Filth_EU

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It takes an awfully long time to get to Granite! If your running Stone Skin, Rock Armour and Rooted your probably one of the weaker Brute sets out there in regards to absorbing an alpha strike.

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Hence why it's better to heal AFTER the alpha strike than before. You're STILL going to take the same amount of damage but in the latter case you can't heal any of it.

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Unless that alpha strike does more damage than your total HP, in which case you won't get a chance to use EE

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Swinging away to secondaries for a moment, I have a bone of contention work thinking of. Damage types. With S/L being pretty much the heaviest resisted damage type throughout the game (and especially in the late game) do we reckon that things like EnMelee and Fire (and Ice does cold, I seem to recall?) have an edge?

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Groan...that old chestnut...you're right up to a point. Fire and Energy are high damage anyway (regardless of resistance) - fire for AoE and Energy for single target. The downside to Energy is that it's so so dull and weedy until the last two powers, and Fire has no secondary effect.

Although people tend to think of smashing and lethal damage together, smashing is actually less resisted than lethal, so going for SS or Stone isn't such an issue. Ice melee is not a big damager regardless of resistance - it's specialty is control.

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Hmm caltrops always cuts through me, good way of avoiding this?

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Can be done by using Phase Shift -> wait until you're Hidden again -> PS off -> Attack (which will critical).

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My word of advice is, dont team with Weed Dominators or Ice dominators. They ruin all your hard work.

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Care to elaborate?

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Well you cant do much with a foes mind if they are entangled in weeds of encased in ice, can you. Theres been times ive used Mass Confusion and had fun watching chaos unravel only to have an utterly incompetent ice dom or plant dom cover the whole places in weeds or blocks of ice. Rather inconsiderate if you ask me.

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Or to put it another way, mezzing the mobs which you missed. Even if they do double mezz it doesn't undo what you've done, I do it myself with my own powers for various reaons.

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They either negate the sleep, hold the foes or immob the foes to completely nullify the confuse effect

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Any Dom that relies on Sleep as a primary control is out of their mind (::cough hohoho).

How does an immob negate Confuse? This is precisely the tactic I use - Seeds + Roots = bunched and confused, it stops them running all over the place.

This does feel like a blast from the past ;>
After playing some other Tanks and other ATs and especially PvP it's really painful going back to Granite without mobility. In Filth's last respec I ended up with 10 attacks, most of which are fully slotted and 3 ranged to try and makeup for being so slow; I also compromised and got TP Foe, which is useful but no substitute for proper movement. I would say now that not having TP with Granite can be as limiting as not having Acrobatics for a Fire tank. PvP with Granite is mostly miserable, TP or not. If I do spend some time in PvP with Filth I'll be taking lots of BFs with me and playing fast and loose.

My problem with Teleport and Granite is it always seemed such an arbitrary limitation - "no superjump or superspeed - oh, but it's ok to use teleport" -eh?, why doesn't TP break Granite? or why can't we use SJ at say half effectiveness? or superspeed? It just made me want to thump the designers. I actually like the idea of having disadvantages to powers, but there are so few and the Granite ones seem like a bit of a kludge. Yes, and now Swift is gimped as well....grrreat /em grumble.

It's certainly true that without Hasten, Swift and TP you're in for a tough time with Stone. Having griped about this I have to say the only reason I chose Stone was because I liked the look of the armour and it fitted my character, I hadn't a clue about anything of the mechanics, I was even one of those Stone tanks who took Combat Jumping; how I laughed when I discovered how well that meshed with Stone - "what? oh s***!"

I wouldn't say Fly is necessarily bad for PvP, it has limitations like all travel powers, I would say Leaping Pool might be better to go for and get CJ (which gives you some extra Def) and SJ. I might swop out Swift for Health as well, since you're a Brute Health is more useful for you than any other villain.

From Medicine I chose Stimulant instead of Aid Other - which is possibly more useful in a team than another heal.

Claws and Spines have something which none of the others do - a ranged attack (Focus or Impale). Both of these can be very hard hitting, Impale will also immobilise.

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If you're looking for a concept build for a Stalker nin/nin is the build to go for

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Why is ninja blade any more of a concept than anything else?

This doesn't answer your question directly but I've played an Energy Aura Brute and relied on Def and done well so far with no higher defences and generally taking more aggro (I even use Taunt). Def also does very well in PvP.

Stalkers aren't designed for prolonged fights so SR should actually do OK. Running 3 toggles isn't actually that much. The fact that Practiced Brawker is a click-power is a huge advantage, it's also probably the best Mezz defence in the game.

