Tonality

It can be perception, though if you stack rage too often, your crashes can be counter-productive. Numbers-wise, without rage, SS's attacks are sub-par to other sets.

Your builds often show a lot of predisposition to being a tank, and I think that's the big reason why you're struggling with brutes. They have the potential to be tanks with tanker caps, but shine best when they are offensive powerhouses. Intelligent inspiration use, effective slotting, and a good supporting team are what turn brutes into monsters.

To start with, you aren't a terrible builder, so before you freak at this enormous amount of text, your builds really only need tweaking.

Overal Themes:

-Often defense oriented at the cost of offense
-Too much focus on accuracy/to-hit
-Not always end-efficient
-Rage often is stacked more than it needs to be, causing frequent crashes and increasing endurance issues

Oh, before we get started:

1) For some reason, I don't think datachunks ever include the alternate slotting.
2) Yup, endurance problems is what I'm seeing. Might I suggest taking a look at SS/Elec (and these tweaks)?




Modified Elec/SD Build

Well, elec IS terrible for single target damage. The patrons do offer some extra ST damage if you grab Gloom or Mu Lightning.

Shield benefits greatly from carting around oranges and greens. For tough encounters (or x/8 soloing), rely on oranges to get you through the fights. Also, the four auto-accolades help a TON toward survivability.

But, I can see some things that might make life more difficult for you. For starters, focused accuracy will leave you gasping for endurance. You already have good accuracy bonuses and the to-hit unique. You really don't need FA.

I'd drop Mace completely for the patron. The redraw from mace blast would get annoying for me, I know. I'll swap it out with elec, grab mu lightning for single target dmg, and move gaussians to buildup. I'll grab superspeed as a travel to add in blessing of the zephyr. This will free you up in the future for adding some purple sets, or allows you to swap a mako out for a Touch of Death to get your defense above the cap to help prevent cascading defense failure. It's up to you on what you want.

So now, Mu Lightning can be slotted more. You have several choices. You can grab ruin for AoE def (which is silly if you pick up SS and 3 slot it with BoTZ), or decimation for an affordable 6.5% rech bonus, or thunderstrike for more range def - or a future purple. As far as that goes, now with SS slotted, in the future you could throw an armageddon into thunderstrike, apoc in mu lightning, and hecatomb in chain induction for a drastic increase in recharge and a very noticable increase in performance.

You will find now that the bulk of single target damage actually comes from three sources: Jacob's Ladder, Thunderstrike (yes, another AoE), and Mu Lightning. Mu Lightning is a great power - quick animation, good damage, and good recharge. Unlike Gloom, the damage is front loaded, and doesn't quite do equal damage to gloom, but I liked the thematic approach. Otherwise, you could pick up gloom and grab dark oblit for some to-hit debuff to layer on some more insulation to avoid that cascading failure. (don't slot oblit with tohits tho, slot for dmg) But, I liked grabbing the travel as it added some efficient defense bonuses.

It's not cheap, but grabbing a membrane hami-o and slotting 1 in active defense will help your DDR.

True grit needs more heal bonuses for +hp. Move that numi unique over to health and get some more HP. Then reslot health, grab the miracle heal IO with that proc for more recovery. You lose 4% in enhancement bonuses, but still manage to gain more regen/HP/recovery.

You have some more options now. You're above the defense cap for range and AoE, so you have some options. You can go back to 4 slotting stamina and look at maybe picking up some more +HP by slotting up your toggles with IOs. If you keep it slotted as is, you have room for 3 purple sets without compromising your AoE def (which isn't a big deal if you do anyway).


SS/WP Modified
I see you're going for softcapping S/L def. You'll be more than tough enough heading to 30%, so you don't have to gimp yourself to get those numbers.

Some similar advice:
drop focused acc. You have rage and accuracy bounuses. If it still bugs you, grab a kismet. Drop maneuvers/tactics as well.

Consider gloom/dark oblit for your SS. You'll layer on some to-hit debuffs with your lower defense and increase your damage potential.

For me, if I slot too much recharge in rage, I find that the crashes become too frequent and actually get in the way (yes, you can use veteran attacks during the crashes). So, if you drop the recharge down enough so it's perma w/o hasten, you'll be happy. Speaking of hasten, get it. The more rech for footstomp the better.

