Show me your Brute tier list!

[Some Random User]

Show me your Brute tier list! What Powersets or combinations do you believe are unsurpassed, good but second tier, neutral, and unplayable?

[Infinitum]

Primary: TW, rad or psi. Those all do crazy damage, have unique features that add to the set, and keep the enemy off their feet or contaminated.

 

Electric Armor IMO is hard to beat when you invest in it.

 

I'm working a psi/Elec right now and I think it's going to be the best I've ever produced.  Afraid to say it too loud, but it reminds me of the flow EM used to have but with a much better AOE

Edited August 21, 2019 by Infinitum

[Rylas]

So many variables to rank by, I'm not sure which to prioritize most. 

 

...but I'll try.

 

Primary — Overall Fun Carnage: Radiation Melee, Super Strength, Dark Melee, and Claws.  Except for DM, they all offer solid ST and AoE damage. DM stands out for the utility it offers for keeping you going with its strong ST damage. While I don't tend to enjoy melee sets with building mechanics, RM's contamination is one you don't have to pay a lot of attention to in order to reap benefits from so that's why I didn't rate it as tedious.

 

Primary — Tedious Carnage: Titan Weapons and Savage Melee. Great damage so long as your paying attention to what powers you're using and when. Not bad, just not the best for me.

 

Primary — Just Fun: Battle Axe and Stone Melee. I mean, who doesn't love knocking people down repeatedly??

 

Secondary — Overall Easy to Survive: Electric Armor, Radiation Armor and Invulnerabilit. Tough to kill in a lot of content and perform well pretty early. 

 

Secondary — Tedious or Late Bloomer Survivors: Bio Armor, Willpower, Dark Armor, Ice Armor, Shield Defense and Super Reflexes. All of these are strong performers, but require more investment of time before getting them there. Bio requires a bit more active attention. WPs layered mitigation approach takes time to accumulate as does DA's utlities. And the defense heavy sets all their defensive powers before they hit their strengths. 

 

Secondary — KILL EM FIRSTers: Fiery Aura and Shield Defense. These sets just make your primaries feel so much more fun. 

[Some Random User]

I'm reading and comparing each user's feedback. I would prefer to get two or three more lists.

[Haijinx]

Really hear mixed Reviews on Savage to be honest.  Its numbers suggest it should be good,  but i suspect they are skewed too far to the DOT side.

[ebssgd]

I can't review all the sets as I haven't played them all, but my favorite character is a TW/Rad, so I can comment on those.

 

TW: Great set at the end game. The set hits like a truck, and just has a fun feel as you swing your giant sword/axe/hammer into things. The downside is that it feels too slow when momentum isn't up, so the leveling process honestly gets pretty painful. Still hits hard, even at low levels, just feels even slower that is already is. Maybe not top tier, but close, and it just feels awesome. So, probably A-tier in execution, but S-tier in bad-assery. 

 

Rad: Love this set. I honestly can't think of a bad thing to say. Great set, and surely top tier for a Brute. S-tier without question.

[Haijinx]

TW is definitely top tier. 

 

It is the current pylon leader for scrappers, tankers and brutes.  

[Sublime]

On 8/21/2019 at 9:25 PM, Rylas said:

So many variables to rank by, I'm not sure which to prioritize most. 

 

...but I'll try.

 

Primary — Overall Fun Carnage: Radiation Melee, Super Strength, Dark Melee, and Claws.  Except for DM, they all offer solid ST and AoE damage. DM stands out for the utility it offers for keeping you going with its strong ST damage. While I don't tend to enjoy melee sets with building mechanics, RM's contamination is one you don't have to pay a lot of attention to in order to reap benefits from so that's why I didn't rate it as tedious.

 

Primary — Tedious Carnage: Titan Weapons and Savage Melee. Great damage so long as your paying attention to what powers you're using and when. Not bad, just not the best for me.

 

Primary — Just Fun: Battle Axe and Stone Melee. I mean, who doesn't love knocking people down repeatedly??

 

Secondary — Overall Easy to Survive: Electric Armor, Radiation Armor and Invulnerabilit. Tough to kill in a lot of content and perform well pretty early. 

