[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

Tanker's get the arc/radius boost, which definitely makes them more valuable versus groups of foes (and by extension, more attractive to most teams) but there are plenty of cases where Brutes have the damage output edge. Such as Levelling up, Soloing; and AV/GM fights.

 

*Thinks about his Bio/Rad Melee Tanker who lives in Offensive stance and how much mileage he gets out of the extra survivability while using two damage aura on top of the Offensive stance* 

 

And its not like extra survivability cannot be turned into extra xp by upping the difficulty setting. As I noted upthread, I got through a full story arc and halfway through the next without realizing on my latest Tanker I had left it set higher from a TF I had run the night before. The benefit is there until levelling is done whereas the realm where Fury is putting you way out of ahead of other melees is quickly run through: Buy two hour long xp boosts, do DFB, Posi 1, and Posi 2 and now you are level 24. 

 

I can assure you, not a single one of my Brute tosses out the following numbers at the same level as the scrapper I was playing was doing so:

 

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

2 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

Just reported this incident to the Mod. I believe you are being antagonistic and it needs to end.

You dropped in to claim the person you accused of cherry-picking, then downvoted, then made a production about notifying the mods about is being antagonistic?

 

I asked a straightforward question of you and got accusations of in incitement. 

 

Remind me who is being antagonistic here.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 minute ago, Gobbledigook said:

Actually they have. Yet again you are cherry picking to incite argument. Have fun lol.

 

If they had, you'd have quoted them.

 

Bye-bye!

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

9 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

I don't rest. It's victory or death. And death is rare. lol. 

 

My only problem with fury is how you can't hit and hold 100%.  That's a problem honestly.  Generating it is a non issue though. 

 

I look at 100 Fury like I look at 150mph on my car's speedometer--ain't never gonna happen.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

27 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

I think you are unnecessarily carrying this to the extreme there - that just is not nor ever will be the case.  I am currently leveling 2 brutes that I have a tanker counterpart. That I am having more fun on the brute - because they do more in your face damage up front and there's also an excitement from playing on the edge of victory or defeat and biting off more than you can chew occasionally - and still winning.  I like the brute better in those cases. 

I was running my latest Tanker though the Nance/Adair clone arc and at one point thought, "I'm not moving that much more slowly than on a brute." 

 

Then I wondered why oranges kept showing up and remembered the night before someone on the Posi 1 I was leading had asked for +1 and I had forgot to set myself back to 0. Pretty sure I would have noticed sooner on a Brute.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

9 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Then you should try it again. Thunderstrike was recently buffed such that the set is better than it used to be.

 

I'll dust off my Elec/Stone Brute and check it out.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

9 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

It's good on all 4 actually, I think it's best on the stalker - just IMO though. 

 

I've done it multiple times...just not loving it though I want to.

 

But I'm crazy. I'm currently play up a KM Tanker.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 minute ago, Infinitum said:

Brute Energy Punch, bone Smasher, total focus, and energy transfer is a bad day for most groups.  I never use Barrage on anything unless I have a free spot or have to. 

 

I the brute aoe is still good enough and stronger than a tanker aoe and will kill the trash just not as many as the tanker will at one time.

 

So when the Tanker ignores the first group, who will follow him, and leads them to the second group, confident in shrugging off a group's worth of attacks, and AoEs them down, the Brute is working the groups separately and taking longer to do it?

 

Real data point here: Fury decays. If you have to rest as a Brute, you are doing inferior damage for need to rebuild Fury. You are now hitting fewer targets for less damage. If Tankers had to build up the size of their AoEs....

 

...hmm....

 

You know...area tied to Fury...

 

Nah, the wailing from the Tanker subforum would be too painful.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

11 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Electric Melee is another. 

 

In fact, Stalker is the only AT I have ever heard found Electric Melee good.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

19 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

Tankers are performing well and are much more fun to play now than in the past. Do you really want the old Tanker back?

 

Has anybody asked for such? Or is this just to demand ignoring Brutes doing less damage than the tanking primary AT?

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

14 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Once you get the trash out of the way and ST becomes the majority of your targets left the brute will pull away from most tankers even having slightly less sturdy defenses. 

 

Trash is the majority of missions, and not having Giganto-sized AoEs means more ST fighting groups down for the Brute. Moreover, the AoE powers are far less plentiful and on longer times than ST powers. Power Crash and Whirling Hands is not how a Brute takes down groups, Barrage, Energy Transfer, etc are.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

33 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

That or never allow side switching ever. As it is the ATs are too close together.

 

Side switching would have been fine had powers not been proliferated all over the place.

 

Just waiting for Tankers to get Energy Aura and Scrapers/Stakes to get Super Strength. Then Brutes can be completely removed from the game.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

10 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

I find it funny when people put themselves in these little camps of Brute/Tank/Scrapper. Dont people play more than just ONE AT ?

 

I find it funny when people assume that most people in the thread don't play most ATs.

 

Was considering posting to the costume thread about my latest Tanker (started because of a comment in this thread).

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

8 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Haven't fought Warwolf and Mage bosses recently?

