ZemX

Not at home right now, but I also can confirm I am using one of the extra buttons on my mouse. "Button 5" does sound familiar though. Might be that.

It's even better than that since Stalker's Grant Cover also grants stealth to nearby teammates when the Stalker is in Hide status. Stalker: "Shhhhhh! Everybody behind the shield! They won't see us! It's got a tree painted on the front." Scrapper: "We're in a cave." Stalker: *assassinates the Scrapper*

Not really. Wouldn't need to do much more than tack on a AoE taunt to the ranged/AoE defense toggle, similar to what was done to Evasion in Super Reflexes. Your dodging literally pisses people off all around you! And Stealth is not weird for the big guys either. See also: Dark Armor. But yes, silly. Then again, theme when out the window when Stalkers got Stone Melee and Stone Armor... *clomp* *clomp* *clomp* *Assassinate!*

I should clarify that when I said it "made sense" to me to nerf Tankers instead of buffing Brutes, I only meant that given the devs felt Tankers were overperforming, it was far less risky to nerf Tankers than buff Brutes because it then would have required buffing Stalkers and Scrappers. I don't think much needed to be done, as I said. Maybe just Fiery Melee (look up Ston's old testing data if you don't know what I am getting at there. It's wild) and the proc math fix for AoE sizes.

This is the only part that does make sense to me. There was unfortunately too little space between the melee ATs as it was to buff Brutes without eclipsing Scrappers and Stalkers. So yeah, nerfing Tankers was the easy out. I just take issue with the extent of it. I agree with the way they addressed the unfair proc advantage Tankers had. I think that was really the ONLY thing that needed changing, honestly. That and maybe a look at Combustion as I'll note below. I disagree with losing arc width buffs. I disagree with the overcap nerf. If we do look at the old clear speed tests Ston did, we saw Scrappers and Tankers in a tie and Brutes all of 2% behind them both. And, as I said, that would have been even tighter if they did something targeted to Fiery Melee's Combustion, which was a serious outlier in favor of Tankers. While I am against balance based on solo performance, that kind of test DOES correlate well with the devs' stated reason for the nerf: consistently overcap AoE. It's almost a best case for it. Meaning, Tankers were doing probably as well as they could and even then only just barely edging out Brutes in the average across all powersets. Dropping Tankers another couple percentage points would have been warranted and I really bet that would have happened with just the proc nerf they did and maybe Combustion too. But in that particular scenario... they were dropped by 25% instead. I don't see the logic of such a severe cut. Yeah, it's not 25% in ordinary team scenarios, but it's still pretty significant when there was little reason for THAT heavy a nerf bat. Brutes would have been left sitting between Tankers and Scrappers in most scenarios, which is as fair a place for them to sit as any. One could then wonder if maybe Scrappers and, particularly, Stalkers, are doing as much damage as they should given they lack the crowd control capabilities of Brutes/Tankers and certainly have much less survivability. But that can be a separate flame war, I guess.

Yeah but this is broadly true of every other AT capability except for damage. And I'm simplifying a little with damage vs survival. The more detailed list is Survival, Melee Damage, Ranged Damage, Crowd Control, Support, and Pets. But among the melee ATs it reduces mostly to Survival, Melee Damage, and Crowd Control. And of those, it will sometimes just be the case you don't need as much Survival OR Crowd Control as you have. But you still have those capabilities for when you are in a situation where they matter so... you gotta pay for that with lesser capabilities somewhere else. To put it another way, you can't do everything better than some other AT or else there's a problem. Stalkers pretty much were immediately in this situation when City of Villains released. The devs somehow had the idea that being able to assassinate ONE target quickly would be a big deal and it just wasn't. Brutes were far and away doing more overall damage in combat AND were a lot tougher. Few people played Stalkers outside of ganking people in PvP.

Actually, they are words that preceded an argument about Brutes, which you ignored in favor of yet more empty rhetorical nonsense that perhaps you think makes you sound intelligent. On the plus side, I now understand there is no point talking to you.

First of all, thanks for finally actually responding to something I said instead of making up strawman bullshit like "I'm quitting tankers!" that I never said. Baby steps, I guess. But second of all, we DO know what the metric was. I've said this multiple times now. The Devs TOLD us what the metric was right there in the dev notes to the patch: Constantly saturated over-cap AoEs caused Tankers to "overshoot" their targets. Now sure, when and where that is happening and what their "targets" were is not being specified. And that is where the speculation comes in. But I've said exactly why I think this is about x8 soloing and farming. More than once, in fact. Because where else can you keep AoEs saturated? Not team content, I say. Feel free to counter that assertion if you can. But my experience on teams is you can't keep packs of enemies around you constantly like you can soloing x8 or in a farm. Teammates control and scatter enemies. Or they just plain kill them before they can gather around you. I try to lead the team when I'm on a Tanker so I can get in at least a few good big AoEs to not just rack up some damage but spread that taunt. But that's the best I do. Quickly, that spawn is cut down and my AoEs aren't hitting 16 anymore. The devs even had a term for this: "Pyramid effect". It's what was supposed to balance the big Tanker AoEs and, I assert, it does... on teams. And we're not just talking about Brutes for no reason either. The four melee ATs exist on a pretty obvious spectrum of offensive vs. defensive capability with Tankers, presumably, occupying the position of "toughest, but least damage" with Brutes being next to them at "not as tough as Tankers, but hitting harder". It therefore stands to reason that if there's any "target" for Tankers to hit, it's dealing a bit less damage than Brutes thanks to being tougher. Fair, right? Except, again as I've said, if we're talking about soloing at all, this is not purely a damage output scenario. Survival factors in as well. So who clears faster is not the same thing, exactly, as "who is doing more damage".

