Maelwys

Thankfully the Devs have just revoked the AoE base damage decrease across all Tanker AoEs. This means Eye of the Storm will perform pretty much the same as on Live until it hits >10 targets - it'll just have slightly lowered proc activation rate than before. Guarded Spin and Innocuous Strikes also look to have properly recovered their base damage - in fact Guarded Spin is even a smidge higher than before. So good news all around; at least for Tankers. I'd still be very in favour of advocating a buff to the Arc of Innocuous Strikes and Guarded Spin (possibly driven by a global buff in "Staff Mastery") given that they were so much more useful with a 135ft arc than with a 90ft one; but that's more of a balance tweak request for Staff across all ATs; not just on Tankers.

Thankfully the Devs have just made a liar out of me. All the Tanker AoEs should now be getting practically identical treatment; therefore Fiery Melee and Staff (for example) won't be getting nerfed any harder than Super Strength. So it's currently looking like the only real loser this patch is going to be Procbombed Radiation Armor.

*Checks the listed base radiuses* Yeah... they've not actually reverted the entire radius changes from the looks of it; just increased the base damage of each attack to compensate for it. So you're quite right, proc rate will be reduced a bit on those attacks compared to Live due to the higher base radius. However I can definitely live with that one. (also: average of 62.44 on Brainstorm compared to 62.43 on Live - technically MA got buffed!) 🤣

Foot Stomp, Combustion, Axe Cyclone, Spine Burst, Tremor etc. are all 15ft Base Radius AoEs and never had their damage reduced by the radius tweaks in the first place. That's the main reason why we've been decrying the radius changes as "unfair" and are very happy to see them go - they hit some powersets much harder than others.

The overwhelming majority of them, yeah. As of this build; Tanker AoEs should only be getting a reduction to their damage via the "overcap" damage reduction mechanic... which is much fairer since it's hitting all Tanker AoEs equally instead of just the ones with <15ft base radius. And IMO it's also a far less heavy-handed way to reduce high-end tanker performance; since the same percentage reduction will be applying to damage from any source (including procs)... but it'll only affect you whenever you're surrounded by >10 targets; so most of the soloists and lower level Tankers won't be howling loudly about unfair nerfs. It also makes it considerably easier for the Devs to balance/tweak the reduction values in the future if it turns out they were still a bit too harsh or a bit too lenient. Personally I still think the overcap reduction figure might be a little bit too harsh... but I'm more than happy for this revision to go live and see where the dust settles. Again, thanks for listening to all the feedback devs; it's much appreciated.

Update: Base recharge of Radiation Therapy just got changed from 25s to 15s. With a single foe it's now recharging in 27s instead of 45s. That's better for survivability, obviously. However the base activation rate for 3.5PPM procs just went from 46.7205% to 28.7718% In other words; average damage increase from procs is utterly pathetic in it now. Best case slotting I can find is with ED-capped Damage and Recharge and only ONE DAMAGE PROC (which is likely providing more value via its +damage set bonus!) (Dam, Dam/Rech, Proc, Heal/Rech HO, Heal/Rech, Acc/Heal) On the plus side, that gives ED-capped damage, healing and recharge aspect. On my Scrapper it's now recharging in ~9.348s with one foe and ~23.868s maxed out. When optimised its average Healing and Damage Per Second has increased drastically vs a single target; but damage per activation vs 10 targets is just 27% of Live. TL;DR: If this new current build goes live, strip out your procs.

Thank you for this! 🍻

Head's up: The Radius Nerfs have been revoked on Brainstorm! 🎉 That should just leave the Overcap damage reductions, so the fallout should be drastically lessened and individual powersets won't be getting hurt more then others. Thank you for listening Devs! 👍

Kismet is a +120s Proc. As such it should work in any pseudopet that has the "boosts are copied to entity" flag unless it also has the "ignores enhancements and other boosts" flag. Freezing Rain has both flags, so Kismet's buff will probably not work for it. However Enflame only has the first flag, so I'd expect Kismet's buff to work for it just fine.

Resistance modifiers were not changed. Resistance DEBUFF modifiers were changed. That means powers that inflict damage resistance debuffs on enemies (like Melt Armor) will strip off very slightly less resistance than before. Tanker Armor sets still have the same damage resistance totals as on live.

