Blinded by the bright lights of bruiserdom

[jmik]

I’m a new player (just hit 24 with my Bruiser) that’s a little confused in how to interpret my AAs. I’ve decided to go down the STR tree and have so far put 4 points in.   -         Right now I’m dual wielding imbued fist wraps. How far down the STR line should I go until I go all naked hands? Should I wait until a few points into double attack and ignore the debuff strike for now?  -         I see that INT is a popular choice to go with STR. How do these work together? Do you have to switch between handwraps and bare fist? One of each? -         Like I said I’m new to the game, so I have a lot to explore and do. I only have the KoS expansion right now. At what level does everyone recommend I get the EoF retail box (so I can get both EoF and the other expansion) for both added content and subclass AAs?   As a side note, I’m a husband and father, so don’t have much play time. I also might have to log unexpectedly do to family dramas (bed time, puppy poop, all that good stuff). If anyone on Crushbone knows of a guild that would understand my playing limitations, I’d love to find some people to play with while I’m on. Not looking for any hand outs mind you, just nice players to chat and group with.   Thanks all

[Etchii]

<p>wait untill you can get 8 pts into double attack before you go to bare fists.</p><p>Ride that out untill you get to the highest tier before you switch out of bare fisted and get weapons that are high end legendary/low end fabled or better...(unless you really want to buy new fabled weapons every tier...i'd rather spend the plat on armors myself)</p>

[Catodon]

The Int line is nice for the melee crit% bonus, which is passive and works all the time (even when barehanded.) The eagle spin ability in the int line requires a fist weapon equipped in primary (same with the agi and wis melee abilities and baton/staff respectively.) But, no need to keep a weapon equipped all the time, you can set up a macro to equip a fist weapon and use eagle spin immediately, and a second macro to unequip and go back to bare hands. ( (Easy to do with the recent macro system revamp.) If it were me I would pick up the eof expansion sooner rather than later.. it's not expensive, and having everything on one dvd makes installation easy if you switch to a new computer.  There's no 'mandatory' content in eof for bruisers until end game t7 stuff, but the eof achievement lines add some flexibility and there are plenty of new areas to explore at lower levels that you would kind of miss out on if you wait till 70 to buy it.

[Novusod]

If you had EoF and did some of the quests there more than likely you would already have the 17aa required for a full barehanded STR build. Also if you are using treasured or handcrafted weapons bare handed is always better even if you have only a little aa into it.