 

When whatever special case you want to point at represents the general nature of play, call me.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

40 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Especially since I'm not sure Trapdoor catches the current meta.  Consider where we went with nuCouncil and nuCircle and X star task forces.

 

Always some reason to deny the obvious.

 

Did the Meta change such that Brutes do more damage or Tankers do less? No. Then the metric which existed and  under which  people denied  Tanker superiority until such time as it was demonstrated time, and time, and time again gives plenty of insight.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

I dunno, if none of those AT take longer than 6:20 at +4x8... I don't think this is evidence that one AT outclasses another enough to cry 'Nerf'.

 

I think the issue was your claim that in only edge cases were Tankers outperforming Brutes--something I pointed out was true only be stretching the definition of edge past majority of cases.

 

A team is just plain better off bringing a Tanker over a Brute for most scenarios where you have a team. The Tanker is more likely to live and will do more in terms of speeding how quickly the group gets through the missions/TF.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

27 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

So this is showing that by some measure there may be a 5-to-10 second difference in something?

 

EDIT: I mean to say: Is this something like a trapdoor test? a Pylon?

 

Trapdoor: 

 

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

30 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

I wonder if the fire melee difference is due to combustion only being on tankers. 

 

I'd had the thought but was waiting for someone more knowledgeable to comment.

[Why is Kinetic Melee still bad?]

Running DFB and Posi 1 on my newly created WP/KM Tanker last night and already it sucks to repeatedly have the third attack's wind up be so long that foes with 40% health when I initiated the attack are dead before the attack lands. Radiation Melee has a slow pace but at least its attacks land like a hammer dropped from space. By comparison, with KM it's a long wait for love tap.

 

At level 19 now. Will see how I feel once I get him to his 30s.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

6 hours ago, tidge said:

The Brutes v. Tanks argument is a corner case that relies primarily (my PoV) on very specific build/slotting choice

 

If we go by this (higher is worse)...

 

 

...the specific builds are anything other than Electric Melee, Titan Weapon, Dual Blades, Psionic Melee, Staff Fighting, and Broadsword--that works out to be 16 of 22 powersets. I would usually expect an edge case to be a tiny fraction of the possibility space, not 72.7% of it. A similar usage of the word "edge" puts the majority of the US population in the edge states east of the Mississippi.

 

Edit: It was an actual edge case which got Brutes nerfed in the first place. FWIW, I think Tankers should be left alone at this point. Just give teams a reason to have Brutes along.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

43 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Condider that the tanker advantage at the high end game could be their reward for being less fun leveling and exemping than the brute.

 

Then Defenders should be seriously boosted.

 

I have played and exemplared plenty of Tankers. They were plenty fun.

 

43 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

An SG mate's Dark/Dark tank had me considering one of my own until I realized what few attacks he'd have for the first half of his leveling journey.  So I made him a Dark/Dark brute instead.  Much more fun.

 

I do believe the latest big patch has suitable altered the pace of power acquisition for everyone. 

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

10 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

MO Brutes are indeed fine when compared to other melee ATs before a tricked out IO build is taken into consideration; particularly when soloing.

 

If performance while soloing were the yardstick of comparison, Brutes did not need any nerfs as Scrappers were just fine while soloing.

11 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

But they bring very little to teams - Tankers have better AoE damage and sustainability (even if both are at the res caps, Tanks still have a bigger HP + Absorb pool); Stalkers and Scrappers have better Single Target and Spike damage.

 

And then there is this. There is no reason to have a Brute along--the Tanker is tougher, taunts just for being there, and does more AoE damage and the Scrapper as you note deals much better burst.

 

It is worrisome that in the lead up to the most recent patch, the Developers That Be apparently mentally lump Brutes in as some sort of faux-Tanker, as that was the role assigned to Brutes before the system was scrapped. Brutes do not survive so well. And when the difficulty setting starts getting turned up, it becomes painfully obvious.

 

16 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

The Scrapper and Stalker ATOs increase the peak damage output of those ATs considerably, and the same is true for the the Tanker ATOs in terms of survivability... but Brute ATOs are not in the same ballpark performance-wise. They could honestly do with a tweak to get them into the same ballpark.

 

This is something noted by a lot of people and has been noted for a long time. But there is NOTHING to suggest it is even under consideration.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

48 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I’m sorry but the idea that BRUTES, the number one most popular AT in the game....

 

 You have something to back up that claim? Or are you relying on statistics from long ago, say like claiming GM is the number one car seller in the world because they sold more cars than anyone else in 1972?

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

Personally I'd still like to see one of the Brute ATOs altered to grant an AoE teamwide damage buff based on their current Fury level.
That way bringing a Brute along would actually benefit the rest of the team a little bit more than bringing a Scrapper/Stalker; and it'd serve a slightly different role to a tanker.

 

So the Brute would get nothing from slotting the ATO?

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

 

People who want to solo maps made for teams. It SHOULD be a slog. For EVERY AT.

 

I do not recall making a comment on ease or difficulty, just which AT is better.