Perhaps, although I suspect more of the min-maxed ones are chasing maximum damage output instead via Global Accuracy and Global Recharge set bonuses plus Damage Procs. And even for the not-quite-optimised Brutes there's definitely something to be said for picking a Nerve Alpha plus 6x damage procs in most of if not all of their important attacks. I fully accept that Tanker higher base numbers means they can meet specific survivability thresholds with less effort and build compromise than Brutes... which can in turn give them more leeway in slotting. However that only holds true if attaining those survivability thresholds is necessary for survival in the first place for whatever content you're running. And a very common view is that the majority of this game's content is so easy that building for additional mitigation simply isn't required (even for diehard soloers, in these days of Incarnate clickies and being able to type /AH before each mission!)

I remember soloing that guy on Live on several squishies; and by far the easiest way of dealing with him was to grab a Shivan Shard. IIRC Infernal had a similar problem back in the day before all the IO power creep.

But long before hitting the damage cap, even a 3.5ppm Damage Proc still adds more damage per activation to the vast majority of Brute attacks than a Lv50+5 Damage IO does. Their final attack damage is proportionally much more heavily reliant on Fury than on slotting damage aspect into their powers. Tankers on the other hand rely on that damage aspect (unless you're a SS with constant double stacked Rage, I guess!) (Also as an aside, a Single Kinetics Corruptor or Defender can indeed cap out a Brute. Even my Kinetics Mastermind is capable of granting a good +360% purely by double stacking Fulcrum Shift, let alone Siphon Power and Support Hybrid etc. A traditionally slotted Brute is typically sitting 100% plus ~125% from slotting and Alpha plus ~160%+ from Fury = ~385%+. That's a good 35% over their 700% cap even before Set Bonuses and Hybrid!)

Rage is going from +80% to 70% damage per stack, so that's a loss of 20% for the double stackers. Realistically with Musculature and ED-capped damage aspect enhancement that'll result in going from ~385% damage to ~365% damage, or a proportional drop in damage output of ~5.19%. Damage Procs and Set bonuses and Assault Hybrid and Interface Incarnate abilities etc etc will all lessen that further. Given that Footstomp isn't getting its Base damage reduced by ~25%, I'd call that a solid win in comparison to most of the other top end sets.

That's the thing. What constitutes "90% of the game" (as opposed to "90% of CoX's total playable content") will differ wildly from person to person. I think it's fair to say that many players spend most of their time steamrolling through Lv50 content fully min-maxed; so they won't benefit as much from building for mitigation. Others will spend more time playing at low-levels or exemplaring; so benefit from more mitigation to counter the loss of Incarnates/Enhancement Aspect/Set bonuses/etc. I probably fall more into the first camp; but I tend towards a more balanced build approach instead of always going all-in on maximum damage output. Plus my OCD really appreciates it whenever I can reach arbitrary targets like the MaxHP cap, Resistance hardcap and/or Defence softcap(s) even if I know they're not strictly speaking necessary... I get the heebie-jeebies if I mouseover a Scrapper's HP bar and see XXXX/2399 instead of XXXX/2409... 🙈

IMO the Sentinel and Brute ATOs are probably tied for "worst performing"; but at least Superior Opportunity Strikes means Sents get to trigger Vulnerability a bit more often. The only time I've ever experienced any noteworthy beneficial effect from either of the Brute ATOs is in AFK Farming runs. An additional ~5 HP/Sec per stack from the Superior Unrelenting Fury Proc can slightly reduce the likelihood that I'll come back to a dead toon. Meh.

To be fair, Brutes get some versatility too via the way Fury works- they benefit much less proportionally from slotting their attacks with damage aspect; meaning that they can opt instead for more accuracy/endred/recharge whilst levelling; and when min-maxed at 50 they can go all-in on damage procs. Also since a sizable proportion of the powergamer playerbase here take the stance that "building for survivability isn't needed" - most of the time building for offense will trump everything else; and the fact that Tankers can hit those survivability caps easier becomes a moot point. Sure; there are edge cases (801 AE mission series for example. And "AFK" AE Farming) but you just have to glance at an average min-maxed 4-star build to see that a lot of melee ATs aren't even bothering to ED-cap their armors half of the time even for the "hardest" content in the game (yes that's due to Barrier spam, but IMO that just reinforces my point!)... 🤷‍♂️

It's definitely a game balance/mechanics issue. However I don't think it necessarily needs addressed PRIOR to readjusting individual ATs or Powers. It just needs addressed SEPERATELY. Honestly, the Devs have been talking about redoing proc mechanics for years. If other changes had to wait until they were done then we'd barely be out of issue 25.