Who cares about noticeable? You think anybody else would agree to a 10% nerf for no good reason just because they'd need a stopwatch and a spreadsheet to know the difference? Now maybe you don't agree with the "no good reason" and that's fine, but this is my argument here at least. Why should I accept any nerf, however small, because of a balancing metric we've never used before? Since when is x8 solo and/or farm performance a reason to nerf an AT? My point is that any Brute was already contributing more offense on any team I've been on, so why I am getting any nerf at all? And this doesn't touch on the argument nobody seems to want to have, which is that Brutes SHOULDN'T just be assumed to solo faster than Tankers at max difficulty. Soloing isn't purely a damage affair, so what exactly was the problem with Tankers and Brutes being so close to the same average performance on x8 solo clear speed in the first place? Not to mention if x8 solo clear speed is the new metric around which we should be balancing melee ATs... uh... my Stalker wants to see the manager!

Who? Because that is not what I am saying. I am saying, in fact, that is what I EXPECT to happen... but only when soloing or farming. I have not seen this happen in teams. Almost the opposite in fact. I have trouble getting teammates to bring stragglers like rezzing Freaks to the next spawn even. They single-mindedly want to grind each spawn to dust before moving on. And they sometimes even get upset I've moved on to the next spawn to get it all taunted-up and clustered up on me. Then there are controllers/doms doing confuses and immobs and what-not, further preventing enemy clustering. There's no chance to keep AoEs saturated on a team like that. Not in my experience.

This is what is particularly annoying about the nerf and it's why I say it can only have been motivated by the extreme corner-case of +4/x8 soloing and/or farming. I don't see how, in any other situation, Tankers outdamage Brutes. It HAS to be a situation where the larger Gauntlet AoEs could be kept cranking up to their target caps constantly. They even said so in the dev notes. I accept the proc change. That's fair. And indeed some AoEs always suffered that, like Foot Stomp, because they were naturally 15ft radius even before. Or already wide enough cones they were denied Gauntlet's boost. So this puts everybody on the same page. It's fair. But the overcap damage cuts aren't. I'd need to see data that proves that was ever a real problem outside of farming/soloing and I accept neither of those as valid for balancing because nowhere is it writ that Brutes should solo team-sized groups faster than Tankers. Soloing involves BOTH damage and survivability. It is not clearly in the domain of one or the other AT. And even Ston's testing did not show a significant difference in clear speed anyway.

Few things: 1. It can take a Tanker a few rounds to get some kind of taunt effect going on all the aggro in a spawn if it's not exactly already packed together. It only takes a Controller one press of a button if they get there first. It is therefore a good idea to get there a few seconds, at least, ahead of the team. This means leaving slightly (but not a lot) before literally every enemy is dead. It does not mean playing several spawns ahead of the team like your story, but be sure you're not confusing the two. One is good team tanking. The other is soloing... on a team. 2. Rezzers: Nowhere is it chiseled in stone that if a freak tank decides to stand up three seconds after the tanker has left that you MUST stand and fight it there. Bring it to the next spawn and drag it past the explosions. It will peel off on somebody else if you don't want its attention. This is far more efficient than everybody wasting time standing around staring at dead freak and wondering if it might stand up. 3. Pulling in adds: Provided you never go over aggro cap, pulling in nearby enemies is potentially a good idea too. If they're that close, they might aggro on someone else in the team eventually. Better it's a tanker or other sturdy character who doesn't mind the attention. I do this sometimes in rooms with multiple spawns so that instead of aggroing two at once, I start pulling in the next group before the first is finished, so that we don't end up with groups two and three at the same time if the team is not particularly strong enough to handle that. Double pulls as x8 will go over the aggro cap. Doesn't matter if the tanker can survive that. Others might not. -- Circling back to point 1 there: Remember also if this is a PuG, it can take the Tanker a little bit getting used to how the team is rolling. Might leave one fight too early and adjust later. Point being: Don't be too quick to judge. Someone is not necessarily running off to solo just because they moved a little too quickly. Some teams move fast and you have to move fast to stay slightly ahead of them. It's a balancing act. Also... shit happens. Was on a team recently when the lead got bent a little out of shape saying the team had split when in fact someone had clicked a glowie and caused an ambush from behind. Half the team turned to fight it. Half the team didn't even see it until people started dying. That was the "split". That can happen. Roll with it.

