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 do lack ranged attacks, which could leave you vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics without allies to cover you.

Faction: Villain

The Brute's power sets are:

Primary: Melee
Secondary: Defense

The Brute has Medium Hit Points and High Damage.

Power Sets

Primary Power Sets

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

• Battle Axe (Issue 12)
• Broadsword
• Claws
• Dark Melee
• Dual Blades (Issue 11)
• Electrical Melee
• Energy Melee
• Fiery Melee
• Katana
• Kinetic Melee
• Stone Melee
• Super Strength
• War Mace (Issue 12)

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
• Regeneration (Issue 21)
• Super Reflexes (Issue 12)
• Willpower (Issue 11)

Patron Power Pools

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

Inherent Power

• Fury
• Brute attacks, and many of their toggle auras, taunt the enemies they affect in PvM. This is similar to the Gauntlet inherent that Tankers possess, only without an area of effect.

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 ideally trump all of them. Brutes want to harvest enemy attention (since 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 the enemy's day.

For character construction, Brutes prefer fast attacks, with secondary effects like Disorient or Knockback 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 they can as fast as they 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 slotting 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 bar, and aware of ways to keep it high; the Brute needs to be far more conscious of himself and cannot rely solely on the assistance of other characters to support him. Effects that enhance a Brute's Endurance are not always 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 recharge debuff effects hindered Fury and those powersets were removed. Energy Melee and Energy Aura were then added as available powersets.

External Links

• Summary and Analysis of Brute Powersets
• Archetypes documentation on official City of Villains site
• Official City of Heroes Manual as a PDF file