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I very rarely, if ever used my bots as cannon fodder. That's what the brute was there for.

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On the rare occasions I find myself with MMs they overwhelming do the same thing - keep as far away from the fight as physically possible. As far as I'm concerned MMs regard the rest of the team as cannon fodder and that's one of the reasons I can't stand teaming with them, they are in their own 'little world'.

The few good MMs are simply exceptions to the rule - and there are a few excellent MM players. Heck, I've been on teams with MMs and Brutes and *I've* been the one expected to tank - as a Dominator!

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succesfull thus boring.

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Ooooh uh! Boring is NEVER good!

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Depends how you play, you can stick on Heroic all the way to 50 and cruise through with just about anything.

If what you actually want is a high damage melee based AT I would go with a Scrapper with a reasonably tough secondary like Dark or Regen. Tanks in CoH seem to be designed as a kind of melee controller where most of the 'control' is directing aggro at yourself.

As far as stone melee goes it's a fun set to play. The breakdown Lonelyshade posted missed out 3 of the best attacks Heavy Mallet, Fault and Seismic Smash (he didn't say what level that was supposed to be). One of the funniest toons I've seen recently was an Ice/Stone tank, seen him a couple of times in Siren's "Cro-Magnon Man" he seemed to do alright and made me laugh (Chilling Embrace is scarily effective in PvP, I found out).

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As for the primaries...

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Thinking like a Brute Unthing?

If you want to PvP at all and you're thinking either Stone or Inv I would go with Inv because of mobility, there are ways of coping with Stone's limitations but if you like to be fast moving and flexible, Stone Armour isn't it.

For melee, SuperStrength and Stone are quite similar but I found Stone melee more consistently entertaining and effective all the way through the game. The mallet attacks are both great, Fault is a very good Stun power which works well in PvP as well as PvE, and Stone has a killer attack in Seimic Smash which does the same damage as Knockout Blow.

Super Strength has the hilarious Knockout Blow attack which you get pretty early (very similar to Seismic Smash) and it has the Rage power which overall is superior to Build Up. SS has a very good AoE attack in FootStomp, similar to Tremor although FootStomp does more damage and you get it later at level 38. The mezz power Handclap in SS is a good stun but has a pretty huge knockback which can be a problem for a tank, Fault is better as far as this goes. SS's first three attacks are also a bit on the gimpy side, even Haymaker is only as good as the first mallet attack.

Yes, I'm the whiny, impatient and occasionally successful Dominator Bilharzia (Praise The Tree, Qwoorw!).
Not looking forward to facing this Dark/Psi Defender. I count Defenders as the biggest threat of any Hero AT.

Stealth stacks with Hide and so hides you better.
take a look at this.

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personally i thought earth embrace was different from the other +maxhp powers cause it doesnt have a heal element (which powers like hoarfrost do have)

however, your health % on your hp bar stays the same, so if you had 75% health and activate earth's embrace, it will only heal the offset to 75%.

At least, that's how i always looked at it, but im not sure.

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Earth's Embrace does both heal and add to your max HP. Slotting Heal enhancers will increase both the heal amount and the addition to max HP.

I get what you're saying Gorg - that versus an Acrobatics user you could use ST (knocking off Acro) then use the Hold, but that ST has a long animation time and might not be worth it (and I think you made a good point) - but you also said some things which could be confusing about Acrobatics so I was trying to make this clear.

In fact because a Dark Defender only has one Hold targeting an acrobatics user is more of a problem for them. Even an Ice Blaster would do better since they can have 2 Holds, which can be effective against an Acrobatics user.

A tactic you could use as Dark/Psi might be Fear->ST->Gaze, but I know nothing about Psi Blast. As far as Acro is concerned it really does work! It's no subsitute for BFs though.

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Acrobatics is a strange one and next time I am in the arena ill check it again. As far as I know players have the same mag vs hold as minions, i.e. Mag 1 so acrobatics makes it Mag 2.

In more real terms though from playing about 2hrs a day in SC as well as dueling in warburg and arena constanly anyone trying to hold can easily get a hold on someone running acrobatics.


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That is wrong. Acrobatics will protect you against one standard single target Hold. I use Acrobatics and frequently get hit by single target Holds and I do not get Held.

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Whatever answer further testing comes up with the fact is that acrobatics rarely if ever will protect anyone from someone trying to hold them, if it did people wouldnt have a tray full of BFs when entering PvP, (even scrappers and tanks if they are wise) .

