Maelwys

FWIW the regen rate increase has been reverted (for now) in the most recent Build #4. However whenever it was still there it really didn't make a noteworthy difference to my farming runs on Brainstorm. The proposed Tanker AoE and Cone damage nerfs however are drastically increasing my Tanker farming clear times (and even regular mission clear times!) on Brainstorm. The proposed changes to Radiation Armor are also reducing the damage dealing capability of both Ground Zero and Radiation Therapy. So it may lose the top spot. There is a slight nerf to Battle Axe damage (as the animation times of Axe Cyclone and Swoop are currently both getting increased a smidge; and the "pull" effect on Axe Cyclone is much less reliable than before) but if you're procbombing Axe Cyclone then honestly it's pretty much a wash. At present AoEs with an unbuffed base radius of 15ft (like Footstomp; Spine Burst; Axe Cyclone and Tremor) are still a smidge ahead on Tankers... so if you're setting one of those to Autofire on an AFK farmer (like Spines) then you'll be less impacted. But I suspect that if all these changes go live then overall Brutes or even Scrappers will take the lead again for Melee AT Active Farming (where you don't need as much survivability). My RadMelee/StoneArmor Brute and my BattleAxe/FA Brute are both still chugging through farms perfectly happily on both Live and Brainstorm; with little if any difference in clear times + the same applies to my Scrappers, except for the EM/RadArmor one!

Unfortunately there are no net arc / radius increases. The global increase from gauntlet was removed, and instead each AoE (with a radius <15ft) had its base radius increased. As a result, Radius stayed the same but Arc actually decreased (so melee cones hit less targets) and the base damage of each affected attack was lowered (because they had their Area of Effect adjusted without their damage being renormalized again afterwards) and the likelihood of Procs to kick in on them was reduced (as Base radius is a factor in PPM calculations). Then on top of that you have the separate "overcap" damage reductions: if an AoE has a target cap of 16 on Tankers but 10 on other ATs , regardless of radius, then targets #11-16 on Tankers will take vastly reduced damage. With an even harsher curve on Cones that have a target cap of 10 on Tankers but 5 on other ATs. Taken all together it's not a pretty picture. There are even some Cones - such as Staff's Guarded Spin - which you can hit 10 targets with on Brainstorm and still deal less overall damage than hitting 5 targets with them on Live (and that's before you even consider the reduced proc rates!)

It might well be a (very poorly documented!) intentional change, but I still think it could also just be a byproduct of someone in the powers team bulk adjusting the radius values and either forgetting to renormalize the damage numbers afterwards or not realising that they needed to do so. As has been pointed out in another thread, whilst the design formula for AoE damage includes area factor, if it's not recalculated at runtime then the base damage per activation of each affected attack could have been left as-is if all the Devs wanted to do was bump the radius. Given the amount of changes being made in this page and the other errors and omissions that have already been highlighted; I'm currently giving them the benefit of the doubt and not (yet) ascribing this one to malice. But IMHO if this particular change is staying in, then the patch notes 100% need clarified here.

The base Areafactor of an attack affects its base damage. You can see this demonstrated for Dragon's tail in my post here - hitting a single target with it (unprocced + unenhanced) on Brainstorm does less damage than on Live. It's up in the air whether this side effect of the radius changes is intentional or not as base damage reduction is not expressly mentioned in the patch notes. I've asked them for clarity in the Build #4 thread.

I am hoping; hoping I say; that someone somewhere just ran a script to target all the Tanker AoEs with a current radius <15ft and automatically adjust their radius... and then the damage recalculation occurred automatically based on the above Area Factor design formula but they missed it and/or forgot to normalise it again afterwards.

Proc reduction is in place either way... the damage dealt by Procs will get reduced by the "overcap" damage reduction (at least to targets beyond the regular cap); and the likelihood of Procs activating in the first place will get reduced by the gauntlet radius changes (to all targets of an AoE as long as it has a regular radius <15ft). Without sounding like a broken record: I do think Tankers are doing too much AoE damage; as they hit more targets than Brutes or Scrappers do with the same attack. "Radius and Base Damage/Proc Activation" adjustment is certainly one way to go about that; and "Damage reduction to anything beyond the regular target cap" is another. But a good few AoEs exist where the radius is already 15ft (like Footstomp, Axe Cyclone, or Spine Burst; or Tremor) and those attacks won't be impacted by the radius changes. Footstomp in particular is very, very good when procbombed and quite honestly it needs to have its damage reduced for targets #11-16... hence my preference for leaving the overcap reduction in place. [EDIT: Perhaps the gauntlet radius changes could be kept in and the overcap reductions could be left in place for ONLY AoEs with a regular radius of 15ft... but that might be more trouble than it's worth?]

