Maelwys

I gave you the exact slotting; plus the reasoning behind it: If 2x damage procs; a buff proc and a debuff proc in a single AOE ability is a "strong use of procs" then fair enough. Let's try breaking this down again: Axe Cyclone. Base 15ft AoE, Tanker on Live: 52.8297 Base damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha: 118.96 damage. vs 10 foes: 1189.57 damage. vs 16 foes: 1903.31 damage. Tanker on Test: 52.8297 Base damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha: 118.96 damage. vs 10 foes: 1189.57 damage. vs 16 foes: 1425.10 damage. Brute on Live: 41.7077 Base damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 60 Fury: 143.96 damage. vs 10 foes: 1439.63 damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 70 Fury: 152.30 damage. vs 10 foes: 1523.04 damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 80 Fury: 160.65 damage. vs 10 foes: 1606.46 damage. That's a typical lead for a Tanker over a Brute of anything from +18.5% to +32.2%; depending on your average Fury. With the changes on Brainstorm that lead vanishes and becomes a slight deficit: ranging from -1.01% to -11.29%. ALL COMPLETELY IGNORING PROCS. - - - - - - - - - - However that's a 15ft base radius AoE; which aren't being hit as hard for Tankers on Brainstorm. Frozen Aura. Base 10ft AoE, Tanker on Live: 75.23 Base damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha: 169.40 damage. vs 10 foes: 1693.95 damage. vs 16 foes: 2710.33 damage. Tanker on Test: 57.87 Base damage. With ED-capped damage slotting + Musculature Alpha: 130.31 damage. vs 10 foes: 1303.06 damage. vs 16 foes: 1561.06 damage. Brute on Live: 59.39 Base damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 60 Fury: 205.00 damage. vs 10 foes: 2050.03 damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 70 Fury: 216.88 damage. vs 10 foes: 2168.81 damage. With ED-capped damage aspect + Musculature Alpha + 80 Fury: 228.76 damage. vs 10 foes: 2287.59 damage. Again, that's a typical lead for a Tanker over a Brute of anything from +18.5% to +32.2%; depending on your average Fury. But this time with the changes on Brainstorm the deficit becomes much greater: ranging from -23.85% to -31.76%. Honestly I think this is a "playstyle differences" thing then... because as mentioned above whenever I am soloing it is extremely rare that I cannot get at least 16 enemies around me for the vast majority of my AoE activations (unless I'm on an indoor map with highly restrictive geometry - typically one of those sodding Caves!). It's really just a case of ensuring that you're never fighting a single spawn at a time; which I find is a cakewalk on a Melee AT with inherent Taunt effects - by the time I whittle the surrounding enemies down to only 5-10 foes I'm already dragging them with me into the next enemy group. Admittedly for most of my characters I'll only start playing like that after they hit level 50 and are fully twinked out; otherwise they're unlikely to be able to survive the incoming damage from more than one +Nx8 spawn's worth of enemies constantly shooting at them... but still. If you know your AoEs have a target cap of 16, then why wouldn't you be trying to catch at least 16 targets with them...? 😕

I appreciate that this is now a rather long thread... but read the next few posts from Shags and Erratic1. We've already had this very same tangent. 😉

AFK Farmer Brute builds are very tight. Not so much because of the Defence and Resistance requirements but because of the Passive Regeneration requirements. You really need an absolute bare minimum of 35HP/Sec before Panacea and Performance Shifter Procs, and the higher the better (because it means you become less likely to die to a string of unlucky hits). 40HP/Sec is a good yardstick to aim for. Fiery Aura has Fire Resistance but it does not have any Native Fire Defense or Passive Regeneration buffs. The easiest Brute Secondary to build an AFK farmer with is Stone Armor. Brimstone Armor gets you Fire Resistance and Rooted gets you Passive Regeneration, so the only thing you really need to concentrate on is Fire Defense. Plus, until you build up some influence you can just cheese things with Granite Armor (the Recharge reduction means you'll kill things a little slower, but that's not a huge concern for an AFK farmer) - slot up Rooted and Granite, grab Tough and Weave and you're almost ready for AFK S/L farming. When min-maxed it's also one of the best high-end Brute farming secondaries due to +Recharge from Minerals and damage procs from Brimstone Armor.