 

Secondary — Tedious or Late Bloomer Survivors: Bio Armor, Willpower, Dark Armor, Ice Armor, Shield Defense and Super Reflexes. All of these are strong performers, but require more investment of time before getting them there. Bio requires a bit more active attention. WPs layered mitigation approach takes time to accumulate as does DA's utlities. And the defense heavy sets all their defensive powers before they hit their strengths. 

 

Secondary — KILL EM FIRSTers: Fiery Aura and Shield Defense. These sets just make your primaries feel so much more fun. 

Why i cant see War Mace anywhere in this list? Since i continiously see ppl rate it better over Axe

[Rylas]

2 hours ago, Sublime said:

Why i cant see War Mace anywhere in this list? Since i continiously see ppl rate it better over Axe

When it comes to just having fun, KD > Stun. 

[Colder]

Savage is unreal, I've heard it's better on stalkers for the simple reason hemorrhage is a better power but I've got 8 vet level brutes and invested most of my time and money in the savage/bio, mostly because the damage felt vastly superior and faster than any other set I've played.

 

That said I'm having a tremendous amount of fun with a staff/DA brute. Staff really helped DAd atrocious endurance usage much more managable, and with 3 AoE/come attacks at my disposal he's even viable for farming and can consistently chain aoes with fractions of a second downtime. It's ST dmg is not to be overlooked either.

 

I've got a vet level WM/EA who is "STRONG AND PRETTY" just like the tag line implied.

 

My main farmer is a fire/stone brute, I'm not one to optimize because everyone else does it and the use of fault and tremor with burn are plenty good enough for me to quickly farm +4/x8s so what do I care.

 

I paired TW with rad and at the time this was great, however with the clicky nature of radiation and the lack of symmetry with momentum caused me to abandon the character, but he was my first vet level on homecoming

 

Ive got a dual blades/ice armor brute who performs well enough but I just really wasn't a fan of the combo system, in fact I respecd him to remove the sweep combo.

 

Anything viable but this would be my tier list of my current brutes. Hope it helps.

[SaintD]

My tier list is based on nothing more than just how much fun I have with a set, which bumps up some sets that are average to competitive by the numbers but are hilariously satisfying to use, and pushes down other sets (one in particular) where the numbers don't lie but it's just wretchedly boring to play with. Sooo.....

STUFF I LOVE
Savage and Claws are basically the absolute top-shelf set for the real psychology of Brutin', which is a willful descent into single-minded Scrapperlock clicking. They're just relentless. They're also the earliest of early bloomers - they get piles of fast recharging, endurance friendly, ludicrously fast animating powers absolutely immediately that let you go off on insane rampages literally right from level 1. Finding, waiting for, and running a DFB might possibly be slower than just going on a blood rampage on fast respawning Skulls in Atlas Park to level up to Kings Row with these sets. It helps that these sets also have such visceral feedback, they're very satisfying to watch and listen to. They can lose a bit of steam later because they're getting heavily resisted.

Fiery Melee is barely below those two on the Fun Scale. It's let down a little at low levels by having to rely on Scorch as your Brawlplacement, because Scorch is boring, but later on it fills out with powers for better chaining and dear God practically every single one hits like the scythe of Death himself. It cannot be understated how much absolute death Fiery Melee hands out. This set is a little bit the opposite of Savage and Claws in that while they come out of the gate hilariously fast and slow down a little later, Fiery Melee comes out a little slower than them but somehow just keeps getting more and more terrifying because enemies that keep loading out on Lethal Res usually forget to pack their Fire Res.

Psionic Melee. I recently discovered this set and had no idea it was so good. It's a little slower on the start because Mental Strike looks absolutely terrible and no-one in their right mind should countenance using it, but once you're rolling Psi Blade, TK Blow, and Psi Blade Sweep you kinda feel like you don't even need anything else anymore. Boggle is probably a useful skill to someone but again, what is up with that animation, I'm a Brute, not the Riddler presenting a conundrum to Adam West's Batman.

STUFF THAT NEEDS YOU TO CARE ABOUT THE CONCEPT A BIT MORE
There's piles of stuff in the average bracket. Super Strength and Street Justice have good, often great animations and great visual/aural feedback. They're just a little ho hum mechanically. Broadsword, War Mace and Battle Axe should be thematically perfect for Brutes, but their mechanics and animations are more ponderous than one might have thematically wanted from the idea of a Brute hacking and slashing his way furiously through enemies. Get over that though, and they're great to play if you like the concept. Katana is a little more swift and busy but results in the same kinda thematic trap as Martial Arts, Staff, and Kinetic Melee in that they look too clean and professional for being a Brute. Dark Melee is one of the most useful attack sets in the game with just how versatile it is....but your enthusiasm for the usefulness and potentials of it gets blunted somewhat by the uninspiring actual use of it.

