marcussmythe

I can see this. Soloing, the Sentinels greater resilience could allow it to live ‘dangerously’, piling up crowds and hammering away - whereas the blaster must be more circumspect.

Feel you there. I managed to get an invuln build that caps out pretty much everywhere - but its totally pillowfisted. Decisions, decisions...

Damn nice, Werner. I managed about the same time and settings on my Invuln/EM - but I had to eat all the inspirations or either my death count or time would have gone sky high. Awesome work doing it with no candy. And my guess to what killed you - there is a beam rifle sniper mob in there somewhere that does a long cast time high damage sniper shot - and that long cast time means it comes in right at the tail of his 6 friends that just wrecked your defense and energy resists. The ubiquity of Energy Damage late game is hard on Dark Armor - there are days when it feels more common than S/L once your post 50.

Titan Weapons loves its recharge. Consider finding places for the Force Feedback +RCHG proc. Ive got a SR/Titan and I still try to get more recharge! I would probably not pursue +DEF on Radiation. You have no defense debuff resistance, so any value you get from defense will be quickly lost against many enemy groups - and between resistance, heal, and absorb, I cant imagine needing it. Forgive me that I am doing this on my phone - so I cannot open the build and give better thought out advice.

I find ‘proc monstering’ to be an overstated problem. While potentially very powerful on specific outlier powers, every power that gets procced is a pile of high value set bonuses left on the floor, mainly survival bonuses and recharge bonuses. Set bonuses gave a fantastic survival tool to all ATs, when only some needed it. There is little value in taking a tank from ‘Can survive’ to ‘Can survive indefinitely while AFK’. Proccing out attacks allows ATs that do not need additional survival tools to instead gain additional damage tools, redressing this imbalance. I wonder if some of the Superstrength/Rage issue would be solved if Rage could only buff attacks -in superstrength-. The real power of SS, it appears to me, grows out of its ability to leverage rage across high DPA Pool Attacks - most of the powers in superstrength itself are unimpressive in the absence of the Rage buff - likely by design. I wonder if some of the disconnect is the people who say Rage is fine using it as originally envisioned, in an era before nukes got built into defense sets and before Power Pool attacks had better DPA than many if the best in-set powers in the game - while the people that say nerf rage really mean nerf ‘Rage plus Boxing plus Cross Punch plus Gloom plus Dark Obliteration’.

Its his delendam at this point. “Rage Delenda Est.” Amusingly, the more I kick the tires, the funny thing about SS is that as (it looks like) its powers were built with the assumption of one-stack rage (like Brutes lower base damage scale, because Fury). Which means that SS more than any other set I have player -wants- to go out of set for its attacks - Boxing and Cross Punch may not be world beaters - but apply double rage to them, and katie bar the door... and lord the gloom numbers.

Halloween Event.

If ALL you do is solo, Id go with Brute. Fury is a fantastic mechanic when leveling, and will still leave you with more damage at 50. The Brute will be more fragile, but for solo content, the difference wont matter - both are tough enough for anything in the game. If you want to tank for teams, a tank will be a better choice - it gets tougher, earlier, and always will be. The tank will do WAYY less damage while leveling, but by 50 youll be within spitting distance. Both are awesome. It goes to your priorities.

Thank you.

HEATs dont really apples:apples with anyone - most tanks cant turn into a flying AOE squid, most blasters cant turn into a giant pile of crabrocks, and so on. That said, I do feel the HEATs need some love.

Signed in Elec/SR Sentinel.

Faster than the Scrapper has GOT to go to runners... Scrappers flat out do more damage than tanks (Barring, as noted above, SUPERSTRENGTH Tanks. What the hell, Superstrength?)

Home, and now have the time to recreate what I had at work, because this is bugging me. Both builds attached below. Tank: Brute: In the state those builds are set in, I see a slight damage advantage to the tank. If you take Follow-Up out of the equation, the Brute has the advantage, but at two stacks, the Tank is slightly ahead. You should be able to play with toggling stuff on and off, based on your greater knowledge of what does and doesnt work in Mids, and let me know if Im seeing what I think Im seeing - if Tank values are off for Follow Up, the Brute should slide ahead (though not by all that much!) Im ignoring here things that could be done to either build to further improve damage, or for the brute to try to catch up on DEF, or the Tank to 'trade in' some of its comparative overage in DEF, in the name of Apples:Apples

I do not have the Brute Clone of BZBs Tank handy - just walked out of work. Ill try to get it to you tomorrow if the issue is still open. If you feel like fiddling with it in the meantime, it was a very simple reverse clone of BZBs - same slotting, same powers, apples:apples. Once I started turning on the incarnates and the Follow-Up Buff, the tank climbed. It should be simple to replicate what I saw.. start out with no follow - up, and no incarnates, with the Brute at 90% Fury. Brute ahead, no problem. As I turn on Musculature Alpha, Follow Up, Interface... Tank starts catching up and eventually passed the Brute. Im aware Mids has.. issues.. and I offer the curators no criticism. It is rather a crying shame, however, that in a game where the math is as deeply obfuscated and impenetrably explained as CoH, the only tool we have for looking at these things (other than spending untold hours respeccing on Test) gives bad results so often. My understanding is that the Mids team is doing the literal best they can with essentially zero resources. Now, if Follow-Up gives a different buff for each AT (I did not know that!) thats going to offset some of the difference. *sigh* This is why BZB is doing the testing, I suppose.