Isn't "Fourth Ear Deaf" just a parody of "Third Eye Blind" though? Not sure which real band Golden Grain is referencing but I'd guess it's the same sort of thing.

One Thousand Cuts would sure look wild!

Doesn't look like it. Weirdly, there seem to be several modifiers that can be used by powers for -res effects. Evolving Armor uses melee_debuff_res_dmg. That one was nerfed to match the other melee ATs. Weaken Resolve, for whatever reason, uses ranged_res_dmg modifier, which has not been touched. Staff's Eye of the Storm bonus in Form of Body stance uses melee_res_dmg modifier to do -10% res for Tankers and -7.5% for the other melee ATs. Hasn't changed. I don't know what the reasoning here is unless it was to JUST nerf Bio.

On that note and while @Scarlet Shocker blathers on about armor, I will again remind everyone what we're REALLY missing in this game:

I think you ended your post on the right answer: This is a choice nobody has to make. Do both builds on the same character. Play both. See which one pleases you more.

Bingo. It just makes way more sense to decouple what the powers do from what they look like when possible. So you can be Invulnerable because your skin is invulnerable or because you're wearing really good armor. Up to you. Only thing we could probably use here is more "minimal/no VFX" options for various armor power sets that are still too overboard with particle effects. Like, as much as I love Rad Armor, for example, I haaaate the spinning ping-pong balls. Ugh!

I play mostly Tankers here. This vest would probably kill me.

Judging by the power description on City of Data here... yeah, I'd say there's something VERY weird going on behind the scenes. I cannot make heads or tails out of the code, so I have no idea how they managed to get mez enhancement to increase the magnitude instead of the duration. But my guess is that Mid's does not know how to decipher this power either and you'll just have to assume it's doing what the dev's claim it does and is enhancing mag.

If you were using this power on a Tanker prior to the Tanker nerf... it was. Tankers had a global arc/radius boost that would have affected this power and made it 22.5ft radius but still proc like it was a 15ft radius power. Now it's a 15ft radius power for all and it procs like a 15ft radius power. The proc chance should calculate based on the power's radius, not the inner radius of that one effect.

While convincing enemies to cluster together is *an* issue sometimes, it's not the one I was speaking of there. I mean even if you do manage to cluster them, they still obey their collision volumes and don't occupy the same physical space. Shoulder-to-shoulder, front-to-back, you still can't fit 10 of them in a 75 degree and 7ft deep cone. You may be lucky to fit 5. It, of course, depends on the cone. Some are quite generous. Staff Fighting has 9ft deep and 90 degree cones. Titan Weapons has three 10ft 120degree cones but two of them have always been target limited to 5, even on Tankers, and still are it seems. But most melee cones, even the ones that are wider by default, are melee-range deep, which is 7 feet. That, more than anything, is what limits how many targets you hit. In a crowd, you just can't hit deep into the crowd. Where the arc width buff we had before this patch helped was, at least, hitting enemies to either side of your target more reliably thanks to having a wider arc. This is especially helpful if you're in the middle of a big group of enemies and physically CAN'T reposition to get the most out of a cone volume.

Stealth nerfs?! But... my Stalker is already struggling!!!111

Crowd Control wouldn't change at all because it was never allowed to be bigger than 180 degrees even before the nerf. Like Foot Stomp, some Tanker AoEs were always disallowed from Gauntlet's arc/radius buff because they were deemed "large enough" already. No cone, that I'm aware of, manages more than 180 degrees and many weren't allowed to go bigger than 120 or 135. Flashing Steel, for instance is 130 degrees and a 50% bump would have put it over 180 degrees, so it was disallowed. So if they were to do for cones what they did for spheres and add to arc radius 50% on each power, I assume they'd follow the same rules Gauntlet did back before the nerf. Also, I expect shared pool powers like Cross Punch wouldn't be customized for Tankers and thus would stay at the same arc radius as other ATs even though I'm pretty sure they benefitted from Gauntlet previously. This is the rule they followed for pool sphere AoEs, it seems.

Hmm... am I doing the math wrong? This looks to be a pretty small difference in proc rate for something that might be used in an ST chain like, say Sweeping Cross. 3.5 PPM, 8s MRT (i.e. No recharge, say just acc/dmg and procs), 1.67s cast, 75 degrees base arc, 7ft radius = 45.5% proc chance. Expand that to 112.5deg arc (+50% arc) and you get... 43% proc chance. For that 2.5% hit to proc chance you get a much better chance to knock the teeth out of bad guys to the left and right of your intended victim as well.