Rad Armor / Electric Melee Brute

[tentagil]

Recently returned to the game with all the news there has been lately, and I started up a Radation Armor / Electric Melee Brute in Praetoria. So far he's been a lot of fun, only made it to level 13 at this point though.

I've gone with Leaping as my travel power of choice.

 

I'm finding the durability pretty good and dmg level is decent, though I have contemplated slotting more for endurance drain to make it harder for enemies to punch back.

Wondering if anyone has any advice on a build like this.

[SeraphimKensai]

Welcome back. Brutes are Offense/Defense. If you search the forums....there are quite a few threads about rad armor. Some about elec melee.

 

Radiation armor is a layered approach combining resistance and absorb. I wouldn't aim towards building it for defense as it will have no DDR save Ageless radial so any defense can be striped easily. I personally like to build my resistances to make use of cycling meltdown, rune of power, and melee core to cap off my resistances, and then ensure I have 100% resistance to slows/recharge debuffs and aim for building recharge to maximize ground zero and rad therapy.

 

With enough recharge, you'll likely be using Thunderstrike, Lightning Clap (maybe), and Lightning Rod, to keep mobs knocked on their asses. You'll also likely cycle Rad Therapy and Ground Zero with damage procs to have a couple mini nukes to expand on your AoE damage from Thunderstrike and Lightning Rod.

 

I'd probably take both maneuvers and weave as LOTG mules and to slot kismet, shield wall, and reactive defense procs. You'll probably want tactics as well to help hit +4's reliably.

 

For epic/patron there's two main schools of thought: either energy for focused acc, lbe, and physical perfection OR soul for gloom and darkness night. Personally when I build a character I don't often need an extra power like phys perfection (a lot of people like it though, rad armor gives you good Regen/recovery as is) and laser beam eyes is not a lot of damage (but can apply a -res proc although it's fairly unreliable for that because of its recharge). I really like the DPA on Gloom and often pair.that with Arcane Bolt for runners. Darkest Night is a pretty damn good mitigation tool in itself given the -damage and -tohit it applies (not that you need the -tohit, but this also benefits your whole team when used typically for hard targets).

 

For a a rad armor brute I'd look at Musculature Radial, Rebirth Radial for healing/more regen (with a full IO build and accolades you could be damn close to brute HP cap, so that's why I like radial more than core). Melee Core as that's part of your resistance cycle between meltdown and rune of power.

 

Interface, lore, and judgement are dealers choice (although lately I like void for judgement for adding more -damage with darkest night, but it's only useful on advanced difficulty stuff).

 

Sorry for the long post.