PyroBeetle

I think I have explained why it was done for practiced and master brawler, as well as the ongoing rage and unleashed might mutually exclusive powers, but I will try to make it simpler. There are valid and longstanding reasons for practiced brawler to be how it is as a click power, revolving around stacking the mez protection, just as there is for shield defense to stack the defense debuff resistance. As a Sentinel I never participated in PvP so didnt care and master brawler was an automatic pick across all of my Sentinel SR toons. However there is a huge segment of the player base, let's say 95 percent plus, who want the ease of MB as it exists on Sentinels, but promulgating it as it is would again make PB just cease to exist off of Indomitable or wherever the 4 people who still PvP in this game play. In order to make the power a choice, not an automatic, something had to be done. By making MB a straight toggle and PB getting the heal, you are now introducing a balanced choice to playstyle, and that can never be a bad thing. Thank you to the dev team for making this considered choice.

I am using a variant of this build suited around my tastes, but the cycle is still pretty solid on the build. Before I was rarely having to use the Melee Incarnate, now I use it regularly on test. The build has some extra leeway built into it that I need now.

I think that is exactly the point, that it is a straight up upgrade for using UM instead of Rage. If you are going to leave Rage in the game, and double stack Rage is still going to be a thing, there needs to be a trade off. UM, even on a Brute with all of the changes, does not exceed the outright damage that a double stack Rage procbomb character can output. Giving the new Handclap to a doublestack Rage build would just be...overpowered. Really crying for the new toys and wanting to keep Rage is like saying you want to have your cake and eat it too. There was essentially no risk to taking and double stacking rage on a resist based character prior to these changes. This allowed them to enjoy the massive payoff for double stacking rage with rpoc bombed builds that far exceeded the damage that a tanker could and should do. There should be a tradeoff for that performance, and the risk for using rage, which is still far more effective at throughputting damage than UM, should be applied equitably across armor sets.

I think the primary reason for the change the way they are doing it is there are specific reasons to make Practiced Brawler stack, primarily for PvP, and rather than get rid of the power entirely or just leaving it to those niche purposes, they are trying to make it have some value. The whole goal of the absorb being better when you are more in need fits well with a regular PB build because I often see my health river between 50 and 70 percent before my resistance numbers just mean my regen is exceeding the hits that are getting through, and I nirmally have PB tied to a movement key so I dont have ti think about refreshing it...functionally it works, but not as well as the old MB I can just reactively use this when I need it button. It also gives a side benefit to having a casting time versus just having status protection tied to the T1 and T2. But it does give some reason for PB to exist, because I sure as hell never took it on any of my SR Sentinels, MB was just that good on comparison.

I think this is the point entirely. People do love the current rage and have several builds around it, so they cannot eliminate it, but they can make it have an equitable effect across the armor sets.

I have never thought of Hand Clap as an easy skip, it was always a large part of mitigation and a consistent driver of FF procs, and regularly fired two damage procs. Was it a lot of damage no, but it was an AoE available on tanks earlier than L30. I would not want it to be a cone on my current SS build either as it is my only 360 AoE before Foot Stomp and it plants a lit of mibs on their asses and buys me a lot of time. (Acually I used to build SS to get Cross Punch at 14 and HC right after then respec to get them both slotted out. HC normally gets 4 slots for me, the KB/KD no damage proc, the FF +recharge proc then the 2 damage slots it can fit, but really it does wonders with only the KB/KD as far as mitigation goes.) Having the power modified by UM the way that it is, as UM is mutually exclusive from Rage, allows for the set to be a clear differentiation in playstyles, really what people were asking for the T9s before they were rolled back. If you want ti play your SS the way it was, at least damage wise, with Rage, then it will, otherwise the play revolves around the pick of UM instead. They build completely differently.

Personally I enjoy the highlight rings notifying me of when a powers secondary effect is available, it doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a difference. While there may not be an option to remove rings around powers, and spines is far from the only power to get them, you can turn off the UI when not in combat if the pink ring bothers you that much. I have been really playing around with this, and although Impale's cast tine is still more than 2 seconds it was reduced. As far as the DoT damage being extended I tend to view it as being Hancock crashing through a building then slow walking away while everything crumbles behind him. It could also give me time to monologue about how pathetic and weak the heroes are while waiting for them to die. The whole set just puts out swarms of tiny orange numbers, and I rather like it. Functionally, I have been trying to level a toon organically the same way I would in live, and Spine Burst feels greatly contributory and useful from the second it is selected as opposed to what it was previously, when it was soooo slow to fire and soooo slow to recharge that I often just skipped it as not being worth the pick. Impale is still a little janky to use, but it is offset by how long its damage extends over time. This evening I will test the changes at a mid level around 30 when I normally first start slotting IO sets and see how it feels. Please note that I never AFK farmed and never will, and even when I farmed I used Rad/Fire (haven't farmed since the double inf nerf) so I think about spines in how it plays in normal play, and these changes help smooth things out a lot.

