Erratic1

Brute Fury says, "Hold my beer." 😛

I have not asked for them to be Tanks. So bringing that up is meaningless.

I just don't get why Sentinels complained so much. If they wanted to do ranged damage they should have just gone ahead and played a Blaster, right? Doubt the above would have resulted in the changes currently being reviewed on the test server. Presumably people were playing Sentinels for the combination of things the class was advertised as having.

Water/Kin is a lot of fun (Fulcrum Shift + 4 area attacks) and teams loves the buffs.

I do not put people on ignore for dissenting opinions. I put them on ignore for being jerks. There is a certain, highly opinionated player (no, not @Snarky) who invariably has the most incorrect takes on things. But for all that he is invariably wrong, he is not a jerk and so I do not have him on ignore.

But the game has always changed. So requesting no more suggestions is trying to influence the game to be different than it has always been. SHAME ON YOU!!!!!

Most people will eventually come off my Ignore List but some few...there until the last star burns out and the universe is left cold and dark.

What is this noise about short range? Just how far back are you wanting to stand?

Each of the combos will work well with any of the ATs but I would probably lean in the following way: DM:Shield: Scrapper/Tanker DM/Bio: Scrapper/Tanker DM/Inv: Brute/Tanker My second character Live and go to guy for melee was a DM/Inv Scrapper. I do not think DM/Inv on a scrapper is a bad choice at all. But I would milk the higher resists possible on Brutes/Tankers for an, "I walk in, start swinging, and don't stop until everyone is lying at my feet" experience. You could get this too with DM/Bio on a brute but with that combo I would lean more heavily into the damage dealing aspect.

I suspect room for improvements to the Brute ATO to be heavily constrained. Damage cap was lowered, so anything which directly increases damage would be going against that. But so too would doing something to increase survivability because that translates into fewer slots dedicated to survival and more available to boost damage. Can't improve To-Hit because that would make Brutes the go to for dealing with harder content and end with more damage going out that other ATs.

DM /Inv, DM/EA, and DM/Shield have long been popular and they work well across the various melee ATs. Edit: Psst...a hidden gem is DM/Elec on a brute.

As an overall comparison, not that I see. There are a few examples of people running the same powersets across melee ATs. The initial post has roughly equivalent times between TW/Bio scrappers and brutes (5:38 scrapper, 5:59 brute). Sovera has Fire/Rad Tanker time of 6:57, Brute time of 5:55 on presumably similar builds (no Atom Smasher on either). Non-proc based Rad Melee is extremely single target since Proton Sweep is usually skipped and in Sovera's builds Atom Smasher was as well. This presumably would favor the Brute according to everyone posting about how Tanker's dominating Trapdoor is via superior area attacks. Fiery Aura's Blazing Aura is also going to be boosted by Brute Fury, which would be an offset against both increased radius and number of targets for a Tanker. The Brute's 355s completion would suggest according to Aethereal's calculation 514.75s, or 8:34.75. Sovera managed nearly 2 minutes faster for and end result only 17% longer as opposed to 45%. Sovera does come back later and tests a Brute build with Atom Smasher and is able to drop the Brute's time to roughly 4:50 but I do not see a test of Tanker with Atom Smasher. (Note: Did not consider the damage splash mechanism.) Eyeballing results on a light skim most Brute times are around the 5m mark with some dipping a bit lower and some coming in a bit higher. Scrappers are similar, at least initially, but do have builds which get down towards 4m. Tankers...well, depending how heavily SS or Rad are abused*, get down to sub-4m times. *The guy with the best Tanker times notes he can get similar times with a Fire/Savage Tanker, so perhaps throw Savage in the mix as well.

@aethereal, I should probably apologize for that last post. Just really bothered that in the Brute forum in a thread supposedly about Brutes and their place, what with the OP backing up that he was not calling for Brutes to do more damage than Scrapper (and certainly nothing I have called for) the thread keeps being bent to Scrapper.