Yeah. It's not exactly intuitive; but the damage AoEs deal in CoX is partially based on how large they are - attacks that cover a wider area inherently deal less damage. Therefore increasing the base area of effect of an AoE attack (rather than buffing it from an external source like Gauntlet still does on Live) will reduce its base damage. In short; this means that any AoE attack that a Tanker has which doesn't already have a radius of 15ft is getting its damage nerfed. Then on top of that is the "overcap" damage reduction; therefore AoEs that have a regular radius of <15ft radius and a regular target cap of <16 are getting nerfed twice. (and Cones have a steeper "overcap" damage reduction curve plus a reduced Arc... so heaven help you if you're a Dual Blades, Staff or Titan Weapons Tanker... 😭)

Can this section of the patch notes PLEASE get clarified so that people are aware that removing the passive Tanker global arc/radius buff and increasing the inherent radius/range of these AoE powers ends up causing these powers to deal considerably less base damage than before? Live: Brainstorm: I'm not worried about the fact it's also reducing Proc activation rates. I'm worried that currently a Cone on Brainstorm hitting 10 targets is dealing less damage than a Cone on Live hitting five targets.

Agreed. @Devs: Please either lose the Gauntlet Attack Radius change, or lose the 'Overcap' Damage Reduction change. Don't implement both simultaneously. Personally I'd actually prefer the Overcap damage reduction be kept and the Radius changes dropped... as that way Tankers with AoEs that are already 15ft in radius (like Super Strength) would still see a reasonable reduction in damage output. But I could go either way. (The Radius changes are lowering base damage across the board for AoEs with less than 15ft radius regardless of how many targets are hit, nerfing Proc damage on those same attacks and making Melee Cone attacks able to hit less things - but the overcap mechanic is already nerfing both Regular and Proc damage against any "extra targets" - which AFAIK is where the bulk of the Tanker performance disparity is coming from...)

Yes. Any damage dealt to "overcap" targets, including proc damage, gets reduced by the (overly harsh!) overcap damage reduction curve. See my post here which has a few relevant combat log snippets. So you can't just procbomb an AoE attack to soften/avoid the damage reduction.

Completely ignoring Procs, a 10ft Tanker PBAoE on Brainstorm is doing about 23% less damage; even to a SINGLE TARGET, than on Live. (That's a byproduct of moving the radius buffs out of gauntlet and into the attack itself) And if you're hitting the maximum number of targets (e.g. 16) then you can expect to be dealing about 39% less damage than before. (That's the result of the "overcap damage reduction" nerf) Cones are even worse. Cones have a narrower arc than before and a far steeper "overcap damage reduction" than AoEs. Procs have been reduced in effectiveness too, yes, but even without procs Tanker AoEs are getting hammered; and Tanker Cones are getting obliterated. SuperStrength is less impacted than other sets because FootStomp has a 15ft radius by default. But if you hit >10 targets with it then you'll start seeing noticeable reductions.

Same for MMs. The Blaster and MM Epic Pool version of Bonfire has had the appropriate flag for quite a while though; and currently there's no difference between Live + Brainstorm. So personally I think this is the Dominator + Controller version playing catchup.

I don't think they are. I mean, procs are A problem; sure; but I don't think they're THE problem in this case of Tankers overperforming other Melee ATs (especially Brutes) for AoE damage. And to be perfectly honest; the proposed moving of the Radius buffs from Gauntlet into each individual power seems to be reducing the impact of damage procs on Tanker AoEs pretty nicely. By itself that is not too hard a nerf - it's lowering Tanker AoE base damage across the board and lowering proc likelihood in those AoEs at the same time. The existing implementation of procs is horribly unintuitive (what do you mean slotting local recharge reduces my damage output?!?) and rife with edge cases where powers have required tweaks to reduce activation rates (see: Irradiated Ground, Carrion Creepers, etc.) and frankly it needs napalmed from orbit then whatever's left fed to a leopard. But it's not a problem that is unique to Tankers. Patience. The Devs have been attempting to assemble the Horsemen of the Aprocalypse for a good many issues. I'm sure it's coming SoonTM.

