Maelwys

It was time to change the ATOs years ago. Baseline Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes are fine balancewise. Tankers were very much an outlier (at least whenever you were engaging a sufficiently high quantity of enemies to keep your attacks saturated!) and the recent changes have addressed that... however they are now lagging a little behind and so frankly could do with the Overcap damage reduction being lessened a bit (e.g. to at most a ~50% flat reduction instead of the current -67% flat reduction) and/or their aggro cap being raised by ~50% or so. The ATOs are to blame for the very large performance disparity between a min-maxed Scrapper or Stalker (with their utterly fantastic ATOs) and a min-maxed Brute (with their utterly dogturd ATOs). And whilst the Tanker ATOs don't directly increase damage, they do directly increase survivability (via a constant 13.4%-20.1% damage resistance plus a decent chunk of Absorb) which can allow a min-maxed Tanker to forego slotting for any additional survivability via set bonuses and instead concentrate on slotting for global recharge and damage procs. AFAIK the only reason that some players aren't observing a major performance disparity between those ATs in game is that fully leveraging the Scrapper ATOs requires a very detailed knowledge of your attack timings (ideally you want to place the ATO2 proc itself in an attack with high Animation Time Before Effect and high PPM activation chance, then follow that attack up with a few low Arcanatime but high damage attacks, plus a final attack with a sufficiently low ATBE that it can just sneak in before the very end of the ATO2 proc's actual buff duration window). Getting the most out of the Stalker ATOs is much more straightforward, since all it really requires is sticking a Gaussian proc in Build Up and having a big heavy crit-from-hidden wallop that isn't Assassin's Strike... but Stalkers don't get any taunt auras and tend to be rather lacking in the AoE dept, which means they end up with considerably more ground to make up on team/+Nx8 content.

Traps is fine, although the MM version still gets Detonator rather than the more useful Temporal Bomb. Really the only thing I'd poke at would be reducing the interruptible period of Trip Mine (or even eliminating it entirely like the Devices version!) It's definitely slow moving, but it excels at point defense and crippling AV/GMs. 3+ Acid Mortars for -res plus a Poison Trap to floor their regeneration, and 2x Triage Beacons (with Panacea proc) and an FFG for sustain... Caltrops, Web Grenade and Tripmine toebombing is just gravy.

FWIW my Bot/Traps was comfortably soloing AVs even pre IOs... it's all about positioning and getting the debuffs layered on properly. That said, IMO that combo has long since been surpassed as the "do everything" MM build by Bots/Marine. That setup is just so solid it finds it really difficult to lose...

Why not just visit a START vendor and pick up the "Only Affect Self" toggle power...?

Depends if you're working Rise of the Phoenix into your attack chain or not... 😛

A few patches ago Mids started wiping out parts of the Mids Hero Designer folder (including deleting the entire contents of its old default Builds subfolder) every time it takes an update. So if you store your saved build files within that subfolder, they'll get deleted each time Mids updates. It's happened on me at least five times now across three different devices. If you store your build files elsewhere (like within your My Documents folder) or back them up to a secondary location then they'll be OK. I take nightly backups which is the only reason why I didn't have steam coming out my ears when it started happening. And yes, the MR Devs are aware of if it as it was grumbled about on discord some months back. IIRC the official advice is to just not store your builds there. Meh.

FWIW, whenever I was combing through patch notes a few topics ago I did come across this: I always considered Punchvoke to be the name of a mechanic (whenever a taunt effect triggers on activating attacks) rather than tied to a specific AT's inherent. So IMO Tankers and Brutes and Kheldian Dwarfs all get it. I know the Wiki claims Brute's is called "Pokevoke" but I haven't heard anyone actually use that term seriously since circa issue 7.