Why do you think Procs skew balance in favour of Tankers? If Tanker AoEs hit 16 targets to a Brute's 10 then in terms of absolute damage dealt they're already up +60% regardless of Damage Procs. Damage Procs are irrelevant to the balance issue here. On a damage per activation basis Tanker base damage is also higher; but Fury (ballpark average of 60-80 depending on downtime between spawns, so +120%-160% damage) will push the Brute numbers ahead. Adding a damage proc to an attack will raise that attack's damage per activation for both Brutes and Tankers by the same amount (because Proc damage isn't affected by base damage scalars or Fury!). However Tankers have a much greater opportunity cost whenever it comes to slotting a larger number of procs in their attacks. Brutes gain the bulk of their damage from Fury rather than by slotting damage aspect within each attack, which means that Brutes can freely go "all in" on damage procs and 6-slot each attack with them providing they have sufficient global accuracy. The AoE you're referring to in my Staff Tanker has got 2x Acc/Dams, 2x damage Procs, a -res Proc and a FF +Recharge. On a min-maxxed Brute it'd have at least 4x damage Procs. (And the FF +Recharge is, notably, not there to help with damage output but with uptime on DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura. Staff's attack chain is gated by animation time, not by recharge rate, because it has to build perfection stacks!) AFAIK the only potentially valid argument here is that "Procs are kicking in slightly more on Live for Tankers than they should be in AoEs that have a base radius <15ft" because those AoEs are getting their base radius buffed by +50% via Gauntlet; but PPM mechanics use the original base radius to work out proc activation likelihood. However remember that the lower base radius used here will be exactly the same number for Brutes, therefore Brutes will have exactly the same Proc activation rate per target as a Tanker. So once again the real issue here is that a Tanker is capable of hitting more targets than a Brute with the same attack - the Procs themselves are not the culprit. This is why the new "Overcap" damage reduction on Brainstorm that applies to all damage dealt including Procs is essentially a silver bullet fix for the Tanker overperformance issues (as long as the Devs can get the numbers right!). All the radius changes are therefore not required at all and IMO should really be reverted since they're effectively just needlessly overcomplicating things.

Back in the day the longest consecutive session I played in was an ~18 hour Shadow Shard TF run. But I was consistently on for 6+ hours most evenings. These days my playtime is very much limited by my RL responsibilities. Between being on call for work and running around after two young kids it's very rare that I get an uninterrupted stretch longer than an hour.

It's the build I've used on Live for years - last post I can find about it is here. As I mentioned in my OPs the builds I tested are all minmaxed general purpose toons (hence the softcap balancing act in the Staff one!) so the attacks in the Staff Build do have a few damage procs in them. But it's not what you'd call Procbombed - Mercurial Blow and Eye of the Storm are the worst offenders with just two damaging Procs each. And its power selections are also not capping its AoE capability - it has zero epic pool AoEs (the meta is to lean into My Mastery for Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning). It's a generalist. I didn't have any issue clumping foes on any of the floors, even on the builds (like the Staff one) that don't possess a teleport ability to use bamf-to-target binds. But perhaps that's a playstyle thing - when herding I'm always on the move: "AoE one group, then immediately jump into a second group before they can react, then whittle them all down whilst moving towards a third..." so the only times I'm not surrounded by more than 10 foes are at the very start and the very end of each floor. On the last floor I'lpve been targeting the EB first and drag them around, hitting them with my higher-DPA ST attacks whilst spamming AoEs. That said... "close" AoEs (the 8-10ft ones) favour Tankers due to their increased radius making it easier to catch more foes. Especially if you're constantly on the move and dragging foes with you between spawns.

