CrusaderDroid

Short version: Title. Long version: Making Taunt and Confront inherent clears up a space on melee sets that can be repurposed for a new power unique to each archetype that can be used to further define itself and push its identity further, such that we can see a meaningful difference between a Scrapper, Brute, and Tanker all using, say, Fiery Melee, that extends beyond just scalars. (Actual specifics probably merit another topic.) It also means that you don't need to lose a power slot for basic endgame competence in those roles. I don't believe the opportunity cost/skill test of careful power selection applies to Taunt very well. Bonus: Now Scrappers will actually use Confront. Single target Taunt in this game is beans as an investment.

You might be able to sidestep @Shin Magmus's concerns (and my own) if Roar didn't drain Fury, but locked it at its current level for the duration. That way you aren't trading away your offense for CC when you could have just AoE spammed your way to victory without it. Also: Careful about theme! Themes are great guides for gameplay, but gameplay is more important than theme. Ideally we get the two to work together, but janky thematic mechanics are worse than generic mechanics that Just Work. In this case, I can just as easily argue that a Brute angry enough to be Roaring at people has hit the point where their Fury really isn't going to stop.

You get a like for the attempt. I like the core idea a bunch! My main concern is twofold: Bottoming out Fury will require having to build it back up again for your normal damage. On live, this is a non-issue - three swings and you're capped off. This does limit other possibilities that may require slower Fury gain, though. The magnitude doesn't scale, and Brute can't really access the +Mag benefits of Controller and Dominator, so realistically the targets you can hit with this are the same targets you can mow down with your own AoE attacks. That's a problem - especially since you've removed Build Up completely, so it now takes longer to clear the same enemies. I think something in this ballpark might be part of the puzzle for Brute, though. It's worth considering and worth further drafts.

Honestly? Hell yeah. Just have the merits be once/week for each AE arc with a minimum of 3 missions and we've basically killed most of the abuse cases right there. Assuming that's even necessary, since Smoke and Mirrors is more efficient than any non-TF anyways.

Looks fine to me. It won't be the end of the world if it goes through, it's a good first step. I'd rather see something attempted and then reverted than no action at all - at least attempting it gives us data for the future.

I don't think you should be able to take Evasive Maneuvers just because you got Mystic Flight and Hover, so I don't believe this is a good change. It's trimming down the opportunity cost of choosing powers, but there's no reason given as to why we need that specifically. A better argument might be that if we need fewer pool powers to get to the best stuff, it'll let us focus on our unique powersets that we picked at character creation. I could at least be moved by that, but I think power choice is one of the most important skill tests in the game, and I don't think it should be toned down accordingly.

This ain't it. Since it only interacts with your survivability, you're not really doing anything that a Tanker isn't doing. Even if we ignore the HP cut you're proposing, it's harder to ignore that by having your Fury be your new health bar, you're losing damage by getting beat on, meaning that you are less likely to survive the fight since you can't end it as quickly. It doesn't really set up any new directions, either. If anything, since Fury is now locked in as an extra health bar, it pretty much kills any other possible interactions. The fix for Brute isn't going to be giving them a busted up way to compete with Tanker.

I'm not one of those guys that needs to be at the top. This seems overly...reductive? Fatalistic? Defeatist? Can't really find a word for it, but it sounds like it's just giving up. It's entirely possible to take something working fine for...let's just say 50% of the playerbase, and then make changes that bump it so that 65% to 70% of the playerbase like it. If that can be done without alienating a significant number of the original 50%, why not? Fighting games pretty quickly sort themselves into tiers, from best to worst. That's unavoidable. What is avoidable is the gap between the tiers - some of the more memorable games have low tiers that still have their own unique strengths, enough that a skilled player can take them and win competitively in spite of their weaknesses. I think that's pretty admirable, and something that can easily apply here. If we can close the gap such that the lowest performing powers or ATs still have something unique and awesome to bring to the table, then let's do it. Yeah, there'll always be something better, but it still leads to richer gameplay. Shouldn't that be a primary goal of every dev? In this case: Brute doesn't need to be the best AT in the game. It isn't even the worst AT in the game. It is, however, hurting from an identity crisis caused by being caught between two solidly-defined ATs. If there's a tiering for ATs, a change in its identity might not - and doesn't need to! - move it in that tier list, but it can still get us measurable gains in gameplay feel.

