Maelwys

Nah. Running regular mission maps constitutes an awful lot of the game's content. Maybe not always solo at +4x8, but I certainly find facing the equivalent of an x8 mission map on a team to be the rule rather than the exception. And in those cases the ATO performance disparity will usually apply because ATO Procs/Globals are slottable from very low levels and almost every Lv50 build will be racing to Catalyze them. IMO Pylon times are definitely not representative of most content. But the older Trapdoor times and Current Mission Simulator times are. That's the entire reason the Devs asked us to provide them in the recent Tanker changes Beta thread.

Damage Output on an average mission map? I'm not sure about "meeting or exceeding", but surely the fact that Stalkers and Scrappers and Brutes all have Primary Powersets that are focused on Melee Damage output suggests that they should all at least be "roughly within the same ballpark"? In my view, having Scrappers deal about 10%-15% higher damage than a Brute feels about right considering that Brutes have a higher Survivability ceiling and better Aggro Control. But whenever a Scrapper is consistently dealing >30% higher damage than a Brute, that feels like too much. And since the damage differences become so much less pronounced whenever you take all the ATOs away, personally I blame the ATOs. Pesky ATOs. **shakes fist**

FWIW, currently post-i28p2 world the numbers I've seen still suggest that whenever ATOs are considered; clear times for fully IO'ed-out toons on an average mission map (Galaxybrains Mission Simulator at +4x8) have Brutes taking ~30% longer than a Scrapper and Tankers taking ~40% longer. So from what I can see; the performance difference between ATO'ed Scrappers and ATO'ed Brutes (in terms of damage output) is definitely more just a few percentage points here and there... even if it's true that on a team with multiple nuking Blasters the benefits of bringing any melee toon over another largely evaporates. I'm not sure it's worth overly focusing on Pylon time; since as Someguy pointed out earlier there are specific setups that WILDLY favour the Scrapper's higher base damage and forced Crits. But suffice to say that Brutes seem to lag behind Scrappers even more (it's not uncommon for a min-maxed Brute to take 50%+ longer to drop a Pylon than an equivalent Scrapper). For Stalkers; their mission simulator times can vary wildly (since most Stalkers suffer from a lack of noteworthy AoEs) but they're much higher up the Pylon charts than a Brute is (and Energy Melee in particular can throw out considerably higher damage output than on an equivalent Scrapper). However I think it's fair to say that Scrappers and Stalkers are both in a decent place relative to each other balancewise (with Stalkers favouring ST damage and having more consistent crits). So IMO if we take the performance of those two ATs as a "baseline", then Brute damage could do with being buffed by quite a lot (to go from 30% longer mission simulator cleartimes to at most 15%) and Tanker damage could do with being buffed by a little bit (to go from 40% longer mission simulator cleartimes to at most 30%). And personally I'd rather these buffs were brought about via adjustments to the Brute and Tanker ATOs; because if you take the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs away then their damage output plummets but Brute and Tanker damage output remains largely the same. Meaning that the vast majority of the Melee AT performance disparity is almost entirely down to how effective their respective ATO procs/globals are. And Brutes' are provably 💩. (And yes; naturally another way to go about it would be to severely nerf the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs; but we know what sort of backlash that would result in... 😅 )

I mean... since Brutes are the only AT that are currently sitting noticeably below the performance curve [whenever ATOs are considered] it suggests to me that tweaking them would be the most straightforward. But if the devs decided to completely upset the apple cart and rebalance multiple ATs then sure, that could work too, providing Tankers and Brutes and Scrappers and Stalkers all end up (i) capable of soloing at a decent pace AND (ii) being seen as a worthwhile addition to a large team (even if it's just for specific content and/or team compositions). So your example of reworking Tankers to give AoE buffs? Sure; you could do that. Maybe amend their ATOs to give AoE +Absorb and +Res; then rejig Gauntlet to apply a blanket ~10% resistance debuff. That'd also bring Tanker AoE damage up to scratch again without making any further adjustments to the overcap damage reductions. This is all hypothetical naturally... but if the above changes happened I'd expect that fully IO/ATO'ed Scrappers and Stalkers would end up dealing roughly ~130% of the damage of both Brutes and Tankers on a mission simulator map. And Tankers would again become the "preferred melee AT" outside of Pylon and GM fights. So Brutes would then need their damage output raised up to the point where there's only about a 10-15% difference rather than a 30% one (simple enough!) as well as something else that sufficiently sets them aside from the other ATs to make them attractive to a team... and that last bit is where the headaches start. Inflicting mez has been suggested, but it isn't overly thematic and would only serve to slow down Fury generation. Plagiarising Scourge and giving Brutes a chance for double damage as enemy HP drops might work; making them better vs Single Targets and Tankers better versus groups... but it'd need to be very carefully balanced so as not to step on the toes of Stalkers (Scrappers at least are equally good at both AoE and ST damage!). Alternatively you could perhaps just make the Tanker ATOs apply AoE +Resistance/Absorb and the Brute ATOs inflict a hefty amount of -damage resistance (say 5% for standard and 7.5% for superior; stacks up to twice). That'd solve the Brute damage performance and team attractiveness issues; and Tankers would keep being the "make my team safer" AT (although they'd likely still need their overcap damage reductions made a bit less harsh to flatten out the performance curve!). It's all a big balancing act; but from where I'm sitting the #1 culprit is ATO performance disparity; with "Brutes not having much of a niche on teams" coming in a distant second.

