[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

35 minutes ago, Duckbutler said:

 

I don't doubt you. Masterminds as the tank replacement would have been a huge mistake... and back in the day, mistakes were definitely made. I think the community made do and it, surprisingly, worked. Villains were always individually weaker and had to work more as a team to stay alive. That was honestly part of what made the game fun, I originally played more red side than I did blue. I had a willpower brute back when that set came out and finally having something tank adjacent was a huge relief. It took many iterations before I found something that worked for me and more still to make that character something approaching durable.

I read this thread and it reminded me of the CoV Beta testing and that one of the days I was on there was focused testing going on with some powerset tweeks and Plant/ Doms were in that particular one, so I was on my Plant/Thorns Dom running stuff with people.

 

Castle happened to be there observing for a bit and his comment on Masterminds being the intended Tanks kinda stuck with me is why I mentioned it.  He could see the Community making Brutes the tanking AT at release but was reluctant to make too many changes.  I'm guessing that the Going Rogue expansion was already in the preliminary planning stages is why.

Just my guess, though.

[Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?]

1 hour ago, Duckbutler said:

I've been resisting this thread because it's troll bait and a half, and I see some posts that come across as very angry-because-I-want-to-be-angry, and very closed to any counterpoint no matter how reasonable. There seems to be a disconnect with what brutes are even supposed to be. Are they melee damage? Are they tanks?

 

For my part, I pick brutes when I want a tank that plays aggressively. I think that's the common perception and in line with the original CoV design. When I picked up the game again in January and applied everything I've learned elsewhere over the last decade since shutdown, I was surprised that brute baseline durability isn't higher. Base AT hit points is higher than scrapper, but not by much. The benefit both ATs get from their secondary powersets is identical and brutes don't really pull ahead until they're either built out with IOs or receiving buffs from their teammates. It would make sense to me to try to push brutes to be more in line with tankers and not even competing with scrappers/stalkers.

 

For that, I actually do like the scaling resist based on fury, at least in concept. It rewards the "turn brain off and plow into the next group" behavior that brutes are supposed to be known for. With fury's current implementation it might not work out that way in practice.

 

As someone who likes to play Brutes (and Dominators) more so than other ATs and was in the CoV beta test, the perception of Brutes being the CoV 'Tank' was made by the Community after it's launch, but started it's momentum towards the end of Beta when they started allowing more people in.

 

The original intended 'Tank' for CoV was the Mastermind with Brutes filling the off-Tank Scrapper-like role, but that never really panned out, on the Servers I played on at least.

 

Masterminds were few, at least the ones wanting to group, and if you were a Brute and joined a group, they expected you to Tank, no matter your Powersets.  I lost count of the times my BA/SR Brute face-planted because of this and before it got fully IO'd out.

 

I'm not going to argue with anyone about buffing this, nerfing that and so on because I've not played since the shut-down and have only been back for 3 months and there's so much that has changed and or been added that I'm not fully up to speed as of yet.  I've remade my BA/SR Brute, but it's only lvl 8 because I've been too preoccupied with leveling my Dominators and SJ/Rad Brute, which has decent survival for only being lvl 40 with SO enhancements.

[Wanted to try out the new Axe set but i have no idea on a secondary]

I've just returned to the game and haven't had much of a chance to play around in Mids to see, but back before the shut-down I ran a BA/SR Brute and it was pretty fun but a toggle nightmare and slot hungry.

  I can't find my notes on the build, since it's been so long, but I know leaping and fighting were 2 of the pools I used.  I just don't remember what other pools and incarnate I had on it, sadly.  It did have some HO's and at least one purple IO set in it, that I know for sure.