William Valence

The rule was to allow players to have consistency in expectations toward what their powers do. It was the prevailing design theory that there should be consistency, and players should be able to trust that the powers they use do the same thing day in and day out. The result keeps powersets from drifting, but the rule is very individual power specific. The quote, in context, was referencing changing a specific power in Ice melee IIRC. Not to keep ice melee from drifting, but because it's unnecessary to change the core function of the power in question to do what he wanted at the time. The example castle gave was power-centric (build up) not powerset-centric. And there's a lot that can be done in that philosophy, and I haven't really see anything that shows that @Captain Powerhouse intends to stray from the consistency focused design style. I may not like tankers being pushed more offensively, but that doesn't violate the cottage rule or consistency of effect of their powers, it's a pure tuning thing. It's a me problem not a CoX design style problem. Rage is better single and double stacked, than before, unless you were either able to ignore the crash by having large amounts of resists rather than, or on top of, defense. It preserves both types of play, makes single stack more viable, and makes it so that the crash applies properly without regard to the defense set you choose. It could be made a toggle, and it would still be a power that when used, adds to your damage. But it's a creative change that preserves and improves what exists without having to make sweeping design changes. The opposite of a "Cottage Rule" design philosophy would be in a game like League of Legends where the core functionality of powers and items change patch to patch. There are likely other servers which will approach design and balance in this way, and I think it will be scary to see how ugly it ends up.

Doesn't help that the cottage rule is one of the most misunderstood, and misapplied things in the CoX community.

Gonna phrase all this slightly differently, consolidating thoughts and being less vague, but trying one more time. Can we give: Controllers, Defenders, Corruptors, and Brutes 10 Rage base, all the time, with their inherent, Everyone else, but tankers, would get 17 Rage with their inherent, all the time. Tankers would get 24 Rage, all the time with gauntlet. Modify the call for the aggro cap process to compare aiTarget->attackerList.count against aiTarget->attrCur.fRage instead of the currently defined critter aggro cap. Would let you test both a variable aggro cap, as well as how the AI handles modification to the cap on the fly using Brute's fury inherent. Allowing you to test powers that modify the cap as well. If life is good technically, then a new attribute can be made, fAggro or some nonsense, and Rage would no longer be needed as a placeholder. You could even attempt a damage buff for tankers in their inherent, that scales down based on how many enemies are on their attacker list. Allowing tankers to better stack on teams when one has a majority of the aggro.

@Captain Powerhouse Would it be possible to try an iteration of pineapple with a Variable aggro cap attempt, just to see if something in the direction of differentiating the ATs around aggro control and manipulation would even be feasible?

You leave the first sentence to provide context for the second sentence. If I was saying that it wasn't how incarnate swapping worked, I wouldn't have added the second sentence, and simply sassed the Exactly how it works part. Because the first sentence provides the assertion of how core swapping works, but the second doesn't reference core swapping specifically, rather using a determiner phrase "they can put that kind" it's appropriate to keep the first sentence to maintain context and avoid cutting the thought in half or risk quoting out of context. This has been your overly pedantic English lesson on how to properly quote an idea when being a sassy bastard.

The fury break-even point is the difference in scale damage between tanker and brutes two at buff level / brute base damage scale / 2 rounded up. Or the base scale damage for brutes / the difference between tanker and brute damage at buff rounded up. First seems more accurate with rounding, but either is close enough. Since fury adds between 2% and 200% base damage, you want to know how much of a difference between the two there is, and how much brute base damage needs to be added to match. For example using @csr's Rage +enh example. Tanker does 2.6125 scale damage and brute does 2.0625 for a difference of .55 scale damage. To make up the .55 scale damage the brute would need .55/.75 or 73.33(Repeating of course /lerroy) or 37 fury. Proof -> .75 * ( 1 + .95 + .8 + .74) = 2.6175 -> within rounding error as breakpoint was between fury points. He's looking at the break even point. The fury needed to match tanker damage at a given level of equivalent buff. Also there were some errors in what you did: These are literally plus percentages, so you add the percentage, not multiply. So you either add damage equal to 175% or 315% or multiply by 100% plus buffs. So damage would be 275 and 415 in that scenario. Modified the way you did to get brute vs tanker final damage (It's usually easier to just use their damage scalars and skip a step the proportions are the same) You would get 261.25 vs 311.25 or 19% more damage, less than the 27% increase estimate.

It is possible that the /mmm, or all the freebies commands could be given to the player. It is not reasonable to make the argument that because of this the long-term goal was to give them to players.

The full bit from the manual you referenced @Haijinx. Emphasis mine, but that's not even what I'm arguing. It's not that they don't do damage, of course they do damage, rather that the damage wasn't the primary reason to pick them because other options were focused on that. The utility for protecting a team through survivability and melee fighting control, was the primary purpose for choosing to take a Tanker over another option. Just like a Defender's primary output isn't damage, but of course they do damage. @Leogunner We've spun this circle in the past, and I don't think we'll agree on this topic. Probably just best for us to just leave it be this time.