Thank you for not locking the thread! I've noticed significantly fewer locked threads lately and I think that's a dramatic upgrade in modding. I appreciate the hard work you and others are putting in. I think you might be buying into the false dichotomy that Brutes have to be directly boosted in damage or tanking to be viable, though. I don't think either of those works. +recharge does lead to more damage, admittedly, but +recharge gets there through more powers, period - which also means any powers that have cool extra effects get to enjoy those extra effects more. It's also why I tossed out the rather-out-there idea that Fury could ramp up CC magnitude instead. Reason being is that if we keep Brutes stuck in this weird intermediate state between Scrapper and Tanker, there's pretty much no hope for this triangle here. It's possible to make a change to make Brute desirable if we push it in one of those directions, but then we'll end up rehashing a similar discussion with Scrapper or Tanker or whatever. Stalker successfully distinguishes itself from Scrapper by trading AoE and a little of its defensive powers for stealth and huge single target damage. I believe we need a similar distinction to get Brute out of the intermediate state and into its own, unique design space. That starts with trying to pick something that it should excel at so it's got a clear identity. It can't be raw damage. It probably shouldn't be raw tanking either. I think anything along those lines is kicking the can down the road. +recharge is at least "neutral" in that it affects every power you have, so it can be useful on its own as a stopgap or in conjunction with any number of future changes. I'm not dead set on +recharge either, it's just one tool among several that can be used here. Whatever the case is, I don't think Brute's going to be fine until it has a unique design space and identity all its own, without having to intrude on Scrapper or Tanker.