Not that all of these T9s were used this way but enough of them are, by rotating the crash able long duration T9s with Melee Hybrid, Unleashed or RoP, and Barrier timing, you are able to achieve functional invulnerability without relying on slotting your other powers. So we are catering to that extreme edge of playstyle as opposed to making T9s functional for the rest of the player base and across the levels as opposed to just Incarnate endgame content?

I think the word means exactly what I think it means the long standing metric has been 2 resistance equals 1 defense. This particular axe doesn't need to be ground here, but if it were I would point out that you are conflating the word equitable with equal, and thus engaging in a strawman argument. I didnt say equal, I said equitable, meaning the change would have the same effect across sets now, resistance and defense, whereas before, it had no effect against resistance sets.

I think this is something that everybody can agree on, and I really dont understand the cost for a respec in the first place in the current game. The cost is so trivial as to be meaningless and just a time sink for no reason to buy a recipe and craft a recipe.

Bio is getting hit to the point that at the Endgame you just cannot run in Offensive anymore, which arguably will make the set more...diverse? I dont know but will hopefully now find a reason to form change, because dog walking everything in Offensive isnt going ti be a thing anymore. I dont necessarily see this as the point either. Most of the T9s were only usable to niche builds, builds that would rotate "the cycle" all you needed was a blue to pop after the crash and you were fine in all scenarios, often just invalidating or making irrelevant any slotting beyond slow resistance and procs from your attacks. I did this on a vast majority of my builds too, some combination of RoP and Melee Hybrid and Barrier on cycle covering the time period the T9 was down. Eliminating this as a playstule makes for more variation, not less, and I think it is a good thing overall. Will I have to find new toons to enjoy or change the ones I play, yes, but honestly, isnt that part of why most of us have been playing this game for 20 years.

I am going to have to remember this term...it fits peefectly.

The fact of the matter is I dont think anybody ever has complained about controls in a group setting. Are the necessary, no, are they always useful, yes. I have never been turned down from a group for running a controller, regardless of the damage output. I would also argue that even after the changes you could solo effectively without procs on a Fire/Kin and be pretty quick about it too. On the other hand, before I stopped running my proc bombed Pyro/Marine controller, he could effectively solo just about all content, pretty much as fast as most PUGs, except for the Star content. He did so much damage so quickly for the Halloween missions on +4/8 he didnt stealth ti the end, he just killed to the end and made it through the portal before the robots spawned. Sometimes I would let the robots spawn just to have more to kill. In short, it made teaming irrelevant, and actually harmful most times outside of all incarnate groups, which I dont think anybody will argue is the point for a MMO.

When I read that they were going to be making changes to Sentinels and to Storm, it made me want to unshelve my favorite toon, a Storm/SR Sentinel. He looks cool, is nigh immortal, and is now going right back on the shelf. The damage from Storm is just not competitive even with the changes, and while the changes were visually appealing...more lightning YAH...the actual lightning was only doing meh. Was Storm OP when it was first released, probably, but it was nerfed hard and has still not recovered. The casting time change to Storm Cell is welcome as is the stable mechanics, as in effective I am casting SC, Cat 5 and Intensify every 20 seconds anyhow because of how slow the old Storm Cell moved, but the internal procs to the Cell just need to proc more often to more targets for the set to be competitive or it is just a nice debuff when High Winds procs.

It is 100 percent about the +to hit, and I think all the whining about the change is more about the fact that using the statistically less effective Unleashed Might will make having to do all the fussing with double stack rage not worth it. Coupled with the fact that it is making regular slotting attacks, especially for a brute, come close to the damage that running a full proc build, just less appealing. Add on you get a new toy, or at least a refurbished one, in Hand Clap for using Unleashed Might, and holy Jesus, the world is ending. The proc bomb meta is a thing, and yes a Rad/SS Tank used to be able to effectively solo in 4 Star Content. I dont think that was ever anybodies intent for CoH, and for sure it is not the dev teams intent, because they have been saying for years the want to do something about procs. Full disclosure, I was running a Regen/SS tank proc bombed out the wazoo, and I find SS/Willpower Brute that I was testing the changes on, just more fun to play, if not quite at the peak effectiveness. It was just less fussy.