This right here is the problem as I see it in a nutshell. Even in the content where you might expect a Brute's particular balance of Survivability, Aggro Control and Damage Output to make them the most mechanically worthwhile pick... Scrappers actually still win. Brutes just make it safer or require less skill to pull it off (which to be fair can help make things more fun... but the performance disparity still exists!!)

I think this might be the point of disconnect, so to tease my view out a bit... Let's take Corruptors. As you noted earlier, they have a Blast set yet less base damage than a Blaster; and they have a support set yet lower base buff/debuff/healing values than a Defender. So all else being equal, why would a team ever desire a Corruptor over either a Blaster (if they're after damage) or a Defender (if they're after buffs/debuffs/healing)? The answer is partly due to "role stacking": Teams tend to value both high AoE damage and high buff/debuff numbers... but one Defender and one Blaster combined tends to result in less overall damage and buffage/debuffage than two Corruptors. And partly due to the Corruptor Scourge inherent: if you're in a situation where normally a significant chunk of the team's time would be spent fighting things that have 50% HP or below (like in 4* content, especially Boss fights) then Corruptor damage output will skyrocket and vastly reduce your clear times. Now take Brutes. As things stand, a Brute can inflict reasonable amounts of damage (since i28p2 more than a Tanker, but not as much as Scrappers or Stalkers) and hold aggro and withstand punishment (better than a Scrapper but not as well as a Tanker). So all else being equal, why would a team ever desire a Brute over a Scrapper (if they're after damage with a bit of aggro control) or a Tanker (if they're after solid aggro control and tanking)? Unfortunately I'm not aware of any scenarios in current CoX content that require two melee ATs tanking targets independently (like constantly surrounded by two aggro cap's worth of targets, or multiple AVs/GMs who become invulnerable when near each other). So two melee ATs are never required (and even in those hypothetical scenarios I imagine most teams would just CC half the adds and Immobilize the superfluous AVs/GMs instead of trying to facetank them all simultaneously!). Most teams either want something that can solidly hold aggro (so you're just there to take the alpha and clump up the targets for them between nukes, the damage you dish out is almost irrelevant) or an additional source of damage with a side of aggro control (so you're there to deal damage, and maybe clump targets a tiny bit and/or hold the attention of the occasional AV/GM)... and whilst Brutes can fulfill both of those functions mechanically-speaking they are not the most optimal choice for either. So they're lacking a niche that sufficiently sets them apart to make them an optimal choice of teammate in even very specific content. Now it's worth pointing out that I agree that this issue with Brutes is almost entirely down to the performance disparity in the Melee AT ATOs. But I don't think that Scrapper and Stalker and Tanker ATOs necessarily need nerfed - buffing the Brute ones (alongside rebalancing ATOs for other ATs!!) would work as long as they can be made to almost deal as much damage as Scrappers/Stalkers and survive almost as much punishment as a Tanker. Or the Brute ATOs could be tweaked to increase team performance instead in order to allow Brutes to bring something new to the table that specific team compositions might find desirable enough to take them over a Scrapper/Tanker. Alternatively, another way to approach it might be to adjust Fury so that Brutes deal more damage as enemy hit points decrease (so they'd become mechanically better at raw damage output in the same situations as Corruptors)... but that would likely still result in them being sub optimal in everything outside of 4* Boss fights, and without tying it to the ATOs it would throw off the balance at lower levels before you're IO'd out. In short: Brutes don't seem to ever be a mechanically optimal choice of teammate on larger teams, for any content, especially once ATOs are considered. And I think that is a problem. However when soloing or on very small teams or before everyone is IOed out IMO they're perfectly fine.

