is a cone.

True but spines is so light on single target that ripper is it's second highest dpa attack (at base values)...

 

Spines seems to be in an odd place overall. Given it's popularity for farming I doubt it's very high up the list for buffs but if you exclude the farmers they are thin on the ground indeed. Actually I seem to remember one of the original devs, I want to say Castle, saying something along the lines of spines being outside the boundaries of the design parameters, and if he did look at it nerfs would result. I wonder if he had it confused with Claws 🙂. I think my biggest problem with the set is that it feels like it should be doing something really exotic with the 'neural toxin' damage but actually lethal and toxic are heavily resisted. Also the rider effects of slow and -rech aren't nothing but they aren't the most noticeably useful.

[Makobola]

9 minutes ago, Parabola said:

True but spines is so light on single target that ripper is it's second highest dpa attack (at base values)...

 

Spines seems to be in an odd place overall. Given it's popularity for farming I doubt it's very high up the list for buffs but if you exclude the farmers they are thin on the ground indeed. Actually I seem to remember one of the original devs, I want to say Castle, saying something along the lines of spines being outside the boundaries of the design parameters, and if he did look at it nerfs would result. I wonder if he had it confused with Claws 🙂. I think my biggest problem with the set is that it feels like it should be doing something really exotic with the 'neural toxin' damage but actually lethal and toxic are heavily resisted. Also the rider effects of slow and -rech aren't nothing but they aren't the most noticeably useful.

The thing that may benefit is that slow does contain 2 damage procs for it; so you could theoretically load up almost all spines attack with 6 damage procs

[Sovera]

Spines is just exceptionally weak. It's not even that good for farming with cones being inferior to PbAoEs. Savage or Rad paired with Fire will throw three PbAoEs without the need to reposition. Farms just don't get as much about ST. It's not like we need to finish clearing a spawn before moving on, a farmer will just drag the bosses to the next group until at some point there are 6-7 bosses being whittled by the AoEs.

 

Now the interesting thing with tests is how it ends showing on random PbAoE + Burn is as effective as two PbAoEs + Burn. I figure it as being something like, two Burns will usually kill a spawn. If the person is smart (or, y'know, has HP bars enabled for all mobs) they will be doing their ST attacks on the mobs with more HP. Doing more PbAoEs in the interim has no value when the second Burn achieves the purpose.

 

But this is for regular gameplay. Melt the minions, focus on the boss. Burn is part of the ST rotation so ignore the lieutenants and they passively die. In the above example when having 6-7 bosses more AoE will speed things up.

 

At least its' what I extract from Spin + Burn or Whirling Hands + Burn having the same Trapdoor clearing times as Irradiated Ground + Atom Smasher + Burn, or Flurry + Savage Leap + Burn.

 

 

5 hours ago, Makobola said:

You can kill the Minions/Lieutenants in a quick cycle of TAoE epic + Throw spines, but when going against bosses you might cycle Ripper, Impale, Lunge, but those animations are really long for the damage. Comparatively, a radiation melee can almost delete a boss with devastating blow, which I think is around the same cast time as ripper. On a scrapper you at least get crits, and a tanker gets more target cap

 

Damn man, share your Devastating Blow slotting. It usually takes a bit less than half a lieut's HP for me, or 1/5th HP of a boss, depending if IG had a chance or not to slip one or two -res to spice things up, and that's with five Hectacomb + ToD damage proc.

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by Sovera

[Makobola]

13 hours ago, Sovera said:

Damn man, share your Devastating Blow slotting. It usually takes a bit less than half a lieut's HP for me, or 1/5th HP of a boss, depending if IG had a chance or not to slip one or two -res to spice things up, and that's with five Hectacomb + ToD damage proc.

 

6 Damage procs - I usually chomp rages or run a FS-er. Looking at how much it does, seems like closer to 40% for a Devastating Blow;

But what matters more is the attack cycle; if there's a group of bosses around me, Burn + Atom Smasher + DB = dead bosses; though, just another burn ends up killing them also

[Seed22]

On 1/22/2022 at 11:07 AM, Uun said:

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ll have to disagree on the Dark Armor comment. Rad is  Dark but, maddeningly better. In fact, every time I look at DA when making a brute I think, why not just be Rad Armor? 
 

Don’t get me wrong DA is exceptable. But compared to Rad it’s very much lacking. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Seed22

[Lazarillo]

10 hours ago, Seed22 said:

every time I look at DA when making a brute I think, why not just be Rad Armor?

Rad Armor doesn't have any way to get Terrorize protection in the build.

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Rad Armor doesn't have any way to get Terrorize protection in the build.

For all like seven mobs that terrorize?