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Please test it yourself, Acrobatics works. Two (or more) stacked Holds will break through Acrobatics Hold resistance, this is pretty clear. Acrobatics does not protect you at all from Sleep, Stuns, Fear or Confuse so it's certainly a marginal power as far as anti-mezz is concerned and of course it can be knocked off by a toggle dropper attack.

Acrobatics is limited and you may well be better served by simply carrying a lot of BFs with you. I took Acrobatics mainly for PvE but it so happens to have some use in PvP as well.

Some ATs can manage fine without Stamina in PvP - Stalkers spring to mind and Brutes with Energy Aura. Stalkers because they are about delivering high damage over a short period and EA Brutes because they have two Endurance powers. I think it would be very tough with a Corruptor though.

Yeah... while I'd love to have another enthralling episode of debating tanker damage mitigation, I was directing my comments at the question of the original post. Fire and Inv do a good enough job at being 'effective and fun', not that Ice isn't good I just picked two, gee whizz, I could write polls for Cryptic.

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In fact it will not. Acrobatics adds a Mag 1 Hold resistance to a player's base of 2, which gives you a Mag3 Hold resist of 3. This means you are protected from one application of a typical Mag3 single target Hold.

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Which is one of the reasons I liked the idea of Subdue. Slotted 2x Acc 3x Dam 1x Recharge I should be able to spam it and stack immobs quite easily. The only thing that I was concerned about was the actual chance of a immob happening when a player has been hit. Does anyone know how frequently this occurs?

In a completely unscientific piece of observation I would say in PvE an Immob occurs about 50% of the time against even lvl mobs.

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From a Psychic Blast guide I read it doesn't look too good. If I was in your position might go for Initimdate from Presence to give yourself another Fear power, but maybe you're planning that anyway.

Although, come to think of it I read about Psychic Assault for Doms, so the Defender power might be different.

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Are you serious?


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Yes.
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The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

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Although that made me laugh. Better Res than Ice eh? The heal is a different style to most other tanker heals, depends on your tactics and what you prefer. If you want the best Res go for Stone, pretty obvious, but I'd be aware of the limitations.

I say to the OP to also consider some Scrapper combinations as they might be more interesting to play. Something like Dark/Dark can do a reasonable job at having tank-like durability.

For being easy to use and reasonably tough I would go with Inv or Fire as Primary. Stone gets very strong with Granite but has real problems with recharge and especially movement. Ice is an interesting one but the lack of Res means you can get clobbered pretty hard.

For melee I would decide whether you want more control or more damage. Ice is very controllery medium damage, Fire is high damage zero control and everything else is somewhere in between. I've liked Stone a lot since it's a great mix of fun, damage and control. The only two I would be cautious about are the Rubber Mace (almost universally loathed) and Energy Melee - which whilst it is the king of single target damage it doesn't get its two big powers until level 35 and 38, that's a long time to wait since the rest of the powerset is not that great.

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3) ... Acobatics is taken for knockdown not hold res for most as its hold protection is only Mag 1, your hold will easy bypass acrobatics.


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In fact it will not. Acrobatics adds a Mag 1 Hold resistance to a player's base of 2, which gives you a Mag3 Hold resist of 3. This means you are protected from one application of a typical Mag3 single target Hold. Two Holds will succeed against Acrobatics, or a critical from a Controller, or a single Hold from a Dominator with Domination, or a Hold power which is greater than Mag3 in the first place.

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5) Hold and even more so fear are very very useful and the hold will allow you to drop CJ and acrobatics on many players thus making Subdue and Tele. Blast more effective.

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Again, a single Hold will not drop acrobatics, also although Fear can be extremely effective I've noticed that escaping from someone who has feared me isn't that difficult. Many times I've super-jumped away from being feared while still being affected by Fear, since Fear doesn't drop toggles and allows you some action - attack or movement - it does have limitations that Holds don't. Fear really scores against Scrappers and Tanks who usually don't have Fear resistance except for those with Dark Armour.

I also have a DM/EA Brute (currently lvl28), when you factor in combat jumping and Energy Cloak the figures are slightly better - 27.4% Def except Energy which has 33.3% Def. It's not a pure Def set - it does have some damage resistance if you pick up the passives. EA has one of the best mezz resist toggles for Brutes and DM/EA especially allows you to skip Stamina altogether.

It can be tricky to play especially since it doesn't have a heal, I've used the heal in DM to good effect, although I'll probably pick up the Medicine Pool now as well. It isn't the most 'tanky' of power sets to play, but it's been fun so far and I seem to do at least as well as most other Brutes I've teamed with.