Oh absolutely agreed on the radius thing - if there are 10 or fewer spread-out targets then the wider radius of the Tanker AoEs can still help. I'm pretty sure that Epic AoEs are unaffected by the changes though? Ball Lightning and Dark Obliteration on both Brutes and Tanks should still be dealing the same damage as before "unreduced by overcap" to 16 targets over 15ft... I just checked via a /respec on Brainstorm and that seems to be the case. Also Electrifying Fences is still listing a Target Cap of 10 and a radius of 15ft - so it looks like they've (correctly!) not gotten their target cap bumped... Most of my own Tankers use a combination of Single Target, Cone and AoE attacks (both Secondary Powerset and Epic Pools) over the course of an average mission. With these changes; any Cones and AoEs from their secondary powerset will have their damage drastically reduced; but any Single Target and Epic Pool attacks will be mostly untouched (aside from the +Damage and -Res effect reductions). So realistically there'll be little/no impact to whacking down a single target like a Pylon; but regular mission runs (especially at x8 or when teamed) will be hit very hard - not quite as hard as Tanker AE farming; certainly; but still very hard. Definitely harder than I'm comfortable with. I want Tankers to be dealing less AoE damage; but I don't want them to become "mechanically obsolete" on teams. And as it stands; if all these changes go live then the benefit of bringing a Tanker over a Brute will be a bit of increased AoE aggro control [due to bigger arcs and target caps] and a bit of additional survivability [due to higher MaxHP and Base Defence/Resist numbers]... at the cost of circa ~20% damage. Which would have been fine and dandy 15 years ago whenever "Aggro-Magnet Immortal-but-Low-Damage Bricks" were still somewhat desirable in CoX; but is almost completely irrelevant in the current state of the game. Sure, for soloing the min/max crowd will still be able to cram a few more damage procs into Tanks than Brutes whilst maintaining the same level of survivability... but for teaming (at least those beyond low-level SO-only PUGs) it hardly ever matters. So I can foresee Tankers only getting a spot on many teams if the leader really likes the player and/or doesn't care about killspeed... which is unfortunate; because that means they'll have simply traded places with Brutes as the "pity spot" melee AT.

Aye those numbers look more like it now. So purely with an AoE attack; when "Unbuffed" a Brute with Fury and procs has gone from dealing ~24.4% less damage than a Tanker to dealing ~21.9% more than them. And at the damage cap, a Brute has gone from dealing ~32.6 less damage than a Tanker to dealing ~9.4% damage more than them. That's a hefty difference to anyone who isn't being Fulcrum Shifted (or Active AE Farming + chugging red insps like candy) - and even then Brutes still "win". And Tanker Cones are going to be even worse off than that... and Tanker Single Target damage has always been less than the others anyway. Really not surprising therefore that folk are posting 30%-40%+ increases in Tanker mission clear times...