I HATE YOU
As a Brute, Titan Weapons can eat my ass. Really get all up in there. It is so disgustingly slow in every way, so late blooming, that it offends me. Titan Weapons is masochism. Titan Weapons is a reverse pinata where you have to smash yourself in the balls with a claw hammer until you get the candy. Every other set just gives you the damn candy from the start, and more as you go on. Titan Weapons stands over you like a dominatrix and demands you lick it's feet, every day, and you're not into feet, or licking stuff, so that one day you might be allowed to do something everyone else has been doing all along.

Spines is Marmite/Vegemite/Weird Furry Monstergirl Porn. You either love it or hate it. It's a hideously ugly themetic s***show, the animations are from when the game was released, it eats endurance, and it doesn't do anything genuinely interesting. If you hate it, that's probably why. If you love it, it's probably because OH MY GOD EVERYTHING JUST DIES WHAT IS THIS I THINK I'M CHEATING GUYS IS THIS CHEATING I THINK IT'S CHEATING.

Edited October 9, 2019 by SaintD

[Shoulung]

I love my TW/regen, even when moving slow. I think it reminds me of all the big weapon wielders in Soul Caliber, and with a huge weapon it should feel slow at times. The only thing I might change is tying animation speed to the rage bar instead of momentum, so that the longer you’re in combat the faster you’re getting, but that would probably require a lot of work.

[Frostweaver]

1: Fire. except for those stupid swords, you feel like the bad guy from kung-fu panda when he set his hands on fire... Everything is in bullet time while you go all badass all over.

2: Radiation Melee is just friggin' powerful. No two ways about it. The special effects are generic enough that you could recolor it and call it whatever you like. Not very brutelike, but when you are the best Brute set in the game you can do what you like.

3: Savage and dirty fighting (stj) are thematically, along with SS, about as brutelike as you can get... but bleed dps and combo bonuses seem to have a lot less oomph than they do on scrappers, which is a shame. And personally I cannot tolerate the rage crash, and if you remove rage, SS becomes way more Meh outside of farming.

 

4: Stone melee, while maybe not the most badass set, feels INCREDIBLY destructive, and does it's job well. It's not particularly powerful, but it slots VERY well, helps weak secondaries, and when the screen shakes, you know you just concaved someone.

5: TW is only fun if you pick the right weapon, and the right secondary. I would KILL for sentinel-style regen on brutes, but WP does okay despite it's wimpiness. You do need to invest a ton in very rares and recharge, however, as auto-hasten always seems to always fire off just after you achieved momentum, wrecking your chain.

6: Psi melee would be awesome if they didn't keep throwing massively psi-resistant content at you post 40. Claws are very brutelike, but the animations feel less like wolverine and more like that dude from Street Fighter 2.

7: Wm is surprisingly fun, especially since you can slot +recharge into almost anything. BS and katana are also both fun, especially since at full fury parry does real damage and is not just a filler for adding defense. Stick fighting is just like that, only without the coolness, screen shake, and with a complicated combo system that sucks all the blind brutelock fun out of being a brute. It also feels slow.

8: Electrical melee is useful, and kinda cool looking, and seems pretty solid, but it's striking capability seems better for someone that doesn't have to keep a fury bar full.... I wind up using it's teleport strike in close combat constantly or MAYBE quickly traversing the distance to another pack. It's got lots of aoe up-front but not as much sustained.

9: Dual Blades. Umm... My brute doesn't do a pirouette, thanks. I guess if you want to be "Ballerina Man" that's the set to go for.

10: Spines is spines. Ugly. Decent for farming. Crap against GM's.

11: Dark and Ice are... like getting another secondary. Meh.

12: Axe is like that kid that always gets picked last, and who the team would prefer being short a player than actually putting on the field. It's not bad, it's just like they took BS and WM and combined them, always picking the lesser of two powers. MA is sorta in the same boat now, although I remember it being a lot more fun back in I15.... did they nerf it?

