Erratic1

What a person finds fun is what THEY should be doing, but it is not a way to objectively view things and make an comparison of performance across ATs. I've had fun on objectively underpowered combinations, but that fun does not change the actual underpowered nature of the combo.

I admit, I had been considering Burn's area being boosted but had not checked that point. Were you using Follow Up to boost damage on both or looking at Burn in complete isolation? If I am following your numbers correctly, that would bring the final set of numbers to roughly 171 for the Tanker initial hit, vs 168 for the Brute, 9.55 ticks for the Tanker and 10.94/7.54 for the Brute. Totals would be 295.15 for the Tanker, 279.22 for the Brute. Mind, I am not saying the Tanker is better off but that the Fury break even point is pushed higher (you have established pretty solidly Burn working roughly evenly). Moreso if Follow Up is stacked twice. And keep in mind Claws was found to favor Tankers. So overall it still looks to me Claws/Fire favors Tankers, just not so much as I thought.

I learned something new about KREA today. During the generation process you do not need to use Quick Enhance to end up with clear, upscaled results. In fact, not using Quick Enhance can leave you at a result you prefer over what Quick Enhance will produce. The downside of this is the details will remain fuzzy until you upscale an image. I started from this screenshot: From: To: Edit: You don't even need to use the Generation interface at all beyond uploading your image. Upscale it and use the options presented on the Upscale panel. True, you get no feedback on what things will look like, but you can repeatedly tweak and upscale directly. From: To:

I don't slot SO, but rather crafted IOs, but that is neither here nor there to the point of perhaps your view being distorted as I actually exam people when I team and far fewer are Set IO'd to the gills than are.

The lead was 19. Truthfully the worst of it was the early missions with too many people running off as if solo, or pulling way too much. It got much better towards the end.

Yeah, shouldn't have invited the Stalker, but I was not the one in charge. In reality, the Stalker was a star.

+1 for the first mission, +0 thereafter. Six Brutes, a Scrapper, and a Stalker

Bosses aren't pylons. Elite bosses, which are not common, might at times approximate one (e.g. Protean*). Caves tend to have big rooms containing multiple spawns. So advantage Tanker there where in the hallways, with constrained spawn sizes it's more breakeven. But advantage + breakeven = advantage. And most missions are not caves in any event. You're talking an IO'd, endgame Brute. Talk to me about levels 20-49 and SOs. And as goes endgame, against the big, end of trial/TF, you want a Tanker. If the survivability of Tankers is overkill, then you have no objections to Brutes getting some of that...say half the difference now between Brute and Tanker values? Or maybe Tankers not getting any higher values and having to reach cap like Brutes do, through set bonuses and not skipping Toughness? Back on topic, I have yet to see anything substantiating Claws/Fire performance being better on a Brute versus a Tanker. The entire calling card of Fiery Aura is Burn, which favors Tankers. *I play every character I make against Protean. I can assure you the Tankers have an easier time than the Brutes.

So do eruptions of the Yellowstone super-volcano--something most people don't want to be present for.

It was, on both accounts. At a certain point it goes from being a train wreck... ...to a train wreck witnessed from an RV while having Thanksgiving Dinner with the one uncle with odious political views during a natural disaster. However, I am proud of the four others who stuck it out out of the eight we started with.

Not sure I have ever seen something like this before:

Does not sound passive in the least. Just aggressive.

Depends on how they are doing damage. With greater area and greater survivability, the arena where Brute does more damage is confined to single target. And yet the primary draw of any Fire Aura build is area damage, particularly when damage boosted via Claws/Follow Up. I do not believe it is controversial in the least that Tanker deal more area damage nor is it controversial that damage boost are less immediately meaningful to Brutes than any other AT. If I am reading City of Data correctly, Tanker Burn deals 110.3 base damage whereas Brute Burn deals 87.08 base damage (Mid's gives other numbers but the Tanker is likewise ahead). The Tanker never has to ramp of Fury and has less downtime to recover from combat regardless since their defense values are inherently better. Damage is more than just raw numbers but a matter of how frequently you can deliver it and Tankers have Brute beat in that department, IOs or not. I have been running an increasing number of Tankers, and I up the difficulty on missions far sooner on Tankers because it becomes so easy to herd things up and take them down. And if I have to spend a little more time on a Tanker working on a boss, well, I spent a whole heck of a lot less time taking the trash down and at far less risk. So let's not just simply toss out the line, "Brutes do more damage"--it simply is not true. I have run Tankers solo while levelling and it is not only not a slog like in the old days...it is in fact pretty darned zippy. The number of bodies around on an AT that oozes taunt is limited only by the caps the designers have put in.

I know I have asked for it before, and there was explanation, but still... Short sleeve tights would be awesome.

Given the area increase on Tankers, why is Claws/Fire not better on a Tanker (before we consider greater survivability on the Tanker achieved sooner and far easier)?

Atomic Smash has the highest chance of your attacks to apply Contaminated at 35%. Always follow Atomic Smash with Radiation Siphon. Not as effective as picking the advertised target but requires no evaluation.

If you're told not to do something and do it anyway, it is no longer an accident/screw up. Its malicious.

That was the point: You cannot look at Claws (or any set) in isolaton. The secondary matters and the combination must be considered as opposed to just the pieces of it.

This isn't World of Warcraft where one person doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment wipes the entire party. Closest you will likely come is the accidental pull of a second group, most times--which still should not cause a total wipe.

Per City of Data, Brute Spin hits for 78.8276, Scrapper Spin hits for 98.8472. Factor in recharge and you're looking at 5.63 dps vs 10.74 dps. The scrapper will slot to enhance damage to the ED cap and be near double his base at 21.48 dps. To match that the Brute needs to multiply his damage by 3.8 times. Base damage gets him 1, shooting gets him 1, leaving 1.8 for Fury. I typically consider Brutes to be working a bit below that at 1.7, so the gap is not that big. Yes, the Scrapper has crits, but that is true for every offensive set. So I am not sure the Brute is being crushed in the area damage department as much as 14s vs 9.2s suggests. It may be, at least at times, too reductive to look at individual sets in isolation. Two of the defensive sets with damage auras are resistance sets--which everyone agrees work better on Brutes. One is hybrid (Bio), and so while better than a pure resistance set for Scrappers still favors Brutes. One is defense based (Ice). Claws/Electric probably is better on a Brute than a Scrapper and would have some pluses compared to Claws/<non-damage aura> on a Scrapper. Claws/Ice...yeah, play a Scrapper or Tanker.

Decided to give a red side Blaster a go in the form of Energy Blast/Ninjitsu.

I always pay some attention, but I pay more attention when playing a buff/heal AT.

I'm looking at: A bit better S/L resistance but that is not so much that there is going to be a significant difference in feel I'd think. Keep in mind on WM/Bio you have an ablative absorption shield and the ability to majorly ramp regen on top of having a heal as compared to Ninjitsu having a heal but neither of the other two. On tradeoff, Nin is giving you stealth, crit from stealth, a bit of DDR, am a To-Hit debuff/sleep/confuse.

Are you only relying on Defense and have not done anything with your resistances?

When a rogue Circle of Thorns falls in love with a rogue Fortunata, their offspring is unlikely to have what society would call an acceptable view of how the individual is supposed to fit into society. Flame Sauvage, my new Fire/Claws Tanker is going to have things her way...she's sure of that.