Erratic1

Don't tell me Brutes are fine is what it should say.

@Snarky, I have two brutes I am currently levelling. The Savage Melee/Electrical Armor, because I want to try to wring as much out of Savage and DoTs as possible, and there StJ/Inv because I had never played up StJ before and had no current Inv characters. They are enjoyable in the abstract as they work their way to final form and improve but... SM/Elec s never going to be as tough as other pairings of powersets. I worry about how survivable he will be in the end and am certain it will be less than the DM/Elec I had on Live or the SS/Bio who is my pride and joy as goes Btutes. The StJ/Inv should be incredible as goes surviving, but he is going to be very pricey--at least twice what went into SS/Bio and maybe more. While I enjoy levelling them, they feel like chores with questionable payoff. By contrast, WM/Nin scrapper is a constant set of joy whose end I look forward to.

Tankers were pretty miserable to solo before. I do not have a problem with the changes for the AT (could have given them the Defender treatment but oh well). It is not a matter of Brute vs Tanker but rather where does the Brute fit and is their play fulfilling/worthwhile on the whole. If you are only ever reaching for your Brute to farm with, don't tell me brutes are fine. (Generic you there.)

TFs are the content where unless you have a significantly full team, you don't run. Teaming encompasses down to two man, and two-man TFs are rare short of IO set overloaded gods flexing. That two-man team I ran last night on my Brute ran at +0x0 whereas my last Talker at the same level was soloing +2x4 content. The Brute had fo rest every 2-3 pulls for health (or after a single pull if multiple oranges or a red was involved) even baked by an Emparhy corruptor. On a full team a Scrapper can serve the alpha absorption role and after that, who cares who is on the team? Oh, you forced to take and slot Tough/Weave? The horrors! Brutes have been there, done that. A later team last night with two Brutes and still the occasional non-Brute death. Granted that was after the leader declared the team was blowing through +3x8 too quickly and upped things to +4x8. Who knows...maybe those other AT players were feeling suicidal? I find it interesting I can reference Tankers clearing content faster than Brutes and that gets pooh-poohed as a result of the properly chosen powersets for that to occur but there are seemingly no powersets brutes can take to reach equal time (while surviving) nor equal Tanker survivability. What is your reference for Brutes being fine other than feeling it? I repeatedly in this forum see people questioning why they should make a Brute, or continue making them. Why was that question, when asked of Tankers, worthy of a buff but Brutes are fine? Seems to me most of the, "Brutes fine" crowd only ever show up in the Brute subforum to naysay anything changing for Brutes, otherwise most of their existence is off discussing an AT which has a reason for existence.

I am not calling for a proc nerf, but conceptually if slotting a power for damage is less effective than filling it with procs....

Did the Tanker buff improve Tanker survivability? No, it did not. So no, Brutes could not do everything a Tanker could do. Repeatedly in this thread, people who say everything is fine assert that Tankers surviving is their thing (and note this thread was stated about Brutes not surviving). And on a team, while Brutes can be buffed (as can a lot of Scrappers), that really depends on the makeup of the team. A Tanker just doesn't care and so they fit regardless of team composition. And more the lie that Brutes could do everything a Tanker could because when I invite lowbies to join me they occasionally get killed because aggro control is weaker on Brutes (and I forget until it happens that I need to be more proactive in protecting them until that first death). All of the analytical skill at spinning how Brutes "are fine" really should not have missed how Tankers are better at survival and aggro management. If the matter were all about teams then what should have happened was a buff to Tanker damage cap as that would have paralleled Brutes having the resistance cap of Tanks but needing a team to reach it when using SOs or needing to spend more slots and using set bonuses with IOs. But path not taken. As for "more mitigation based build" every single brute I have has invested more slots and set bonuses to survival than they have damage. Because if you do not do that you're playing a Scrapper with slightly more health. You take Tough and Weave, not to mule but for their actual effect. Your damage sets are picked not for "Damage Bonus" but for what protection/health/regen they offer. My most effective brute's attacks are primarily filled with Kinetic Combat sets because it gives defense while consuming the fewest slots. His area damage abilities are mostly three-slotted with Erradication because he needed the Energy/Negative defense and did not have the slots after covering staying alive to fill them in other ways. By contrast, my Tankers almost never take Tough or Weave, and when they do it is for muling mostly, and certainly not because I plan to wring more power effect from them. Damage slots are plentiful. Heck, even my Epic power choices get a lot of slots. So just how much more are you suggesting Brutes invest in staying alive? Maybe not bothering to even slot their attacks?

