Which Enhancement Set Bonuses

[OdinAZ]

Hell All,

 

 My Brute just hit lvl 25 ish, and I am looking into Enhancement set bonuses.  But what should I be looking for?  Should I be stacking resistances?  Increased Regeneration?  Increased Recovery?  Is there a general Brute priority list?  I'm Savage/Electric Armor if it helps.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Let's split it into two categories: offense and defense

 

Offensively Recharge is generally the bonus that gives you the most bang for your buck. Stacking global recharge lets you tighten up your attack chain using your heavy hitters more often and avoiding gaps so that you can more easily build fury.

 

Defensively it's a bit of a tossup between Defense and Resistance. Electric Armor is primarily a resistance based set so stacking more resistance on top of your existing resistances is not a bad way to go. However on the other hand defense bonuses are easier to build up and having some defense is still useful. But on the gripping hand in team play you'll get a lot more defensive bonuses from your teammates than resistance bonuses which encourages building towards resistance.

 

Plus of course the general stuff like Miracle and Numina procs and the 7.5% extra HP are of course a good choice on most characters.

Edited Wednesday at 09:07 PM by Adeon Hawkwood

[Spaghetti Betty]

The gist was already covered, but I'd like to expand just a bit!

 

I'd double down that Recharge is definitely the most important stat offensively, but it also benefits you greatly from a defensive standpoint as well! Don't forget that all clickies are important to your overall wellbeing!

 

I'll also say the second most important "offensive" stat to build up is accuracy! It's kind of easy to forget about, at least for me. This matters less if you only plan on fighting even con mobs, as raw enhancement value will usually cover your accuracy needs at that scale. But if you start pushing up into the +3s or +4s, you'll need to find some extra accuracy somewhere in your set bonuses. This becomes exponentially easier once you start diving into VR sets and Incarnates at level 50, so don't sweat it too much now.

 

Also, don't fall into the trap of building up +Dam bonuses! You get a poor return on them, especially as a Brute, who have a very strange relationship with their own damage scaling.

 

Another thing I'd like to touch on is building Defense vs Resistance. As a general rule of thumb, always build upon what your armor is good at first and foremost! While Brutes start with the same base numbers as Scrappers, they get the same Resistance hardcaps as Tankers (90%), so as Electric Armor - or any other Resistance based armor - you'll definitely want to attempt to get to that! If you build up a little Defense along the way, great! But keep in mind that -DEF is the most common debuff in the game! Any mob carrying something resembling a machine gun or blade will reduce your Defense! It only gets worse as you level up!

Edited Wednesday at 10:00 PM by Spaghetti Betty
changed wording

[MonteCarla]

Electric Armor on Brutes is the best set to build for Resistance. I wrote up a big guide on building Resistances for Brutes way back.

 

 

You can easily hit the 90% to Smashing, Lethal (needs Tough and Brute ATIOs) and Energy (just happens) and can also reach it for Fire/Cold and Psionic if you go for it.

I found this to be a lot of fun and ended up with a supremely tough character who's defences would never get bypassed by debuffs, unlike Defence based characters.

 

You won't need Recovery bonuses thanks to Energize and Power Sink - getting their Recharge up via set bonuses is a better bet than trying to enhance Recovery itself.

 

 

[Psyonico]

42 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

But keep in mind that -DEF is the most common debuff in the game! Any mob carrying something resembling a machine gun or blade will reduce your Defense! It only gets worse as you level up!

and to further on this, because Electric armor has no in-built Defense Debuff Resistance, any -defense you get is going to be full strength.

[Erratic1]

While Savage being the land of damage over time does not by itself suggest Recharge, (a) Savage plays into Recharge inherently via Blood Frenzy, (b) Electric play into Recharge via Lightning Reflexes, and (c) Energize is something you want up 100% of the time--I personally would set it to auto-fire and aim for it to cooldown a bit before it wears off. You should be able to reach a point where Power Sink is skippable, thus freeing up the slot for some other power, particularly when you factor in Blood Frenzy also lowering your endurance costs. 

[WuTang]

You've chosen two of my favorite sets. Electric is great because you gain 100% debuff resist to recovery and endurance, it checks so many boxes. And Savage is so fast and on a Brute is brutal. I'd recommend this when fighting, don't let Blood Frenzy stack to max. Unless Blood Thirst is off CD. Blood Frenzy stacks buff your recharge and reduce endurance costs, so if you pop 5 stacks you become exhausted and can't build any BF for a bit, thus sort of "debuffing" yourself.

 

The only hole in Electric is its toxic resist...but honestly, I've never found it to be a prob.

[Uun]

My Stone/Elec brute is capped to S/L/E and in the low 80s to F/C/P. Elec is weak to Ne and has no Tx protection at all (I got Ne resist up to 53% and Tx up to 29%). You obviously want the Shield Wall 5% +res unique. As crappy as the brute ATOs are, they have solid resist bonuses for 6 pieces (6% S/L for Superior Brutes Fury and 6% S/L/F/C/E/N for Superior Unrelenting Fury). Most purple sets have both 6% F/C and 6% T/P resist bonuses. Superior Winter sets have 6% F/C. Bombardment and Shield Wall have 4.5% E/N bonuses. There are quite a few sets with 4.5% T/P and 3.75% S/L bonuses.