You can tweak the one in AA's thread to suit your purposes (often folk will not combine purple insps for example) - personally I tend to split up and tack it onto the end of my various existing movement key or power tray activation keybinds so that I don't have to keep hammering a separate key. inspcombine insight enrage$$inspcombine luck$$inspcombine catch_a_breath enrage$$inspcombine respite enrage$$inspcombine sturdy enrage$$inspexecname enrage inspcombine keen_insight focused_rage$$inspcombine good_luck focused_rage$$inspcombine take_a_breather focused_rage$$inspcombine dramatic_improvement focused_rage$$inspcombine rugged focused_rage$$inspexecname focused_rage inspcombine uncanny_insight righteous_rage$$inspcombine phenomenal_luck righteous_rage$$inspcombine second_wind righteous_rage$$inspcombine resurgence righteous_rage$$inspcombine robust righteous_rage$$inspexecname righteous_rage Those three strings combine the commonly dropped insps of each size tier into reds and activate them. If you're using them as-is then disable Breakfrees and Awakens as they're not included. Even so, allowing all three sizes of insp can occasionally result in tray clogging. So yes, you can also choose to block small insps (although I don't) if you really don't want to occasionally clear a tray or two out by hammering your Function keys. Or you can tweak the commands to make it consume Blues too (for example) instead of combining them.

I don't think there's that much of a case for "extra efficiency" TBH. On a toon with a Taunt Aura and/or punchvoke; IME Fold Space has only a few very niche situations where it's more efficient than you just instantly moving yourself into the middle of one fresh spawn; firing off a regular AOE; and then instantly moving into the middle of another fresh spawn. Because it has a target cap of 16; and power target selection in CoX always prefers the closest targets so Fold Space will always grab the closest 16 hostile targets (and annoyingly, line them up rather than pack them tightly in around you). So when soloing it's usually faster for those toons to just aggro a bunch of targets and drag them into another spawn, letting the enemies bunch up whilst you AoE them. And when on a Team you'll be having to time things between Blaster Nukes anyway. On a toon without a Taunt Aura and/or punchvoke; I could potentially envisage a few more reasons to take FS... if it didn't have such a long recharge time, if it bunched the mobs up better and if using it didn't cost you nearly two seconds that you could have spent activating a damaging AoE ability. Honestly on my Doms/Blasters/etc that've tried it, they were all better off just using an extra AoE or two. IMO the only niche situation where it'd be handy to have a power that physically gathers up enemies is when you're fighting something that starts off spread out and won't close to melee range natively (e.g. they have "prefer ranged" AI) which only exists with a few specific enemy types + missions.

Any map where you can realistically fight at least 16 foes all or at least most of the time. So the vast majority of outdoor maps; as well as a good deal of the larger indoor ones (probably not the CoT Caves though - they suck!) Assuming of course that you're playing at +Nx8 difficulty and are prepared to aggro more than one group at a time. I mean... even if you check the times I posted earlier in this very thread for my runs at +4x8 on Galaxy Brain's Office Mission Simulator (in which the Brute will have an advantage when clearing up the spawns before calling the elevator on each floor; and again when spanking the EB down) my Bio/Staff Tanker on Live was getting 5:59 and my Brute variant on Brainstorm was getting 5:54 using the same slotting. Without the benefit of Incarnate clickies or chugging Big Red Insps. Plus on Brainstorm Staff has gotten buffs to both Sky Splitter and Eye of the Storm when under 3 Perfection stacks.

Yes, but if it's called by a parent AoE effect then that doesn't matter. Because the Punchvoke redirect will get called separately for each target hit by that parent AoE, meaning each target gets it's own Taunt status effect applied to it. Don't get me wrong, Tanker and Brute Single Target Punchvoke mechanics are different. But their AoE Punchvoke mechanics work the same way. (Although an aside... AFAIK the AoE rider attached to Tanker ST attacks isn't really relevant these days unless you aren't running a Taunt Aura. IIRC it used to be if you were a Willpower toon then RTTC's rubbish base Taunt duration really hurt your aggro control, but they linked a Punchvoke redirect into each of the auras several pages ago so currently it should be getting overridden by the latter's much longer duration) /tangent 😉

