DrunkFlux

Honestly I think people are biting more into the comedy of it rather than the bait itself, it was amusing.

Yeah live was....maybe months away from the "Softban on influence in trading" that would have been inevitable due to how badly inflated influence was. Instant respect that you were able to quickly admit you were incorrect about the buffs, that still gave me a good laugh though :D.

You missed one. Brute max damage was 850% before fury changes in issue 18. Every min/maxer was flatout saying brutes were the ultimate class up till then, we weren't kidding then.

Kind of why i'm fine with the changes myself, as a nice compromise that lets tankers continue to excell at agro holding as they should while ensuring they don't outshine brutes and scrapper AoE power, ensuring there is no clear "winner" for min/maxers like myself. Min/maxers who enjoy min/maxing don't actually 'like' a clear winner for classes, one reason I love CoH is that most of the time there isn't. Just there has been when it came to tankers vs brutes.

i guess also.... The OP being what it is here says a lot about game balance being as simple as it is complicated :).

All classes and builds, even solo, have a place on a team or should have a place on a team. The strong solo build is just as valuable on a team as it is without a team. I read the tanker changes as 'slight nerfs', seeing more that while the baseline damage is being unchanged the damage buff is being lowered slightly and the extra AoE damage is being severely crimped which, honestly, it should be. It still doesn't solve a problem I'd pondered being that fury isn't quite the mechanic that it needs to be to separate brute from a "generic warrior glug glug" class I feel it kind of is, but the nerfs to tanker DO make me consider brutes again, for a long time i'd considered brute a class one SHOULDN'T pick, if CoH's community was anything like older days of mmorpgs the brute in its current state would have been a "banned class", like stalkers, peacebringers and warshades were during the earlier/early-mid era of live. I'm amazed people are insistent somehow that tanker should do more AoE than the brute like it does or that the nerfs are unwarranted ect, they all missing that the tanker in its current state out-classes the brute on so many areas that it kills the brute as a viable choice for 99.9% of the game and even for farming i'd say the brute is an inferior choice as your basically making an over-specialized character that is only viable in AE fire farm content, 100% against my design philosophy of min/maxing(which is make something good for every team and still works well in solo, crippling over-specialization is a no-no for me).

Forgive me on the second part though clearly the devs are thinking they made a mistake now, alas, farming is not the majority of this game but only done in a very small section. Again though, brutes do not out-shine the tanker in single target enough to be worth playing. Farming is only about 1% of the content, granted content people play constantly 'again' your talking about a game designed around team gameplay with classes making very clear trade-offs for there strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps I'll take it to the brute subforum if its discussed there, as I said though i was only stating WHY a nerf has to happen :/. No one may like it but brutes were always balanced against the other melee classes its a rare case where a class is a major outlier :/. Tankers are just out-classing the brute severely :/. But I wouldn't shut down conversation here on 'that'; because then people may shut down the conversation in the brute subforum and the discussion is dropped entirely.