Ive spent the last half our playing around in Mids (I will admit that Mids is not play, but I am at work). I think I was wrong. I owe BZB an apology. At least for Claws. If there are no buffs whatsoever, the 'Tanks do 90% of Brute Damage' absolutely holds true - and I think that is reasonable. However much tougher tanks may or may not be, a 10% DPS advantage is non-trivial, ESPECIALLY when we are well past tough enough - the tanker additional toughness just does not matter. However... Once you layer on stacked Follow-Ups, start adding in Musculature and Assault Hybrid - if my math and mids are to be trusted, the Tank (at least the Claws Tank) eclipses the Brute (at least the claws brute). Any reasonable level of buffing outside of base enhancements and fury and the tank starts to catch up. I really did not expect that the higher base value would 'swamp' the 180% Fury buff, but it looks to me like it does. Now, I can build a Claws/SR Brute that 'gets ahead' of BZBs SR/Claws Tank on offense, while still staying over softcap - but thats bending procs, etc. If the Tank did the same thing, and sacrificed the headroom it has spent to get about 10% more DEF than the Brute into yet more damage bending - maybe Adrenaline Boost... then the Tank would (again by my math) come out ahead. The Brute still gets the title back at full buffcap - but as BZB points out, we dont live there, and noone questions that a red-converting candy-popping farmer will do more damage with a brute than a tank. But we create an odd situation were in generic game play/hard content, the Tank is a NOTABLY better soloist than the brute, as it is both tougher, and at least in some instances more damaging. (hysterically, the Brute may be a better team player in some circumstances - as a heavy damage buffing team will send the Brute past the Tanks damage, and the same team buffs will make the brute no less unkillable than the tank) I do not have a clear, simple solution, and my math and mids may both be wrong (The map is not the territory!). But if Bill comes back with the Tank matching or out-performing the brute, I will not be surprised.

I think if you are using SR, which gives the same caps to DEF on a Brute as on a Scrapper, and which also loves really high base HP of a Tank to buy more scaling time for its RES the Brute doesnt have a great arguement. Of those three ATs, Brute is the last I would pick. If you are using claws, which leverages a constant Dambuff from F/U, the higher base damage mods of the Scrapper and Tanker get more use from it - and the Brute less so. For your particular combo - yes, the Brute has it hard, I think. A Resist set would push the Scrapper some out of the Spotlight. A high raw damage, self buff set would be notably better on the Brute than the Tank. So maybe Mace/Invuln

I here refer to things like TVHW Magesterium, etc. Which I am given to understand is still actually mildly challenging?

It would be nice to know if we are looking at Page 6 (or something similar) in a 'this month' 'this season' 'this year' or 'never' time frame, just for expectations management. As I play several likely-impacted powersets, having that information would allow me to make better informed choices about where to spend my playtime and influence. Even a 'we don't know when if ever' would be something. This request should not be taken as criticism of the HC team or their work, by any means - simply an observation that better information makes for better decisions.

Yannow, to the extent we arent already in them, we almost oughta form a supergroup for the people who like DPS chasing, big-game hunting, and other 'Extreme Sports' CoH...

Welcome home! Im @C'len on my global - holler if you need help with getting your feet back under you, or anything else!

Because difficult content resurrects the not-thoroughly-enough slain Holy Trinity, and hyper specialization is rewarded when you are pushing the edges of the envelope? Maximum tough AT, maximum damage AT, maximum buff power AT, Maximum CC AT, and a really high damage team buffing AT. Yeah, thats what Id take to a raid in WoW, as well.

Im not sure that is an entirely fair comparison from which to draw 'grossly unfair'. Yes, in content of sufficient difficulty to badly threaten the brute, there is a good chance the tank will do better than the brute - as the tank is getting busy killing, and the brute is getting busy dying - or trying not to. At the next layer down, the brute should similarly outperform the scrapper at a lower threat level - and the scrapper the blaster. The tougher AT SHOULD outperform the more damaging one on sufficiently dangerous content - and exactly at this point, where the content starts killing the lower-toughness character, but cannot yet do so to the tougher one. That is the tradeoff, and there must be, else there is no point to the more resilient AT. More broadly, after years in live and early days on HC of 'Well, I COULD tank, or I could Brute and level far easier and do waaaayyy more damage oh and also be tough enough for almost every circumstance...' .. yeah. If you buff Brute survival until you cant find a temperature point of survival between the brute and the tank.. well.. we are back there, again.

Hunh. I made one of these last summer. I should dust her off...

Incarnate BP are -mean-. I dont imagine this psy damage troubles the Bubbas much, but NOONE likes Radiation Defenders.

An interesting point about survival vs. damage - as survival is a prerequisite to damage, and damage can open the door to surviving (Defeat being the best debuff) So looking at the 'really tough content' design space - how do BZB Scrap, Brute, and Tank handle in Linea Missions? I recall you running them, right?