Enamel_32

I think I'll miss the original lineup a bit. It'll take some getting used to looking at the tanker version and only seeing 6 of the original power names.

Agreed that resistance is still the way to go. I made a high-defense build to test, and found that many little defense debuffs will chip away at your total, while simultaneously getting Reactive Regeneration up to speed and it smoothly takes over some of that mitigation work. But then there's also some stronger debuffs out there where this won't happen, and that's noticeably more ouchy.

I like both the attention to numbers and mechanics as well as the overall flavor, but have to wonder about how it interacts with... itself: I'm not aware of too many mechanics in the game right now that rely on stacking and consuming debuffs/tokens on enemies. This seems to be done mostly on the player side of the equation. I think the reason for that is when you have multiple Broadsworders in the mix, sever is going to end up benefiting one of those players, and the others don't get the big orange damage number. I think that could be solved in a couple ways, both of which I'm not sure are currently possible in the game: A. only remove 1 stack of laceration when sever is procced, or B. only remove stacks of laceration created by the player. Edit: I didn't mean to resurrect this thread. My apologies!

First off I'd like to say thanks for the clarification regarding Ailment Resistance, Dull Pain and Reconstruction. I fully agree with the motivation behind it. I've never really felt that Reconstruction pulls its own weight. I think a big reason is while it's roughly in line with other standard-size heals in the game, the overall set doesn't provide much in means of reducing damage, compared to the other sets with heals like this. Often I'll see incoming damage, while Reconstruction is activating, take a big bite out of the health I wanted Reconstruction to recover in the first place. Dull Pain / Second Wind get around this through brute force, but the 15% healing increase doesn't quite elevate it to that level.

Mechanically at level 50, the set performs well. Meaningfully better. The changes address a lot of issues people have complained about over the years. But I think the leveling experience hasn't been entirely factored into the changes, and may suffer as a result. Leveling is something I found to be rough even before the changes. I also share @Troo's take on Dull Pain and its shifting usage over time: However, I think that feeling this loss could be attributed to Reconstruction under-performing. That can be addressed in its own straightforward way, or Second Wind could be pulled earlier in the set.

The most common +healing effect might be in nature affinity, and it's the same negative resistance to "heal damage" as mentioned already. The stacks of Bloom effect it grants provides 4% increased healing received and stacks up to 20%. It only affects heals though, not health gained through regeneration.

Totally. Several things that were considered shortcomings of regen were completely reversed for WP. It has layered mitigation, doesn't rely on click powers, and has a scaling regeneration effect instead of just having 2 speeds: IH on, and IH off. Like Troo, mine's somewhere around 90s. I built my regen brute for resistance bonuses so I don't always need to reach for MoG, but it's really nice for alpha strikes, especially in those level 50 TFs that have you facing off against an entire group of Heroes/Archvillains.

I can kind of read between the lines with these suggestions, but what do you folks think Empathy isn't doing well today? I see a lot of talk about the set attracting people who aren't interested in the buff powers, tedious upkeep on the single target buffs, and reactive nature of healing being difficult to pull off when things get especially busy. Oh, and big big recharges on the auras. Anything else?

I've always wished for a burnout-like effect, since regen has so many long cooldowns.

If you want to play from the couch, you might want to look into a wireless mouse and keyboard like you'd use for a home theater PC setup, or one of those newer game streaming consoles. I think some players have even had success using a controller as well, you should be able to find some threads around here on that. Cross-platform support is usually one of the hardest things to do as a game developer for design, technical, monetary, and even legal/regulatory reasons, so thinking outside the (console) box is probably the solution. I'd of course love to be wrong here!

Nice! That reminded me I haven't posted Man Clay, who is also a little bit waxy.

I'm flattered that you went to the trouble of tallying the click power counts, but I was trying to say what you opened with, much more clumsily: it's a preference thing and some prefer to not be so closely involved in damage mitigation. I wouldn't call somebody lazy for not liking that either, but it IS more work. I'll try my best. I'm not thinking as much about level 50 and endgame builds. Maybe this is where our perspectives differ? It's hard to forget how rough leveling pre-40-ish was, and needing to use whatever powers I had unlocked (rune of protection too) with urgency. Sometimes followed by revive. I probably would have shelved the character without being able to reliably join teams. That changed pretty quickly as powers could be fully slotted, and even more with IOs. While not burdensome, it is noteworthy that 4 of the 9 powers are clicks that are defensive in nature. I don't think many people consider them optional, and they don't provide additional utility beyond not dying. It's a different experience with different motivations than using something like fiery embrace, shield charge, or power sink. With a "completed" level 50 brute, I also don't need to constantly click the powers, but I wouldn't attribute that to regeneration itself. Don't get me wrong: I'm a regen enjoyer and do a lot of challenge mode stuff with my brute, where I actually use more of the set than usual. But the gap between a finished level 50 and a "just got my T9" level 30-something character is huge for regen. More than any other build I've, uh, built.