Pretty sure they function the same way via a global inherent which gets called for each offensive power plus stuff like taunt auras, via the same sort of redirects and power executions, yep. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=tanker_defense.invulnerability.invincibility&at=tanker https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=redirects.inherents.gauntlet_aoe&at=tanker https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=brute_defense.invulnerability.invincibility&at=brute https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=redirects.inherents.fury_proc_aura&at=brute IIRC the different Taunt duration scale values crept in during i26p4. (Pretty sure the official name for the Brute version is "Punchvoke" now too...?) The text in the wiki is correct in that Tankers can inflict a Taunt effect on multiple foes via one single target attack; whereas a Brute's single target attack will only inflict a Taunt effect on the target that it's hitting. But an AoE Taunt effect will kick in on AoE attacks and Taunt Auras for both ATs and AFAIK that AoE Punchvoke mechanic is identical on each (aside from Tankers having a longer duration) and the Taunt effect on both of them is Mag4.

I have Fold Space on precisely one toon, and it was taken at level 49 because they'd nothing better to pick... 🤷‍♂️ I have self-teleporting abilities and bamf-to-target binds set up on the majority of my toons though. Combat Teleport gets taken if I can spare a pool power selection, otherwise it's typically Mystic Flight.

To be fair, most of the discussion in the Brute subforums for the last few years seems to have been the same group of people trying to convince posters to roll Tankers instead... 😛 Anyways: Mine certainly do. And I know one of the main reasons that Superstrength Brutes (for example) tend to sit at the top of that AT's leaderboards is that they can freely procbomb their attacks without worrying about getting enough global accuracy to cap hit rate vs +3 foes. (As if we needed more justification to nerf Rage...)

Currently Tankers and Brutes have the same aggro limit and the same AoE Punchvoke mechanic and Magnitude. Their Taunt powers are also completely identical. So with like for like enhancement slotting the only reason a Tanker tends to holds aggro over a Brute whenever both stand next to each other is that the base Taunt Duration on Tanker Punchvoke is very slightly longer (14.96s compared to 13.6s) - as remaining duration plays a big part in deciding who claims aggro (if the remaining duration on the currently active Taunt effect is less than 50% of the remaining duration on a new different owner's Taunt effect then that new effect will get an opportunity to kick in) So I'd say that Tankers could use a leg up here if they're supposed to be "AoE specialists" who attract more targets to themselves than a Brute. On Live? Almost all of them. At least whenever you ensure that their AoEs are always fully saturated with enemies to hit. Dealing a minimum of 60% additional damage adds up. Tankers have more base mitigation than Brutes and therefore have a much easier time hitting survivability thresholds (the "Immortality line") which often gives them more leeway to slot Procs... but if a Brute and a Tanker are both slotted identically then the Tanker's AoE damage output will outperform the Brute's regardless of how many Procs are in play. However on a damage per activation basis the more procs the better off the Brute will become, at least until they both start hitting the damage cap... so the Tanker really needs to be constantly hitting those extra targets to pull ahead.

It's not. Procs actually skew things slightly in favour of Brutes. Tanker's AoEs and Cones being capable of hitting 60-100% more Targets for full damage (and having 50% more coverage area in most cases!) is the problem. However it's a problem that only really becomes overtly troublesome whenever you are surrounded by enough targets for those AoEs and Cones to consistently achieve full target saturation. Like AE Farming (which is irrelevant for AT balance) and when steamrolling through content at +Nx8 (which isn't)

