Erratic1

It would take so very little in the way of changes to push the S/L resistance a lot closer to 90%. Just a rush job to see what could be done on S/L resistance with various powers and slots freed (was going to do a full build but had something come up). Might work on a full one later.

I am not greedy nor grabbing names to reserve. I renamed a character to the name he had on his original server when I moved him and it was being held by someone apparently not playing. Renamed a character to a name which a certain Marvel character shares whose theme is utterly different but completely fitting of the character I am playing. I checked and have not lost any of the plentiful names I have on characters which are now freed up. I am not going to take steps to hold those names. If someone wants them, they are out there to take.

I do not find it often the extra targeting capacity of Energy Focus mode Power Crash is meaningful. As for the initial question, you already are playing a Claws character, so on balance Energy Melee would probably be the choice between the two. I can very much get behind the notion of taking Cross Punch (something I do on SS characters) because EM is a bit weak area wise compared to other powersets. The other merit to Energy Melee paired with Rad Armor would be its support for using Energy Transfer (in Energy Focus mode) as quickly as you can get Total Focus to cycle as regen will help offset the health loss.

The thing about black holes is...they're black. And the thing about space is...its black.

Villa...come here...I need you.

Film for visual lushness, series for plot/action.

Completely untrue. A Brute will never, ever, EVER tank as well as a Tanker. Period. They will also never, ever, EVER do as much damage as a Scrapper or Stalker. There is no choice. They will be second place no matter what they do. You object to something which was not said. Using the procs is a matter of slotting them. Good luck surviving if you go proc happy as a Brute relies heavily on set bonuses to reach maximum Brute survivabilty and proc'ing out will hinder you getting there. *LOL* And Brutes were never mentioned in the above. So an utterly meaningless aside.

Ston was a rather prolific collector/tester of AT performance and the image was taken from his thread: You can click the above and go to the thread. Mind you, this is only a portion of of the totality of his work and discusses on Trapdoor, which favors area attacks and more importantly procs--something it is somewhat hard to load up on as a Brute as compared to a Tanker because Brutes have to bend their slotting towards survivability. Pylon is another common metric. And before this thread, there were others where people both reported their performance and often video clips of their runs. In the previous Trapdoor thread (in the Scrapper subforums I think) Ston would regularly challenge people's notions on exactly what type of performance could be managed on Tankers. You can catch him doing so in the following thread (which predates the one above) here: Posting the image I did is a remind to some of the participants of this thread they participated in those other threads and did not find near the objections they have managed to find in this one.

But a very few Brute builds, buffed to the gills in a team setting, was a problem requiring nerfing all Brutes, eh? You are engaging in tactic of disassembly--arguing no specific point proves an end conclusion as distraction from the assembly of points meaning something. I asked above what specifically would constitute proof of one of your fellow naysayers and got nothing specific in return. I leave you the question.

The primary advantage Brutes have over Scrappers is more hit points and a higher resistance cap. That last bit does not mean much until IOs come into play and the first is possibly not that meaningful if the Brute is using a defense set as opposed to a range based one as it is hard to cap defenses and then push past 75% on resistances. Add on top that unlike with Tankers vs Brutes in terms of survival, Brutes get the same value out of their armor sets as Scrappers do. So yes, your impression of the survivability advantage of Brutes to Scrappers is correct.

Something like the following:

I would go Battle Axe over Broadsword. The ability to drag foes with you using Axe Cyclone and cluster them together is amazing and having just used one area attack, you can follow up with both Pendulum and Cleave. You will want to plan for the lack of an armor set endurance recovery option ahead of time.

I was agreeing with you mostly, just underscoring the AT focus involves more than just damage. OP has a forum history of extremely opinionated positions usually at considerable odds with common experience.

I was exploring various AI generators and for the life of me, I cannot remember which one I used to generate the underlying image I used for the below, but it was spectacular...except for the incredibly mangled hands. So I took that image, ran it through a different site, clipped out the hands and got the following result:

Aside from the fact it solos decently when considered against the rest of ranged ATs (solo Blaster is risking failure more often for example), I ran Synapse on my latest Corruptor on Friday. He is Ice/Marine. We ran without pause because I was able to keep everyone's endurance sufficiently high they never had to stop to recover endurance, buffing their resistance lowered incoming damage, and buffing damage, recharge, and To-Hit allowed us to cruise right along. Some of my corruptors blast more than others. Really depends on the nature and number of buffs to tend to (as well as how often people push the envelope and require I focus on healing). Ice blast makes you play a bit more like a controller--focus on the Ice Storms and Blizzards, the single targets are just icing on the cake.

At any given amount of equal expenditure, the Tanker will be more survivable and be able to load on more (until failure of course).

And in particular, you can grow the size of enemy spawns by setting team size higher, so there is great density to plow through.

Not played a Tanker recently I take it? Because this is massively untrue.

Marine as I see it is more of a buff powerset than a debuff one. Torroidal Bubble buffs Recovery, Resistance, and grants Endurance. You should keep this one up all the time on your group. Its effects are easy for recipients to miss, but there will be fewer deaths and more uptime. Tide Pool does debuff enemy damage and movement speed (Slows). It also buffs the damage of friends standing in it. Solo play you can place it under yourself to boost your damage then when foes come at you retreat, leaving them to be slowed. In groups, drop it where the fighting will occur and your melees will love it. Shifting Tides boosts Damage, To-Hit, and Recharge. Drop on a melee, pet if running solo, or even an enemy if need be. This is the big power of the set, eclipsing the T9. Take the above and your heal (Soothing Wave), and anything else is optional (often good but none necessarily critical).

The base defense/resistance values for a Tanker are higher than for a Brute. As example, a Tanker gets 15% Defense to Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative from Environmental Modification compared to 11.25% for a Brute using the same power. For equal shooting the resulting values will be higher on the Tanker. Bio Armor is like every other armor set in this regard. This holds true for Power Pool powers too--Tanker values are higher. Tough for a Tanker gives 15% Smash/Lethal resistance, for a Brute it gives 11.25% For equal power/slotting investment a Brute will be at two-thirds the values of a Tanker. When a Tanker is at 90% mitigation the Brute is at 60%. Where a Tanker would take 200 points of damage in a period of time at 90% resistance a Brute at 60% would take 800. Where a Tanker at 45% defense would average 200 points of damage a Brute would average 800. So the Brute will have to recover sooner. Healing likewise gets boosted for the Tanker, with healing powers healing more. And all this on top of the Tanker having more health. More incoming damage and weaker healing means more time spent healing. Of course the Brute can invest more in his armors, but slots are not infinite. And IO set bonuses spent to fill the gap are not available for other things as Maelwys pointed out.

If the Brute has to spend time recovering from the greater incoming damage the Tanker does not, the Tanker pulls ahead when considering performance over time.

Only help I need is in seeing how consistent your position is.

The numbers are not theoretical but the results of testing and reported clear times, not just theory. Moreover nobody is ttruly asserting no single Brute build ever outperforms a Tanker build. In your case, without seeing your builds and how you play them, nothing can be said against what you have reported. And as indicated more than once in the thread, certain mechanics favor Brutes. Quite a few suggestion are listed at the beginning of the thread and Savage was repeatedly mentioned. But one powerset favoring Brutes is not the hallmark of the AT as a whole.

Then you think Brutes never needed to be nerfed in the first place because what you claim of Brutes now was true of Scrappers then? They were at the time soloing +4×8 content. Establish your position as nonsensical and doubtlessly I will. And it's not like you don't have access to the ignore feature.

I'll expect it right after proc bombing gets fixed and name freeing is implemented.