Erratic1

So if Developers released a class which could push a button every second and make every mob within 50' instantly die, I am pretty sure it would be popular. That popularity would be due to being overpowered, not "getting it right".

What I see is repeated threads going on long binges about Tanker godliness but then suddenly when someone mentions balance (especially in light of Brutes) it is suddenly, "Woe is me, I have to trudge uphill both ways in snow drifts a mile high to eke out just barely passable damage."

The discussion was about more than just EM Tankers.

There went the supposed time gain as you have to go visit a vendor after every mission (or possibly while in the middle of one) to stock up. Or is one supposed to rely on random chance to always provide the necessary inspirations?

You have to be able to survive the crowd. I have already covered that Brutes are behind both by raw value and ED.

No. The Brute will not be turning up the difficulty at the same time but to one lower setting because while Brutes can reach Tanker caps, they do not get the inherently larger values for defense and resistance Tankers do. Some chunk of their survivability is gate kept behind ED and IO sets. Sticking 3 SOs into any of a Brute's armor abilities will leave them woefully behind where Tankers get to in terms of survivability. So unless you like dirt naps, you will not be turning things up very far.

Every Tanker gets three attacks by level 4. Most have their fourth attack at level 16 (assuming you did not go Fighting pool). Super Strength is an outlier, getting the miserably useless Hand Clap at level 16. Not sure it should be held up as the exemplar of the Tanker experience. While Brutes will typically have two more attacks by 16th level, those are also the least experiencing demanding levels for one to play through and also levels one is not likely to be turning up the difficulty on, unlike the later levels on a Tanker.

I do not think there is necessarily one single metric. I said solo was not the metric but I think if one is really going to go after balance one needs to look at both solo and group play and do so as it actually is experienced by the majority of players.

If the solo experience is the fulcrum of balance, then certain ATs need some serious boosting and have needed it for a very long time. It would also deny the need for niche protection because when you are soloing you are filling all niches. Why did Brute damage potential get trimmed if solo was all that mattered?

Brutes being villains may have been true at the launch of CoV, but that's long since stopped being the case. There are also villainous Tankers. But hey, I am more than willing to entertain the notion of giving Brutes their own niche. Maybe they could code it so that NPCs point and laugh?

Outside procs (which I think procs are their own, broken mess that should not really bear on discussions of AT balance) I admit I am sometimes conflicted. Outside the realm of IOs and Incarnates, my tankers meaningfully do less damage. OTOH, the tankers survive so well and have such AoE capacity that the act of solo grinding on them for levels is notably faster because I can pack a mission with extra foes to wring xp out of. But balance is not predicated on the solo experience and in the group experience it doesn't matter what you play since ∀group g, (a1,a2,...an) where ax ∊ {member of the set of ATs} and 1<n<8, ∃t, a tactic, where S(t), the evaluation of the success of tactic t, is true.

There is another way of going about things. Build the Brute (all SOs), determine the limit of what he can face and still survive while solo and time how long it takes him to dispatch whatever scenario it is being presented. Then take the Tanker and compare how long it takes him to dispatch the same scenario. If inside the limit of Brute survivability the Tanker is clearing content faster then there is groundwork for questioning how reasonably the ATs are balanced.

Think I am in the same age range and yet WoW PvP...I got called out on the WoW forums for making matches go longer. I've got the same general aversion to twitchfest gaming, but with WoW twitch isn't always king...or at least deviousness has its advantages. I played a Shadow Priest back before they were popular. Oh the things you could do in PvP. Hide somewhere and Mind Control someone and watch while his buddies react to the appearance of a sudden red name (because your victim gets transfered to your side while controlled) by hitting first and killing one of their own. Speaking of Mind Control, did you know if you MC someone peeking around a corner when defending the warlord in Alterac Valley you can walk them right up to the warlord, cancel Mind Control, and watch the hilarious execution that follows? And that is only second in fun to fear bombing the group gathering outside the room, causing some of them to flee in, trigger the warlord, and have him go on a killing spree. Also in Alterac, you could get on top of the most rock formation at the more forward graveyard for the Horde (For the Horde!) and lie down. People wouldn't notice you. Alliance caps it, then once they move on, you hop down, kill the one or two defenders that got left to guard it, and recap. Arathi Basin had people so wrapped up in trying to kill foes they missed the point of the battleground--hold the nodes. I would ride up to the lumber mill, apply DoTs, and then Mind Control and throw people off the cliff. First off, the fewer defenders the easier it is for yourside to cap, hence the throwing them off the cliff. The DoTs were so that if they survived the fall the DoTs finished them. I have so many fond memories of PvP, and I was born the same year Star Trek first showed on television. Edit: And don't get me going on what you can do with Boomkin who has thought to take cat form stealth.

Giving Electric Armor a go with Savage currently. I have to run solo periodically under the notion that if opponents are defeated at a reasonable pace while soloing then I should be contributing meaningfully on a team.

I am not in a position to tell you something like that. I can help you out with your dizziness, being the kind guy I am.

So dizzy you could only manage to get back to make a performative post 20 hours later after things have moved on?

Who has said the game is unbalanced?

I run higher on various other ATS, SO only. What makes +2x2 your magical cut-off?

If he is squishy then the claims of how utterly overpowering Sentinel secondaries are when combined with ranged attacks amounts to hot air as reality is ranged+secondary+hover. As Arcadio put forth, if Hover is a require part of having a functional sentinel, it should be their inherent. And I would not be surprised if your fire/bio is pretty darned squishy on SOs even hovering (relevant because the game is not balanced around IOs).

Lower damage, shorter range, lower target caps, and no group functionality is where Sentinels are at. Is it your position that dropping that to lower damage, shorter range, and no group functionality will balance them out? Or is that a starting point?

Tankers got an area increase to hit more than any other AT in the game on top of a damage increase. I am pretty sure nobody here is asking for Sentinels to hit more targets than any other AT.

And on non-trivial content a Sentinel's damage is meaningless to a team and they do not bring any other functionality. I am not sure it is much of a hallmark to survive whlie doing nothing useful, but perhaps that floats your boat.

Neither is the notion that dealing sufficient damage to kill things before they get to you (Blaster) is as well. And yet you'd portray mattters as if Blasters are at some sort of horrible risk of dying when in fact actual game play and repeated experience shows otherwise. Know when I decided I was going to play a Seismic blaster? When on the test server I took out an entire spawn with absolutely NONE of them getting a chance to do anything to me because I kept knocking them off their feet. While is it not my cup of tea, blappers are far from unknown, rare things. You don't do that if it results in eating pavement routinely. The entire "Blasters are hyper-flimsy" routhine may hold for a bit but if their defenses were the equivalent of Sentinel damage nobody would play the AT.

Sentinels do not need to do Blaster level damage but they should do more damage than a damage starved Defender (who hits more targets) since the Defender AND ALL OTHER ranged ATs bring other functionality to the fight for the group. My Dominator happily tools along with things never getting to him or being the are immobilized or held at a distance. Oh, and he buffs regen (for himself and the party) too.

So by what you're saying the entire secondary set for Sentinels is useless because one can just hover? Also I note that sense Blasters can hover, there should be no reason not to up Sentinel damage sense hovering is apparently protection.