Also, just to address these ones: (i) Brutes currently win at Passive (AFK) farming. But for Active Farming (where you are present behind the wheel to combine inspirations and press buttons) speedwise they are not even in the top three... unless you're intentionally limiting yourself to the traditional four melee ATs only (and even there Scrappers still beat them into the ground) because survivability simply isn't a major issue when you can customise your enemy type and trigger inspirations and click buttons. (ii) Stalkers have two major advantages over Scrappers when it comes to survivability. Firstly, Hide - this not only allows them to get off a heavy opening hit without immediate retaliation, but it increases their Defense by a non negligible amount making it easier to reach the softcap. Secondly, Placate - since the rework in i27pg3 this has very much become worth taking for both offensive and defensive purposes. Now personally I think that Scrapper's higher base HP and HP cap probably make up for at least some of that. And you're correct in that those powers come with an opportunity cost since Stalkers lose access to some other abilities. But to my mind the biggest performance difference between Stalkers and Scrappers comes from the availability of Taunt Auras in the latter.

I am not, and it isn't. I am looking for a way to ensure that a Brute, a Tanker, a Scrapper and a Stalker can each provide something beneficial to the team that is sufficiently different that each of those ATs ends up filling a separate worthwhile niche and being attractive as a team member (albeit perhaps more attractive for specific content or team compositions). Brutes' current placing of being "slightly more survivable and dealing significantly less damage than a Scrapper" is unfortunately simply not a worthwhile niche. They therefore are not currently chosen for what the AT can mechanically bring to the team, but because of other factors (such as being friends with the person playing them, or there are no Tankers/Scrappers available, or the difficulty level of the content is so trivial that team composition simply doesn't matter). With the recent Tanker AoE damage nerfs, Brutes lot has improved slightly, but in most content they will still mechanically pale in performance compared to a Scrapper with a Taunt Aura (and Confront, for facing AVs) and for 4* content a Tanker's larger buff caps and MaxHP pool will win out - because the melee AT's native defensive powerset buffs are irrelevant since with alternating Barrier spam your toggles might as well be switched off. There is certainly a valid argument that teams nowadays steamroll through missions so quickly that the differences in Melee AT offensive and defensive performance become largely irrelevant. And if all you need is someone to take the Alpha and occasionally taunt AVs then you might as well just bring a /Devices Blaster or Illusion/ Controller or Arsenal/ Dominator or whatever. But I do firmly believe that getting each of the melee ATs to a point where they can each be seen as attractive to a team in different ways would be a good design goal. And the fact that a well built and intelligently piloted Scrapper can survive most content in the game is IMO not a bug... because the same applies for a well built and intelligently piloted Blaster (and often an unintelligently piloted and/or soundly inebriated one!!) especially when teammate buffs are applied - heck, even back before IOs and crashless nukes and sustains a single Empath plus a Blaster could tackle most things in the game...

Masterminds? They already have 'em.

A lot of the time the groupthink boils down to "Scrappers should be STRONGEST, Tankers should be PRETTIEST, Brutes should be both STRONG and PRETTY." Then at some point the thinker remembers about Stalkers and has to backpeddle a bit so that they can be the REAL strongest. (Just maybe not against groups. Unless they're Primary X and Secondary Y. Or if it's a Tuesday...) However in reality there aren't just two desirable and potentially opposing dimensions (personal survivability vs personal damage output) but lots of other things to consider. Aggro control and debuff/buff capability; at a bare minimum. I think it's fair to say that each of the four Melee ATs should be capable of soloing at a reasonable pace; and each of them also ought to be a valuable addition to a team. However YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEAL THE MOST DAMAGE OR BE THE MOST SURVIVABLE IN ORDER TO BE A VALUABLE ADDITION TO A TEAM. Defenders are a prime example of this. They do not personally deal the most damage or take the most hits - but they act as a force multiplier; allowing the team as a whole to deal far more damage and/or withstand far more hits. IMO each of the four melee ATs should simply have something unique which makes them a potentially desirable recruit for someone putting a team together. CoX is currently lacking a melee AT that acts as a force multiplier (other than very specific VEATs with double leadership auras...) so from what I can tell there is a bit of a gap in the market there (although I'm sure it's not the only one!) which is why I said this: Altering the dynamic in this manner would allow for different team compositions whilst maintaining similar levels of performance. As an example: On Four Star Content people tend to bring a Kinetic (for +Damage) and a Tanker (for Aggro Control) whilst spamming endless Barriers. But if Brutes were capable of inflicting a sizable amount of -res debuffs or granting a sizable amount of +damage buffs then a similar level of performance could potentially be achievable by taking that Brute instead of the Tanker and swapping the Kin for a different buff powerset (like Thermal or Marine). Team variety increases. More characters become "desirable". Merriment ensues.

