Enyalios

I kind of wonder other than it being a default function what purpose does it have?

Also I guess I don't post enough so 0 rep. Honestly only vaguely knew it was a function.

SS/SD seems to be an effective build. I've seen alot of folks dominate with it though I've never made one myself. It does struggle vs Nemesis though seems to do well in PvP.

I made a EM/FA Brute a couple issues ago for theme reasons too....I wanted to have fiery pom poms of doom! It was fun for a while but really seemed to lose the thrill somewhere along the line because honestly EM isn't all that great anymore since the i12 nerf. Its not terrible, but not really good either.

Shield Defense is very powerful at higher levels but has some ruts in the road getting there. Try getting into groups where someone else will take alot of the aggro and you'll find you don't flop over so much. Brutes are not meant to be soloing beasts until higher levels and even then they're better with some buffers.

As others have surely told you already, as a brute your fury bar is the most important thing. Keep it filled up and you'll feel like a scrapper with better resists and damage.

Tankers and Brutes while they look and feel similar are radically different.

Tankers hold aggro to make their teamates live longer
Tankers team best with blasters who pulverize the herd they build up ASAP
Tankers don't need buffs to be great defensively and cap out pretty quickly offensively with buffs.
Tankers like controllers because they can lock the enemy down reducing damage the group takes.


Brutes hold aggro to make their fury go up so enemies die faster
Brutes team best with corruptors (and defenders soon too) who buff them so they can smash things and take smashing better
Brutes have the same defensive/resistance caps as Tankers and the highest +damage cap in the game so properly buffed they are the upper limit of how powerful a CoX toon can be.
Brutes like dominators because they make the enemy stand still (hopefully in a concentrated group) so they're easier to smash.


Its all what you want to play. Don't think of brutes as tanks though cause even though they take the alpha more often than not redside they're not tanks.

Got to 624 on my redside main with all the new i17 badges. Strangely my hero badger is still stuck in the high 300's.....but I'm just not motivated to play blueside so I guess I'll have to wait to get the blue badges till July.

What you're looking for decides alot of what is "BEST"

SS/WP is an absolute beast combo. Its good right out of the box.....its good levelling up.....its good at 50th level.....its good with SOs and IOs out nicely as well. For people who want a fire-and-forget brute where you can just run around and beat on stuff, this has to be one of the easiest to do. WP sucks for holding aggro though so you know thats really the only drawback. Note: SS/Inv isn't as good right out of the box but might actually IO out a little better at 50th and can hold aggro.

Elec/Shield is popular at the moment and its not hard to see why. S/L soft cap it and its got amazing AoE potential with the 2 TP damage attacks and all the other benefits of the elec AoEs. Its more complicated than SS/WP but if well played more powerful in many situations. Elec/Shield is lousy compared to SS/WP with just a SO build though....it requires the IOs to not flop over frequently.

Stone Melee/Fire is a nice combo because Stone is the most mitigating primary and Fire armor can use the help. I found mine very powerful but I didn't like the look of the stone attacks so I never play her anymore. I suspect Stone/Dark would be pretty wicked as well though I never actually did one.

Other things I've noticed:

Claws are nice with just about anything because they build fury so quickly. They seem to do weak damage till they get going though.

SR can't do the main redside farm because stacked vengence = faceplanting and the main farm is against nemesis. Otherwise they're great.

Dark Armor is almost ignored for Brutes because people think DA = slow fury.......this has not been my experience. Though DA is end heavy so its late blooming.

Energy Armor is fine despite all the jokes about Mace/EA being strong and pretty.

I've found that a soft-capped to S/L WP or Invuln brute can be 90% as resistant as the stoner and able to use enough mitigation from their primaries that they're actually more survivable than the stoner.

Remember most attacks in the game at least have a smashing or lethal component and if they do the S/L defense will be applied meaning very low chance to be hit.

Broadsword is fun on a stalker. I love my BS/Elec.....pretty sure I'm the only one with that combo even on Freedom server.....and that just adds to the fun.

I still haven't figured out why stalkers got BS and brutes got DB though *boggle*.

As for why don't you see it....its cause alot of people already levelled up a ninja blade stalker and broadsword seems too similar to bother for them.

I've done fine with all my stalkers in PvE.....you just have to play such that people don't associate you with the bad experiences with stalkers in the past.

My EM/Ninj kills the boss/EB/AV

My BS/Elec pretends she's a scrapper and takes the alpha

My Spines/Dark does wicked AoE attacks and self-heals and self-rezzes so even if I do die with all the aggro nobody cares.

Just don't take your stalker and run off to do your own thing and leave the group without your services and most of the time you're going to be fine in PvE.

You can be too thin...and recharge has a point where it reaches diminishing returns.

Lets say something takes 60 seconds to recharge with no recharge.

