Rylas

I'm curious as to how much testing was done before they implemented these sets and how balanced they are to preexisting ones. The water control one seemed to do pretty short work for being level 3. That's pretty early for a pet as a con/dom.

Ah, so I have. Thanks for shifting my perception on those. But the only trouble spot seems to be around 400%. Most end game leagues will have buffed beyond that point. The rest seems rather in-line outside of where the numbers happen to line up right (or wrong). But dropping the cap to 500% would leave Tankers falling behind again in said content, and dropping below that would begin to fail practically completely at having a 90%/90% goal. Off the top of my head, I would suspect raising the multiplier and keeping a lower cap would end up having Tankers peaking too early. So I'm left wondering if the 550% Cap is the closest we can get even though slightly problematic in some cases. Which I'm still not sure would be an issue or not. I like it better when you're questioning my judgement. Not so much my intentions. 😉 But I can completely agree that more testing is needed.

I mean... if they had really terrible lawyers, maybe.

Well, that's kind of the thing about legal talks like those. They have to be kept pretty confidential until terms can be agreed upon and made official.

This isn't terribly surprising. If HC is in talks with NCSoft, this kind of move only makes sense.

Actually, I think it was challenged quite well... I'm also not convinced by the data that chooses to compare Tankers at a cap, but Brutes only with a Fury bonus. When we talk about Brutes performing at 90% of Tanker survival, are we comparing by the same skewed measure - Brutes buffed but Tankers only with SOs?

But by your same reasoning, the justification to use said data is also insufficient, because there aren't any metrics to show *anything* other than what's been built the most. Not why or how it's used. I would agree, the issue of this being an issue is highly debatable. But since neither side of that debate can be substantiated by any meaningful data, it would be better to leave the debate altogether and focus on issues we can more reliably measure. The thread would be better served by doing so.

Well, if we want to get philosophical and esoteric about it, sure, we're all just farming XP and Inf to make the characters we want. But that doesn't mean everyone's going to min-max to the extreme point @Auroxis is concerned about. Or that if some people do, that it would be an issue.

I didn't say they don't show up in PUGs. I was saying they don't show up in the numbers proportional to their FotM popularity. And a good reason for that is that most are built to farm. Not to play in teams or to play in most game content. And for that reason, I don't see the wisdom in pointing to such things as min-max capabilities as a reason to do, or not do, something. Because no matter what, you'll always have those things in game, and pure speculation of how prevalent they would be, or how much they would overpopulate the game, is just that. Speculation.

I think you might be mislead to what exactly that "popularity" actual translates into, or what it really means. While there might be a great many builds that are Spines/FA or Fire/Kin, the build up of teams that generally happen in pick up groups doesn't proportionally show that popularity. Mainly because the people that make those builds are using them to generate influence for their other characters. I don't know if it's prudent or wise to conflate popular farm builds as balance or popularity issues.

I heard Energy Melee associated with Jeffrey Epstein and I agree with @Murcielago

I second that second, but not that third. That's just excessive.

Quoting @Myrmidon quoting @Captain Powerhouse. It looks as though the Assault changes were inspired by potential EM changes.

Somehow I've never seen anyone mention the /altinvite command. I feel both embarrassed and shamed. 😭 But I'd still be ok with the automatic badge! 😝

Oh, I didn't take offense. If anything, it's a good indication that I pulled off being faithful to the original art. My whole intention was making something people could use on the forums, so I consider it a win. 😁 This won't deter me from trying to finish what I've started.

The sword icons might not be the best for testing. They were the some of most difficult to infer "artistic intention" from when blown up. The "burst" icon (like most Build Up icons use) ended up being a bit more "cleaner". The ranged icons might be a better test as well. I'll have to try making my own texture files when I can (maybe later into the week). I'll try to grab some before/after images for comparison.

Useful for new toons on the live servers, which I'll be keeping in mind, thanks. But for test, it's a little tedious to build a base for temp toons and make a second account to self invite.

Good to know for those level 50 toons I'm testing. Thanks!

Let's slow this roll a little. It's within your rights to be upset or to choose not to like something. But it doesn't serve your purpose to misrepresent the reasons why changes are being made. While these changes might help certain tanker builds farm better, it most certainly isn't the reason the changes are being tested or suggested. Have you actually tested this out beyond just the one thing you care about? So far, all the testing I've done hasn't shown any reduction in damage output. Quite the opposite. Like Bruising all you want, but it's contribution to solo and team play was never something I noticed, and only in very few situations made a difference (albeit one of negligible difference). At least the proposed changes allow for a lot more versatility for tanker play while also boosting their ability for crowd control. I can understand some people's fondness over the power even though it always felt like lip-service damage boost to me. But in all seriousness, how exactly is the concept of Bruising that detrimental to the concept of the Tanker? It's really a support mechanic, and to me, if there was going to be an inherent power feature that Tankers should get, it should be more focused on crowd control, not boosting team damage.

You're taking away the wrong message from me then. I'm not putting judgement on how you like to spend your time (fun's fun and I get it). But to make that how things work across the board would make the rest of the game too easily exploitable. What you're asking for doesn't have any good benefit for game balance, and isn't needed to be able to maintain good aggro. No offense, you're asking for "no challenge" - how convincing do you think that argument really is?

Slightly better!? Are we playing the same test server? I used Shadow Maul and was hitting 4-5 targets with hardly any effort on line up. On a Brute, I was lucky when I hit 3 after getting into position. Bruising hardly ever made a difference in team play and damage for me outside of AV fights. And even then, it wasn't an increase that was noticeable. Bruising didn't help bring down groups of minions at a time the way these AoE changes do.

Yeeeeah. I think you've pretty much highlighted why 1) the aggro cap will never go up and 2) why you don't *need* a Taunt power that hits more. Because you're arguing for a change that basically turns this game into free XP and less challenge. And that's one thing the game doesn't need help with.

If this doesn't happen, Homecoming has failed us. +1 you cheeky bastard

Don't confuse the aggro cap with a powers target cap. Even if they made Taunt hit 20 targets, only 17 would be aggro'd to you. However, if you need Taunts target cap to be raised to hit the aggro cap (and this isn't meant to be a diss) then you're not making use of all the tools you have available to grab aggro. Aside from Willpower, it should be laughably easy to jump into a group of foes and let your taunt aura grab aggro.

With the new patch up, I took the SR/DM Tanker and DM/SR Brute out for another spin. Same builds, same environments. This time around only using attacks from Dark Melee. The end result was a tad bit different. The Tanker moved a bit slower with only one cone available. Not to any degree that would be considered sluggish. Watching Shadow Maul hit multiple targets easily was still fun to see. It was probably the only thing keeping him in close enough pace to the Brute's kill speed. The Brute, not surprisingly, performed the same as before. When it came to +1 encounters, the brute mowed through single targets much faster. For those who love data, here are the combat logs for each running through a defeat boss mission. Tanker Logs Brute Logs