Footstomp: The ideal for quite some time has been 5 armageddon and the Force Feedback recharge proc. IT recharges that AoE unbelievably quickly, and that knockdown is unbelievable mitigation. You might Consider that FF proc instead of that oblit set (just swap out the oblit proc for the FF proc)

I'd take out the kinetics in boxing and move those slots to slot my other attacks better. But, I had surplus slots in my completed build, so I put them back.

What matters to a brute is living long enough to flatten mobs.One you're sure you can live through a fight, all that matters is how fast you flatten the map. The build is too defensive and not offensive enough.

Web Envelope adds KD protection, which hurts your mitigation of footstomp (the exception would be if you were SS/Fire and dropped a burn patch and wanted them glued in place)

I am starting to see a pattern: you really hate missing your attacks, and overcompensate. You don't need that much accuracy/to-hit. With rage double stacking, tactics, and focused, I'm seeing numbers in mids like 400% accuracy, which is just overkill.


SS/Fire

Ah, here's the FF proc in footstomp.
Elec/Fences Burn. Great.
Rage isn't as recharge heavy - good.

In general, you don't even need end mod in Consume, because if you hit 5 mobs, you get 100% end unslotted. What you want most is to hit the ed cap on recharge (oblit works nice here, especially since the power has a low end cost).

A 4th slot in stamina with the perf shifter would help with your end.

I think burn is overslotted. It's nice but you can save some coin here.

You want more recharge in Knockout Blow. At 19% recharge, the power isn't coming up quick enough.

Plasma Shield needs to be slotted for resistance. This is your nrg/neg resistance, and Rikti are going to rip you to shreds even more than normal for a FA brute.

Obliteration isn't the best choice in a toggle like Blazing Aura. The end consumtion is going to hurt. If you want slot efficiency, the least amount of slots to achieve good performance is:
Scir: Acc/Dam/End, Dam/End (10% regen)
Multi: Acc/Dam/End, Dam/End (some stupid bonus)
That gives you good dmg/end redux, and modest accuracy. You can add some neg resist if you add a 5th slot with another scirr and pick up more acc, but it's not necessary.

If you think your rage is still crashing too often, put in a single rech IO into rage instead of the two adjusteds. With your rech bonuses, you are still perma rage w/o considering hasten/FF proc.

IMO, your SS/Fire brute is your best build. It has a good balance of offense and defense. Now, /Fire is incredibly reliant on the heal to stay upright, and stacking that extra melee does help.

Since this isn't a defense-oriented build, I'm turning weave off and leaving it in as a mule for a LoTG 7.5.

There's still plenty of tweaking that can be done to this, but it's a start in the right direction.

edit: BTW, the titles on the builds are links to builds

This was removed in i16 so any level can now enter. (with some complaints involving lowbies on Rikti Raids)

This is an interesting challenge!

Which is why I want cane melee for CoH.

I'm not sure what your primary is, but I haven't had a problem fitting in the patrons on any of my three /elec brutes. It sounds like you took too many attacks or pool powers, which is okay for thematic/RP reasons, but for min/maxing, that's where you get in trouble.

I haven't been able to play a lowbie in about 6 months without wanting to play my fifties. I do admit there's more parity at higher levels than lower levels. With intelligent rolling and knowing the market, I can generate about 200-400 mil a day. The wide range depends on my playtime. That's estimating 1500 tickets/10 minutes, giving around 100 mil/hour, or more if I'm lucky. But that has more to do with smart ticket rolls.

It is possible to get to stamina in under 30 minutes.

Quoted multiple times for Extremely Obvious Emphasis.

THIS.NOW.PLEASE.

There is almost no reason to ever use anything but Positron or Ragnarok. I used one set once for the AoE def, but honestly, I probably should have used Positron.

Maybe give us a set with defense bonuses so Castle can freak out a little bit more about stacking defense. That sounds fun to me.

edit:

They fixed detonation. It gets my DM/SD brute to the AoE cap, and is the only non/posi-rag that I have in any of my characters.

That's because being Ebil corrupts your soul. You can't turn away from the darkness that is marketeering.

I consider my mace/stone brute a mace/granite brute because that's what it is. If you can deal with the penalties, it's easier to design a build to work in granite than to design a build flexible enough to work in the other modes.

