Maelwys

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...?

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)