For me it is more like the tides...ebb and flow. Sometimes I am playing CoH and sometimes I am playing something more modern. I am deeply into character building. Hook me with your mechanics and the ability to meaningfully craft a character and I am in whole hog. The problem of modern, multiplayer games (not the only type of game I play but heavily represented) is they all want to monopolize your time with necessary activities you need to be doing on schedule or your character advancement stalls. Do the story arc, play in the pvp grounds, join the raids, do the daily quests, do the weekly quests, harvest the resources to upgrade your equipment and make sure you do all that daily/weekly/pvp stuff you do not love (or even like) or else do not get ahead. Toss in an unhealthy dollop of RNG in getting what you need (resources/equipment) and it quickly becomes a job. I have a job. I am playing the game as a means of relaxing from that job. I do not need another. So when I hit that stage of being sick of the new game, I return to CoH. Yeah, it has its resources, but I can short circuit some of that if I choose by buying stuff with currency I get for just playing the game. The game even encourages not playing the character (rest xp) so encourages me to make more characters unlike games described above where every extra character requires even more time dedicated to daily/weekly/pvp/battleground/raid/etc. It probably helps that I have a greater tolerance for inefficiency from other players than most. Unless someone is sabotaging my game play, I am pretty easy about wiping a few times (or more, like in that 2-man DFB I did a month or two back).

Where did you get the idea I was sore or would be? The thread's title literally says, "I'm not complaining." I hold onto the characters because I am too lazy to strip and delete them if I am being honest with myself. Well, that and most of them have a concept, which seeing, makes me quasi-nostalgic over that sense of possibility which existed when I created them but was not lived up to in some way in actual play. Toss in the effort of giving them backgrounds, costumes, names...I am in no rush to delete them. But honestly, I am almost assuredly not going to play them ever again. Of course some chunk of them got touched this last weekend when I was hunting for recipes/enhancements I could transfer to my most recent, baby Dominator because I refuse to pay the inflated prices being asked for basic IOs in the level 25 range due to the rush of characters being created upping demand and prices. Yeah, I can afford the prices just like I can afford gasoline at $6 per gallon, but I am not paying either price. The humorous upside of filtering unplayed characters for recipes/enhancements is noticing you've made the same AT/primary/secondary more than once. Poor Electric/Energy Aura Stalker...you are just not meant to be.

I cannot say why he did not respond to that request as he did post the builds for the Fire/SS. Perhaps he just did not notice the request, or possibly it slipped his mind. Either way, he was logged into the forum as recently as yesterday and so it seems he is around to ask. But let me analyze my own contradictory nature some.... While it gets argued over whether it's true or not, the realm where the contention lies that Tankers potentially outshine Brutes is the realm of IO set bonuses. This thread got going looking at a level of play which pretty well requires set based builds. Still, it is commonly said the game is not balanced around set IOs then even if it is so that Tankers are ahead of Brutes in that realm the developers may not overly care. Or at least, they may not overly care if the gap stays sufficiently narrow and confined. After all, how many players reach 50 and how many of them engage in end game content? Am I concerned about Brute/Tanker performance outside that range? Honestly, I do not think so. For the most part, I am quite content with how Brutes and Tankers play up both solo and in group (I do not tend to apply set bonuses until a character is 50, excepting Recovery related ones and then only as needed). And as I noted elsewhere, Tankers needed something because I remember the tedium of playing up a Tanker previously. People talk about soloing Defenders being nasty, but I did that back at the beginning of live (admittedly pre-ED) and that was never so bad as post-ED Tanker soloing (excepting certain build). While it is interesting to read reports of it, I have never wanted to solo ITF on any character regardless of AT. If a Tanker can do it and a Brute cannot, or the Brute takes longer to do so that would suggest of some measure of AT imbalance, but it is not something I was ever planning on doing anyway. I cannot see that ever being my cup of tea.

I am not Bill so I am not sure why you would expect me to react like Bill any more than you would expect me to dance like Ginger Rogers (who I also am not). As for things people know, you know that Ston also noted the performance of his Fire/Savage tanker (4:06). You know this because in that thread you asked him for the build. Do note that Fire/Sav is not relying on any sort of Rage mechanic as Savage doesn't have one. And yet Savage Melee was only 11 second slower than Super Strength. That would suggest it is not Super Strength or Rage mechanics that is allowing the performance. Again, how are you explaining the Fire/Savage performance, as neither of those are in the powersets you consider exceptional?

