DrunkFlux

Even without having played on +5 on test I can already as a min/maxer state that my builds I'm always including things like leadership: Maneuvers and tactics 'specifically' to counter-act against things like increased defenses/to hit on mobs in hard mode, even if I almost never actually play hard mode content. If I have time I may have to port over my widow and my newest stalker to test for some 55 runs. My widow is made with making even the crappiest teams excell on 54, and 55 content likely won't see any changes to her build due to the +18 or so tohit she gives everyone with TT: Leadership and mind link. Likewise, my stalker has a +12 or so to-hit from tactics(+7) and targetting drone(+5). And i'm pondering slotting changes to try and get the kismet +6. Both builds always have a lot of accuracy from set bonuses to begin with and i'll be switchin from agility to vigor before long on the stalker. But heres a tip for everyone: Start stacking leadership powers more. Seriously, especially maneuvers and tactics, there isn't really a limit on how high you can crank your to-hit and defense values, while there is a soft-cap for defense having more than the soft-cap simply means it can harder for enemies with -defense to defense cascade you successfully if you've enough over the soft-cap. If you have even 4 people with leadership tactics I guarantee thats going to make the drop in to-hit chances feel like a drop in a bucket. Good min/max builds CAN overcome being on a bad team but a good team composition will overcome 'any' challenge even a min/max build may struggle to solo, even if they aren't 'all' min/maxed its about bringing things to the table. Leadership stacking actually something I frequently see LACKING in teams, often only brought by people playing support toons. You don't HAVE to be a support toon to bring leadership powers. And they always ALWAYS stack. They make take some endurance but seriously thats why we load out toons with so many endurance management tools or even just throw ageless at it. And you don't HAVE to take leadership at lower levels where your not going to be running 55 anyways, you could easly slip maneuvers/tactics or assault/tactics at levels 47 and 49 respectively in fact tactics is one of my most commonly taken powers AT 49.

That kind of works for me, heck maybe the repeatables being soloable will give me incentive to mess around in the Labyrinth, as outside of raids I had no reason to, and in fact only entered it 'once' on one of my new tankers(life had kind of gotten in the way in a bad way when it comes to participating in anything raid related in this game, time zones specifically).

Personal issue I have with costume unlocks is what if the content needed to unlock them gets outdated enough that newer players struggle to get it unlocked because people have moved onto other content in the time? That kind of creates a soft-fomo problem, not to mention some players may be offline when the issue goes live and may be in a life situation where they cannot get online enough while the content is still hot, preventing them from acquiring the outfit they'd otherwise be happy to acquire. I'd be happy if there was also a solo path for unlocking said pieces.

If galaxy city tunnel entrance is being opened back up, does this mean we'll be seeing Galaxy City moving forward in the future? A galaxy city 2.0? Also masterminds being given the ability to apply the set IO bonuses to henchmen means this'd be a huge buff for me, as I tend to go almost all-in on sets as a player in general anyways. Eh, makes sense, thugs generally respect a "MIGHT IS RIGHT!" outlook and so if you were just the type of mastermind who never ever attacks, why should they show you much respect? Be a leader an lead by example, not a narc barking orders :).

It doesn't feel like your really 'dominating' your enemy when your doing so from a distance, and dark/dark absolutely ruins the existence of everything when your up close with them. Seeing this post makes me want to take my dark/dark for a spin again, in fact.

This is a combination I used for one of my mains on live, and i consider this combination, on defenders especially to be the ultimate "Budget build" for newcomers and veterans alike: Maxed defenses using power build up/power boost before farsight and times juncture Flooring enemy recharge so they have even less attacks with distortion field + rain of fire makes them not do anything from trying to veinly escape the field. Can be made sustainable even with just SO's and incarnate powers(Cardiac Alpha + Clarion) with minimal IOs. Some thoughts: Fire breath is also a solid power if you use it right before fireball, as the DoT it applies will hit its final tic often as the fireball lands. This is more burst-fire AoE tactic, not as necessary on homecoming(thanks to inferno being good) as it was on live(where Inferno was trash thanks to end crash), but can easily be a good hold-over until higher amounts of influence and merits are available to flesh the build out on more advanced IOs bring inferno recharge to a more competitive range. If using Clarion and willing to risk a few seconds of downtime with farsight, use Radial Clarion for the huge boost, then power boost/power build up for even HIGHER defense numbers. Not always recommended though, as a few seconds of downtime may be all the mobs need to score some hits or a defense cascade. But it can be a strong opener for a tougher fight, especially if summoning lore pets as they benefit from the increased boost.

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.