Quite frankly, I always felt that doing a shield charge into an AoE crit was always an exploit, one that I was happy to abuse the crap out of. Double bonus for LIghtning Rod use, either staggered with Shield Charge or on top of it. Yes I also love fishing with dynamite, and it is about as sporting.

Nothing is stopping you from continuing to double stack rage other than the fact that Rage now equitably effects resistance armors. As I posted in another thread, the purpose of Rage in all practical reasons in the modern meta was to facilitate proc monster builds...hell did you even run anything other than procs in your attacks (see 6 proc cross punch and 6 proc dominate that were staples of a SS Tank) if you could reliably double stack rage. The changes being have all been a steady assault on proc damage builds, by design. Trying to justify anger without saying what you are really mad about is just disingenuous.

I actually see the Devs plan to have been slowly trying to get rid of, or at least mitigate the presence of Proc Monsters. The changes with Adaptive Recharge and removing the proc damage from armor sets has highly been about this. The depth changes in cines make the powers much more usable, and much less proccable. The changes in the T9s are also largely about turning the game away from damage, because when you only had to rely on a T9/Melee/RoP rotation for survival, you could just proc the bejesus out of your attacks. This has been the meta for this game since 2019. The only reason it wasn't meta on live is because of the way the market worked, it was just too expensive to build a proc monster for 99 percent of the game population, but for the 1 percent who could afford it, yes proc monsters were the bomb and outshone everything else. Now, the changes have slowly been about reducing the effectiveness of damage procs (especially on toons that could most effectively leverage them due to either extreme protection scalars or ATOs like tanks, or highly effective controls like, well, controllers) while boosting the relative effectiveness of full sets, and it is huge. However the devs have stated for years they were looking to change proc fu, ir mire directly nerf procs, and that is why you hear the collective outcry from those that abuse them (I too proc fu, and my most recent beast Pyro/Marine Contiller will languish now until/if the pendulum swings back the other way). Any cries that this is coming out of left field or the devs dont know what they are doing are just spurious. They have stated this was their intent for years. Just gives me a chance to roll/create new toons that are overpowered in a new way. The age of man is over, now is the age of the orc...or you could state, the age of tanks is over, now is the age of the brute.

These changes sound good to fix Attune within the concept of the power set. Certainly what I am looking for, at least after having tested it on a Stalker. The range more than anything should prove to be highly relevant, as the power is really wasted on minions, and allowing it to be placed deeper in a group can allow me to work from the edge inwards while it grinds on a boss. I think we all knew that Sonic wasn't going to be a S Tier set off the bat, and while comparing baseline numbers against an S Tier set is good to confirm this, I would say those numbers are not particularly worse than many of the other B Tier or even A Tier sets. Given the tradeoff for the team utility of debuffing resistance to debuffs, is that a bad thing? Really looking forward to seeing how the set plays with high debuffing toon like a sonic defender or a Huntsman build. With procs my Huntsman debuffs resistance at around 60% in an area, and that number not being resisted against purples will be meaningful. I think having another damage set with some team utility is not a bad thing, and am willing to sacrifice some top end DPS to achieve that.

As I thought the Sonic Melee set offered something fairly unique to Stalkers, that being a fully viable AoE mode, I have been playing around with it a bit. The build I have been using is Sonic/Stone, and I really enjoy the way that the broad and deep melee cone allows me to face and shoot. The build I have been using allows me to basically Build Up, fire the cone, fire the pbaoe, fire the cone, by which time the AT proc has reset the Build Up, wash rinse, and repeat using the time to reset the attuned anchor on another boss or lt if the first one died. The set does not do good damage unless you play with the attune mechanic, but I am used to something similar on the Sentinels that I play. I have attune bound to the z key and I recycle it whenever the target it is on dies. It is a different playstyle, and one that takes a bit of getting used to, but the speed of the set allows me to run a chain of the T9, T2 and Assassins Whisper on an attuned target, if it lasts that long, I will intersperse applying Attune in the chain as required. From a fun flow and feeling standpoint the set feels fine on a Stalker. The T9 hits like a Mack Truck going 90 miles an hour downhill, the animations are not onerous, things die before I notice the hold mechanic, but the KD mechanic is noticeable in the AoE cone. The only thing that bothers me is the constant whispering in the background, but only because it is indistinguishable from my wife speaking to her sister on the phone in the back room. One thing to add, and this is a a true negative to the set, is that I too wish that I didnt have to be leg humping a bad guy to apply Attune. With the way the set works, especially on a Stalker where I have been cycling attacks before an enemy alerts to Attune being placed on them, allowing Attune to be placed from range would better allow me to play from the edge in, like a Claws Scrapper as opposed to starting my AoE barrage in the middle of spawn wanting to chomp on my flimsy behind. It matters to a Stalker, especially as most of the edge spawns are minions and Attune is largely wasted on a Minion.