/bind KEY "petcom_all aggressive follow" Summon Pet. Press KEY. Done. No clicking of pet trays or any other horribly difficult UI interactions required. And if you are the sort of person that doesn't need the kids to set up your streaming box (that's the modern equivalent of "program your VCR", right?) you could even append the petcom command onto the end of the same button you press to summon the controller pet in the first place.

I used to love Sappers. And Shadow Cysts! They were barely a threat if you had one whit of sense (my human form PB used to solo the little terror-inducing purple fluffballs for shiggles) but it always seemed to stop the half-asleep steamrolling PUG team dead in its tracks. Heaven forbid you actually have to target something... 🙄

I "save" most of them for later; and chug the rest. Typically Column #1 is a Red, a Yellow, an Ultimate and a Wakey. Column #2 is Purples. Column #3 is a mixture of Greens and Blues (typically only 1-2 blues). Column #4 is Breakfrees. Although on a melee toon I only tend to keep one emergency Breakfree; and use this for extra Reds/Oranges. Column #5 is left empty, so it's where my free-use skittles drop. I basically have my movement and targeting keys bound to "inspexec_slot 5"; so that as more skittles drop I immediately chug them. If I'm fighting an GM etc I'll just start manually combining them and/or open the AH or my global email to fill half my tray up with Reds.

Vigilance is a pretty rubbish inherent, but at least it boosts their damage output when soloing/duoing. I find their ATOs rather decent personally - the Heal proc is particularly useful on Sonic/FF/Cold/etc, and the Absorb Proc is useful for everyone. (Although if they weren't AoE then it'd be another story...) FWIW, with the ATO2 proc in Headsplitter you should get 4.25-(2.508-1.32)=3.062 active buff time remaining afterwards. That's more than enough leeway to trigger both Hack (Arcanatime=1.584) and either Whirling Sword (ATBE=1.2 sec) or Disembowel (ATBE=0.733 sec).

AFAIK the only AT that Elec/Shield is currently decent on is a Stalker. Whilst the pseudopet Teleportation AoEs do benefit from caster boosts like Fury, they have poor base damage on Brutes and don't inherit their larger damage caps and also don't Proc well (aside from the Tanker version of Lightning Rod which is coded as a power effect redirect instead of as an entity creation). If you want an AoE focused Brute I'd lean into either Fiery Aura, Stone Armor (non Granite) or Radiation Armor rather than Shield Defense. Primary will be Super Strength, Battle Axe, Titan Weapons or Martial Arts. Savage Melee is also a contender for AoE but is terribad at ST.

I'd love to see that sort of testing too, although as @SomeGuy points out Trapdoor isn't really a great example of an average mission these days, so something like Galaxy Brain's Mission Simulator map might work better. I'm not sure about the premise that Brutes "should" be squarely between Tankers and Scrappers. A lot of players feel that Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers should be dealing very similar levels of damage output. Personally I subscribe to the notion that the less survivable you are the more damage you should be dealing, but since non-Resistance focused Brutes are very close to Scrappers there it's rather difficult to put a firm number on it. For Pylon times I think it's fair to say that Stalkers ought to reign supreme but Tankers come dead last, but for AoE heavy content (like active AE farming) and for mixed "regular mission content" things get a bit murkier since most Stalkers have poor AoE capability and Tankers are supposedly meant to be AoE specialists. Really depends on just where the Devs feel it ought to sit. There are any amount of Pylon time threads out there, and even in Ston's original threads (which lean heavy into Cross Punch and "old" pre-recharge-time-nerf Epic Snipes, and don't quite make the best use of Scrapper ATO2) you can clearly see Scrappers drastically outpace Brutes in those metrics. By about 30-35%. My own far more limited testing using Galaxy Brain's Mission Sim has Scrappers being about 130% faster than Brutes, 140% faster than Tankers and also comfortably beating Stalkers (although by how much drastically depends on the Stalker powersets, as something like an Elec/Shield will be a lot closer than a NinjaBlade/SR or EnergyMelee/EA). Unfortunately my free time is largely still being taken up by toddlers so I'm currently not in a position to put together an exhaustive comparison. My gut feeling is that Tanker performance should be a smidge better (roughly where Brutes currently are) and Brutes should be a lot better (still beaten by a Scrapper, but only by 10-15% tops!) 🤓 📋