If the developer intention is that Tankers are to be the Tanky Melee AoE specialist, then either they need to deal more AoE damage compared to the other melee ATs (and we've already seen where that leads) or they need to be better at controlling the Aggro of a large number of targets. As I pointed out earlier, currently for the purposes of aggro control there is no point to raising the target cap of Tanker AoEs from 10 to 16 whenever Taunt auras and AoE punchvoke mean that the Aggro limit is already being consistently reached at the lower caps. Raising the Tanker aggro cap to about two full +4x8 spawns worth of foes (24+) would become capable of attracting the attention of more critters without dealing more damage to them. However there would still be an element of risk even on teams that choose to only pull two groups at a time because of the way the Taunt effect works (the threat level of the Taunter on each affected target is a multiple of both the remaining Taunt duration and the total damage that the Taunter has dealt to that target). Unless the Tanker is dealing consistent damage to each foe their Taunt effect on that foe will be "fragile"... certainly fragile enough that a Blaster (for example) will be able to peel them off the Tank. IMO this approach would allow Tankers to occupy a sufficiently different niche from Brutes (and Scrappers/Stalkers) that they can each be mechanically desirable on Teams for different reasons.

AFAIK the ATOs mostly follow the theme of the AT and often complement their Inherent. So the two more damage focused melee ATs each get two ATOs that give them greater damage (via more regular Critical Hits and additional Hidden state and Build up activations) and the more resistance focused AT gets two ATOs that give them greater mitigation (via more damage resistance and absorb). Brutes are supposedly more balanced and so get one of each: a damage boosting ATO (+Fury) and a mitigation boosting ATO (+Regeneration). Conceptually all that makes sense to me... but unfortunately in reality the performance of both Brute ATOs is pathetically poor.

The argument, as I understand it, is that if Tankers are the AT most suited for grabbing and holding aggro then having them deal damage to more targets simultaneously (via a bigger radius and Target Cap) helps them lock down aggro faster. The problem with that is AoE taunting is very limited mechanically. Currently you can only hold aggro on up to 17 enemies simultaneously. So when combined with punchvoke and your Taunt Aura a 16-target AoE is usually overkill, because a 10-target AoE will end up keeping the attention of the same (capped!) number of foes. Also, these days most non-Tanker "squishes" tend to be just fine at surviving the attention of minions (and often LTs) long enough to kill them. So often the only things that are really worth Taunting are Bosses and above. In my opinion the best way to achieve what the Devs appear to be going for here would be to: (I) Completely revoke all the changes to Cones and AoEs. Return the global radius/arc buff to Gauntlet the same as it is currently on Live. (ii) Implement the "Overcap" Damage Reduction mechanic for any targets hit above the regular caps (5 for cones, 10 for AoEs) using either a Single Exponential Reduction curve (so target 10 takes ~75% of the damage of target 9 which takes ~75% of the damage of target 8, etc) or a single flat reduction (so each Target takes ~50% damage). The exact figures can be tweaked over time to bring Tanker performance down to a roughly similar level as Brutes. This will allow the runaway extra damage dealt by Tanker AoEs when surrounded by targets to be reduced without impacting their regular performance, and affect damage from all sources including Procs. (iii) Raise the Tanker aggro limit. Going from 17 to something like 24-32 will help those higher target cap AoEs actually mean something for aggro control purposes. (iv) Give Brutes an ATO which actually affects their damage output and makes them more attractive to a team for damage purposes. Like "Each point of Fury grants an additional 0.5% damage buff, that applies not only to the Brute but also to any allies within 60ft" or "Brute punchvoke now applies a non-stacking damage resistance debuff of -10% for 5 seconds". Result? Tanker performance stays put for regular gameplay; but their AoE damage when surrounded by mobs (Farming, +4x8 runs, etc) is drastically reduced in exchange for becoming much better at holding the attention of a very large number of foes. Brute performance gets a slight increase when soloing and it becomes more beneficial for a team to bring a Brute along for raw damage output but a Tanker along for AoE aggro control.

