Question About Mud Pots...Why?

[Timeshadow]

So I'm a lurker here on the Brute forums but I love the AT.  IMO, they manage to strike the perfect balance between Scrapper and Tank.  I also love Stone Armor, especially after the revamp.  The Homecoming team did what Paragon Studios never got around to, making Granite a power that's nice to have instead of something that forces you to build around it.

All that being said, I'm struggling to find a justification for Mud Pots outside of a simple aggro tool.  My understanding is that damage auras are actually an important part of a Brute's DPS output but Mud Pots just seems like a really slow and insignificant DoT.  Am I getting this all wrong?  Do I need to proc it out to see the DPS benefits?  Veteran Brutes, help me out here please.

[Snarky]

Brute damage auras are gold.  Keep in mind that almost all Brute attacks, and definitely attacks in primary/secondary are modified by Fury.  Brute Fury turns meh attacks into steamroller damage.  

 

People constantly tell me how Scrappers do so much more damage than Brutes.  Or How Tanks, with the AoE changes, do more damage than Brutes.  Heh.  I was there on live, when they did it.  They changed Brute's Fury because Brutes were out damaging Scrappers.  I only played Brutes and a few Doms back then.  I watched it close.  They tweaked it just enough to bring Brutes under Scrappers without Brute players having a grievance, and threw Brutes a bone in changing Fury decay to boot.  As far as Tanks go, yes, jealous of the AoE.  No, they do not put out more damage than Brutes.

 

Brutes are indeed that glorious balance between Scrappers and Tanks.  I can Tank Recluse on Master settings in the MLTF on a Brute, for as long as the team needs.  More armor is always nice....but....  I can do nearly as much damage as a Scrapper once I build up a head of steam on a Brute.  A Tank DOES NOT do as much damage as a Brute, regardless of extra AoE coverage.  A Scrapper just does not have the health pool to take the inevitable RNG hate that happens in heavy combat.  My Brute falls, but only when I am caught by surprise.  Like jumping into a bunch of baby Snakes in a 50 Mercy mission without realizing they were all 53 bosses.  Rezzed, played correctly and spent a couple minutes burning them down with no other deaths.  When I know the fight I can use tactics, inspirations, buffs, etc to survive almost anything and grind through.  That is way harder for a Scrapper to say. Finally, Brutes high damage cap revels in high end game type mechanics like Fulcrum Shift, team inspirations, and team buffs. In these situations (I do not run data mining tests) I am fairly sure Brutes are once again out damaging Scrappers, since they are just behind them solo.

 

Brute 700%

 

Blaster, Corruptor, Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker

210% at level 1

500% at level 21+

 

all others

200% at level 1

400% at level 21+

Edited March 12, 2022 by Snarky

[Uun]

Mud Pots does slightly less damage than Death Shroud, Lightning Field and Icicles (0.18 scale vs. 0.20), but this is because it also has immobilize and -speed, while the others are straight damage. Damage auras as very endurance efficient, particularly when facing large numbers of minions, and actually do a sizeable amount of damage once you're built up Fury. Procs in auras are generally not recommended, as they only have a chance to fire every 10 seconds.

[Timeshadow]

4 hours ago, Uun said:

Mud Pots does slightly less damage than Death Shroud, Lightning Field and Icicles (0.18 scale vs. 0.20), but this is because it also has immobilize and -speed, while the others are straight damage. Damage auras as very endurance efficient, particularly when facing large numbers of minions, and actually do a sizeable amount of damage once you're built up Fury. Procs in auras are generally not recommended, as they only have a chance to fire every 10 seconds.

 

I see.  Mud Pots doesn't feel very End efficient at all but I'm not fully slotted yet so that might work itself out over time.

 

Since procs are a non-starter, would you recommend a regular PBAoE IO set? 

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

 

I see.  Mud Pots doesn't feel very End efficient at all but I'm not fully slotted yet so that might work itself out over time.

 

Since procs are a non-starter, would you recommend a regular PBAoE IO set? 

slapping two half sets of 3 each of Eradication, and/or Scirocco's Dervish, and/or Multi-Strike give interesting ways to pump your Res to Energy/Neg, Smash/Lethal, Fire Cold.  I use places like the Damage Auras to fill in the last bits of spackle on a big build and finish out the numbers

[Uun]

3 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

 

I see.  Mud Pots doesn't feel very End efficient at all but I'm not fully slotted yet so that might work itself out over time.

 

Since procs are a non-starter, would you recommend a regular PBAoE IO set? 

It's end efficient in the sense that you'll use fewer attacks to take down a spawn, especially if you can get 6+ foes in it. One of the set ups I like for damage auras is 3-slotting with Scirocco's Dervish: Acc/Dmg, Acc/Dmg/End and Dmg/End. Obviously you can add more slots if you can spare them or want the set bonus, but this skips the recharge pieces that you don't need.