Unfortunately the damage figures you're using for Dragon's Tail on Brainstorm are still off quite a bit; because one of the side effects of moving the radius buff out of Gauntlet (a Global Buff) and into the individual attacks is that their base damage gets reduced (an attack's area is included in its damage calculation even before you consider procs!). Live: Brainstorm: I don't have a level 50 MA Tanker on Live handy; but I do have a level 50 Staff Tanker; and you can see this pretty clearly in their PBAoE (Eye of the Storm): Live: Brainstorm: That's 20.29*6=121.74 on Live; and 15.61*6=93.66 on Brainstorm; for a difference of -28.08 (e.g. 23.07% lower damage dealt; before considering less Proc activations!) Also; as I've mentioned earlier... Tanker Cone attacks are going to be hit even worse than Tanker PBAoEs because the Overcap damage reduction scaling hits cones much harder (meaning any foes >5 take far less damage than before) and the gauntlet radius changes have reduced the arc of melee cones (meaning that if you are surrounded by foes in melee range it's considerably harder to hit as many of them with the attack as before). Therefore sets that rely more on Cones (like Staff; and Claws, Dual Blades, Mace, Spines, Titan Weapons) are going to be considerably worse off. And all of that is before you consider Procs - they'll be activating less often and the "overcap" damage reduction applies to damage dealt by procs as well. Here's two combat log samples of me whacking 16 targets in an AE Fire farm on Brainstorm; with the Purple Proc's effect highlighted: You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Reactive Interface for 1.54 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 15.49 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 85 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 56.95 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Reactive Interface for 10.62 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.63 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Reactive Interface for 9.34 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.63 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 74.82 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.84 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 75.95 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 50.88 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Reactive Interface for 9.49 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 7.13 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 39.14 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Reactive Interface for 4.88 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 5.34 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 29.36 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 19.67 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Reactive Interface for 3.66 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 12.68 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 69.6 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Reactive Interface for 9.34 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.63 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Reactive Interface for 9.34 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 3 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 16.51 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 11.06 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 2.25 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 12.38 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 8.29 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Reactive Interface for 1.54 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 7.65 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 28.14 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v3.1 with your Reactive Interface for 5.24 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 4 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Reactive Interface for 2.74 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.63 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 74.82 points of Fire damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Eradication: Chance for Energy Damage for 50.13 points of Energy damage. You hit Angelbot v1.1 with your Reactive Interface for 9.34 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Eye of the Storm for 13.63 points of Smashing damage over time. You hit Angelbot v2.1 with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 74.82 points of Fire damage. IMO whilst the min/maxxers are going to find ways to soften the blow; I suspect "regular" Tankers like Shags are going to be suffering the most. ...and all that is why I think these changes; whilst individually perfectly fine; are too heavy-handed when taken collectively.

Issue 26, Page 4. Third point down under "Tanker & Brute Changes"

We definitely are. As @Erratic1 says, I tend to assume 80+ Fury unless I'm idling even on a ST focussed Brute. As for AoE Focussed ones? >90 easy.

A power like Footstomp has a target cap of 10 on Brutes. On Live that power has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to all 16 of them. On Brainstorm; it has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to the first 10; then a lot less damage to the 11th, even less damage to the 12, and so on. The severe dropoff on targets 11-16 means that if you're surrounded by enough mobs to hit the cap; you'll see an overall damage reduction of about 32%. It works out at a 32% reduction for 10-target AoEs like Footstomp; and a 46% reduction for 5-target Cones. It's true that Tanks can still hit more targets than Brutes (or Scrappers/Stalkers) with the same AoE. But their base damage and lack of Fury or Critical hits means that they need to be hitting more targets than those other ATs in order to deal competitive levels of damage. Now there's an agrument to be made that Tankers shouldn't be dealing competitive levels of damage in the first place; and the sheer level of AoE damage output that a min-maxxed Tanker can currently generate on the Live servers in a saturated environment (like AE Farming or ITF runs) is IMO definitely unbalanced... especially whenever you consider that Tankers don't need to give up as much in the way of survivability in order to procbomb their attacks. However this round of nerfs on Brainstorm is IMO a tad too heavy; it'll hit traditional "regular" Tanker builds like Shag's pretty harshly; and offensive Tanker Powersets that rely on Cones are going to be disproportionally affected regardless of how many Procs they have slotted. Tankers have always been well behind in terms of ST damage. It's AoE where they've been excelling. Personally I would like Tanker damage to be a hair behind Brute damage; yes... perhaps something in the region of about 5-10% less. Unfortunately those numbers show FM Tankers have gone from being ~11% Faster (4m30s) than FM Brutes to >20% Slower (>6m) overall; over the course of an average mission. And I wouldn't call a difference of more than 20% "a hair behind". If this goes live as-is... unfortunately I can foresee Tankers becoming the proverbial red headed stepchild again. At least for the "killspeed > all else" crowd.

Aye.

Scrapper (and Stalkers) will outdamage Brutes on a per-hit basis; but Tankers only pull ahead whenever they can hit more targets with the same attack(s). If you reduce the likelihood of the Tanker hitting more targets (Cone Arc reduction caused by the gauntlet changes) as well as reducing the damage that they actually deal to those targets (Base damage and Proc activation rate reduction caused by the gauntlet changes; plus the "Overcap" damage reduction) then Tankers will start lagging behind Brutes again pretty quickly. Tankers still have a major advantage for aggro control on Brainstorm; even if the reduced Cone Arcs hurt a little bit there compared to Live. (and again - just to preempt any squawking from the back row: I personally think that reducing Tanker AoE damage isn't a bad thing. But I also think that the combined effect of all of these individually quite reasonable + mechanically sound proposed changes is currently resulting in an overly harsh performance hit for Tankers on Brainstorm. So I'd like to see them implemented; but at a slightly lesser magnitude!) 🤞

