Daekan

Thought I'd share my ideas on an AA progression for new Bruisers. With how diverse our AA choices are for Bruiser, this is highly subjective, but the point is to help new Bruisers down their AA path in the direction that lines up with their reason to create their Bruiser. I hope I manage to capture three solid AA progression threads with reasons for choosing each AA so that by the time they reach around 100 AA or Lv70, the Bruiser will have the knowledge and experience to re-spec and tailor their AA to better fit their play style.

For a complete guide to Bruiser AA, please refer to:
Crabbok's Bruiser Achievements Comprehensive Guide

For additional information, please refer to:
Sardonis' Basics of the Bruiser


Progression name
AA Level / AA choice

Comment on AA choice(s)

Initial progression (1 thru 33)
1 / Brawler - Favorable Wind
2-5 / Brawler - STR line: Strength (Rank 4)
6-9 / Brawler - STR line: Pressure Point (Rank 4)
10-17 / Brawler - STR line: Double Attack (Rank 8)

Double Attack is a good start for DPS at lower levels with Pressure Point for the additional Combat Art (CA) and crushing debuff.

18-21 / Brawler - INT line: Intelligence (Rank 4)
21-25 / Brawler - INT line: Eagle Spin (Rank 4)
26-33 / Brawler - INT line: Melee Crit (Rank 8)

Melee Crit is the next natural choice with more CA at your disposal.

Pure DPS progression (34 thru 97)
34-37 / Brawler - STR line: Pressure Point (Rank 8)
38-39 / Brawler - STR line: Deflect (Rank 2)
41 / Brawler - STR line: Chi

Capping Pressure Point increases the higher base damage of the CA and debuff. Putting only two points in Deflect is just to get Chi, and it will help a bit if you switch to a less offensive stance. Chi is mandatory for Bruiser DPS.

42-45 / Brawler - AGI line: Agility (Rank 4)
46-49 / Brawler - AGI line: Baton Flurry (Rank 4)
50 / Brawler - AGI line: Ambidexterity (Rank 1)

Getting a start on Baton Flurry will help increase how fast you can recover from using CAs and spells. Throw in a point into Ambidexterity to reduce the reuse time on CAs and spells by 1.5%.

51-76 / Bruiser - Knockouts line (Rank 5 in each except Trepidation at Rank 1)

Capping each of these CA lines will greatly increase your base damage and overall DPS.

77-86 / Shadows - Tier 1: Diety and Health

... or whatever you want, really. I prefery Diety and Health for extra STR and survivability.

87-96 / Shadows - Tier 2: Jab (Rank 5) and Offensive Stance (Rank 5)

Increase the base damage of Jab and overall effectiveness of the Offensive Stance.

97 / Shadows - Tier 2: Sneering Assault

An additional CA to use with Knockout Combination, but you risk taking hate from the main tank.

Pure Tank progression (34 thru 107)
34-41 / Brawler - STR line: Deflect (Rank 8)
43 / Brawler - STR line: Chi

Increasing your Deflect will increase your overall evasion, which is crucial to brawler tanking. Chi is still mandatory, especially for holding hate on big fights with DPS.

44-50 / Brawler - INT line: Parry (Rank 7)

Also increasing Parry will increase overall evasion.

51-70 / Bruiser - Conditioning line (20 points in everything but Rock Skin)
71 / Bruiser - Conditioning line: Retribution of Stone

Put only what's necessary in the Conditioning line to help with tanking and getting Retribution of Stone as soon as possible. With each riposte, Retribution of Stone has a chance to give you stoneskin. Very handy when evasion fails. Oh, and don't bother with Rock Skin... it increases your mitigation by a lot, but you can't do anything but single target taunt. Taunting may not do a whole lot if you have to use Rock Skin.

72-81 / Bruiser - Attention line (Rank 5 for single and encounter taunts)

Important to help reduce the amount of taunt resists.

82-86 / Bruiser - Conditioning line (5 points in anything left but Rock Skin)

May as well cap anything outstanding except Rock Skin.

87-96 / Shadows - Tier 1: Diety and Health

... or whatever you want, really. I prefery Diety and Health for extra STR and survivability.

97-106 / Shadows - Tier 2: Defensive Stance (Rank 5) and Battle Hardening (Rank 5)

Defensive Stance is an obvious choice, and you also want to select Battle Hardening to reduce overall damage dealt per attack. It makes a difference in the long run.

