Brute

Overview

Brutes live to fight, and as a Brute, you will revel in hand-to-hand combat. With strong offensive power sets designed to inflict pain and impressive defenses to take it, you're the best there is in a straight melee fight. Protracted battles only make you mad, and the madder you get, the more damaging your attacks become. You build up Fury as you attack and are attacked, multiplying your base damage potential dramatically. This unique combination of powers makes your strategy one of speed and aggression.

The Brute's power sets are:

Primary: Melee
Secondary: Defense

The Brute has high Hit Points and High Damage.

Power Sets

Primary Power Sets

A Brute's primary power sets are designed specifically for melee. They are:

• Dark Melee
• Electrical Melee
• Energy Melee
• Fiery Melee
• Stone Melee
• Super Strength

Secondary Power Sets

A Brute's secondary power sets are designed for defense. They are:

• Dark Armor
• Electric Armor
• Energy Aura
• Fiery Aura
• Invulnerability
• Stone Armor

Patron Power Pools

• Leviathan Mastery
• Mace Mastery
• Mu Mastery
• Soul Mastery

Strategies

Very simply put, Fury is the core of the Brute's play style. This single, scaling buff, while inadequate in PVP when compared to hero effects, is simply your best source of damage. This means that whatever strategies you opt to take, building fury should trump all of them. Brutes want to harvest enemy attention (because being attacked builds fury), which suggests the typical tactics of pulling are suboptimal from the Brute's perspective. Better to buff the Brute, let the Brute taunt, and ride in to ruin enemy days.

For character construction, Brutes prefer fast attacks, with secondary effects like disorients, stuns, or slows being of less concern; with this in mind, Hasten offers the Brute a potential way to increase attack speed and therefore, build fury faster.

There is, however, a tipping point; a Brute who simply attacks as much as it can as fast as it can will run out of Endurance very quickly, which means there is a constant tension for the Brute player, to balance and maintain Fury against their Endurance. This makes managing endurance a key skill for the Brute player, who can often get by socketing his attacks for Endurance Reduction and Accuracy - as Fury will at least in the early stages of the game, compensate for damage.

With this in mind, the Brute needs to understand how to earn the attention of enemies; the Brute needs to be aware of his or her Endurance stat, and aware of ways to keep it high; the Brute needs to be far more conscious of himself and cannot rely on the assistance of other characters to support him. Effects that enhance a Brute's endurance pool are not so common in City of Villains, which means teammates have to be aware of their limitations.

Notes

During the City of Villains Beta, Ice Armor and Ice Melee were powersets for Brutes. It was determined that the slow effects hindered Fury and those powersets were removed. Energy Melee and Energy Aura were then added as available powersets.

External Links

• Archetypes documentation on official City of Villains site
• Official City of Heroes Manual as a PDF file