Lobster

The part that annoys me the most is actually fetching the 4 AVs. Maybe it's because it's in a cave map and zipping around in those gives me headaches.

Temps are not required to beat the sack of HP, DPS will suffice.

This sounds like a ton of fun and might be a good excuse for me to finally try Vent again.

What level is the brute? I would guess 50?

What is your budget? Ie purples or no purples?

Also, if you look in some of the farming threads, there may be some builds posted....

Final tally (I had maybe 12-15 hours of playtime over 2xp):

elec/ice dom 47-50, unlocked alpha
ice/ss 42->45,45->47 (itf x2)
axe/wp 45->46
ss/fire 43->44
elec/dev 41->43 (itf)
wp/ice 39->42 (itf)
mace/sr 38->40
dem/dark 38->39
warshade 35->38 (itf)
kin/elec scrap 32->33
dp/energy 29->30
elec/nin 25->29
kin/energy scrap + elec/kin controller duo 26->27
ill/kin+ill/cold duo 23->25
fire/storm corr (praetorian) 18-24
ice/thorn dom 1->25
psi/energy 1-6


.... yeah, I was kind of all over the place. Looks like I ran 5 ITFs too. Good times.

It seems like others have covered it pretty well, but I'll add my 2 cents:

Ice/ is the aggro king. That is ice's "thing" IMHO. I ran the ITF twice on my Ice/SS this weekend - once @ 42 and once @ 46. The first time I was main tank with an Inv/ for offtanking and the second I was the only tank. I had no particular issues either time. Yes, I used a few insps - but against huge mobs of heavy damage defense debuffers... that's to be expected.

The one time I died was a bit odd, I went from 100%+ defense to dead faster than I could see my health bar move. It could have been server lag, who knows, it happens .

The second tf we had a stormy grabbing every mob in sight and dragging them to me where I grabbed their aggro - it was a blast.

As others mentioned, Hoarfrost is not so much a "heal" as it is a +HP buff with a heal component.

/kin will allow for nice -dmg stacking and a little bit fo mitigation with the pbaoe KD but if you don't love the animations it could get old.

Does anyone have an ice/DM tank? That seems like it would be pretty sweet...

I am also on Comcast (in Portland, OR)...but I was running flawlessly right up until patch time, so I'm more suspicious of the patch.

It looks like it's happening on all 3 of my machines ... with 3 different types of video cards, so it could still be Comcast, but it seems like if it was the ISP it would lag all the time instead of just inside certain missions.

I'm going to try updating my video drivers now just for kicks.

Yeah, I was wondering how much that had to do with it, but I don't know how they do their server/mission loading.

I had my first crash ever on my new desktop (basically only has City of Heroes, Elemental, Firefox, Mediamonkey & Office installed) minutes after my first post-patch login.

Then, last night on my first ITF, *inside* every mission I was redlining netgraph most of the way. As soon as we stepped out of the missions, it was fine. Afterwards, I did a few tips - inside 3/5 I also redlined, 2 were fine, and outdoors was always fine.

I've also seen some flickering graphics artifacts that seem to come and go.

For some reason I hadn't tried this pet (from Soul Mastery) out yet. I picked it up last night on my elec/ice and I think she is maybe the smartest pet ever.

Why?

Because she apparently only uses ranged attacks AND they have the psi attack long range. So she just sits way back and plink plinks while the gremlins & I make with the melee punch punching. Also, I don't think she has any AOEs, so her aggro draw is low.

[City of Data says she has Mind Probe, but I didn't see her use it - perhaps because the 100 range of the Psi Blasts is far enough that her melee ai settings don't kick in.]

As usual, probably won't be noticed in a large team, but in a solo or duo type setup, she provides consistent damage - and for me a 3rd damage type.

Can't wait till 50 and I've got her just about perma'd (~1s off, with perma hasten).

For maximum pretty : kin/ea. Invisible jazz hands attack! Mine has been gathering dust for a while, but I shall return to maximize the pretty!

This is not so much a "which is better" as just some rambling about my experience playing both and trying to find a new farmer to level.

tl;dnr: The brute is massively superior at farming fire ambushes due to his higher resist cap and things not running out of burn.

Burn: What's the deal with scrapper burn? Nothing ever runs out of my brute's burn, but it seems like the scrapper's burn maybe wasn't fixed? Enemies mostly seem to run out of it and zoom around like headless chickens.

damage comparision:
Because I was curious, I put some simple #s into excel. This is leaving out build-up, fiery embrace & double stacking rage (because on mine I don't double stack at all yet). These simplified #s look pretty close, but in practice my spines/fire did not kill nearly as fast as the brute because nothing would stay in his burn patches.

Finally, more vet rewards I will actually use! A week or so away from 81 .

I'm still waiting for my "All new alts have the option to start at level 22." Vet badge. 96 ?

If you're not that into pets... you've already put mind/energy up there as an option : go with that.

Mind is one of the less expensive sets to stack recharge on (cheap purples for sleep & confuse), and no pets to wrangle. Plus, mind/energy has PB, which lets them do fun things like solo the ITF/LRSF/etc.

Doms are less pet dependent than controllers for damage, but also much squishier (due to lack of debuff/buff), so (especially pre-permadom) pets provide a pretty valuable service as meat shields/alpha eaters when your controls are cycling or miss.

re: AE farming: I've had the best luck with bronze rolls. It has the 3% def procs, kb prot procs, Regen tissue proc, rectified reticle (100mill+ generally), Basilisk Gaze and a few other 10millish drops.

I wait until you are at the ticket cap, then roll at minimum level (10-14). Always craft your ios before selling - it generally adds a great premium - and use tickets for the rare salvage if it's too expensive.

As others have said, amerits are a great way to make money. Check the market before you spend them to see what is selling high - and at what level. When I get Miracles, for example, I get them at minimum level.

Awesome. I have yet to actually have a character complete the costume via VG merits, let alone 80 of them. Much appreciated.

From what I've heard, WoC is generally only useful for the "cool" looking aura, if you like the look... I really wanted it to be awesome as well but the small radius, low damage, long duration between ticks & short confuse duration make it generally worthless.

On my fire/stone I wanted to go this route as well, but I respecced out of mudpots before got very far into the 40s because it just doesn't work that well (for me) with Hot Feet - for all the reasons others have mentioned. The radius mainly...if they bumped it up to at least 15" I would probably pick it back up. The end drain is pretty severe (even on a permadom - without Mud Pots mine still runs down the blue), but heavy IO slotting and the Cardiac incarnate will help with that.

I have a nec/dark & nec/pain at 50 - the /pain was really on the boring side and I couldn't have done it solo.

Of the combos you've listed as options, I think /storm is going to be the strongest in terms of sustained killing power. /therm will level pretty safely, as has been noted, but if you are an aggressive player I would suggest storm. Your pets will die more early on, but with the 32 buff and the later storm debuffs I think it will catch up. My nin/storm is decent as far as survivability goes, and ninja tend to die even more than the zombies, in my experience.