With all the click powers, regen really does make you work for it. I'd say it makes you work a little too hard, out of the box.

Looking past how this is implemented (badges), I totally get the goal. Most memorable to me was an MO run of the market crash TF, where somebody died almost immediately before the final boss and we had a very effective teammate (understandably) get frustrated and quit. We still wanted to finish the TF, but that final boss was much, much harder to fight without the full team. If I wanted to go for that MO badge again, would I want to team up with that same player again? Were they a serial-quitter or was this just a bad day? It's not feasible to say with the tools we have available. (Edit: I say feasible here because you have to actively make use of the notes feature, and that only involves your own personal interaction with other players. You have to be bitten once or twice before you can form that conclusion.)

Indeed, people will go for the badge because you gotta catch 'em all. What if we flipped it? Have something like a "TF quitter survivor" badge?

I meant that question more in legal/ncsoft agreement terms, not so much the costumes coming out of such a change. Back in the day it was probably relevant for things like the ESRB rating.

My 2 cents: This would help with muted and neutral colors, which aren't very well represented in the default color palette. I've always felt a bit limited with my options for brown, for example. I think it was an intentional design choice that you can't pick flesh tones for, say, tights. What changes, if anything, if that's possible?

Your screenshot is a little hard to read, it looks like you've probably got Rest toggled on. Maybe Moment of Glory, too? It's hard to tell what bonuses you've built up with those two active but it looks like you've got some good resistances.

That's an interesting thread to pull on. I think a damage-adjacent debuff like -Max HP has potential, but maybe that's too strong for a PBAoE. But then my thoughts wandered to making fury provide more reliable damage. What if fury provided a smaller damage bonus, but let you bypass a portion of enemy resistances? You'd keep most of the status quo for the other melee ATs, and brutes would occupy a "hard target specialist" niche where they'd be uniquely equipped to beat up big beefy baddies. Like minotaurs, for example.

There's plenty of animations and effects to borrow from too, between poison, water blast, and probably a bunch of other powers I'm forgetting.

I know the villain alignment power grants brutes 100% fury... why couldn't Build Up, Follow Up, etc. also grant some amount fury?

Back to talking about brutes: replacing one or more powers for every brute out there is a big thing to ask for. Regardless of whether I like the end result, having to respec several level 50s sounds like a chore. Fury requires some time to build and continued activity to keep at high levels, and the end result is closer-to-scrapper-than-tanker levels of damage. I definitely agree it would be nice to have something beyond "somewhere between scrapper and tanker" but It's also worth mentioning that some players consider that summary to be inaccurate now that tankers have increased target caps. Increasing a brute's target cap, even if it's tied to fury, even if the cap is lower than what tankers get, may be hard to sell given people's opinions on AE farming and how a change like that would make it easier. To me, they've always been the "freight train" archetype and I'd like to see more aspects of momentum built into the inherent. If that sounds vague, it's because I haven't come up with anything especially satisfying 😂 but I'll keep thinking about it.

I like it. Speaking of procs, I could also see this potentially working as a proc in a new teleport IO set.

Agreed. I've been trying to describe one benefit of predictable damage, and I don't believe it involved making arguments that critical strikes were detrimental at any point. One thing being beneficial doesn't mean the other is a drawback. In fact, my "winning wars" bit was intended to be a nod to crits being stronger overall, while fury might win the occasional battle here and there. I wasn't aware of nerfs, were those before the official NCSoft agreement?

Of course, because that would be absurd! This is where our analogy breaks down. If you receive unexpected extra money, you can keep it. You cannot put unexpected critical hit damage in a bank for later, however. If a crit was total overkill, it's A. comical in a way video games do very well, and B. serves no purpose. Apologies if this detail wasn't clear enough. I don't need to. The game tells me exactly how much damage the attacks do after resistance and visually how much of the HP bar it took away. I don't find it difficult to build up an intuition once I've smashed through a group or two. Happy to hear you mother is paying less for internet, though. They're usually happy to keep quiet about stuff like that and keep charging the original amount. Why I pick brutes, though, is the optimization possibilities: having high damage and resistance caps (and a few other things including the fury mechanic) make for enjoyable problem solving, there's space for a build to "grow" in multiple directions. I don't find being between a tanker and scrapper a shameful thing (though I do feel tankers are a touch strong in their current state) and I can dial in exactly where between those two I want each brute of mine to reside.