Rock_Crag

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Assuming you turned off diminishing returns in the arena (which I'm still not sure if it works, I've heard mixed stories), it's not an even comparison. Even with DR it's not valid, it's just closer to "even".

Were you at 90% smashing resistance the entire fight (assuming the /SR was softcapped)? Or, if you were at the 41% that /Elec hits with SOs, did the /SR never go above 20% defense?

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Well, here's the deal. There were 4 of us in the arena match. We often did a free for all, but there were times when we dueled. I dueled my friend twice, once without (40% smashing?) and once with Power Surge (90% Smashing?). Obviously with Power Surge I was able to last a bit longer than without... but the end result was the same. I had self heal with 2 interrupt IOs and 2 heals, he had that blasted dark anchor power (Darkest Night, I think it's called). I could hardly even touch the [censored]. I tried draining him as much as possible but it really only proved to be a minor annoyance.

I don't even know for sure if he was using Elude or not....

This fight did prove one thing, though. All those regen bonuses I slotted in this build are pretty much worthless... Although... I'm not sure slotting for defense bonuses would have helped much here either.

Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.

There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.

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if i can choose the color of the lightning out of my brutes hands forget blue ima be like a mummy at night, fightin' with white lightning, frightened with five little white Vicadin' pills bitin' him.

props to those who know the reference.

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Don't know the specific song, but that sounds a lot like Eminem. He has a certain style that's always recognizable.

Dang it... I even looked it up on Paragon Wiki to make sure i had that right.....
They changed the layout and confused me.

Indomitable Will will be your favorite power, then. It offers Psi protections as well as several status effects. Plus, you can get it as early as level 6. ^_^

You can choose both Stamina and Will Powers Endurance boost. They'll work with each other to combine increase both your amount of endurance as well as it's recovery rate.

IMO, Super Strength beats Energy Melee. Both are good sets, but Super Strength has Rage. That's probably the one thing that sets it apart from other attack sets. Rage is the sets power/accuracy boost. What sets it apart from the others is that you can make it permanent (and with ease). This means that the power will fully recharge before it's effect on you can wear off.

As for the secondaries, I have more experience with Will Power than Invulnerability.... so I can't accurately judge them.
I've seen both sets do well when built well.... so it really depends on what aspect of the abilities you like better. Will Power has more HP Regeneration and Invulnerability has more Defense, if I remember correctly. Also, I seem to remember Invulnerability not have anything to protect you against Psionic damage, while Will Power does. Not super important in early game play, later on you will run into several different kinds of foes who use psionics quite a bit. Carnies, Lost, Arachnos etc....

Welcome back to the game. =)

Near the top of the first page in this forum, there is a thread called Brute Guides and FAQ's. That thread will have a list various guides for each build and/or powerset for Brutes. That should help. Although it's good to find a guide that's from a later Issue*, unless something major changed, the power sets tend to play the same from Issue to Issue. So It's not that big of a deal if you go with a guide from I7 (I believe we are going to have I15 pretty soon).

Anyway, yeah, there should be a guide in there for Super Strength. I don't have much experience with it, but from what I understand, it's pretty user friendly. The only real tough thing to deal with is the Endurance drain. Remember this, as this will be a pretty big influence on what secondary set you choose.

Secondary power sets: Willpower is a great choice. It's typically one of the favored combos with Super Strength. I believe this is because it not only provides good protection, but also has a passive endurance boost (which is actually slightly better than Stamina** that can help deal with Super Strengths high endurance costs.

*labeled I with a number after it. Issues are the free expansions and updates for the game.
**This is notable because Stamina is the standard Endurance problem solver. Which means, if you choose, you can add Stamina to your other passive Endurance power and never have to worry about Endurance problems.

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But how hard is it to cap resistance on a brute without granite?

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This. The only brute I have at 50 is my Elec Armor and the only resist he can cap is Energy... even with Power Surge.

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Really? You may want to re check your numbers. With no resistance slotted in Power Surge, and three Resistance SOs each in Charged Armor and Conductive Shield, I'm able to hit 90% resistance to Smashing, Lethal, Energy (obviously), Fire and Cold. Negative Energy is at 75.9, Toxic at 52.5, and Psi isn't increased by Power Surge.

My current actual Elec/Elec build manages to cap everything but Psi while using Power Surge, including Toxic... although I owe 15% total bonus Toxic Resistance to three of my four Purple sets, so that's really a bit out there. But that IS with only three slots in Power Surge, each with a Res/Recharge IO. Between that, and all my other recharge bonuses, I cap all but one resistance type and manage to have it available every 380 seconds, without Hasten. Or just a little over twice its uptime. The ultimate point being, my Brute is more consistent, but my SR with all positional defenses soft capped is still miles ahead in survival, because I was able to get him to that sort of Tier 9 Mitigation constantly, where my Brute had to spend 1.4 billion in IOs to scrape up 15% Toxic resistance and a few Negative Energy bonuses here and there. Soft Capped Defense definitely pulls ahead in practical use.