Foot Stomp is indeed an exception, insofar as it has always had too much damage than it should (on both Tankers and Brutes) for a 15ft base radius AoE. However it's the base radius, not the base damage that is the important thing here. Because Foot Stomp has a 15ft base radius; its base damage is not being reduced by the Radius changes - regardless of how high its base damage currently is. What I'm referring to in my previous post is that the radius changes to Tankers on Brainstorm are having no effect on any 15ft base radius AoEs (like Foot Stomp, Axe Cyclone, Spine Burst, Tremor and Combustion) but they ARE having a drastic negative impact on any <15ft base AoEs (like Fire Sword Circle, Whirling Hands, Atom Smasher and Dragon's Tail). All of those 15ft base radius AoEs (whether they're "exceptions" like Foot Stomp or not!) currently have the same damage listed on both Brainstorm and Live. But the smaller-radius ones have less damage listed on Brainstorm. This means that the only nerf to Tanker 15ft AoEs on Brainstorm is coming from the "Overcap" damage reductions... but Tanker <15ft AoEs are effectively being nerfed twice. As a result; whenever you compare overall damage dealt by a Tanker and a Brute both using the same attack when under full target saturation (e.g. surrounded by oodles of foes) ...all the 15ft base radius AoEs I mentioned above are clocking in at nearly the same damage for both the Tanker and the Brute (the Tanker will be dealing roughly -1.01% to -11.29% less overall damage than the Brute depending on Fury) but the <15ft AoEs are taking a much more drastic hit to their damage (the Tanker will be dealing about -23.85% to -31.76% less overall damage than the Brute depending on Fury). Example numbers in the link below. As-is IMO it's shaping up to be a complete nightmare for balancing purposes; as some powersets are going to be taking major performance hits and others will be getting off very lightly. I'm still holding out for a rollback of all the radius changes (not just on the Melee Cones) but unfortunately that's looking less and less likely before it hits Live.

As it is currently the only Tanker Secondary sets that aren't taking overly harsh reductions in AoE damage are those with 15ft base radius AoEs. So realistically Super Strength, Battle Axe, Stone Melee and Spines. I was already planning on rolling up another Super Strength toon, so that kind of clinches it.

Yeah it's bugged. Been reported several times.

FWIW, the mission simulator runthroughs I've been doing for the Tanker feedback thread included a Battleaxe Brute. It's currently consistently slower on Brainstorm than on Live... but only by a few seconds over the course of the entire mission. Long story short, for damage output purposes if you're sticking a few procs in Axe Cyclone and Swoop then the cast time tweaks are practically unnoticeable. The change to make Axe Cyclone's inverted repel effect "resistable" is however very noticeable - you can't reliability pull enemies (especially higher level enemies!) around any longer so unfortunately it's lost its previous utility as a tool to clump spawns together. But at least things still get knocked down.

Yeah, that's the real head scratcher and why I've been consistently calling the changes out as too harsh. To my mind there's little question that on Live Tankers are overperforming whenever they can keep their AoEs saturated with targets. And the Devs have come up with great new tech to address that (the "Overcap" reductions). But I don't know why there's a need to set the reduction values quite as high as they currently are, since it's clearly resulting in Tankers underperforming on Beta. It also makes little sense to me that they're removing the global radius buff from Gauntlet and applying it to each individual power... whilst this technically brings the net base damage of those AoEs into line with the power balance formula, reducing their damage per hit means Tankers will deal less damage against multiple foes (and they're supposedly AoE specialists!) until they're hitting target saturation. If the Overcap mechanic didn't exist then this might be the next best thing as a method of reducing Tanker overperformance; but in light of what the Overcap mechanic can achieve IMO it's completely unnecessary. And since these radius tweaks are only impacting <15ft Base radius AoEs it means that certain powersets are going to perform much worse on Tankers than others - a nightmare for balancing. So if it were my call I'd 100% roll all of the radius changes back (restoring the wider melee cone arcs in the process!) and instead just focus on getting the Overcap reduction numbers appropriately balanced.

I mean, you just know what sort of nonsense we'd end up with...

As per the above, if the current Tanker changes on Brainstorm go live as-is then for AoE herding purposes a well-built Brute is going to be steamrolling a Tanker. The outliers are specific powersets that rely on 15ft base radius AoEs (like Axe, Spines and Superstrength) which will be much closer; but still slightly in favour of Brutes. And since Brutes already utterly dominate Tankers in terms of Single Target damage... yeah. It's not going to be a very pretty picture. The real kicker? Brutes likely still won't be first choice; Taunt-Aura-Possessing Scrappers will still drastically outperform them so unless you really need 90% resistance and punchvoke...?