The Bugged Fury ATO thread was starting to stray into "let's talk about Brutes as a whole". I figured that was a good sign to, well, talk about Brutes as a whole. Currently, they're in an identity crisis. It's not immediately obvious to a casual player - if you have a Scrapper, Brute, and Tanker all play in the same team while leveling, the Brute does significantly more damage. That's because of Fury, which grants a damage bonus based on how full it is. Now, Brute wasn't originally a contemporary of Scrapper and Tanker. They were exclusive to Villains originally. That meant Brute needed to be tough enough to survive tanking for the otherwise-fragile redside ATs. Brutes still keep their increased health and resist cap, accordingly, tying them with Tankers. Nowadays, though, anyone can be anything, which puts Brutes in direct competition with Scrappers and Tankers. This is actually pretty bad - when you have this kind of competition in game design, one option almost always obsoletes the others. This doesn't mean it's bad, but it does mean that you're choosing to handicap yourself by not taking the best option. So what's the problem with Brutes? Well, it's damage. Ironically. See, while Fury grants a lot of damage, there's a maximum damage cap that can be achieved by a character. Scrapper, Brute, and Tanker can't reach that cap by themselves, which you think might give Brute an edge...except that this is a team game, and Kinetics' big calling card is Fulcrum Shift. When targeting a full group of enemies with Fulcrum Shift, the bonuses granted to everyone are more than enough to cap out your damage when coupled with damage enhancements. This presents a problem as Fury only grants damage. A Brute that has damage capped at 0 Fury gains no benefit from Fury. A Scrapper that has damage capped can still crit, and modern Tankers have increased target counts on their AoE attacks while enjoying better numbers on their defensive powers. Now, keep in mind Brute's scalars - that is, the multiplier on the base damage that affects where all damage boosts start - are lower than Scrapper's. That means that, if damage boosts are equal, a Brute does less damage than a Scrapper even before crits. Since Fulcrum Shift caps everyone out so easily, it's pretty easy to get to equal levels of damage boosts. End result: Brutes can't compete with Scrappers in damage. But we've got tanking, right? Well...not really? There's a few sets that Tankers don't get, but for every other set, Brutes use Scrapper numbers for their defense set instead of Tanker numbers or an in-between. That means that despite the increased health and resist cap, Brutes have to put much more resources to reach them. There's also no way to offset the increased target count that Tankers get. In short: while they work great on a budget or as first characters, at high levels of team play, Brutes don't really excel. There's no need for the role compression they offer, Scrapper can hit harder, and Tanker can bump up its damage to match Brute since it doesn't need to invest as much in personal defenses due to better armor base numbers. The only time a Brute would be useful is when your team is missing key support players, but an AT that only excels in suboptimal situations is quickly going to find itself irrelevant as the meta shifts and people start trending towards optimization. But the problem here goes way past that. See, we can't actually change Brute in either direction - damage or durability. We can give crits to Brute, but now Scrapper loses its draw. We can bump up the base numbers on Brute armors, but now Tanker loses its draw. It's more than just buffing numbers and being done with it - doing that would just shift the problem AT to one of the others instead, and we've gone nowhere. Now, it's entirely possible you're of the opinion that Brute "feels fine to me". I'm glad you're happy with your Brute! I like mine too. Personal feelings don't get to sway numbers and direct comparisons, though, and Brute comes up short on several comparisons. You could settle for "feels fine", but then you're leaving "feels even better" on the table. Why settle? What needs to happen is a way to define Brute independently of both Scrapper and Tanker. Brute needs its own unique identity that would give it a niche that you can't cover with either of those two classes. Which, uh. That's really hard. So, I'll pitch a few ideas and explain why they can help, and I'd love to see your ideas too. Brute has a fun thematic that I don't think is being sufficiently explored right now, meaning there's lots of room for new things. My ideas are not all meant to be adopted at once. Some can coexist, but the purpose is to workshop possible avenues of change, not pile everything onto Brutes to make them OP. That said, there's a few things that aren't going to work - namely, overly defensive picks and +Acc/ToHit. An overt focus on defense (or CC aura-type effects like Cloak of Fear) doesn't have the same kind of effect on a player as offense - it's much easier to overlook not taking damage than it is to have a big effect happen at the press of a button. At the same time, +Acc/ToHit is invisible - you literally cannot notice it without monitoring the combat log like a hawk. I think there's room for stuff that's appreciably good and visible. Without further ado... --- Make Fury Increase Global Recharge This goes in line with the earlier thread. Global recharge is handy because it means you get to press buttons more, and pressing buttons is the primary means to enjoy playing your character. It feels good to have your powers available more often. This also opens up new ways to balance fury gain. With fury increasing recharge speed, we can pivot and move Brutes into a slow-starting, momentum-heavy attacker that builds and loses fury at a slower rate, relying on that recharge speed to accelerate their attacks. Increases in recharge speed also mean we can step off Fury granting so much extra damage that gets overcapped. This also won't interfere with Scrapper's own relative balance - Scrapper's crits can be offset by more reliable, faster strikes from the Brute. Replace Build Up Powers with Fury Interaction Build Up features prominently in many builds, but isn't really the most exciting power and ends up getting copy-pasted across powersets. With Brute and the Fury mechanic, we have an easy pick for a change that can add some more dynamic play to the AT. There's a lot of directions we can go with this. My personal favorite is to turn it into a PBAoE nuke that's only accessible at a certain level of fury, without giving up all of the benefits of Build Up. It's flashy, it's an extra AoE attack that the other two ATs don't get, and it plays well with the intent of building fury to do big damage. We can also opt to make it consume fury, instead, for another benefit - healing or a boost to resistances, for instance. This one is better with fury that doesn't take a lot to build up. I don't like it quite as much as most of the benefits here are going to end up being defensive in nature, so it's harder to get away from Tanker. If we have a particularly slow fury gain, Build Up could also increase fury gain or just grant fury. This is going to depend heavily on exact changes to Fury as a mechanic, but it's an option. Have Fury Increase CC Magnitude Now here's an option that was kinda floated in the prior thread in a different way, where Fury would terrorize enemies. If we have Fury increase magnitude, we can then pivot Brute into a hybrid damage and control AT where things that get hit by Brute have a very bad day. This is a pretty neat direction, but there's several issues that would need to be addressed first, not least of which is that melee sets rarely have enough CC to make this meaningful outside of knocks. You'd need to modify the Brute sets to add more CC for this to pay off. You'd also have to worry about the fact that now we're introducing a very strange competition with Controllers and Dominators of all things, which gets bad for those classes given their relatively lower damage and lack of staying power. It would take a lot of work. It's still an interesting choice worth mulling over, in my opinion. Have Fury Increase Mez/Slow Resistance This was floated in the earlier thread too. It looks cool on paper - very unstoppable, means high guaranteed uptime on all of your stuff. This gives Brute a niche, accordingly - you could use cleanse-type powers on other allies for similar results, but the powersets with those don't have the same damage boosts as some of the top picks. This lets Brute run in and tank volleys of control and still keep swinging. The main barrier is that armor powers already grant a hefty boost to varying CC types. This would end up wasted for the most part and encourage some very odd meta shifts. However, if we're committing to changing more sets to grant more Brute-unique powers, this gets more compelling. Removing the protection powers to make room for an exclusive Brute trick means this idea has merit. It also means Brute play gets more intricate as you need to manage your fury before running into mezzes. --- What do you all think? I like Brute a bunch, and I don't want players to be in a situation where they need to give up the fantasy of "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" in the name of meta optimization. Brute needs love well past a simple numbers buff to be able to hit that point, and I'm hoping this is a decent start to getting Brute a unique identity that gets it away from the unenviable middle child of Scrapper and Tanker.

They're saying don't have it toggle off automatically after a certain period of time, like other toggle powers. Spirit Ward probably works out okay as a "normal toggle", but I'm not entirely sure about Enflame being able to stay on indefinitely. Even if it's annoying to recast it, it still provides a measure of downtime. Then again, I don't know how competitive Enflame is as a damage option, so maybe it won't actually matter.

