Develle

While earths embrace may not be a 'heal' it does boost your HP massively if slotted well, then you have the other health power from the set rooted which skyrockets your regen on top of than.

I'm currently running earths embrace (5 slots 3 recharge, 2 health will pick up another health slot soon), rock armour (3 def, 1 end), rooted (3 health) and health (1 health) as my only defense and seems to work ok unless you get pounded by 2 + level bosses at once. Even then with energy primary I can stun pretty much anything to take out a bit single shot hitter. Seems to make a good combo energy and stone.

Added to which having just picked up energy transfer at 32 the regen rate picks up the drain of that too.

With my previous heros of tanks and scrappers, I always went heavy defensive slotting first then picked up offense in later levels. Running a brute seems to work quite nicely the other way around with stone I can slot defensively light, you don't need masses of defenses if you can 2 shot a boss Added to which, if I don't run mud pots (only a single end enhancer in there at present, I'll maybe look at slotting that up a bit more agressively if I get the slots pre 40, if not I'll wait till post 40) I can keep a good attack chain running for a while without using too much end up.

For someone who doesn't find scrappers that much fun to play, you certainly have a lot of scrapper alts Raven :P

You guys are absolutely correct, you should build a Monument to my PvP greatness...Oh wait that wasn't the title of the thread was it.

If I'm on later certainly, GF is coming over so might not be able to come online, although not yet been to warburg with my brute only the other 2 pvp zones. I'll have to look up where the entrance is from the villain side.

Anyway, if I do manage to make it onto the game I'll send you a tell if I'm about.

I wouldn't have thought PB with 3 slots was such a bad idea mind you, more so for PvP so if you do get dropped you can get the power back as soon as possible.

Your going to have to change that avatar of yours for where that auto turret is going to be shoved into Doulos. Lets just say that its going to be inserted with great force into your body from your sitting end upwards and by the end of the procedure doulos will have 1 gun barrel pointing out of each nostril.

Youre going to have to blow your nose with kevlar once I'm through with him.

Becuase Devellis is such a 'nice' brute though, I will at least concede to wash my hands before and after the operation to maintain a good degree of clenleness.

Not alltogether suprising mind you it was deleted :P

Doulos, Don't worry matey, next time my brute Devellis sees Doulos in PvP I'm going to pick up one of your trip mines, lob it like a frisby into the villain base and Yell 'Fetch' to you

See I have the l33t pvp skillz, how to deal with a devices blaster.

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yay for my lvl 10 ice tank!

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Being happy about that is kind of like saying being punched in the stomach is a better than a kick in the nuts :P

Most of the tank ATs need a sort out, its been said before but I think ED was what pushed a lot of the sets out in the scrap heap and turned the tank into low damage, high hit point scrappers who if they wish to team at all have to make do with basically zero offence at all until the late game to have any kind of defense going however small.

Yeah I would agree as a 'no' to that tactic. 0 skill or place in PvP imho, its just a cheap way of removing someone from PvP for a while with no real balance to any kind of pvp mechanism. If it starts to become widespread areas around the bases will no longer by places that can be fought in.

I don't think they should fire at all at heroes and villains, a safe zone is a better option like warburg for instance. True people run in and out of it, but its not normally much of a problem, usually folk just move back a little to allow a larger fighting area.

Well, the fact that it was bugged means you now get about 1/2 the def buff you used to from it so in effect it has made you worse yes.

On the flip side, stick 3 heals, 3 recharge in dull pain for more hitpoints than you used to be able to get :P

He said Mez resist alan (eg resistance to holds, stun etc), not psionic resist or defense :P

As it stands Inv is probably the best mobile tank (until if they ever decide to 'fix' the def buff from invinc which is about 2-3 times what it should be according to the devs).

Stone is the toughest by a mile, but don't underestimate the slow and rooted effects, and only once it hits 32+ in level. I have a 50 Inv/ss tank and a 39 Stone/Stone tank, simply not being able to run around whilst tanking and even get over a small decorative ledge without the use of teleport is pretty huge.

Secondary wise, well Fire is good for AoE, stone is entertaining and reasonable with its big hits, SS is an all around good clobbering set but energy probably wins out overall in single target damage (again probably late game only, takes a bit of getting going).

As I say though Primary wise stone is toughest by a long shot, you just need good patience to be able to do much with it, and don't expect it to be that much fun in PvP unless you like just being a wall. I've stood toe to toe with several stone tanks with my blaster and they don't exactly cause me much panic in the damage they kick out unlike some of the other primarys can not just in damage output but mobility in being able to chase you down.