TL:DR ; Min/maxers will always pick tanker over brute because tanker only loses a very small amount of single target in order to do literally everything else that a brute does better. On raw performance tanker clearly wins its not even a fair matchup. Even with those technicalities remember that tanker resistance and defense powers out-class brute and scrapper equivilants which, in actuality have always performed on the exact same scales. The only difference in survivability characteristics that brutes had over scrappers was litterally more HP(and only a mediocre increase at that) and a higher resistance cap(the real difference in survivability). Because we also have to consider overall roles in teams: Tankers job primarily has always been a frontliner holding agro. Granted we don't want the tanker being nothing but a taunt bot but its still more on the survivability focus as its main speciality. Brutes job was either to focus on being a tank, or an off-tank with DPS focus, OR DPS focus. It wasn't meant to render the scrapper or tanker useless. Scrapper is a striker, a DPS class with no regard for agro management, if it takes confront it can off-tank but generally its truely meant to just hit as hard as possible. Stalkers are also a striker with less AoE than scrappers for even higher single target. Thing is, with your logic of tanker being better at AoE than other melee archtypes, you run into the problem of potentially making other archtypes obsolete or redundant. The LAST thing you want in game balance is one or two classes being rendered inferior to another, there should be no clear winner as to what people pick. Brute was a clear "Avoid me" class, a smerf as me and snarky said. The real reason BEHIND the increase to target caps for the tanker was to allow it to hold agro better than the brute, it was not really meant to render the brute useless(which it kind of has from a min/maxer perspective). This also hurts the scrapper which only survives on its ATOs, which brutes do not have the benefit of. You cannot have a class that has higher baseline survivability AND area damage than another without rendering the other class redundant. It simply doesn't work, you have a 'very' clear "PICK ME I AM SUPERIOR!" choice. Even tanker players I talked to knew about this problem. A major factor in player choice in classes is divided in power vs utility. All melee classes are power archtypes, blasters are power archtypes to as are sentinels. Support AT's, CC ect are chosen for UTILITY likewise, be it support or control. I role that later category into one for simplicity sake. But how do I measure power? Simple, survivability * damage output. how do I measure utility? Crowd control and buff/debuff effects. Tankers out-strip brutes on both categories completely. On utility they are kind of meant to; they are meant to hold agro and hold it well, to be the best main frontliner in the party. Brutes were also meant to be a powerhouse, and they are, but with the huge AoE power tankers have, brutes are just outshined in raw power. This renders the brute questionable as a choice at best on a min/maxers perspective. Also understand more players will over time see which class performs better than the other there is always the 'feel', and it depends course on what powersets they pick. Some of us played the same sets on both classes and the difference quickly became clear as night and day. Some of us clearly never picked the same sets so its taken longer to notice it. But many players notice it. Someone even did a tier list with AoE clearance time as a measurement and found tanker FAR out-performing the brute in the tests, especially with AoE centric sets. It was far, far more comprehensive than my math here could show at the time. And tanker wasn't changed or 'nerfed' for a long time between that post and today. So why pick brute when brute loses both categories? It loses to scrapper on DPS in both AoE and single target, loses out to tanker in AoE horribly and holds agro less effectively than a tanker. This left brute in a very, very weak position as an option. It simply lacks a niche because the tanker far exceeds it on the AoE front, and loses to tanker on survivability and utility. Again, the choice shouldn't be so clear like it is on what you pick for damage/survivability/utility for melee classes like this. Its less clear with scrappers vs stalkers and thats actually a GOOD thing, it ensures no one class is dominant over the other as a choice. If your choice is between scrapper vs brute its ALSO not that clear, one does more damage and cannot hold agro, the other does slightly less but CAN hold agro. But its very clear for brute vs tanker. One class only barely beats the other on single target and is far out-stripped on AoE, a min/maxer sees a gain in power with the AoE increase at a cost to ST. That same class with better AoE has more baseline resistance/defenses and much higher HP. Again, a min/maxer will put more points in favor of the tanker. And that same class has better agro holding mechanics. Again, a min/maxer will see that and draw the conclusion: "For about 10% single target damage i'm doing almost 60% more AoE damage, have way more HP, have much higher starting resistances and defenses and need way less buffs from allies to hit the maximums than the other choice, this is clearly the better option". That is the exact line of a thought a min/maxer will take as its the exact thought ALL min/maxers take, we look at things from "what am I sacrificing to gain?", thats what min/max means, minimizing loss to maximize gains. And tanker just leaves brute in the dust on this. And in gameplay practice it applies to, especially with how EASY it is to grab the max target cap on a tanker.

I'm primarily looking at things from an AoE focused perspective, as it depends also on power set use. Tankers AoE potential out-classed brutes when you used AoE focused sets, or rather if you looked at things from using powersets identical across ATs such as say, fire melee on tanker vs fire melee on brute, fire melee on tanker far out-classed brutes version. But this also continued with sets such as titan weapons, spines, radiation melee ect.

Aye, i'd tried to play brutes a lot myself and every time I roll one, I end up stopping myself because as a major fan of melee(I'm about as bad as the emperor on text to speach device as a melee fan), I always found myself switching to stalker scrapper or tanker, because brutes are just lacking and the only question was "did I want to draw agro?", if yes, tanker, if not, scrapper or stalker and 'that' was based on how capable a set was in AoE on a stalker. Like a train of thought like 'that' was always a baseline for me to consider "is it reasonably close to balance?". I'd been saying a while brutes could use an adjustment, and wasn't sure how they'd adjust tankers, well now we know.

Baseline tanker damage is actually 0.95, brute 0.75. Brute damage is low as it is to accomodate for fury, when you run the numbers though as I do in my post above, brute falls WAY behind tanker currently, so does scrapper for that matter. AoE damage is king in general gameplay, and scrappers only remain relevent due to having especially good ATOs that brutes 'dont' have.

