A New Challenger Appears!

Cauteriza 16 TW/FA Villain Brute

So I decided to expand my leveling queue a bit to include one of every Archetype. That way, I can play whatever play style I'm in the mood for. It'll be slower to 50 anything this way, but so what? 50 isn't my goal. Just a natural result of playing a character I enjoy enough to get them there.

Taking the Brute leveling slot, we have my latest character Cauteriza (a reroll from FM/FA because I find that combo a bit boring even though I normally enjoy symmetrical sets), a Titan Weapons/Fiery Aura Villain Brute. She's an archaeologist who found a magic ax that transformed her. She's one of those characters who could change alignments, perhaps often, based on the Banneresque tug-of-war between the two personalities. Technically, she's the same person in either form, certain traits are just greatly amplified under the ax's influence.

My preference for simple, but visually iconic and strong costuming really shows on her. I'll probably do the Barbarian metal bikini on her when I have the Points to purchase them (buying Titan Weapons nearly wiped me out-- and was worth every Point) because the Barbarian female top comes with six-pack abs (finally some muscles for females!)

I heard horror stories of Titan Weapons being slow and unwieldy at low levels, but I just don't see it. Oh, it's a bit slower to start than some sets, and the Fury building of the set is pretty far off optimal, but at level 16 the set is feeling fast and fluid. Not at all the clunky set I had imagined. And Titan Weapons has a good mix of AOE and single target options, allowing you to build with a bias towards one of the two, or a balance of both. I had feared the set was AOE only, meaning it would lack the single target punch needed to take out tougher Bosses, Elite Bosses and Archvillains. Not so! Very good single target damage is there if you want it in addition to some of the best AOE available to melees.

In addition to really great, versatile damage, Titan Weapons also brings a surprising amount of damage mitigation. The tier-one attack, Defensive Sweep, gives a stackable 11.25% Melee and Smashing Defense! You know, I thought Powers like Parry were the design mistakes of an inexperienced development team, but here they are putting Parry-like powers into brand new sets (and even an "old" set with Tanker Martial Arts having a non-stackable 10% all-positions, all-types except Toxic and Psi Defense in Storm Kick) so it must not be considered overpowered even if my sense of game balance is telling me that it is.

I chose to pair it with Fiery Aura because the pair seem to prop each other up very nicely. FA gives even more damage of a rarely resisted type and Endurance recovery to TW, and TW gives extra mitigation to FA. It's win-win.

I highly recommend picking Titan Weapons up. It's a much better set than it would seem and is every bit the fun-quotient equal of Street Justice. I did not expect that.

And by the way, there's nothing about the set that feels wrong for Stalkers. The Momentum builders in the set are very much Assassin's Strike animations. Stalker players would feel right at home with the set. Luckily, I hear it will see a port at some time in the future (and arguments about theme are asinine. You can surprise someone with the world's biggest sword if you can turn invisible!)