107 / Shadows - Tier 2: Sneering Assault

An additional CA that increases your threat level. It's better than taunt!

Hybrid progression (34 thru 97)
34-39 / Brawler - STR line: Deflect (Rank 6)
41 / Brawler - STR line: Chi
42-47 / Brawler - INT line: Parry (Rank 6)
49 / Brawler - INT line: Eagle Shriek

Hybrid selections still tend more towards getting your evasion up, or you may as well just do the DPS progression. Eagle Shriek will get your DPS up as well as give you a bit more on defense when your health drops below 30%. Good for soloing, too, when you're cutting it close!

50-69 / Bruiser - Conditioning line (20 points in everything but Rock Skin)
70 / Bruiser - Conditioning line: Retribution of Stone

Same as above in the Tank progression. Put only what's necessary in the Conditioning line to help with tanking and getting Retribution of Stone as soon as possible. With each riposte, Retribution of Stone has a chance to give you stoneskin. Very handy when evasion fails. Oh, and don't bother with Rock Skin... it increases your mitigation by a lot, but you can't do anything but single target taunt. Taunting may not do a whole lot if you have to use Rock Skin.

71-96 / Bruiser - Knockouts line (Rank 5 in each except Trepidation at Rank 1)

Same as above in the DPS progression. Capping each of these CA lines will greatly increase your base damage and overall DPS.

97 / Bruiser - Knockouts line: Drag

May as well. Great for mob repositioning or getting it off someone else for 4 seconds.

Cheers,
Sudden

Prugor

bump!

Crabbok

Nice thread.

I am working on a new, more complete AA thread and will include this guide in it.

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Gosta Dirk

Vey nice indeed..

Really looking forward to the complete with TSO

Shidoshi

Only thing i dont agree with is tso tier 2. The points are better spent in swinging strike than they are in d stance or o stance. Those increases are very minor. If it would say bump up the damage of proc in o stance or increases minimum deflection stance in d stance than i can see getting it, but it doesn't. My TSO tier 2 is: Swinging strike (5), Battle Hardening (5) and Sneering Assault (1).

Daekan

Thanks for the feedback!

Yah, that Offensive stance is junk. Battle Hardening is better in the long run. Not sure if that's going to help more early on, though, than extra skill in crushing.

For DPS spec (read: non-tanking), putting a point into Sneering Assault, though, would be counter-intuitive, hey? That's an instant hate rip, and I don't know what options the Bruiser would have for de-aggroing. Also, if the Bruiser FD's, then that's a bad trade for DPS for just 1200-1600ish base damage (at Lv80).

Understand that this is intended for up to 100ish AA.

Sudden

Prugor

I grabbed Rescue and Battle Hardening. Sneering Assault has a terrible recast, more then two minutes for a -meh- CA/Taunt

Shidoshi

its good if u raid. it doesn't land most of the time when attacking a raid mob from the front but it will from the back usually. good for when the tank goes down or w/e.


but ya for dps, well for any spec really u have to take swinging strike its one of the highest dps CA's we have (10 second recast). would be foolish not to have 5 points in that.

I dont know about rescue tbh, i dont find it that useful. I mean in group setting as is it should work even if ur last on the list. in a raid setting the only time it "shouldn't" give u insta-agro is if uve been dead for a while or something. you should be in top 5 on the hate list at least.

Azraël

Sneering assault is still another rescue spell quite useful on memwiping raid mobs. Not to mention that it's another CA that procs Ko combo.
Rescue for AAs is nice if you're raiding a lot fo content that requires you to off tank fast add respawns or memwiping mobs again, but we have so much good things later in the tso AAs that i didn't put anything there. 5 AAs to reduce the casting time when you can have sneering assault for 1. Plus you have another rescue type CA at the very end of the tso AA section.
3 is enough if you don't even count D&C, you get a nice rescue rotation.

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Prugor

I don't raid that much. However, I have used both Sneering Assault and the Rescue enhance, and Sneering Assault doesnt work as much as Rescue. It just doesnt hit enough for me to like it. The recast also is a bit much for what it does. And usually, in my KO rotation, I can hit all my CA's, plus kick/hammer twice, and my AOE's. While timing with Auto-attacks.

Azrael, at the end of each TSO seconds, you have Sneering Assault, then Inner Focus (the stoneskin, 2x hit 10% 12 seconds), Bruiser Tsunami, and then the 4 threat level increase attack.