[Obsinious]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

That is way harder for a Scrapper to say. Finally, Brutes high damage cap revels in high end game type mechanics like Fulcrum Shift, team inspirations, and team buffs. In these situations (I do not run data mining tests) I am fairly sure Brutes are once again out damaging Scrappers, since they are just behind them solo.

 

Brute at damage cap is behind a scrapper at damage cap, even before factoring in crits.  In fact this is the least favorable condition to compare a brute to a scrapper.

 

Scrapper damage scale is 1.125 for melee and their damage cap is 500%, brute is .75 with a 700% damage scale.

 

Scrapper: 1.125 x 500% = 563% at damage cap

Brute:  .75 x 700% = 525% at damage cap

 

Compare this to solo with +95% damage from enhancement slotting and the brute at 85 fury.

 

Scrapper: 1.125 damage scale x (100% base damage + 95% enhancement) = 219% damage

Brute: .75 scale x (100% base + 95% ehance + 170% fury) = 274% damage

 

The brute is much more advantaged at lower +damage levels, in these situations fury means a lot more. 

 

Edited March 13, 2022 by Obsinious

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Obsinious said:

The brute is much more advantaged at lower +damage levels, in these situations fury means a lot more. 

 

Plus base crits and the even higher crit values as the two scrapper ATOs come into play. Edit: Ooops, nevermind. Crits don't come into play with damage auras for some stupid reason.

Edited March 13, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Errants]

Doesn't Quills Crit? Being in a primary?

[Bill Z Bubba]

27 minutes ago, Errants said:

Doesn't Quills Crit? Being in a primary?

 

It does. As does irradiated ground. Should have specified it as secondary damage auras. Still dumb. Hell, Burn should crit. Ain't holdin my breath for it, though.

[Errants]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

It does. As does irradiated ground. Should have specified it as secondary damage auras. Still dumb. Hell, Burn should crit. Ain't holdin my breath for it, though.

Haven't played Rad/* Scrapper yet... Too many alts.

[Timeshadow]

While I've got the lords of SMASH here debating, let me ask another question. 

 

I've noticed Stone can be pretty heavy on End.  The extra Recovery in Crystal Armor is nice but I'm wondering if I should still be eyeing Energy Mastery for my Ancillary pool.  Having a second Stamina is great but I'd like to take something else for thematic reasons. 

Edited March 14, 2022 by Timeshadow

[DreadShinobi]

17 hours ago, Obsinious said:

 

Brute at damage cap is behind a scrapper at damage cap, even before factoring in crits.  In fact this is the least favorable condition to compare a brute to a scrapper.

 

Scrapper damage scale is 1.125 for melee and their damage cap is 500%, brute is .75 with a 700% damage scale.

 

Scrapper: 1.125 x 500% = 563% at damage cap

Brute:  .75 x 700% = 525% at damage cap

 

Compare this to solo with +95% damage from enhancement slotting and the brute at 85 fury.

 

Scrapper: 1.125 damage scale x (100% base damage + 95% enhancement) = 219% damage

Brute: .75 scale x (100% base + 95% ehance + 170% fury) = 274% damage

 

The brute is much more advantaged at lower +damage levels, in these situations fury means a lot more. 

 

 

This is what I think of every single time people claim brutes have an incredibly high damage cap that is an advantage to the archetype. 9 out of 10 times brute damage cap is mentioned, their base damage isn't mentioned. It ends up becoming incredibly misleading. Their low base damage makes damage buffs (set bonuses, assault, red insps, targetted buffs like fortitude and forge, and even fulcrum shift) less impactful at every step of the way, not even just at the damage cap. .....but this is also super off topic in a thread about mud pots.

[Errants]

6 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

While I've got the lords of SMASH here debating, let me ask another question. 

 

I've noticed Stone can be pretty heavy on End.  The extra Recovery in Crystal Armor is nice but I'm wondering if I'm wondering if I should still be eyeing Energy Mastery for my Ancillary pool.  Having a second Stamina is great but I'd like to take something else for thematic reasons. 

Part of the issue there is Scrapper APP's suck, since Scrappers are so awesome out the gate... It really does come down to Body/Soul for min/max, or whatever for concept.

Edit: Change to Soul/Body/Mu - just realized this was Broot forums.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Errants
Wrong AT!

[Koopak]

6 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

While I've got the lords of SMASH here debating, let me ask another question. 

 

I've noticed Stone can be pretty heavy on End.  The extra Recovery in Crystal Armor is nice but I'm wondering if I should still be eyeing Energy Mastery for my Ancillary pool.  Having a second Stamina is great but I'd like to take something else for thematic reasons. 

Throw some performance shifters in and dont neglect end redux slotting, you will be fine.

 

2 performance shifters alone is 0.5 end/s. You dont need to burn your epic pool on end, im managing fine on TW/Stone and TW is a hongry boi

[Without_Pause]

I'm doing Ice/stone/mu on a couple of builds, so no, Body isn't required.