13: EM is... well, I will let the Tankers explain it. And Kinetic Melee I literally cannot take a character past 23 with it... I mean, I work hard, slot it all up with 25 IO's, and then just imagine all those retarded animations and weaksauce sound effects that make you sound like you are slapping them with a wet paper towel.

Secondaries:

1: Bio and Rad are obviously OP, which helps make them more fun.

2: Electric, Dark, and Willpower. They all have neat tricks, and unlike some, those neat tricks are useful all the way through the game. They each have a big playstyle weakness, but not any really glaring holes.

3: Invulnerability/Shield defense. Both have kind of awesome potential, but sometimes maximizing that potential can be difficult... not to mention some great big holes that are really hard to patch. Ice. This is an unpopular choice, but I have loved CE since the first time I ever played it. Shield and Ice also lock you into special effects that you might not appreciate, or block access to primaries.

 

4: Energy Aura/Firey Aura. These are decent sets, but are pretty specialized by default, or can use a primary's help. Not really bad, and under the right circumstances (Like a fire farm for aura) can outclass everything else.

5: Regeneration. It's incredibly powerful defensively on a Brute's HP, but you either spend so much time clicking that you interfere with your attack chains, or you build alternate defensive layers and might as well junk half the set.

6: Stone armor: It's got an amazing trick that worked GREAT in I5. Nowadays, though, you pay too much for the great trick that almost any other secondary can duplicate without losing speed, damage, or the ability to step over a newspaper. It needs some updating.

7: SR. It's complete crap, and shouldn't have been ported to brutes or Tankers. Everyone has a 45% softcap on defense. Only Brutes and tankers have a 90% resist cap. SR does not improve even slightly over the scrapper version, and brutes SHOULD be more survivable... The only advantage SR brutes have is more HP So you get to live longer while you lose all the aggro and watch your team faceplant while you sit at 15% fury.

That's my rankings, and it's based on opinion and playing with pretty much every set both live and on HC.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Frostweaver

[thespiritfox2]

Primaries... 

 

Rad and TW are my two top tier primaries. Spines is boring but powerful, I haven't tried savage yet (soon lol) but I like both contamination and momentum as mechanics. And they both do ludicrous amounts of damage. Staff, street justice, dm, fire, all good but overall lower performers. 

 

Secondaries, /fire is fun enough for me to build a second fully ioed out build for my rad/fire farmer to try to survive incarnate trials. 

 

/bio tops out high. You can come pretty close to invuln numbers with defense and resistance, have a toggle to give yourself a massive boost to end efficiency, and has a proc monster power that couldn't be easier to use. 

 

/shield is just solid. Going positional and having a ton of debuff resistance, you can build /shield to remain soft capped forever pretty much. Shield charge is good damage. 

 

/rad and /elec I haven't tried but are great from what I've read about them, /rad is next on my alt list. 

 

/dark gets a special Mention. It is one of the only sets with no psi hole. It can be built to tank literally anything. And it will lock you into ageless because the endurance drain involved. These issues make /dark offically the most late blooming secondary brutes have, without serious endurance investments early, like slotting attuned procs and non purple sets, it'll oom on you mid battle lots. Id go so far as to say the devs should consider tuning the end use down on the sets to bring it in line with /bio and /rad and /sd and /elec in usability. 

[DaemonWithin]

I built claw Regan.  With health/recharge incarnate, perma-haste, purple enhancement sets and several Numina sets also.  The recharge is so fast that you can do away with all of the attack powers except keep follow up, spin, and eviscerate; basically you can use those three powers over and over and a lvl 54 mob drops in no time.  Also get the focus power for a nice ranged attack.  Concentrate on endurance recovery and Regen rate.  Then pick up tough, weave, manuvers, combat jumping (some extra defence) and tactics.  Lastly you have 3 healing powers that now have insane recharge rate.  And not to mention moment of glory!  One last thing is that regen does not care what type of damage comes in so you have no weaknesses to damage type.  My 2nd favorite build.   I did build an unkillable Dark/Elec defender (favorite)

Edited November 16, 2019 by DaemonWithin

[Snarky]