I think as long as one single character can't reliably damage more than 16 enemies with a single attack (Judgement Nukes and Rain Powers notwithstanding!) then we're probably OK. The HC Devs seem to keep gutting stuff that has the potential for runaway exponential damage stacking (like Fiery Aura Burn, Assault Bot Incendiary Swarm Missiles, Plant Control Vines, etc). I know part of that is in response to AE Farming, but it could just as easily apply to "mega corner pulling/dumpster diving" shenanigans. It's already pretty easy to drag nearly two mobs worth of foes directly on top of another two mobs worth of foes. So clumping things up isn't an issue, but keeping things clumped absolutely is, since you really need a long-duration AoE mez for the first 10-16 plus a Taunt for the next 17. And whilst it's currently possible to juggle that sort of thing on a Tanker or Brute; it isn't pretty or particularly safe for your teammates... 😇

To be perfectly honest I think Aggro caps should scale a bit depending on the AT... say Regular ATs including Scrappers ~17, Brutes and Kheldians ~22-25, and Tankers ~27-32. The target limit on most wide AoE abilities caps out at 16, so I can understand why 17 is the default aggro limit. But I personally would prefer it if a Tanker's larger target limits actually allowed them to reliably hold the attention of a few extra enemies (so having a Tanker on the team makes that team safer, especially whenever Blasters are nuking every other spawn, rather than simply faster) instead of having the HC Devs continually fixate on getting four melee ATs' damage output balanced just right. That said, if the Devs hadn't decided that Tankers were apparently supposed to be the melee "AoE specialists" then I'd be perfectly game to stampede off in an entirely different direction... (for the benefit of anyone who didn't read the i28p2 design notes, the relevant snippet is: "Tankers will... ...be AoE specialists among the Melee AT's. We believe that this is a more balanced take for their intended role compared to more damage-focused counterparts." however currently a Tanker hitting 16 targets with an AoE will deal roughly 1% to 11% less damage than a Brute hitting 10 targets with that same AoE... so if they're demonstrably not AoE specialists whenever it comes to damage output, surely that just leaves aggro control?)

The VEAT global Toxic damage Proc tends to contribute quite a lot to their performance. In Soldiers (which can apply considerable additional -res to Toxic damage via Venom Grenade) it can be particularly good, but replicating its baseline effects would still certainly constitute a buff to Brute performance over their current "chance for Fury" ATO. However it'd not help Brutes carve out a different niche for themselves, so best case they'd just draw a bit closer to Scrapper/Stalker levels of damage output. Also, having a Proc's effect vary depending upon the damage type(s) within the triggering attack is to the best of my knowledge currently impossible (at least without including an additional "Fiery Embrace" style conditional element within each and every potentially affected attack power!)... but if the intention is just to inflict a different damage type depending on the owner's selected primary powerset then that might be more doable. It'd still be considerably more straightforward to just pick a single damage type though. Like Smashing. Brute SMASH. <INSERT CLICHÉD TABLE FLIP ASCII ART HERE>

The one about merging Tankers and Brutes together then forcing them both to act mechanically identical to Brutes prior to reaching level 24? I already replied to your PM about it 4 hours ago, but since you're asking again here... I think if the Devs actually did that then the playerbase would be extremely incensed. Really the only thing the proposed change would result in would be the removal of all Tankers below level ~24. Whilst it's true that Brutes don't have much of a niche, somehow I suspect that taking things away from Tankers again is not the way to go about fixing that. My preference would still be to make Brute ATO effects (i) more powerful and (ii) provide a reasonable benefit to their teammates.

This. Last time I back-of-the-enveloped it, I came up with one Global ATO that lets their attacks apply a non-stacking -res debuff that scales with Fury (roughly 1 point of -res for every 4 points of Fury, so capping out at roughly 20-22%) and one Proc ATO that grants 5% MaxHP, 5% Resistance and 2.5% Defense in a 60ft AoE Aura that is stackable up to twice (or possibly scaling with Fury once again up to a similar maximum value rather than utilizing PPM). I've never found the existing +Fury ATO useful, best case it's bringing me from ~90 to ~93 Fury whenever I'm in full hulk mode. The +Regeneration/Recovery one occasionally helps take some of the passive regeneration threshold pressure off in AFK AE farming runs, but in regular gameplay is utterly ignorable.