It could. It would be better than live. I personally don't like it though. Like you said, two other archetypes already have a damage proc ATO. This wouldn't really help define Brute, especially when we can slot in other procs just fine. You'd have to sell why this is better than +recharge, which is a space none of the other archetypes are focusing on.

Yeah, there's other options. They're just appreciably weaker is the thing. More importantly, none of them really help push Brute into a unique niche in a game with four heavily overlapping melee archetypes. +recharge at least helps build the idea that Brute is less a skilled attacker and more a fast attacker that swings a lot to build up Fury, and having that focus in place means a better spot for further work on Brute to distinguish it.

I'm not exactly an expert in build optimization, but 20% recharge time probably wouldn't push a build over from "END equilibrium" to "oops no END". The other Brute ATO has an endurance discount proc anyways, so it evens that out enough I think. I'm not sure this would be appropriate as part of a proc. Even then, I'm personally of the opinion that +recharge is the best avenue for Brutes to make them unique from the critty Scrappers and the tougher+bigger AoEs Tankers. Given the protection powers on a lot of sets as well as the mez resistance in many IO sets, this isn't the big win we'd want it to be. Kinetics can already slam a big enough movement speed boost on you on top of accidentally making Fury useless to you. I'm not sure this would be useful for anything other than unoptimized runs or mono-Brute teams (but I repeat myself). The issue was never unoptimized/low level content, where Brutes are great in a budget, but how Brutes hit a ceiling due to mechanical limitations and stat caps that keeps them from thriving. I'm not even good at this game. I'm pretty sure my build on my Battle Axe/Shield Defense is missing something and I need to respec and heavily consider my choices. I've still got S/L maxed anyways. This isn't a valuable stat to be increasing, and it's very easy to max just by slotting full sets and using Tough. Technically would be useful. +recharge has a more immediate effect, though, and making Fury boost ToHit would most likely get you a case where you drop Acc for Recharge on stuff you weren't using for procs, bringing us full circle.

I'm all for Flurry buffs, but removing the self-root isn't the fix here. That's just part of its ludicrous animation time. The best way to solve that is to divide the animation time by 4 and speed it up accordingly. THAT gets us super speed and gets that attack out of irrelevance.

Honestly sounds fine to me. I'd be okay if Fury in general was granting +recharge by itself even without the proc. I think the shift over to more frequent attacks is a good way to establish a unique identity for Brutes so they're not trapped between Scrapper and Tanker as badly as they are now. To follow up on why these are bad reasons: Lots of things can "feel fine" if you either don't run or don't care about certain content. That doesn't make problems go away, and if it "feels fine", then it's going to feel better after the change, most likely. In this case: even if the proc "feels fine", you're still going to appreciate that global recharge bonus way more. Meanwhile, farming is an issue that goes well beyond one specific archetype doing its thing. Kneecapping archetypes and powersets over farming gets into a dangerous cycle where the best farmer is in danger of having their viability for other content nerfed, and inevitably there will always be a new best farmer after the first one is nerfed out of relevance. There are much better solutions available to address farming than targeted nerfs that catch normal play as collateral damage - assuming we can even agree AE farming is bad.

Best I can do for you is Radiation Blast, which has an eye beam attack. Was funny to see eye beams coming out of my friend's character, whose head was a crystal ball instead of anything that had eyes.

I'm in favor. The practical aspect is you just save a few seconds toggling it back on after a fight - on top of not having to remember to turn it back on. Only possible hangups might be if it's even possible with the current code, and if it's worth losing the reminder to newbies that toggles drain endurance and slotting for endurance and choosing toggles wisely is important.

Brilliant. Please give us SIR GIDEON OFNIR, THE ALL-KNOWING as a mission contact to find an exploration badge for our 48 player league in Ohio Caelid, and once we reach the badge after fighting our way through the gnarliest enemies you can accidentally access, it transforms into a massive dragon that spreads rot everywhere. Does it even matter at that point that all we get is some patrol exp and one badge? Queue me up for this task force every day.

/noparticles 1 Or /noparticles 0, I forget which one. Either way, by turning off everyone else's stuff, it becomes much more graphically stable.

We're not going far enough. The mapserver event has shown that mapservers can gain sentience and go rogue. What's stopping exploration badges from going rogue and hunting players instead? I think having a 48 player league requirement for someone to claim an exploration badge is exactly the kind of socialization this game REALLY needs.

Gonna have to be a little more specific here when fire, lightning, ice, water, storms, and earth are all naturally-occurring phenomena. What are you defining as "nature", and what would that look like?

Even if you didn't, it meant that everyone else that would have filled or created teams for task forces and trials were doing mapserver instead. Not a big deal if you play solo, but if you wanted those task forces, you had some rather slim pickings.

Don't tempt me like this.