Erratic1

Shhhh...Don't tell you know who.

Meteor immediately followed by Upthrust means the Upthrust will arrive at the same time as the Meteor. The delay is a glorious thing.

Underpowe.... ...oh, waitaminute.

Amazingly, I am aware of what set categories the various ATs get.

The conversation has moved a bit over the last 11 pages. Most of my objection has been to the damage Tankers put out. No, I wanted to talk about where the conversation most recently was, not where it got started. 😛

I would say it is. You've built a Tanker with a damage auras on top of having greater area to work with on the damage aura and the SM attacks and compared it to a Brute who is getting a much smaller gain through Shield than from Fury, has no damage aura, and smaller area attacks. Offensive Stance is a fixed damage buff for the Tankers, Against All Odds is variable. It is in no way an apple-to-apple comparison but more apple-to-koala comparison, especially as goes talking about Savage Melee. Edit: And since Pets are notoriously a poor damage vector for Brutes, so Shield Charge is no grand thing. I had a dinner date and am just now getting home.

What is your brute's secondary?

@The Chairman already covered it, but got to their website and download the most recent ZIP package.

v3.4.6 here with DBVersion 2022.9.201

After testing on the test server my sentinel is coming out of retirement with a new sense of purpose.

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.