[Obsinious]

You can buy recovery serums at the p2w vendor.  That solves 90% of endurance woes.

[oedipus_tex]

Damage auras are generally efficient, assuming you are going to have things in range. This is pretty much true for every archetype, even stuff like Controllers if they can get into range.

 

Think of it like this: Each combat action you make has to be "paid for" with animation time. Each click requires you to "pay" with lockout time.

 

Not auras, though. In fact, as you move further and further into the end game and competition for clicks continues to increase, auras tend to get even better. Need to expend animation time on activating Destiny? The aura keeps ticking. Low on enemies and ready to start moving to the next spawn? The aura keeps ticking.

 

An added plus is that a maintained aura won't trigger travel suppression.

 

In terms of the aura's effect on regular attacks, you can basically read it as if you were getting "free" proc damage. In the overall scheme it can be significant. If it would normally take you 6 AoEs to clear most of a spawn and the aura drops that to 5, that may not seem like a lot at first. But over the course of a long mission, one less click every spawn quickly adds up and you can see why steamroller builds love damage auras.  

Edited March 18, 2022 by oedipus_tex

[Without_Pause]

On 3/14/2022 at 11:58 AM, Without_Pause said:

I'm doing Ice/stone/mu on a couple of builds, so no, Body isn't required.

Dinged 31 on the Brute and only soloing it so far. Still doing fine. I will say if mobs do end drain like Freakshow, then it can be more of an issue, but that isn't really unique to Stone.

[Uun]

8 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Still doing fine. I will say if mobs do end drain like Freakshow, then it can be more of an issue, but that isn't really unique to Stone.

Be glad that Stone has resistance to end drain and recovery debuffs. I've had Mu Adepts toggle drop my /WP brute.

[Timeshadow]

UPDATE: I'm currently level 48 and am in the process of getting my IOs together.  With Performance Shifter procs and EndMods in Stamina and Crystal Armor my blue bar's looking ok.  I've got Martial Arts as my primary so using Eagle Claw in my attack chain was a bit rough but now that it's fully slotted with Touch of Death I don't have any issues pulling it off in succession.  I still wasn't super happy with the overall End usage so I went ahead and picked up Energy Mastery but I haven't had a chance to test it properly yet. 

 

On Mud Pots specifically, I'm starting to understand the benefits.  Eventually I'll be using it for the Brute ATO but for now I've got it slotted with a set of Obliteration and the damage is respectable.  Not mind blowing obviously but it saves me having to use an extra attack or two to finish off Minions, which is actually kinda nice. 

 

All in all, this toon's extremely fun to play.  The animations are flashy, the damage is respectable, and survivability's already quite good despite the build being unfinished.  I find myself drawn to it even when I log in intending to run something else.  That might just be the whole drive to hit 50 but we'll see. 

[Without_Pause]

On 3/19/2022 at 1:39 AM, Without_Pause said:

Dinged 31 on the Brute and only soloing it so far. Still doing fine. I will say if mobs do end drain like Freakshow, then it can be more of an issue, but that isn't really unique to Stone.

At level 35. I did a Carnie and Freakshow missions at +1/x4. I used 2-3 blues which dropped. I pushed my end bar as much as I could, and didn't really avoid the end debuff coming from the Carnies. Brimstone Armor has a Res/End in it. The added damage helps so mobs die quicker now which means less end used overall. I still assume using Ageless so end will be fine. Leveling pace is fine, but I still might bump diff at a point.

[Without_Pause]

On 3/20/2022 at 2:52 PM, Without_Pause said:

At level 35. I did a Carnie and Freakshow missions at +1/x4. I used 2-3 blues which dropped. I pushed my end bar as much as I could, and didn't really avoid the end debuff coming from the Carnies. Brimstone Armor has a Res/End in it. The added damage helps so mobs die quicker now which means less end used overall. I still assume using Ageless so end will be fine. Leveling pace is fine, but I still might bump diff at a point.

+4/x8 Council map at level 48 on a Ice/stone IOed out as well as I can. No Accolades for End. It set no speed records. I wouldn't recommend it, but it can be done using what drops for inspirs. Anything which resist your damage decently enough or even has any sort of End Drain I would not recommend doing the same under those conditions. Arachnos even at +2 are an absolute handful. I'm currently soloing at +1/x8 at level 49.

[Without_Pause]

On 3/19/2022 at 9:48 AM, Uun said:

Be glad that Stone has resistance to end drain and recovery debuffs. I've had Mu Adepts toggle drop my /WP brute.

As someone who solos red side, you still need to soft cap Energy Def which can be done. I'm at 41% currently, and it doesn't feel like enough when doing even +1/x8 missions at times. I'll take Malta with a token Sapper everyday of the week and twice on Sunday versus having to deal while a mass horde of Mu including at least one boss.