I assume that's a Pylon time rather than a Trapdoor or mission simulator run? My own recent testing (as of open beta i28pg2) put Scrappers roughly 30% faster than Brutes, and 60% faster than the originally proposed Tanker changes on Brainstorm on a Mission Simulator map at +4x8. Post patch (with the base damage changes reverted) I'm observing Tankers only getting beaten by about 40%. In any case my point was that whenever ATOs are being considered then an optimized Scrapper will beat an optimized Brute into the dirt, rather than it being anything like a close race. So that 30% figure was meant to be a rough indicative ballpark rather than a hard rule. IME whilst there are individual powers and/or powerset combos that play more to a Brute's strengths than to a Scrapper's (like Stone Armor's Brimstone Procs and Fiery Aura's Burn patches) it's still typically not enough to make up the difference whenever ATOs are a consideration... and given the non-superior versions can be slotted from low levels? Nah. And whilst I can certainly understand the reason behind Tankers not getting any ATOs that notably directly buff their damage output, the same is very much not true for Brutes. I do however think (and have suggested previously) that in order to give Brutes a decent niche it might be a good idea to have their ATOs grant a noteworthy beneficial effect which extends (at least in part) as an AoE to nearby allies... let Tankers be lower-damage aggro magnets (just increase their aggro limit!), and Stalkers and Scrappers be the high-damage damage dealers (stealthy Single-Target and non stealthy All-Purpose), and Brutes can be the middle-men who aren't quite the best at anything but can still hold their own whilst buffing their teammates' damage and survivability a bit.

The list of everything across the whole game? Heck no. The list of ATOs though? I'd say so, since Brutes are one of only two ATs that have utterly garbage tier globals/procs in BOTH their ATO sets... and unlike Sentinels they have two rather close sister ATs (Stalkers and Scrappers) which don't have such a handicap and so outperform them in almost every conceivable scenario (ignoring passive "AFK" AE Farming).

Because if the assumption is that a Scrapper with ATOs just about outperforms a Brute with ATOs then the only way that assumption holds any water is if it is a very mediocre Scrapper build. A min-maxed Scrapper will deal an additional ~30% or more average damage compared to a min-maxed Brute, with ATOs. Without ATOs the Brute will be roughly on par with the Scrapper - Scrappers will be miles better at spike damage hit and runs but Brutes will typically edge them out in prolonged combat (providing that neither is getting an obscenely high amount of constant damage buffs, like endless red insps or fulcrum shift). The only other thing that can potentially vastly skew the numbers in favour of the Brute is if the Scrapper doesn't happen to possess a decent duration Taunt Aura (eg anything other than Willpower) and they're doing a Kill All at x8. And regarding Fiery Orb/Energy Font... most PPM effects are going to be very hard to balance without nuking Proc mechanics from orbit, but the aforementioned two ATOs solved that issue by summoning an incredibly fragile uncontrollable pet with short duration and crap AI in entirely the wrong place for it to do any good. IIRC best case it adds less than half the damage of a regular 3.5PPM damage Proc. Hard pass.

Being perfectly honest, I don't know... ...but I very much suspect that it's a case of other things taking priority. HC has a dedicated but small and voluntary group of developers; and an even smaller proportion of them are on the powers team. So the amount of manhours available to do any work on powers stuff is comparatively tiny. I've personally logged multiple bugs in powers that to me would appear to be a very easy and straightforward fix (we're talking five minutes tops to remove an incorrectly set flag, such as a regeneration buff that has "affected by enemy level" set) and yet they're still present years later because they're just not a priority for the powers team. That said, there are many things that irk me when it comes to powers in CoX, and Brute (and Sentinel) ATO underperformance is just one of them. Lore pets - most of these are utter rubbish, and the Radial BP pets should not be doing damage whilst invulnerable. Kinetic Melee - by far the worst performing melee powerset. Kheldians and their attack animation time cancelling exploit bug. PPM Proc mechanics (more local recharge aspect being bad for you is completely insane). And many more. So frankly I'm not holding my breath for any one particular change. I am however glad that they've just spent a big chunk of effort attempting to address Tanker AoEs (even if it's not quite fully there just yet!!)