Erratic1

It is a small amount which isnt going to stand up too well in the face of serious debuffs. I'm fine with that as the set has other tools.

The problem with Pyro/Dark is there are no bad powers, you want to take them all. Gotta focus and figure out what is essential and what can be lived without.

I have been pleasantly surprised at lower levels (20s) just how survivable a Brute using Psionic Armor is while leaping into large groups, though some portion of that has come from Katana/Divine Avalanche. While the aforementioned lack of DDR means defense will not contribute much against certain foes, I am hoping the -Recharge from Impose Presence combined with Aura of Insanity and Psychokinetic Barrier will still provide adequate safety.

I ended up starting a Regen/Fire Tanker last night. Lived through some things I shouldn't have though also had a couple of instances of, "How'd I die so quickly" too. FM attacks come available so slowly. Ugh. Look forward to continuing tonight.

Wanted to try out the new control set and a Something Wicked This Way Comes thought came to my mind, so I paired it with Dark. Let me just say up front, a taunt column is a beautiful, wonderful, quasi-abusive thing to have. Posi 1, first group, toss out Glittering Column right before the melees run in and look at that, nobody takes damage before we lock things down and clean up. Sure, higher levels will no doubt make that less effective, but oh how I have loved it. And I noticed Glittering Column does -To-Hit, just like Darkest Night. Visions of Folding Space on top of a column and applying Darkest Night to keep things from hitting dance in my head just now. So anyone else giving this combo a go?

While the magnitude on Blinding Powder is not high, are you fight crowds composed of lieutenants? But I would agree with BP being the expendable power. I would not skip the Heal, even if you find you can only weakly slot it (mine is fully slotted but doubtlessly because more was being considered in set bonuses). I absolutely would not drop the Fighting pool. Its bedrock for achieving survivability. You clearly planned Willpower as part of your build, getting your travel power and having use for Unleashed Potential, so no, dont drop it either. I have never truly found Ball Lightning all that useful. So I would probably trade it out. But if you find it more useful than the Heal, don't change a thing.

I have SR and EA Scrappers and don't find Nin to be particularly weak in comparison. There are tradeoffs of course. SR neither heals nor recovers endurance but has the best DDR, though that means little against foes not inclined to debuff it. EA has healing, endurance recovery, stealth, and scaling recharge in exchange for weaker DDR and more clicking. Nin has healing, endurance recovery, stealth, enhanced crit chance from stealth, and Sleep/Confuse/-To-Hit but the worst DDR. Note: You did not take Blnding Powder either. If you are not taking and using the powers of the set, why are you expecting it to perform as well as other sets?

You didn't take Kuji-In Sha? If you want to live, why would you not take your healing power? You should probably take Tough and Weave somewhat earlier. FWIW, these are the numbers on my WM/Nin Scrapper:

Captain America is known for his leadership, the Human Torch is not. Do the pool powers have some sort of massive influence on most encounters or are they mostly rounding characters out?

I so want to run EA/KM but KM is soooo bad, I just cannot do it.

Perhaps it does, but most Brutes are chasing survivability and unlike Tankers that means scouring every IO set for things which boost their defenses--including their choice of damage sets. When Mako or Touch of Death is consuming 5 or 6 slots in an offensive power to get you to caps Tankers trivially achieve there are not many slots left to proc bomb with. And that before the extra shots invested in Tough and Weakness (you're likely to 5- or 6-slot both). All sorts of oddball Frankenslotting occurs in area attack powers to drive defenses. Of course you can choose to not be at cap; but that means something too as dead Brutes do no damage.

A Brute, on his own or even buffed by a single Defender/Corruptor, will not reach the Brute damage cap, even with maxed Fury. All a Brute gets from underslotting attacks for less damage is less damage. To be parallel with Tankers, in terms of build flexibility, a Brute would need to be capping their damage...ovecapping even.

I definitely want to do a Regen Tanker. The problem is I am not sure what secondary I want to try with it, especially in light of not wanting to repeat ones I have done recently. Currently I am weakly leaning Dark Melee, but honestly have no great thrill with that choice.

My guess would be that building to play exclusively on teams or only solo would be the far less common way to build a character, but heck if I know how to substantiate that. What I don't get, is why one would do so given every character has the option for multiple builds they can swap between every 15 minutes. So even if focusing on a style of play is what one wants to do, you can still have one character who can change their style.

When I set to x8 I get plenty:

Have you set your difficulty up to +nX8?

Area of Effect for the brute is 'Single Target'.

The cap was to prevent dumpster diving a zone full of foes, which is a type of farming I suppose.

Ignoring Willpower/Regeneration, most armor sets focus on Defense or Resistance. The only cost differential between a Brute and Scrapper is when it comes to Resistance, as Scrappers cap at 75% as oppose to 90% for Brutes. So a Defense built Brute spends just as much as a Scrapper does to get there. The Brute gets 160 more hps, base, at level 50 than the Scrapper. That is basically meaningless as the differential between something which will kill the Scrapper but leave the Brute standing is less than a hit from most things they would be facing. The Brute's cap is 800 hp than the Scrapper, but in the myriad number of builds I have seen over the years, boosting health just about never happens. So that leaves Brute survivability being better than Scrapper really only in the realm of Resistance sets. As contrast, Tankers have 375 more base hp at level 50 compared to a Brute, and 320 more at max, and that is on top of reaching their defensive maximums much more easily.

Do Brute players procbomb themselves much? Because honestly, over the years, it has pretty much never been much of a discussion point in the Brute subforums.

I doubt Brutes doing more damage is on the table. That would be going the opposite way of the previous adjustments (like dropping their damage cap from 775% to 700%) and would threaten the positioning of Scrappers and Stalkers. And if the narrative above is that Tanker damage being reduced means Brute ascendancy for tanking well enough while doing superior damage, giving Brutes more damage ends up in the exact same place. Not sure why Tankers got an ATO which makes them better at survival when the inherent nature of the values they get out of armor sets sufficiently covers that. Give Brutes Might of the Tanker (call it Berserker's Endurance) and give Tankers a target cap/area boosting ATO, keeping the damage increase Tankers got previously but doing away with the area increase. Tankers would still solo better than they originally did, and once they get their ATOs in place become area damage specialists as intended. Brutes survive better than they currently do but do not hold aggro any better nor in any amount approaching a Tanker.

On Sentinels there is some merit to splitting one set to enhance range.

The developers have stated they want Tankers to be the AoE specialists. Perhaps I am reading something which isn't there, but I am thinking the point of the comparison is to get Tankers up to the right numbers to achieve the stated goal. Already more than one negative change had been reversed. Case in point:

The point it not comparing apples to oranges (or golf balls) but apples to apples--that is what testing (a) the same build live versus test server on the same mission and (b) testing ATs on the same mission are giving. It is not meant to be some, overarching, this is how powerset compares to powerset (in this case) but rather how the AT is performing. The context is how the changes are impacting Tankers performance and Trapdoor is a controlled setting. Physics is taught to students in context of simplified systems (see the meaning of 'spherical cow'). You consider trajectories being parabolas by ignoring air resistance. You consider elliptical orbits of planets by ignoring the impact each of the planets have on each other. Trapdoor is a simplification and objecting that it isn't real or encompassing of the totality of the Tanker experience is ignoring what the question is context of what the data is providing.

No you didn't, but you excluded it from having any worth of consideration. Trapdoor is a test of solo play and it removes a lot of variables which can obscure and muddle understanding of results. And for the record, it is poor form to assume what a person understands. I addressed what was not being covered, nothing more.