Fire melee/rad... brute or tank?

[Galaxy Brain]

Fire melee on brutes has 2 AoEs while on tanks it has 3, and rad armor seems to be highly effective on both for offense. Would a brute still be overall better with fury pumping up the damage?

[Bloodofcaine]

    Better at what precisely? In order to address the question properly it would help to know what is your aim for this combination of powers. Are you trying to build an influence/infamy farmer? Are you building someone to tank end game content? etc etc. I ask this because the answer will change probably depending on what specifically you are trying to accomplish.

[Galaxy Brain]

That's a good point! I guess I am working backwards from the character idea, "Dawnforged", who is like a solar powered armor.

 

So, super tanky and can deal great damage to everyone around him?

 

 

[nihilii]

I'd go Brute without a second thought.

Fire Sword Circle is the only AoE you need. Although Combustion is nice, dropping it for Cremate is an improvement in most situations (if you solely want to farm mobs, Combustion would be better - but Brute damage > Tanker damage for farming anyway, so still go Brute).

Radiation Armor comes very close to capping resistances even on a Brute. I'm looking at a planned StJ/Rad build I have right now, which sits at 81% S/L, 71% fire, 67% energy and toxic... Before Barrier is used, and at full HP (which means you can add at least 5% to these numbers, and more often than not, more than that). That's without Meltdown as well.

To put it another way, because Radiation Armor is all resistance no defense, and because resistance has a hard cap, you don't get as much of a relative survivability benefit as you might on some other armor powersets (even if Radiation also has a lot of +regen, where Tanker HP helps).

Now, this is also assuming you care about endgame more than the leveling process. If this is an alt likely to spend most of his playtime under 50, and if you prize survivability above all, then it could make sense to be a Tanker.

Badass costume. 🙂

Edited July 30, 2019 by nihilii

[Galaxy Brain]

I think I'll stay brute then if FSC is so reliable.  Thanks!!