City of Villains: Choosing your First Archetype

If you haven't already read through my Introduction to the City of Heroes Archetype please do and remember, if you are unfamiliar with the terms I use here, please read through the MMO Dictionary.

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Take the Scrapper, lower its base damage, give it more hit points, and increase the strength of its defenses, and you’ve got the Brute. Additionally, the Brute will gain the ability to directly draw the enemy’s attention away from his or her allies through a variety of taunts. To that extent, the Brute has the option of filling two different roles while teaming. They can either choose to go for a more Scrapper-like play style, where damaging and defeating enemies quickly is key, or they can choose to soak up damage while their teammates concentrate on offense. Depending on your team’s needs you might be playing both roles, so expect a bit of flexibility.

It is true that the Brute starts off with a lower damage potential than the Scrapper. However, that’s where Fury comes into play. Underneath your character’s health and endurance bars there will be a third row called the ‘Fury bar.’ The longer your Brute fights the more filled this bar becomes. As the bar grows the Brute's damage also increases to a maximum of 3x its base, surpassing the Scrapper by a good margin (before Critical Hit). Additionally, while the Scrapper’s inherent triggers randomly, as long as the Brute continues to fight this damage bonus will stick around.

The caveat is that Fury goes away rather quickly outside of a fight. Even a few seconds can be enough to lower your Fury bar significantly. This quick Fury degeneration lends itself to continual fighting just to keep the high damage levels, so be aware of your limits. It doesn’t help to have a full Fury bar if you become overwhelmed quickly.

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• Battle Axe
• Dark Melee
• Dual Blades
• Electrical Melee
• Energy Melee
• Firey Melee
• Stone Melee
• Super Strength
• War Mace
• Claws

• Dark Armor
  • A Damage Resistance set that has some potent Mitigation and minor Defense
• Electric Armor
  • Almost entirely a Damage Resistance set with a minor Mitigation power
• Energy Aura
  • Defensive set with some minor Damage Resistance and Mitigation
• Firey Aura
  • A Damage Resistance set that offers a boosted damage potential alongside some Mitigation
• Invulnerability
  • A Resistance set that also has some Defense and one Mitigation power
• Shield Defense
  • Mainly a Defensive set, it also includes some minor Damage Resistance and Mitigation
  • Can not be used with the following primary sets: Claws and Dual Blades
• Stone Armor
  • A mixed bag set that has some of the strongest defenses at a cost to speed and damage
• Super Reflexes
  • A Defensive set with some Damage Resistance as you lose health
• Willpower
  • A mixed bag set that doesn't excel in any one style of defense, but is still strong overall

With the Brute we’ve come to the first choice regarding the role you are to play. Do you want more direct survivability or more damage? Each secondary set will have their individual strengths and weaknesses and the choice you make will somewhat determine what teams expect of you. A damaging character will tend to play very much like a Scrapper, moving quickly from fight to fight, while a defensive centric Brute might spend more time drawing the attention of enemies rather than concentrating on defeating them. For our purposes the primary sets are still equal in strength.

If you are looking for a set that is more about keeping your allies alive a good rule of thumb is this: choose a set that contains powers that represent all three defensive styles. This seems to allow for better survivability. Alternatively, When making a Scrapper-like Brute, examine some of the non-defense powers that are included in the set. These powers are designed to enhance the Brute’s abilities and, in some cases, that means increasing their damage output or attack rate. Finally, know if your set has an endurance recovery power. Since every single defensive set includes multiple toggles that continually drain your endurance, the ones that also include endurance recovery or endurance discount powers will better help you keep going.