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So Mud pots wouldn't help generate fury either?

Damn, I've really messed this build up Too much like a Tanker when I should be thinking/building like a Scrapper.

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Yeah with Brutes its easy to think of them as the COV tank, as many of the power sets are re-ordered and tweaked tank sets where is in reality it plays much more like a scrapper.

Mud pots is handy though, the damage will ramp up. Pop an insperation or so with a stone brute and with around 6 white minions around me by the time I get around to clobbering the last one its almost dead from mud pots. Having said that, Im not using it too much yet on mine as I don't have mud pots slotted. It is a good power though, I tend to use it solo on the numerous missions where you have to kill a boss before he escapes, keeps him nicely slowed while you clobber him. Also will be handy in PvP to stop pesky stalkers sneaking up on you in somewere like warburg (not that there aren't ways around it, but it will help). It can also be a nice power to stack with a some of the ice sets from other AT's in teams, getting enemies to the slow caps to set them up for aoe effects.

I could have sworn brutes have a mini punchvoke, could be wrong on that.

As for general tips, if you are on the receiving end of the teams agro consistantly for whatever reason: a couple of pointers.

Get any of the other team members that can do to buff/heal you as much as possible (they probably will anyway once they realise whats happening).

Try and get the team to pool insps for you, if you are effectively tanking ask them primarily for purples, greens and to a lesser extent oranges. If everything is determined to punch you out first, it means the rest of the team is probably happy it isn't them on the receiving end so may well help you out here.

Try not to run too far ahead of the team, full fury is great, only if you are standing though, be prepared to keep it lower if it means you are in safer positions and encouters.

Cant really see flurry being any use what so ever to be honest, there are plenty more attacks in the secondary better (in fact I would go so far as to say any damaging secondary from any of the sets has more uses) and if its flurry or hasten I konw which one I would pick. Flurry, terrible animation time, not great damage (and its smash leathal, probably lowers your fury by as much as it raises it by if not more with its total time) or hasten which even 1 slotted when you need to really lay the smack down boosts your dps by a large amount and sends your fury potentially much higher.

Fury is great PvE, can't see it being much use in PvP, sure there will be odd occassions it gets going but as a rule can't see it getting past about 1/2 way for most situations on a good day. PvP is too stop start and potentially leathal to you if you keep on slugging, and if you have that many other players going at you at once to really ramp it up quickly chances are you will be pretty dead soon anyway :P Still, we should at least be getting some boost to damage in PvP by it being there which is never bad, you just won't be able to keep it going so easily or keep it anywhere near as consitantly high.

Whats a scrapper?

Its like most other powers, it hits or misses, if you are that worried about tp foe take about 3-4 purple insperations with you, that will stop most tp'ers for a while at least if they start that trick, then pop a break free for good measure and leg it.

Pretty much everything else the devs have put in the game they have toned down as the game as gone on. Powers, now enhancements, entire at's etc. The original idea for the econemy never worked for them I'm guessing, once you hit your 30's you didn't have to worry about inf again.

What I suspect they have done this time is set it intentially hard to get enough prestige to actually make a base that is functional. Everything they have put in game, the players find a way to beat it, break it, abuse it, power through it in ways they never imagined compared to how it was apparently intended to be played (hence all the nerfs - bah).

So this time they start very low, and see what players do to actually afford these bases, work arounds etc. how the salvage system works in with it all. Then possibly at some point they can decrease costs or increase earning rates to make up for it.

Now of course it could have been tested, or maybe is a bad way of doing things, but I suspect this is what they have done. Afterall if they looked in a months time and everyone had the biggest base with everything running, players would cry murder if they increased all the costs, if they at a later date buff base building for the players however, they will get a better response from the player base for having 'listened'

Time will tell I suspect, no point hopping up and down about it a week after launch, I don't think its a good thing as it stands at present, but not much we can do about it.

Dang, Warburg is a PvP zone ?!

I thought it was just some crazy new AI script on the enemies that made them run around like headless chickens for the slaughter. Fun fun fun

Anyone in Warburg is just more reputation waiting to happen in my book, don't like the PvP stay out the way. Lets face it, its the only zone like it at the moment plenty of other places to go see, I don't have a problem with the killing which ever side I'm on, dishing it out (of course the norm :P) or the receiving end. Even then, I've been in there plently of times with various alts solo to do a mission or just explore, its not exactly hard to do with a small amount of preperation and intelligence to not get ganked by a team.