JupiterMoon

get all 3

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
for ss/inv, a brute cant cap out smashing and lethal even with tough.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I remember correctly my /invul brute is at 40% or 42% smashing and lethal.Not quite soft-cap but close enough.
Cost a fair bit of inf to do tho.

[/ QUOTE ]

the smash/lethal resist cap is 90%. brutes cant hit that unless they are granite with tough

for ss/inv, a brute cant cap out smashing and lethal even with tough.

also remember that you fight a metric butt-ton of longbow post 40, and what they do to regen and resist based defenses


the sturdier combo is a tanker and thanks to rage (if you dont count fury) they do decent single target dmg.

youknow that fire sword circle has higher base dmg, the same recharge and is achieved sooner than foostomp?

it may potentially be better than footstomp in the long run due to the fire dmg component. this may be worth testing.

[ QUOTE ]


SR is less useful then invuln when dealing with that many foes? Why? If SR's defenses are failing due to too many attackers at once, Invuln's defenses will fail equally. And with that many attackers the invuln will most likely die too.

[/ QUOTE ]


no, please follow umbrals advice about learning the game.

invuln still has good smashing/lethal resists which is most of what you find in the ITF. invuln has 50% defense debuff resistance and stone has bout 60%, but defense alone isnt what makes granite insanely powerful. it's the high regen and high resist. granite brutes are the only brutes who can reach the smashing/lethal resist caps without outside buffs.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]


prove it

since all brute attacks have the following line in them (even the aoe's):

400% taunt on target


the modifier you speak of matters little. my pets dont pull aggro off a brute who is actively attacking and using aoe's.

again redside heroes are harder to deal with. nearly the entire freedom phalanx has a large amount of tohit buffs. tohit buffs directly negate your defense. doing the lrsf with an /sr is a crapshoot imo. /sd can do it a little better because they have resists as well as resists on their tier 9 so it all stacks better if there is a sonic/thermal corruptor or three.

dont herd on your /sr brute. take it one spawn at a time.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense. However as I mentioned it makes no difference since it's small, and both can fairly easily hit the magic 45% defense value.

I love that they give us access to the values finally.

[/ QUOTE ]

no, they don't

so far the RNG gods have favored you. it's not a matter of if it happens to you, it's when. it may happen only once but eventually it will.

bah. heroes have it easy. had 12 missions in a row where every spawn had two mobs that debuffed all resistances by 40% each? or every spawn has two mobs that debuff your regen 1000% each?

i tried to come back blueside...but outside of fighting vahzilok in the early levels it's just too damned easy.

villains are unique in that there is no one set that is truely unstoppable redside.

blueside they see very few mobs that debuff resists like longbow nullifiers, and even fewer if any mobs that debuff regen like longbow spec ops. their high resist tanks and high regen tanks with resists are safe

but not us. every brute secondary has a common enemy redside. resist sets? multiple longbow nullifiers. defense sets? defense debuffing enemies or those with high tohit. regen sets? missions where there are 4-5 longbow spec ops PER SPAWN.

the game is harder redside. but would we have it any other way?


the RNG keeps me from ever playing a defense only set seriously. at 45% defense, a +2 boss still has an 8%+ chance to hit you. the RNG can hose you and let them hit 3 times consecutively. i dont like the RNG nor relying on the RNG gods being favorable for me to succeed.

the regen is not bad depending on your health pool. with one target in range my sm/wp has 673% regen, and with all the slotting i did for +hp that turns into 64 hp/s with one target in range

the recharge times on the mercs cc are far too long to consider them a control primary. that title rests solely in the hands of necro.

but if you can handle all of the cc you need as an mm in your secondary and patron pool...

it's a good plan. use smashing haymaker until you can find all the kinetic combat sets. they are hard to find since everyone wants 'em.

i would never make an invuln brute myself outside of upre concept. they cant even cap smash/lethal WITH tough and has major holes to exotic dmg unless io'd the hell out to softcap said exotic in the form of defense.

if your granite brute died, odds are it wasnt built to actually tank

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
go traps.

mercs need an overhaul. at least traps will let you do more dmg and give you more control. achille's heel proc in acid mortar plus a few in your pets is a rather powerful amount of resist debuffing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really dont understand this comment, are you speaking from number crunching or from game use?

I have a 50 mercs, 47 Thugs, 44 Robots and 43 Necro. I find mercs are as good ( in their own way ) as each of my other MM's, in fact I find it easier to solo AV's with them as they stay put when I tell them to now the Medic is fixed, not like Arsonist or Prot bot melee idiocy.

There has been multiple posts in the last 3 years comparing each and several people have proven with extensive testing that mercs damage is not that different from the others, its because they are 90% DoT and people see all the little numbers they think their damage sucks.

I actually have the most Fun on my Mercs/Dark and at no time have felt inferior.