I don't believe I've said that it wasn't the goal. I understand that Tankers doing more, easier, without changing play pattern was the objective. The changes reach their goal. I'm saying meeting that goal doesn't fix the problem of two ATs being too similar with one just having more output (It just changes which has more output), while changing tankers to a primary damage identity, and adds a very strongly scaling effect that in my opinion is being under accounted for.

Apologies I thought it was fairly self-evident. HC live they aren't aimed at damage. If you're looking for an AT that is primary damage output, then a tanker isn't as viable an option as others, and now it is. And not only is this version a viable option, it can output the most in player constructed situations. That's the quantifiable change in primary output. That was the goal of the changes if I'm understanding correctly, but there are unintended consequences to that. As to the current difference, that would only be true if the tanker couldn't cycle those same attacks in it's downtime at the same rate, or the powersets were different. In situations where it's more damage to use the AoE, it will be more damage to use the AoE for both, just easier for the Tanker. The tanker doesn't to anything different with AoEs, it does the same thing, just better/more. If damage is kept in a range the only difference will be due to targets hit with extra AoE. If a tanker does 90% it does 90% plus whatever extras it hits with it's AoE. There's no secret sauce like with scrappers/stalkers that makes a big difference here. It is the DPS it's being framed to be, because it's being framed in context. I'm comparing Melee damage Armor ATs to each other, because if a player is looking at a concept using one of them, it's most likely that they would be compared to the others, not to Dominators or Blasters. Also having mitigation should inherently mean less damage compared to an AT that doesn't have that mitigation output which is in part, I believe, why the brute damage cap was lowered. That's fine, and it is more rewarding, but being rewarding doesn't mean it isn't out of spec. If Scrapper attacks were all cones that only damaged the enemy targeted, but the crit damage scaled with the number of targets in the cone so crits did between 1x and 8x damage to the target, it would be more rewarding to line up your attacks, but it would be out of spec. You could hit the 4 people easy and get 4x damage, but the crit would be really rewarding if you got all 8 in. Yes more rewarding, but not necessarily balanced. No problem is ever solved by allowing something else a turn at being the problem rather than fixing it. As for mechanical differences, with the way the sets are structured, it's almost always optimal to gather as many enemies as you can survive and AoE, with single target fillers. That hasn't changed. The feel to it has, with tankers feeling much easier to use and brutes feeling the same. But the optimal mechanical play is pretty simple to figure out, and hasn't changed. Meme, meta, it can be called whatever someone wants to call it, but it's also true. IIRC only stalkers and masterminds get a modifier to participation for event tables. Masterminds because of how their pets interact with the participation metrics, and stalkers because of how disadvantaged they are due to their lackluster AoE output, and behavioral focus on ST damage. I am concerned that there will be a behavioral change in optimization and selection, but the mechanical gameplay won't change. Not really, and definitely not with a change that just modifies the comparative damage levels. Get things into your AoE, use them, fill time with other abilities, repeat. That's the basic loop of CoH combat gameplay. Stalker's Hide/AS mechanic subverts this to create something interesting, but these changes don't do that. They do the same things as pre-change just more.

That is what I'm talking about (Bolded). It is reasonable and fair to point out it is a comparison of a best case scenario, meaning the most damage the tanker can output vs cross-at equivilants, but it's a construct-able scenario that is influenced by the player. A tanker can saturate it's AoEs with more ease than a brute can reach 100 fury. And a Tanker can actively influence it's additional damage whereas a scrapper's crit is RNG.

Quantifying hasn't really helped much, but here goes again. The changes push tankers more towards damage as a primary output making them more similar to brutes rather than accentuating differences. There is nothing to this that creates anything ancillary to either the tanker or brute to differentiate them in fundamental identity. The primary difference would be in feel, with the the brute needing to build resource to get it's effect higher and tankers are just easier to play, in outputting their effect. The increase in target caps allows for base damage output that can't be matched by brutes, and is unlikely to be matched by scrappers (would have to crit every enemy hit) this is best observed on the extreme end in farms, as both brutes and tankers have the same tools, and ancillary options (with higher target caps) yet the tanker's AoEs are potent enough to knock a minute plus off of run times. This is strong enough that it could cause a general change in play pattern to leverage that power The increase in areas makes tankers even easier to play. This means they are not only able to reach the 90% damage of brutes (I disagree with this assessment, as I believe that tankers will be able to exceed brutes output, but even if you use the 90% metric), they will be able to do so with ease of play rather than a swingy mechanic like fury They have the same powersets, so if their output is seen as only damage/survivability and that's how they're balanced, then the one that applies the effects better will be the one selected most often. Rather than having different identities that are built up on for players to choose from.

People will most likely roll what they think is strongest. With tanks now getting offense pushed so much, and the differences between brute/tankers getting smaller rather than larger, they occupy the same space even more. I think it's unlikely there will be a balanced shift. If the two of them do the same thing effectively, or one does all the stuff of the other, plus some, then the one that's seen as more optimal will be picked with greater frequency. Or the one that is easier to use, at each tier to apply it's effect.

The target cap increase is still a lot, a lot of power. If you see on the live servers that Tanks are spending less time in each level range, and/or passing level ranges with less XP; is reverting the target caps something that is possible?