Firstly, since some here are upset, I'm just gonna say it as a min/maxer who always sees imbalances rather easily. Everything is in the math as to WHY this has to happen; If considering pure DPS chasing in normal content, area effect damage has always been king. Not a complete be-all-end-all but it has always in balance resulted in favorite archtypes leaning towards area damage. The stalker was for a long time considered useless trash that should be out-right banned from teams in live purely for having a cmplete lack of AoE and only mediocre single target potential, hence why many newer sets have aoe and stalkers have the crazy consistent critical strike tricks they have today to remain relevent. For scrappers, brutes and other classes however AoE was the bulk of there DPS, with single-target being primarily reserved only for straggling bosses and archvillain fights. Tankers do not win on single target, BUT they should not win, they aren't meant to, they trade damage for survivability, right? Wrong. Its all in the numbers and you literally only need to compare baseline numbers to get exactly how far they left the other melee classes in the dust in recent years. Smarter tankers who actually min/max knew about this, and some like me who sometimes jokingly put out "STOP-HAVING-FUN!" statements in chat also stated it: Tanker DPS was far out-classing brutes, I'd said it a long time since they were buffed to a baseline damage of 0.95 and a max damage of 500% compared to the brute being at a baseline of 0.75 and a maximum of only about 700%. Lets look at AoEs, brute attacks with a target cap of 10 meant that even maxed in damage, they score 5.25 when you multiply 0.75 against 700% if you take that number and multiply by 10 you get exactly 52.5. For 5 target cap attacks your only scoring a pathetic 26.25. If you take tankers however on live currently, 0.95 multiplied by five they only score 4.75 BUT we have to multiply the number by 16 for maximum AoE for pbaoe you end up with a score of 76. 47.5 for 10 target cap attacks. This disparity if you took it to an analogy of a racing game, is liking having such a huge speed advantage over the opponent that you end up LAPPING your opponents and running rings around them even if you were hitting walls left and right becaue they are just so slow and your so much faster than them. On dividing the resulting AoE numbers, I end up with 44% advantage in favor of tanker (76 divided by 52.5) and 80%(HOLY !#@$) advantage in favor of tanker for lower-target cap attacks. Tanker disappears around the first corner of a racing track never to be seen again and lapping the brute and scrapper both. So tankers were doing a terrifying 44% more effective area effect damage than a class supposedly designed for superior damage per second on area front, on top of having significantly higher baseline values for damage resistance, health and defense values. Brute was consequently what us min/maxers would call a "smerf" class as a result; objectively flat-out inferior due to another class completely out-classing it in the same jobs and functions. Some of us myself included even counted brute as a D(complete garbage) on the archtype tier list, with Tanker being double-S(above blaster and defender) purely for destroying another archtypes relevance. Oh, what about scrapper? 1.125 * 500% = 5.625, * 10 scrapper only gets 56.25 on area damage front. Tanker still outclasses A PURE DPS CLASS. Even if you consider critical strike timing the tanker needs zero actual effort or timing ect to out-perform that. 5 target cap attacks only score 28.125, also very low for AoE performance compared to a tanker. Without AT proc scrapper is completely left in the dust. This is all ignoring procs, to, btw, which tankers benefit from to. The goal the devs have is very clear, they want to reign tankers in on area damage and make players consider brutes and scrappers again. You wanna DPS better? Scrapper or brute. Tank better? Tanker. Want to do both? Brute. A purely defensive class should NOT be out-dpsing a balanced/off tank dps focused class let alone a purist like the scrapper. This also means I can raise brute back up to A tier(back from D) as a class again, alongside scrapper(Which I left at B in my scores due to AT procs being the only thing saving the class from irrelevence), and i'd be lowering tanker to A or even normal S tier purely for the reason the class IS losing that extra AoE, but brute will no longer be a joke class like it was purely for being completely out-stripped by tankers so brutally(no pun intended).

I should add lastly, as a maniac who greatly values soloing on the highest settings possible(which I do as a means to maximize my capacity to work in a team, kind of as a benchmark), where controlling the enemy mobs is critically important, placate has saved me more than a few times in my test runs on my latest stalker builds.

I used to skip it but i've found more and more that after using it, i found it very, very valuable: For moments where you need AoE power, Placate can STILL be useful for guaranteeing a critical strike on most targets your attacking, as long as you have an AoE attack be it from your primary or ancillery, I placate and then energy torrent all the time on my main Ninja blade/EA/Energy. For single target DPS theres always the obvious placate into assassin strike, though I find depends on the primary since sometimes, street justice's crushing uppercut hits harder than assassin strike for DPA(Damage per activation). When running Tier 9 powers such as Overload and Elude, placating just before the buff ends is a good way to protect yourself from being attacked while your re-activating your toggles, especially combined with unleash potential cycling. I find it more valuable on extreme recharge builds simply cause it turns into a swiss army control power.

Alpha only gives +1 at tiers 3 and 4, tier 1 and 2 powers only give a +1, Musculature core boost is only a tier 2, so your only getting the enhancement effect but not the +1. The Lore/Destiny also only give an "incarnate level shift" at tier 3 and 4, "Incarnate" level shifts only apply to incarnate specific content. So you still have more to progress for your alpha slot before you have the consistent +1 in the rest of the game 45-50. Once youg et up to any of the four tier 3 alpha powers you'll have the +1 and you'll keep it once you get to tier 4.