Madadh

For the OP, I have several suggestions for you.

1) Someone beat me to this, so I'll just say, try gaming, "Hardcore."

2) I tend to play a lot as if I'm the general and the alt I'm playing is my 'army.' Real generals can't often pick their troops, but the best generals get the most out of them. Often times, the truly epic generals find whole new ways to fight that emphasizes the their 'lesser' troops, and at the same times make the former great troops seem like relics. I certainly can't take sole credit, but I was trying to build squishies to be tough ages ago. People told me that that was silly to try to pile on as much def as I could to a def, I should focus on recharge first and foremost. Why would a rad/rad need def after all? Times change. Take a weak set and explore what you can do with it. Find a combo or IO that may not have been used in that way before. If you don't plug away at it, you'll not find the new next knack, and you'll just start building what someone else discovered first. Sure, you'll try a ton of duds, but, you'll know what the most that can be eeked out of a bum set is, and although it might not still measure up to your gold standard, it is a blast when you play with a bunch of players all playing FoTM builds, and things go south, and your 'weak' combo saves the team from a team wipe.

3) Or, you can take your fav alt. You prolly know it inside and out. Find the enemy that causes you the most problems, crank the dif and tackle them. Or create a custom enemy in AE just designed to slag your own uber alt. You should be able to exploit your own weaknesses such that you can find a way to defeat your best alt. Then, design a new, different alt that can trash, what just trashed your main.

4) There is always PVP. It's a whole different ballgame.

5) Just thought of this too, sorta as an offshoot to the PVP idea. I've never tried the gladiators, and always thought that looked potentially interesting.

What about weapon redraw?

Definitely making Time Def of some sort, so..

1) Time/Fire Def maybe
2) Grav/Time troller like so many others
3) Kin/Fire Def
4) Beam/Energy Blaster
5) Dark/Ice Blaster
6) Maybe a Time/Rad blaster, to boot.
7) Sorta want to try SJ on a scrapper, so maybe SJ/SD (using the PPD riot shield of course)
8) If staff has a 'spear' skin available, will for sure make a SD/Stf Tank, or Stf/SD scrapper
9) Mind/Time troller sounds fun, too. Or maybe Ill/Time

Not really interested in the Titan weapons much, from what I've seen, so I'll give those a miss and try to find a few new places to play with Poison, but no clue where.

I think that should keep me for a while, but I'm sure I've overlooked a few other choices that I'd be interested in.

I too have found that end drainers that also have hefty -recovery tend to hit WP a little harder. Partly since the Invul has more def debuff res the WP can get below the energy def softcap much more easily than my Invul can. So I've had all the toggles drop on my WP more often than on my Invul. And my invul with no toggles just auto powers and set bonuses seems a tad tougher than my WP in the same boat.

Granted, that's a WAY outlying circumstance, but it is there. Of course, the terrorize balances things nicely, so in my opinion, it's still all a matter of preference...

Disclaimer: My multi bllion inf build WP and Invul I'm comparing are tanks, and not brutes. But I'd expect a similar comparison to hold true in a brute conversion.


And, to continue the discussion of WP regen vs Invul regen, assuming you're talking consistant damage over time, most any high end Invul will be healing 1000-1500 extra HP every 2 minutes, appx, which should sorta be counted into the equation, as HP gained over time, even if it's not 'regen' per se.

Having done both, I'd say it's really to close to call. At different levels and slightly different SO/IO levels invested it can swing 1st one way, then the other. Neither is a solo specialist, and neither is ever worthless.

Pain has a debuff, if you enjoy that sort of thing, and Emps don't. Emps of course have better buffs in most cases, and are defenders. But by the same token, a pain has corrupter damage scale and several ways to buff his own DPS even higher.

They're subtly different. And the subtle differences are more a preference. If you're like me, there isn't a better choice, it's more like, "Which do I more feel like playing at the moment?"

In the old days, I'd say, it might matter more which attack set you want to play. But now that Defs are getting Fire Blast, I can't even use that excuse to decide between the 2 now..

I don't think you can make a bad claws combo on a brute or a scrapper.

That said, to help you decide, the Brute does have more HP and Fury will mean more damage in longer fights.

The scrapper if I recall is a little faster and I think has higher base damage on a power or two.

I'd say it's a wash, just depending on the feel you're looking for.

Brutes do get a taunt aura in every secondary set, which might be nice, might not, depending, or may be irreverent, again on your preference.


That said, what to pair claws with???

Claws gains a lot, in my opinion, from leveraging Follow Up. Use it often, is my motto. So, in that case, Super Reflexes and Electrical Armour are great choices as they both get +Recharge powers. Energy Aura shouldn't be overlooked, as I see to recall hearing it will soon be getting a +Recharge feature added to it.
But hard to argue against Claws/Invul either. That combo was a blast. As was Claws/Regen. I guess as I said earlier, Claws will work awesome with any secondary, but SR/Elec/Energy get that little bit of synergy with Claws unique take on damage boosting.

Sadly, the truth that most people try to avoid is that the smart choice for Alpha depends a lot on your build.. I've always been of the "if you run out of end you need better slotting" school of thought, so to me Cardiac is pretty worthless.. If you build with different priorities, your incarnate needs/wants will be completely different.