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Actually, I take that back. I was thinking of Powersurges numbers on it's own. I have it slotted with 1 resist IO (and 3 Recharge) and the numbers are all around 60%, I think. When tied with the other armors, it probably would cap out most of the resist types. Ugghh... i hate having to rely on that fricken power, though. Without it, all my resists (other than energy) are around 40 to 50 percent.

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Please read the rest of the thread before you respond next time.

Actually, I take that back. I was thinking of Powersurges numbers on it's own. I have it slotted with 1 resist IO (and 3 Recharge) and the numbers are all around 60%, I think. When tied with the other armors, it probably would cap out most of the resist types. Ugghh... i hate having to rely on that fricken power, though. Without it, all my resists (other than energy) are around 40 to 50 percent.

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But how hard is it to cap resistance on a brute without granite?

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This. The only brute I have at 50 is my Elec Armor and the only resist he can cap is Energy... even with Power Surge.

God, I wish I could take some vacation time. Unfortunately, it's crunch time before our major deadline for the site. Well, one of the major deadlines anyway.

She's not playing CoX anymore?
I'm a sad panda now.

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yeah its Monday BUT I won a PS3 at my law school - going at nights for an LLM - AND got the Witchblade Anime box set - BEST MONDAY IN A WHILE!!!!!

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Wow, congrats. That sounds fricken awesome.

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I would really appreciate a review of my latest mission. Thanks.

Arc Name: The Endless Battle
Arc ID: 87248
Faction: Neutral
Name: Rock_Crag
Difficulty Level: Hard (or at least I think so, in certain parts)
Synopsis: Pirates VS Ninjas! What more can you ask for?

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This was a bizarre mission. The map was just arachnos until you click the glowie, then it is a huge lag fest (could be my computer) for a few minutes while the map populates with ninjas and pirates. These factions go on to pretty much kill each other and then the arachnos wipe out most of the rest. You have to beat the 2 bosses that remain.

Way too big of a map and the execution of what happens is not smooth. 3 stars.

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Thanks for the review. My computer is pretty fast, so it's good to know that I need to make some changes in order to make it more friendly for the general player.

Did you read the dialog from the contact? I believe I typed out the explanation there.... but if you read it and still didn't understand what was to happen, perhaps I need to work on that as well.

I'm glad the Pirates and Ninjas were busy killing each other. That's pretty much what I wanted to accomplish with them. They ignore you and focus killing each other, but you could step in and destroy them both if you wanted to. The Arachnos, admittedly, are only there to make sure Ninjas weren't the main enemy. I originally wanted it so there were no enemies there before you clicked the mission object, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work like that.

Also, I would have preferred to have the 2 bosses fighting each other..... but there's no specific option for that....

I don't understand. What's this fascination with clothing about?

Why not just use the word Deity instead? It works just the same and isn't censored. Instead of a mission with someone who was given the powers of the god of thunder, it was from the deity of electricity. :P

I would really appreciate a review of my latest mission. Thanks.

Arc Name: The Endless Battle
Arc ID: 87248
Faction: Neutral
Name: Rock_Crag
Difficulty Level: Hard (or at least I think so, in certain parts)
Synopsis: Pirates VS Ninjas! What more can you ask for?

His middle name was Wilson? I didn't know that....

Each part of my name has 6 letters to them.... so the numerical form of my name would be 6 6 6. Kinda freaky stuff.

Maybe he likes to have 7 of them? Because that's the only way that joke would work. lol.

Wow. That sounds nice. I was going to go there for my last vacation, but it turns out I was sent to Coast-a Reek-a, a not-so pleasant smelling beach in northern Florida.

Frustrations at work make me a sad panda.

My God.... that furball can DANCE.

lmao, Yeah, it was just something that popped into my mind. Of course I would never try it. It's harder to stick your foot in your mouth if you never open it. Unfortunately, that's why I have to be so quiet while in social situations.

Okay, I need to decide what to do for my birthday. I have be narrowed down to 2 choices.

1. Stay at home and enjoy the peace and quiet.
2. Go around town and use my birthday as an excuse to ask women out. Perhaps something along the lines of "I made a birthday wish. Want to know what it is? It was to go see a movie with you. You don't want to deny me of my birthday wish, do you?".

Meh, I'll probably just do number 1. I don't think I have the nerve to do 2. lol.