SS/Rad help

[San Q]

Hello everyone, 

I made a ss/rad brute with the intention of procing it out as much as I could. My res values weren't great, but I thought with high recharge and a few force feedback recharge proc and the rchg toggle I would be able to keep meltdown up most of the time, which seems to be the case.

 

I'm not slotted for incarnates yet. Just running the build at +3/+8 it melts stuff. What I didn't take into account is that meltdown doesn't just lose some end when it drops, it looks like it slaps on a 10 second recovery debuff. So I'm having these severe end drops every second or third group of enemies. 

Any advice for addressing this issue? The options that occur to me off the top of my head:

 

1. Ageless destiny

2. Cardiac alpha

3. reroll as a tank to get the high res without meltdown

 

 

[Teddy Chungus]

Do you have perma rage?

[Octogoat]

I play a rad/ss tank and I have to say the extra res and proceed out footstomp and ground zero is nice

[San Q]

1 minute ago, Octogoat said:

I play a rad/ss tank and I have to say the extra res and proceed out footstomp and ground zero is nice

 

Yeah I went ahead and rolled a tank version. Way easier to hit the res caps and it's sad how much better the ATOs for the tank seem to be in comparison to the brute version. I don't think I'll really be losing much if any damage either.

[Warshades]

On 4/13/2025 at 4:10 PM, San Q said:

Yeah I went ahead and rolled a tank version. Way easier to hit the res caps and it's sad how much better the ATOs for the tank seem to be in comparison to the brute version. I don't think I'll really be losing much if any damage either.

 

I wouldn't worry to much about hitting resist caps, your best defense is killing everything before it has a chance to kill you (though tanker's higher base resist values help a lot in making the combo more sturdy). I've saved a lot of versions of this combo in mid's, I think this was the final one that I settled on or something close to it. You can easily replace Assault with Taunt if you prefer. I personally don't really like Meltdown for a few reasons. It mainly boosts resists only (which are already near cap so it's kinda useless) and activation time is very long. I've found the tank version to be more than sturdy enough to not need it. Tankers also have higher base damage anyway (although Fury is meant to get brutes ahead once the bar is filled).

 

I feel that musculature is the best alpha choice here. Double stacked rage will handle accuracy/damage buffing, but some extra from musculature goes a long way towards getting closer to ED on damage buffs. I fully second ageless core for the extra recharge, my tank is able to maintain perma hasten while constantly fighting thanks to the FF +rech procs and ageless.

 

Be sure to hit 100% or close to it on recharge debuff resist. The entire build relies on quickly destroying spawns (and particle shielding) so you don't want to get recharge debuffed and not be able to hit your proc'd out AoEs.

 

Edit: while tankers have a much better ATO, I actually almost never use Punch unless I'm tanking an AV, in which case I'll add it to my rotation for the SMoT/absorb procs.

Tanker (Radiation Armor - Super Strength) 5.mbd

Edited April 15 by Warshades

[San Q]

Thanks for the feedback! I went for softcapped melee s/l  defense on mine, so it's not as proced out as yours is. Seems to be working well so far but you've definitely given me food for thought.

[WuTang]

What ya think about this Brute version?

 

It's partly @Soverabuild that he helped me with a long time ago.

 

Think I'll give it a go.

Brute (Super Strength - Radiation Armor).mbd

[Warshades]

3 hours ago, WuTang said:

What ya think about this Brute version?

 

I'm not a fan of Hurl, or even Focused Accuracy when you have access to rage. Maybe swap the Unrelenting Fury set to Haymaker and replace Hurl with Hand Clap. Replace FA with Dominate for a faster activating ST range attack that you can proc out (the additional slots from Hurl can go here). Rather than running both impervium armor +psi resist and aegis +psi resist in Fallout Shelter, you can move the aegis slot to a different toggle and run 2 impervium +psi resist (extra 1%, but every bit counts!). Swapped the Overwhelming Force in Rad Therapy to Superior Avalanche proc (rad therapy does minimal base damage so boosting damage is kinda useless and the additional recharge from Superior Avalanche will help it come up more often and doesn't hurt proc chances since base recharge is fairly long). Also changed theft of essence to another damage proc, I don't think Rad Armor really needs additional endurance help. Removed the super speed slots to add to other powers (a single winter gift unique will give you 20% slow resist). Think I also swapped health to a Panacea unique.

 

I'm still not a fan of Meltdown and would personally drop it and taunt to pick up Harmonic + Psi Tornado, but this build looks like it's trying to keep high resists on it for a balance between offense and sturdiness.

Brute (Super Strength - Radiation Armor).mbd

[WuTang]

16 hours ago, Warshades said:

 

I'm not a fan of Hurl, or even Focused Accuracy when you have access to rage. Maybe swap the Unrelenting Fury set to Haymaker and replace Hurl with Hand Clap. Replace FA with Dominate for a faster activating ST range attack that you can proc out (the additional slots from Hurl can go here). Rather than running both impervium armor +psi resist and aegis +psi resist in Fallout Shelter, you can move the aegis slot to a different toggle and run 2 impervium +psi resist (extra 1%, but every bit counts!). Swapped the Overwhelming Force in Rad Therapy to Superior Avalanche proc (rad therapy does minimal base damage so boosting damage is kinda useless and the additional recharge from Superior Avalanche will help it come up more often and doesn't hurt proc chances since base recharge is fairly long). Also changed theft of essence to another damage proc, I don't think Rad Armor really needs additional endurance help. Removed the super speed slots to add to other powers (a single winter gift unique will give you 20% slow resist). Think I also swapped health to a Panacea unique.

 

I'm still not a fan of Meltdown and would personally drop it and taunt to pick up Harmonic + Psi Tornado, but this build looks like it's trying to keep high resists on it for a balance between offense and sturdiness.

Brute (Super Strength - Radiation Armor).mbd 44.89 kB · 1 download

Yeah all but the primary slotting was from another build. I don't think SS needs acc debuff resist either so long as rage can be maintained at x2. 

 

I was really just seeing where I could get the resistances to, and I think they are more than adequate even with a proc'd out build. I do like the addition of Dominate in your build. I don't really like Hurl either, but thematically it is the quintessential super strength move.  Personally, I would even swap out some just to reduce defenses and bolster resist even more, just because every 60 sec it's going to be sitting at near 0% for 10 sec. Working in Cross Punch would be another good thing, I think.