Personally I think there are multiple problems with the Melee AT balance at the moment on Live. Tankers dealing too much AoE damage is definitely one of them. The global radius and target cap buffs that Tankers are currently getting; combined with the ease of attaining "enough survivability" (meaning they have more wiggle room that other ATs to buff their damage via offensive set bonuses and procs) means that an AoE-damage-focused Tanker can almost always blow an identically built Scrapper/Brute/Stalker out of the water. AoE damage output certainly has an impact on AE farming times, yes... but it also has an impact on any occasion where you're fighting more than 5-10 mobs simultaneously - which is most team content in CoX. (Nerfing Tankers is going to do naff all to Farmers - they'll just swap to a different AT and move on; never mind the fact that some of us have already been using ATs other than Tankers for ages...). So personally I fully accept that the current level of Tanker AoE damage needs reduced for the sake of balance... just not by quite this much! ATO performance disparity is the other biggie. Take ATOs away and a Brute and a Scrapper and a Stalker all become very similar in terms of damage output. However the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs are capable of adding so much additional damage output that Brutes are left in the dust. Tankers have one ATO that grants +DamageResistance and is still very useful without being damage-focused. Brute ATOs are hot garbage. Procs are definitely borked. PPM mechanics are both unintuitive and ridiculous (adding local recharge aspect is bad?!?) and should be nuked from orbit. But that's not unique to Melee ATs and so IMO is a battle for another day. Notably - Tankers are currently dealing too much AoE damage whether or not you include Proc effects - and the melee AT that is gaining the most benefit from procbombing their attacks is a Brute (due to their low base damage; plus Fury; they gain proportionally more from slotting their attacks with damage procs instead of for damage aspect!).

I still have at last one serial connector RS232 mouse from pre PS/2 days. (And a few stacks of floppy disks... not just the 3.5 inch size either...) 😓 My obsession with keeping working examples of "older tech" secreted away in various showboxes/drawers/etc does occasionally come in useful though. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to dig something out of the cache in order to get different bits of new "smarter tech" to work properly and/or talk to each other (because one didn't understand the other's flavour of Wireless Casting; or because an HDMI port decided it was going to refuse to work on Tuesdays) let alone stripping + resoldering old stereo/speaker bits.

AFAIK the only things that should be affecting Single Target damage (e.g. Pylon times) currently are the slight decreases to "damage buff" and "resistance debuff" scalars. Evolving Armor will be inflicting -9.975% resistance instead of -10.64% Hardened Carapace will be granting +21.875% damage instead of +25% Build Up will be granting +70% instead of +80% damage. ...and that's about it I think. So yeah, I'm not surprised the Pylon times are almost the same as before - I'm pretty sure that keeping Single Target damage as-is was one of the design goals here.

IIRC Power Crash's base arc is pretty big as it is (120 degrees?) so unless you're intentionally constantly trying to catch 6+ targets with it there won't be much difference there. Dark Obliteration (Soul Mastery) will be completely unaffected; so I suspect the only power you'd really notice a change in would be Whirling Hands. Hitting 10 Targets for full damage is going to be much worse than 16; even before you factor in the base damage decrease.

If you're asking honestly rather than tongue in cheek? Tankers mission completion times being ~30% slower than Brutes on Brainstorm would suggest that if what the Developers are intending is that Brutes and Tankers should be dealing comparable levels of damage in a regular mission like Galaxy Brain's Office Mission Simulator (albeit via the Tankers dealing less raw AoE damage but hitting more targets) then either Tankers need to be doing more damage or Brutes need to be doing less damage. And since the major effect of the proposed changes is to lower Tanker damage... then the obvious solution here is for them to not lower Tanker damage by quite as much they are right now. So lose (or reduce) either the radius changes or the overcap damage reduction changes. Personally I'd like to see Tankers have larger Cone Arcs again (without the base damage reduction) and for the "overcap" damage reductions to be made less harsh. But even just lowering the harshness of the overcap reductions from its current -67% to something a bit more reasonable would be helpful; IMO.

Taunt Auras are the same (e.g. Mag3 + 13.6 seconds duration) on a Scrapper as on a Brute. They just don't also trigger Punchvoke for the additional Mag4 effect; so Bosses (and additional enemies beyond the regular target cap) tend to ignore it. But then Bosses also tend to melt when a Scrapper (or Stalker) so much as looks at them funny; so there's that. I've AE farmed a fair bit on various /RA Scrappers at +4x8 and rarely have they had to spend time chasing after runners. The real trick's been the "staying upright"...