Aside from BattleAxe and RadArmor powersets; Brutes and Scrappers are essentially unchanged from Live. Tankers are taking anything from 30-40% longer than before. Let's pick on Fiery Melee: ballpark times for a Trapdoor run on Live for it when min-maxxed are roughly ~5m30s on a Scrapper, 5m00s on a Brute; and 4m30s on a Tanker. On Brainstorm; you'd only be adding an extra ~5-10 secs to the Brute and Scrapper (for the Critter Regen rate buffs) but the Tanker will now be taking longer than 6mins. Tanker Pylon times are virtually unchanged. Tanker AE Farming (and "kill most ITF") times are now abysmal. Tanker regular Mission clear times are somewhere in between; depending on how many simultaneous mobs you're constantly fighting (because more foes = more impact from the overcap damage reductions and the reduced melee cone arcs) and how many procs you have (because more procs = more impact from the gauntlet radius changes). As it happens, my (non-RadArmor) SuperStrength Tankers are hurting much less than the others (presumably because my procbombed Footstomp's base radius was already 15ft; so the biggest hit to them is from the "Overcap" damage reductions!) and from what I can see the reduced damage-buffage from Rage is practically unnoticeable.

It's worth noting that Staff was slightly buffed; currently on Brainstorm whenever you have 3x Perfection of Body stacks Sky Splitter is now doing >20% more raw damage than before (Eye of the Storm is also doing a smidge more than before, but it's the region of ~20 damage so practically negligible). Whilst bumping the damage of one Single-Target attack won't have a huge impact on a Staff Tanker woodchippering their way through huge hordes of mooks; it might well be partially offsetting the negative impact of the "overcap damage reduction" whenever you're running regular missions. So I'm not surprised that your /Staff Tanker isn't quite as badly hit as a /Fire Tanker in your testing despite the fact that Staff possesses two cones (Guarded Spin and Innocuous Strikes) which were both very badly affected by the overcap damage nerf... (😢) Also FWIW; I've run some Brutes, Scrappers and VEATs through the same missions as my Tankers in order to double-check if the NPC Regeneration Buffs are slowing things down. They're not. The only noteworthy performance degradation I can see on those other ATs is related to specific powersets (Battle Axe and Radiation Armor). So it's 100% the Tanker Overcap changes that are the "problem" here. Speaking frankly, IMHO the proposed radius/arc changes (moving from a global Gauntlet buff --> individual Powers) by itself will sufficiently reduce "damage proc" performance to make a noteworthy difference to min-maxxed Procbombed AoE damage-orientated Tankers (whether they're used for farming or "Kill Most" runs!). However the proposed overcap damage reduction will hurt non-procbombed Tankers the most (which is becoming more + more evident as we gather more before/after clear time comparisons!) which is why I think the current overcap curves being employed on Brainstorm are far too steep. @Devs: Please don't penalise non-min-maxxed Tankers this harshly; they are not the problem. Either skip this "overcap" damage reduction change; or at most apply a flat reduction or lessen the curve (a flat -50% damage; or scaling -10%/-20% damage for AoEs/Cones would IMHO be the extreme upper end of what would be reasonable here!) if you want to reduce Tanker damage across the board rather than just the extreme outliers.

FWIW I tried running a few of my non-Tanker AFK Farmer builds (like my RadM/Stone Brute) through some of their usual AE maps on Brainstorm. The difference in kill speed is not noteworthy. There is however a major reduction in Tanker killspeeds, for both Active and AFK Farming. Proc activation chances in most AoEs and damage auras are lower than before, sure, but it's the diminishing returns in overcap damage that is really hurting the times compared to before. Only really bothersome for Active Farmers however, since AFK farmers were never pulling obscene inf/XP per hour anyway... and as I've mentioned previously IMO this really isn't going to impact AE Farmers much since it's quite possible to just switch to a different AT for Active Farming (Brute or Scrapper or VEAT or even a Dominator or Blaster!) if you're there to spam clicks + insps. Heck, if Bots/ hadn't had their damage nerfed a few pages ago then a MM would be a contender too.