[/ QUOTE ]

in game experience. mercs doesnt hold it's own.

pets running off? thugs do so much more damage than mercs and anyone with /traps or /ff can softcap every single pet it matters little. and with my playstyle of keeping everything toghether and under an ffg or dispersion bubble or close for twilight grasp/aoe heals, things running into melee isnt a big deal - even vs. nasty av's with nastier aoe's.

mercs needs an overhaul

[/ QUOTE ]

So much more damage, are you kidding? Are you talking arsonist or all Thugs? If you think its all Thugs then that is totally false. This type of blind stereotyping of Mercs damage died after CoH put the "info" button on all powers. I can tell you for a fact that Mercs and Thugs damage are failrly close if you add up all the listed damge under info ( including recharge)

Easy way for you to check is to take your Thugs and Mercs in game and r-click on each pet , click info and slide the slider to 50, then review each powers damage. Add them all up and compare. I did , they are roughly the same....do you even have both to compare?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes i have. and what doesnt show on those boxes is how the enforcers 2x assault buffs are affecting the powers

and do we need to even say it? medic vs. arsonist?

i have every mm primary to 41 or higher. all but my necro use traps so i have parity for my own comparisons. only reason why my necro is dark is becaue it was my first mm and my first 50 villain.

enforcers use 6 powers each so 12 chances between them that will proc achille's heel -resist. both of my thugs mm's have it. the little debuff is up 90% of the time. i rarely use acid mortar unless it's an eb/av now.

it's far less common on the mercs - probably due to how LONG merc animations are. enforcers animate insanely fast.

the op has a slight point - defense is nearly useless on the ITF as they can s tack enough -defense to make even an SR defenses fail, and they do it quickly being they are using the broadsword primary and every attack in taht set has -defense that stacks.

if a typical mob is hitting yo uwith hack, slash and slice that's 22.5% defense debuffed. on an sr or tricked out sd that's 1.125%

now what if there are 10 of these mobs? it adds up

there are also a lot of mobs that have tohit buffs. a few missions send villains into the shadow shard. the eye bosses have +100% tohit buffs. they will not miss you. there are others of course.

overall it's a strong set for soloing, but it's not foolproof. none of them are at least not redside. now blueside where the enemies outside of the shadow shard are substantially easier as are the av's? with the very very rare mobs wtih ANY -regen willpower is truely an amazing beast blueside.

[ QUOTE ]
Hey Jupiter, I played it. It was kinda hard, I had to use SoW often, but it wasn't anything to write home about. You should try my arc listed in my sig.

One thing, you said these mobs weren't debuffing....but they are. Watch your defense. My WP brute has right around 30% defense to all, and those mobs kept me around -30%.....that means I'm getting hit twice as much. If you don't have alot of defense like me, your probably somewhere around -60% defense when fighting these mobs. That is a pretty big component to leave out of your story.

[/ QUOTE ]

you've got yourself a little confused.

i never made mention of what the mobs in the arc i listed debuffed.

i only made mention that in other arcs with different mobs with no debuffs at all it was a breeze

my sm/wp has 35% smash/lethal and 30% to almost everything else. however unless you have SoW going, you will only have 50% smash/lethal resist

with both a sonic and thermal buffing you, a /wp brute can tank as well as a tanker. not even SoW caps a /wp brute with tough. since the incoming dmg cant be avoided - and it's pretty much similar what one has to deal with on the ITF or cimerora - i consider the arc i listed as a good measuring tool for how your brute will survive on a team.

which was my original point - that arc will destroy a /wp brute who isnt on his/her toes, doesnt have tough and doesnt have SoW or have some aoe cc in their primary to add another layer of mitigation. however if you add a sonic and a thermal corruptor - or two sonics or two thermals or ONE sonic defender - a willpower tanker/brute becomes the toughest things in the game.

easier to do on a tanker of course. they can hit 71% smash/lethal resists, can softcap all dmg types with relatively inexpensive io's (relatively - they are more available blueside due to population, but tend to cost a bit more - to the saving is a savings in time hunting for the recipes) and one sonic defender caps them.

i'm sorely tempted to make a new 3 box - 1 sonic corruptor, 1 thermal corruptor, 1 willpower brute. or 2 sonic corruptors for the -resist aura they can stack on the brute. it sure as hell wont farm like my ss/fire, fire/kin, fire/sonic combo does - but it will tank the hell out of anything that doesnt feature longbow spec ops (gd heroes..they have almost NO regen debuffing enemies and we get a metric butt-ton: longbow, arachnoids and more)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Meanwhile, my SS/WP Brute has yet to find an 8-man spawn of lts that he can survive for more than five seconds. 37189246789123 percent regen is only nice if you can survive long enough to make it matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

SS/WP is perhaps the most survivable powerhouse outside of stone available redside. Can you post your build?