With 50% bonus it'll take 45 seconds (25% improvement)
with 100% bonus it'll take 30 seconds (50% improvement)
with 200% bonus it'll take 20 seconds (66% improvement)
with 300% bonus it'll take 15 seconds (75% improvement)
with 400% bonus it'll take 12 seconds (80% improvement)

recharge caps at 400%

As you can see you can fairly easily reach a recharge level where additional recharge doesn't help nearly as much. Of course you're probably also at game breaking attack chain territory when you get there, but you can have too much recharge.

My #1 tip of the moment is that although bonds are more predictable, that doesn't mean they're safer. Since interest rates will go up at some point in the moderately near future (either the economy will grow or rates will rise because risk of lending will rise if the economy doesn't grow) dont buy bonds with longer maturities than maybe 6-9 mos.

If you want a stock tip I'd say don't buy GS because theres too much risk there.

The new interface would be fine if it didn't run slower. I prefer the old one but I'm sure I'll learn where everything is here too...the issue is it runs like at 1/2 the speed of the old one. And I've already bought something for more than I should have because of price autofilling....but thats my own fault I guess.

It gives an idea of how many toons you need to dominate all the IOs for a specific type of slot.

Varies widely depending on the toon. I know my kin I slotted like 3 sets to get +7 accuracy bonus as early as I had the slots to put them in (10th-15th?). It really helped my kin not miss so early on as I lackeyed along on lib TV missions with level 50s and other such high level content.

Brutes I usually wait till close to 50 because I intend to be able to farm with them...though my stoner used kin combats so got slotted at like 32nd with level 35s mostly.

As a real stock broker.....I'm doubting the M vs B thing....but I can easily imagine that someone intended to sell $10M of the ETF in question and accidently sold 10M shares since under the three platforms I've traded with you select shares or dollars and it'd be easy to mess up and do the wrong one.

I've been curious what exactly qualifies for filthy rich as well. I have quite a bit of inf liquid on both sides and was hoping to run an event in July with some serious give aways in St. Mart. Would 20 billion in total prizes still excite people or should I go up to 50 billion?

I must have the best luck on getting the purples to drop since I pop 2-3 a week consistently. Unfortunately I think I've got a chest in my base which is waiting for my fortunata to hit 50 with a full set of self-popped confuse and sleeps along with the 15-20 leftover sleeps.

I kind of like the ragnarok proc....I mean at least its kd not kb right? If you're 5 slotting its better to put in than the damage which will hit ED and barely do anything itself.

I'm game most of the time as well.

Pillboxes are much easier than heavies. I got the last 89 heavies by entering zone with tray full of wakies and had a friend log a toon from other side.

Click on heavy.

As soon as I got it engaged walk so they knew I was ready.

Die quickly.

Use wakie.

Click on heavy.


I was able to clear a tray of wakies and get 20 credit for heavies every 10 mins or so.

One of Moonfire/Hess basically gives you the badges if you do it. I don't remember which one though cause I've been redside since i11 almost solely. Alternately you'll get them both doing the ITF a few times cause of all the 5th Column ones (which seem to count).

Like the other poster said the +5 endurance isn't so amazing as to be a must have.

I'll probably have air superiority and 2 of the single target elec powers in the build. I could slot up brawl for a 4th place to put kin combats but probably should take a real power as long as I'm going to bother to slot it, they can't be that lousy right?

Does anyone know if you have the chance for kd power proc in kin combat slotted in air superiority do they stack to cause knockback?

If I kin combat it up I won't be as worried about invinc keeping me alive with tons of defense and given my long-term plans for the toon I think I'll be ok since I'm hoping to be able herd and kill 2 nemesis packs at a time unlike my current ss/wp who needs to do the groups one at a time.

Been toying with the idea of doing an elec/invuln and wondered if anyone had done one before. I was thinking of maxing out my s/l defense with some kin combats and the resist set which adds to that as well.

Just an idea so let me know what you all think.

I've never posted a screenie of any of my 11-12 billionaire toons mainly because I've never felt motivated and it seemed kind of odd to just do it for one of my alts and too much work for all of them. That said, since I'm planning to convert 30B of my infamy to prestige sometime in the next 3-4 mos I think I'll post a screenie of my main with my VG's prestige up before and after the arduous conversion process (lots of trips back to market to fetch 2B more).

I agree that 1 billion really isn't much anymore for spec'ing out a toon to the hilt and honestly thats what people collect the fortunes for so they can buy whatever they want. Of course redside you could have 100B and not be able to get alot of stuff quickly like Cloud Senses procs or Kin Combats at level 35 for example.

Redside market might be hopeless at this time because I dropped most of my brainstorm stash (30k or so) into the market and made a ton of infamy but only temporarily dented the prices. Perhaps I should have done more commons but I tried to do a mix that was closer to the real drop rates.