I would love to see this...and you are correct, the build is tight, and I couldn't make it do everything I wanted without making a couple of sacrifices. And it may also be that the sets I used are outliers, as achieving the same survivability with the tank build did free up a couple of slots that I had to place just so. It also might not work as well with a tighter fast animating attack chain, as I did have to sacrifice a little bit of top end recharge, which my ST attack chain doesn't care about, to achieve the same goals. But since the Tanker changes I cannot really feel but that on a same or similar build, the Brute just dogwalks the Tanker when it comes to damage.

I have been testing on Tank and Brute with Psy Armor...I have much preferred the set on Brute

Greetings, I played Live from Beta through Sunset, and I have played on Homecoming since April of 2019. Just saying by way of background. I have mained many different toons over the course of that time, and many of them have been tankers, however I have recently gone back to Brutes, when I can build one to be reasonably comparable on the survivability scale to a Tank. The damage tradeoff gap is...noticible...between the two now. I have been playing around with the new Sonic Melee set, and have to say much preferred the experience on a Brute compared to the Tanker. Similarly, on the live servers, I messed around with a Elec/Rad Tank only to rebuild him as a Rad/Elec Brute. I was still able to cap or come within a portion of a percent to SLEFCP with N at 54 and T at 38. My build is not a farmer or designed to farm and has 100 percent resistance to Endurance, Recovery, Recharge, Slow, and with Ageless Radial stands at 90% resistance to to hit and perception. I was able to incorporate at least one damage proc in all of my attacks and just melt mobs of all types. Functionally, the Ageless doesn't really affect the build beyond debuff resistance, so can substitute T4 Barrier for group play. I do not rely on it for endurance. I have 3 Power Transfer Procs and other goodies plus permanent Energize for regeneration to stack with the resists, so dont really see the health bar or end bar move much if at all. So the question is this, given the comparable survivability, why wouldn't I go for the superior damage of the Brute? I am away from my primary CPU right now, so cannot post the build, but can do so when I get home, if anybody is interested.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is MA/SD. SD can be build to softcap relatively easily and you have e some wiggle room to address the Psi hole via enhancements (I add 23% resistance that way). Has a simple to run AoE chain of Eagle Claw/Dragon's Tail/Crippling Axe Kick, and an easy to run ST chain of Eagle Claw/Storm Kick/Crippling Axe Kick/Storm Kick. What makes it good is that Eagle Claw can be leveraged to quite reliably (Above 80%) proc Critical Strikes as well as granting its own crit bonus which makes all of its follow on attacks crit quite well. Further, Focus Chi with one Recharge IO syncs quite nicely with shield charge for an opener every group.

I dont actually use orange insp like a fiend, hit 50 and still dont have Melee yet, and didnt take RoP until 44 due to other build priorities. The primary thing that I do is lean on MoG as my crutch in this time and the KD in Foot Stomp. I go and Stomp pull a group to the corner, then use my heals as needed. If tanking down health too fast, I will pop MoG. Really in normal content I have been running +0 x8 and didnt go above 0 until after I got my Alpha in place...have been running the Dark Astoria arcs at +2 x8 with my full build, only Alpha incarnates...RoP I use when I cannot corner a mob. Couple of things, I keep attacking even when Rage crash because procs are a thing and the KD is an important part of the mitigation, as is the tanker proc in Haymaker. It's why I needed more endurance than Betty's build provided. The other is I focus down the mobs that make things difficult. Regen is fine once you get it IOed out and slotted, even without the Incarnate, but you gotta play to its strengths. You have 2 heals in the base set for a reason, and I use them reactively and really when I notice my health going down, I dont wait to pop Reconstruction. Regarding the inspirations again, I actually auto convert my inspiration to reds to help with damage like a farmer, so...haven't been using the oranges except to fire up my damage. Not every set is to every taste though. Just saying my experience has been different than yours with the set. You are entitled to your opinion and your experience.