You should easily be able to tank normal content. Now, if you are talking about missions in AE, WP can get chewed up against specialized mobs. The problem then is you are playing the wrong thing - bringing a hammer when a wrench is needed.

[/ QUOTE ]

no it's not

151377

all dual blade lt's. all immune to stun but not knockback

tell me how your /wp does in there with both tough and weave.

however my willpower can tank those missions those ss/fire brutes like to setup easily due to a high amount of elemental defense - and the fact that the mobs in question dont debuff any resistance.

[/ QUOTE ]

So because you don't know how to play a brute, Wp sucks? Gimme a break dude. My WP brute can take, manage, and hold just about anything.

If you can't go toe to toe with any GM redside, your doing it wrong. If you can't have a picnik under a RWZ Pylon your doing it wrong. If you can't do the RWZ challenge while being attacked by a lvl 54 EB....your doing it wrong.

WP is the funk. It is you that is weak.

[/ QUOTE ]

go do that mission as your /wp brute set for 8

it's unlikely a corruptor can tank positron as a +2 av at 40-42 when you first meet him redside - and fight him twice in consecutive missions.

an mm can survive it, but may not be able to hold aggro on it. same with a VEAT or stalker or dom.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
go traps.

mercs need an overhaul. at least traps will let you do more dmg and give you more control. achille's heel proc in acid mortar plus a few in your pets is a rather powerful amount of resist debuffing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really dont understand this comment, are you speaking from number crunching or from game use?

I have a 50 mercs, 47 Thugs, 44 Robots and 43 Necro. I find mercs are as good ( in their own way ) as each of my other MM's, in fact I find it easier to solo AV's with them as they stay put when I tell them to now the Medic is fixed, not like Arsonist or Prot bot melee idiocy.

There has been multiple posts in the last 3 years comparing each and several people have proven with extensive testing that mercs damage is not that different from the others, its because they are 90% DoT and people see all the little numbers they think their damage sucks.

I actually have the most Fun on my Mercs/Dark and at no time have felt inferior.

[/ QUOTE ]

in game experience. mercs doesnt hold it's own.

pets running off? thugs do so much more damage than mercs and anyone with /traps or /ff can softcap every single pet it matters little. and with my playstyle of keeping everything toghether and under an ffg or dispersion bubble or close for twilight grasp/aoe heals, things running into melee isnt a big deal - even vs. nasty av's with nastier aoe's.

mercs needs an overhaul

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What you might find more effective on your Brute is higher damage plus the single target taunt is included in your AoE's. So if you are capable of spamming AoE you are taunting as well

[/ QUOTE ]In the scenario I described earlier, I was using just ST attacks on a single enemy that had broken off from the mob and the main group all came rushing over at me.

[ QUOTE ]
This thing about MM pets stripping aggro has me a bit perplexed. What type of encounter are we talking about here?

[/ QUOTE ]I didn't mean MM pets in particular, but a player controlled pet in general. I've seen Phantom Army strip aggro off a Tanker using Taunt during a Hamidon Raid.

[ QUOTE ]
a willpower tanker will lose aggro on anything that hasnt been hit with gauntlet or the taunt power unless rttc has two taunt io's in it.

[/ QUOTE ]So, basically a Willpower Tanker that isn't doing anything, hoping the aura does it all.

[/ QUOTE ]

sweet jesus dude.

PHANTOM ARMY USES TAUNT

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Meanwhile, my SS/WP Brute has yet to find an 8-man spawn of lts that he can survive for more than five seconds. 37189246789123 percent regen is only nice if you can survive long enough to make it matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

SS/WP is perhaps the most survivable powerhouse outside of stone available redside. Can you post your build?

You should easily be able to tank normal content. Now, if you are talking about missions in AE, WP can get chewed up against specialized mobs. The problem then is you are playing the wrong thing - bringing a hammer when a wrench is needed.

[/ QUOTE ]

no it's not

151377

all dual blade lt's. all immune to stun but not knockback

tell me how your /wp does in there with both tough and weave.

however my willpower can tank those missions those ss/fire brutes like to setup easily due to a high amount of elemental defense - and the fact that the mobs in question dont debuff any resistance.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, so the three AoE's (Lightning Rod+Thunder Strike+Chain Induction) doesn't equal the power of FS? Wow I knew FS was good but I didn't know it was that good!

Thanks for all the help!

[/ QUOTE ]

no they dont, not when you can get foostomp down to 7 seconds without much $$ invested.

300 dmg footstomp every 7 seconds. add in blazing aura ticks and stuf dies fast. and lets not forget burn - with 80 fury, rage going and firey embrace active burn does nearly 1000 dmg. add in a fulcrum shift and even +3 bosses melt with one burn.