Granite offers both a high amount of typed defense and resistance. Without that base amount, I would think it impossible to get the defense cap to S/L without gimping yourself.

I don't have mid's with me right now on this machine, but here's what I see:

1) Generic IO's are awful. For the best bang for the buck, you want to do something called frankenslotting. That means buying very cheap recipes that modify multiple attributes, which will save you slots and make you more effective. Also if you're careful with what you buy on the market, you'll spend about the same as you will with those level 50 Generic IOs. You just won't be buying obliteration, or numinas or LOTG 7.5's. You can use recipes on the cheap. Also - don't forget recipes that don't require rare salvage are always a better option for saving inf.
2) Earth's Embrace: 5 slot it with doctored wounds, skipping the Heal/End one. It isn't that expensive and well worth it for the recharge and to get Earth's Embrace available more often.
3) You can get away with 2 slotting swift.
4) You overslotted boxing. It's not worth the slots.
5) Slot fault with a cheap stun set or Acc/Rech. Not Stun duration.
6) Granite is not six slotted. It's actually a rule. You have to six slot it. It covers both defense and resistance, and you'll want to get to the ED cap on both.

The best thing you could do right now is get familiar with the market. Learn what is dirt cheap because nobody wants them - that's what you want to buy. Then start putting those in your virtual build and see how it turns out. You'll be amazed at the slots that you'll save in the long run.

While the OP is looking to 3-slot, this particular option has several bonuses:

1) It approaches the ED cap for stamina.
2) It has the proc
3) The 4th bonus of the set is a 2.5% bonus to recovery, which comes out ahead of losing about 4% enhancement from generic IOs, and even further if you start adding +End to your build.

It's definitely worth it if you can spare the slots.

With 3 slots, I would only slot regular end mod IOs. The reason is that performance shifter grants 10 endurance at regular intervals, but that 10 endurance doesn't quite translate into 0.2 EPS unless you're consistently below 90 endurance on a 100 endurance build.

I believe the Samurai farm is more min/maxing AE than exploiting. The mobs intentionally use the lowest-damage powerset, and still give normal rewards. This is a far cry from the Meow or Bubble farm. It's about a 20% reduction in potential damage. (hmm, it really sounds bad when you put it like that)

However, as I do not know if the devs would consider this an exploit, I will refrain from explaining how it works. Oh, and I don't run the samurai farm.

My position on AE is that the developers brought parity between AE and content. There are still some practical differences, which would be near impossible to equalize (travel time, ticket rolls), but overall, running AE is no longer clearly the ideal choice for quickly leveling and generating inf.

I thought people were helpful. The only possible thing they could do is offer to farm, which honestly, it probably not going to happen for free.

Those farming purple recipes aren't going to want the company, and those seeking levels know that adding tag-alongs slow down the level speed (unless they contribute)

To be completely honest, you will enjoy getting to 50 a lot more on your own than doorsitting. The first time I hit 50 was on my brute, and I was actually startled by the ding. I was having so much fun playing it that I didn't even notice.

Farming will get you to 50 the fastest. It will probably cost inf to get there. If you are deadset on it, pick a populated server and head to Peregrine Island and offer to pay 5-10 mil / run to be on a private farm. You do not want anyone else but the farmer on the team for maximum rewards.

Personally, I think I would give anything to go back in time to the rush I felt on pushing to get my first 50. Even though I have the ability to level myself very quickly, there is something to be said about getting their yourself. Some of my favorite characters to play are the ones that really worked to get to 50. When my brute was leveling to 50, I was constantly getting tells to join my team, because if people saw I was on, they knew I always had a solid team kicking! I do miss those tells

I just haven't been able to bring myself to play lowbies for about 6 months now. I should join a support group.

There's this thing called Lightning Rod/Shield Charge/Fireball. I miss it when I'm not 50. I really need a better name for it. Mass Carnage? Then there's my rad/kin corr with softcapped S/L/E at 50. Saturated fulcrum without worry of death is a beautiful thing to behold.

The fun thing to do at 50 for many is trick out their characters and see just how 'super powered' they can get. Not every build feels incredible right out of the box. Some do.

We have different play styles. I could never imagine rerolling the same bubbler multiple times over and going through the journey like you seem to enjoy.