Enamel_32

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.

I can't speak for Project, but I can kind of see a reason myself. In terms of being able to effectively plan ahead, a "Critical Paycheck" (fun concept/name by the way) is hard to work with. The extra money is inevitable, however the time scale is not. I need to know when it can be put to use, to get my old junker car repaired, schedule a vacation, etc. For a Brute, there is little uncertainty about how much damage their next attack will do, and that helps inform what the most appropriate next attack would be, or when they will need to switch to a different target. Critical strikes can do double damage on a last hit and contribute nothing just as easily they can transform a first hit into a one-shot. It's certainly nice and I wouldn't turn it down, but I can't maximize its output by playing a certain way like with fury. It's a "winning battles" vs. "winning wars" relationship, but that's my two cents.

I like the suggestion of Lucky Dodge, I think it may be of more use than the passive scaling resistance since it's a front-loaded effect. I can only imagine you'd get one source of resistances or the other, not both.

I think my ideal state for Regeneration vs. debuffs would be close to 0% resistance, and instead all the durations are greatly reduced, something above 80% duration reduction. Thematically it's all about feeling the pain and completely bouncing back, after all. As far as I'm aware, the game doesn't allow for that unfortunately. However, you could do this with status effects. I think fear resistance would be fine and dandy to add, potentially along with 1 or 2 other less-common status effects.

This had me thinking: if you were to observe a hypothetical "power armor" set of any type in the game, what would stand out? How would you describe the way it plays? I would expect some themes to emerge: Automation, dynamically reacting to the current situation An element of resource management (click powers, stacking buffs, endurance, etc.) Multiple modes, or player-initiated overrides to default behavior If you work backwards from that (or hey, pick your own) criteria, is there a name that works regardless if character origin? Maybe something like Automated Defense or Intelligent Armor?

^Agreed. "Power Armor" is a suggestion I had been considering making on and off for quite some time now, and the only conclusive part of the design I could come up with was "something mechanically distinct from regen/willpower/invulnerability/super reflexes/etc. but still fairly low-FX" because costumes are necessarily going to be cooler, more imaginative, and more appropriate for a given player than if the set overlaid geometry on the player like bio or stone armor. What you're left with is... fiddly to craft an identity around.

For leveling a regen brute, I've found that teaming can make a big difference, especially with access to res/def buffs as they effectively multiply regen's mitigation. If you're solo the opposite can hold true, depending on what debuffs are being thrown your way. Pretty early on I decided I wanted to make a challenge/gimmick build out of my fire/regen brute so I went all-in on resistance bonuses: I probably went a bit too far with the experiment, and I may end up swapping in more recharge... but it's definitely stable! Edit: this is without rune of protection active.

I think I've said this in another thread here, but my experience is that if you're not equipped to deal with them, it's slow and/or annoying. Not necessarily difficult, just low on the fun meter. If you are equipped to deal with them, the experience becomes much more... tactical? Whether that's having a fast-animating attack or raw DPS to beat them before the power activates, debuffs or control effects you can apply proactively, or psionic damage, it's got potential to be an interesting fight. They always have the same vulnerability to psionic damage. I think it would feel like less of a "progress wall" to some, and maybe even more lore-accurate, if these "recycled parts" paragon protectors each had different damage type weaknesses.