SS Will is cruise control.  Dark Will is stronger but you have to work to place PBAoEs and the small melee come. SS Invul is one of the toughest builds in the game.  Using SOs.  With IO fuggedaboutit.  Dark Invul is the strongest build in the game IOd. Don’t talk to me about Granite and you already know why

[Colder]

edit: repeat

Edited November 24, 2019 by Colder

[Mitchman]

Super Strong Primaries- Super Strength, TW, DM, Rad (these all seem crazy strong to me)

 

Fun Primaries- Electric Melee, Claws, Ice Melee, SS (my favorite primaries)

 

Super Strong Secondaries- Invul, Fire, Bio, Rad ( All Super strong)

 

Fun Secondaries- Bio, SD, Ice (All of these are strong, tend to be a bit pricey endgame. But, all have a very active play-style for a secondary, If you are looking to just toggle on and roll these are not your cup of tea)

 

These are just my opinions! 🙂

[Ninjaboy]

Primaries:

 

S-Tier: Rad, SS

 

A-Tier: WM, Psi, StJ, TW (maybe savage too?),

 

The biggest issue with Psi is fighting mobs with big time resists. End game you start encountering more mobs with Psi resist which starts making it feel lackluster compared to a Rage + SS. 

 

 

 

Secondaries: 

 

S-Tier: Elec, Rad, Invul, Bio 

 

All the above are on pretty even depending on what you want to do and the situation.

 

I would rate: Rad > Elec > Invul > Bio based on my playstyle + fun factor.

 

Bio / Rad are insane but I just don't like the abilities that require X amount of mobs being near you to function even if that happens in most circumstances. 

 

 

 

I have a SS/Elec veteran and find endgame content is trivial even at +4x8 (although I perfer +3x8).

 

I stayed away from the main builds with this one and instead went into RofP + T9. I am maxed (or near) all resists PASSIVE except for toxic. I don't find a lot of the main builds fun because they min/max to the point of doing silly things like missing a fun power or taking ninja run as your main travel power. Fortunately with this combo you can do almost anything you want and be at S tier. The tier9 is there just for extreme moments (PvP, getting debuffed, etc) but RofP or Incarnate shields will handle most anything without the NEED for the T9. I love the T9 of Electric thematically. The biggest, "I wish this set had" is bonus HP. It makes me sad sometimes. 

Edited January 15, 2020 by Ninjaboy

[oOStaticOo]

My go to's are 

Titan Weapons

Katana

Electric Melee

 

Electric Armor

Energy Aura

Shield Defense

Super Reflexes

 

[Heraclea]

My favorite --

 

Primaries, top tier:  Radiation Melee, Dark Melee.  Both have attacks that help keep you alive; Dark Melee is more reliable, but Radiation Melee gets the nod for a fast recharging PBAoE attack and a damage aura.  Have not tried Psi Melee.  All of these sets have fast lowbie attacks that Brutes especially benefit from. 

 

War Mace is best among the weapon sets, I think. 

 

Energy Melee, Super Strength, and Titan Weapons are bottom tier sets for Brutes.  Energy Melee was ruined on old live, Super Strength on Homecoming, and Titan Weapons is just too slow to get going: far better on a scrapper than a brute. 

 

Secondaries, top tier:  Willpower, Bio, Radiation, and Electric.  Brutes need sustainability and relief from the endurance mechanic the most urgently of any AT.  These armors provide them, with more than adequate survivability in most situations.  Electric is a bit of a late bloomer here. 

 

Regen works if you are building a character to farm lowbie strike or task forces, but hits its plateau early on and performs poorly in the debuff-happy late game.  People will tell you that its deficiencies can be remedied by massive investment in IO sets, but that's just it.  You're spending millions to get it to the point where Bio or Radiation are out of the box. 

 

Shield Defense is the best of the defense oriented sets, with fun offensive abilities.  Lacks debuff resistance. 

 

Bottom tier - Super Reflexes, Stone, Invulnerability.  Stone must be an absolute pain on a Brute even more so than on a Tanker.  Requires a pocket kin to be playable and still you'll need Teleport to get over a curb.  Reflexes and Invulnerability are more 'meh' than anything else; unlike the secondaries I recommend, none of these do diddly squat to get you more endurance.  Defensive sets like Reflexes are also late blooming, with glaring holes until you get all the pieces of the puzzle in place.  And click mez protection is more of an annoyance on a Brute than on another AT.