No. I chose to focus on what you focused on--apples to apples. It cannot be called apples to apples if there are factors which turn one apple into a passion fruit and the other into a kumquat. If we're leaving out ATOs then we might as well leave out IOs too, at which point the supposed Brute advantage of a higher resistance cap becomes greatly theoretical. In these discussions the ability to crit is factored in as a 10% increase in damage because we're considering averages over time. The reality of getting a critical hit? Depending on attack and target (yellow or less definitely, oranges a little more variably) the target is gone. As example, and not applying to all scrappers, my War Mace/Ninjitsu scrapper has a 75% chance to crit from stealth. Open with Clobber and one target from a typical spawn is gone. That is mentioned only to underscore the value of a crit. Brutes -=*NEVER*=- crit. That spawn of 5 foes is a spawn of 5 foes each of which has to be worked down without <CRITICAL> and suddenly one is gone. Did you rest before you entered combat? Well, that Fury bar is not at 80 so there went the 160% damage boost you include in your calculations like it is etched in stone. But you know, I have noticed something.... Despite my repeated references to Tanks and Scrappers both, every bit of your posting is about poor, sad, suffering, barely getting by scrappers. Feel free to start a petition thread underscoring how scrapper have no place in the game and need buffs... ...or, I suppose how brutes need new nerfs. Because clearly brutes must be trouncing scrappers by your apples to apples comparisons, actual video of play notwithstanding.

Every intersection with traffic lights on Peregrine Island is a T-intersection. If you stand at on the cross bar of the T and look along it there is a Walk/Don't Walk sign which serves no purpose because you are not crossing a street.

So one might expect doing the same mission, say like is chronicled in the Trapdoor thread, to find Scrappers taking at least 10% longer than Brutes to clear and Tankers taking 45% longer than Brutes. But that is not what is seen is looking at reported times. The apples to apples comparison is a purely numerical bit that ignores the realities of play.

Saying you believe something to be a mistake is not the same as saying that thing should be undone. Moreover, you leave out the part where he writes: Key words: Sure, Brutes do less damage than a Scrapper. But they really always did. Not by much, but generally less. After change, still generally less. He believes that pre-nerf Brutes did less damage and now even less than that. So were he calling for the nerf to be undone his target is not more damage than a scrapper (regardless of the correctness of belief in what the result would be). But he is not in fact calling for such a change.

The first time scrapper damage is related to damage on this page is your post above: You do not post in good faith. I refer back to what people have written, most often quoting them. You make up bullshit, engage in innuendo, and act to no discernable advancement of understanding. Short of better behavior, this is the last response you get from me.

Has anyone here been asking for Brutes to do equal or more damage than scrappers?

You literally have no arguments, make up positions to tilt at, and really need to follow your own advice.

Oh no, don't confuse what you've been doing here with anything I have been doing. *Sigh* Fine, let's deal with your so-called response.... (1) Blaster, in case you missed it, get to make ranged attacks. And sure, there is the occasional melee attack set with a ranged attack, but it is not quite the same thing as having the ability to continuously cycle ranged attacks and thereby not be there for most things to hit at all. (2) Blaster are also do the most damage in the game. If Brutes did Blaster damage this thread would not exist. There would probably be several threads about the unfair nature of glass canon and inferior damage (shades of the past) but that is not the reality we find ourselves in. Both points above are on full display here. Notice how much damage is being done while opponents are at range and most are unable to touch him. Love that bit a 1m07s in where he is attacking down the trapdoor and clearing out things which have no way to get to him. (3) No gripe was stated by me. You suggested Brutes build like Tankers do and I noted the consequences. You then, using no logic understood by mortal man, started drawing understandings of my response which had no bearing on anything I wrote. (4) If multiplayer is the only consideration then the anything outside the multiplayer role of an AT is immaterial. So you would be fine with Tankers area damage buff being reverted since hitting things in a larger area did not enhance their role. Pretty sure you're not down for that but who knows...maybe you're going to be logically consistent. *snort* Edit: typo fix

Why is it that that when someone starts their reply to another person's statement with, "So...." they are invariably going to make something up which has no bearing on what was actually said?

I rather suspect a brute's clear time will increase if they have to make repeated trips from the hospital back to the mission. At the point the Brute is not making use of their resist potential, all they are is scrapper with crappy damage and no crits.

Please go back and rethink about what I wrote.

Trapdoor is an actual mission. It is completed by doing damage to a fixed setup of opponents. Is there really much in the game involving an endless series of pylons (or pylon equivalents)? Because that Quatefield TF I just got out of seems a whole lot more like repeated Trapdoors than Pylons.