It was the same player playing identical powersets in the same mission. Are you suggesting he was more skilled at melee on one character as opposed to the other? Then consider me in a generous mood as, despite you talking about me rather than the topic, I'm ignoring it.

Well, there is always... AmericanAgent.costume AmericanAgent2.costume

I believe I have posts in the Sentinel forum advocating for Sentinel changes. Why do some people seem to think saying AT <X> needs something means that AT <Y> does not?

The builds are both listed in the second post.

There is a thread where the same content gets run by different ATs which I think you're familiar with. Brutes are not clearing faster in that thread. As example: You do respond in that thread as if this is some sort of peculiarity of SS, but the same buy who posted the 3:50 time with the Tanker did the mission with an SS/FA Brute, which according to you should do it faster and the result was: The usual hallmark in the thread is posting success times without dying. He managed to make the same time only by dying. Had he been avoiding deaths he would have been slower. Same powersets, same content, only differing by AT.

It is not cherry-piciking to read English like one is taught how to read in school and how it is commonly practiced. Perhaps you should try using the language properly. As for leaving, I am doubtful anyone is going to miss your contributions to the thread.

When you get called out on this comment are you going to deny it being a version of, "Git Gud"?

I quote myself: So I addressed your team comment. The survival statement from you, in another paragraph, does not mention teams. Here, let me remind you: Not one bit about teams and wholly separated from your previous statement about teams by a blank line. In English that means the two thoughts are separate as sentences which go together are grouped together in the same paragraph. Perhaps instead of me misreading you miswrote?

I am not sure why I made an Assault Rifle/Poison Corruptor and played him to 50, but I did. That does not say there is anything good about that combo. (In fact, it was mostly about the challenge.)

Your position is self-contradictory. If it is all about team performance and Brutes just need the right team to fit in, then Tanks did not need a buff because (a) Tankers already fit into ALL teams already and (b) Tanker's role on the team was not dispatching targets but rather holding aggro. And no, Brutes do not have near Tanker survival. They have Scrapper survival because they get the same raw defense/resistance values as Scrappers and everyone shares the same ED limits. What Brutes have is higher caps for resistance than Scrappers have but they cannot reach those caps on their own or under SOs. I seem to recall a common mantra in these forums being the game is not meant to be balanced around the notion of IO set bonuses.

The base damage on Neutrino Bolt exceeds the base damage on Melodic Binding (not by a lot, but it does). Since Melodic Binding and Hymn of Dissonance have the same base damage, Neutrino Bolt also beats it for damage. As Neutrino Bolt is your weakest Radiation Blast power, the others will do even more damage compared to Melodic Binding and Hymn of Dissonance. Impassioned Serenade should be (can't check it without playing up but can look at City of Data) doing damage on par with X-Ray Beam. Long and short, you should be using your Radiation attacks, particularly when your Symphony attacks are on cooldown. In fact, you probably should prioritize them for dealing damage over your Symphony attacks as that allows you to apply controls when needed. So yes, use the Symphonic attacks but only when Radiation is on cooldown. And that before considering that Radiation attacks lower defenses and make it more likely for you (and others) to hit foes which have been hit by your Radiation attacks.

I soloed on my Defender back when Live was first released, which was before they got the solo damage buff they currently enjoy. So I would say go for it.

Any way to work in Soul Mastery/Darkest Night? Dropping incoming damage and to-hit would seem like another bump.

I admit to routinely wondering what is going through that that last guy's head while watching you pummel the next-to-the-last guy (penultimate) out of a group which started at a dozen or more since, sanely, when next-to-the-next-to-the-last (antepenultimate) guy was being beaten down he should have seriously considered running and sanely at the penultimate guy's beatdown is running. But don't comics show people continuing to commit crime in Metropolis despite the presence of a guy who can see through anything not made of lead, move in the blink of an eye, fly through stars, can discriminate conversations being held on the other side of the planet, and is only vulnerable to radioactive rock from his home planet, red sun radiation, and magic--none of which are in great supply. We have to take that while the universe seen looks a lot like ours, the population has distinctly different mental development/outlook. And don't even get me started on why people continue to willingly live in Paragon City. Gangs (some mystical, others hopped up on a mutagenic compound, and still others who have cyborged themselves ala Mad Max), burrows under the city filled with fascists and mystical malefactors, a dangerously deranged set of circus performers routinely in town and that before we get to large sections of the city utterly destroyed by aliens who still roam around. I would so very quickly be out of that town.

Isn't the notion of throwing oneself on a grenade that the life of one's nearby buddies can be saved? Fifteen people leaping on it should be considerably more effective, no? 😛