It's even worse than that actually. That's from Ston's old Trapdoor results thread. Mission mobs scatter and Scrapper Willpower RTTC has a rubbish 1.25 base duration Taunt; so it's having to deal with runners. Stone even notes this in his disclaimer. That said; I agree with Tidge that "Asking for a an improved Brute %proc ATO, to either make them sturdier than Tankers or do more damage than Scrappers is crazy talk". IMO we should in fact be asking for TWO improved Brute ATOs... one of which noticeably boosts survivability (but not quite as much as a Tanker SMoT Proc) and one of which noticeably boosts damage output (but not quite as much as a Scrapper SCS Proc). The idea here being for Brutes to remain a bit behind Scrappers in damage output, and a bit behind Tankers in survivability. At present whenever ATOs are considered Brutes are almost OK in terms of survivability; but noticeably sub-par in terms of damage output. So it's either that or nerf the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs... 🧯🔥 🚒

Defender level buffs when applied to pets are pretty obviously going to beat Controller level ones. And being able to layer more -resistance and -tohit on enemies is only going to benefit pets. But Defenders only really get access to Patron Pool Pets (with the exception of stuff like Traps FFG, Marine's Barrier Reef and Fluffy from Dark Miasma IIRC). Controllers get more pets. So whenever there aren't any teammates around they have something to gain the benefit of all their allied buffs and perhaps even tank for them. Personal experience with running lots of tests with Masterminds and Crabbermind VEATs has shown me that pets are incredibly efficient whenever it comes to taking down a big single target; especially with lots of buffs and debuffs in play. That's a big part of why Crabberminds were top of the Pylon leaderboards for ages and why /Marine MMs can down a pylon in a mere 10 seconds. However whenever you subject those pets to a real-world mission environment with multiple targets and teammates they can "underperform". And it's not just because you need to expend more effort in keeping them alive - they're slow; they have buggy AI; they tend to get stuck a lot on Geometry; they obstruct teammate vision and movement; etc. etc. And that's on a MM that can issue their pets orders - something which until very recently Controllers were unable to do! I will say however that whilst my oldest most support-focused Defender (a Sonic/Elec that I've had since issue ~7) did really appreciate gaining access to patron pets back in the day; I've long since stripped them out of their build in favour of min-maxing the toon's own attack chain. And from the Controller side... whilst my two oldest most support-focused ones (an lllusion/Empath which on HC has since been remade as an Illusion/Time; and an Earth/Thermal) are/were both heavily reliant on their T9 pets; neither of them has ever taken a Patron Pet despite being perfectly capable of getting them "perma". So it depends on the pet. IMO the patron ones tend to be a bit underwhelming... in fact the only Controller I have which does take a Patron Pet is an Arsenal/Traps; and that was more because I had plenty of power picks left and already wanted Poisonous Ray.

I get the testing methodology and I agree that measuring each build across ~30 data points (any less than that and the statistical confidence plummets) will provide some useful points for comparison. My issue is more one of... how to best put this? "false advertising"? "sensationist overstatement"? "clickbait headlines"? "unrealistic expectations?" I'm not sure where this and the original Defcon thread fall in/amongst all those terms - because some of them imply an intention to misdirect for the sake of views; and I'm not sure that's what's going on here and I definitely don't want to disparage or belittle the obvious effort that went into it. However I am more than a little bit concerned that someone might glance at these thread titles, then immediately look at the results and draw sweeping conclusions from them that are beyond the scope of what was tested. I have seen plenty of cases (on these forums, in game, on discord, on reddit, etc etc) where someone has spouted misinformation based on test results that they've taken completely out-of-context. Ston's old Melee Comparison and Tier Listing is a good example of this - if you don't look too closely at the context (e.g. the attack chains and slotting utilised; and what was actually being attacked) you might be forgiven for thinking that it is a straightforward test of what level of damage the powers contained within each offensive melee powerset can deal; with each powerset's performance then ranked to show how they perform in relation to each other. But instead it's a test of specific builds and attack chains; many of which rely heavily on pool and epic powers. That doesn't mean it's not useful data; but it's often misused as ammunition in arguments for just how much set X performs in relation to set Y in a vacuum; typically to help the quoter justify powerset buffs or nerfs. So allowing your audience to easily understanding the scope of what is being tested is important. The original Defcon thread claims to be attempting to answer the question "who brings more to the team — Defenders or Controllers?" by making "an honest-to-goodness comparison of these two ATs". However in reality what it is actually measuring and recording are multiple data points for a very limited number of specific builds. Therefore the most that this approach will be capable of showing a reasonable level of statistical confidence in is how THOSE SPECIFIC CHOSEN BUILDS are likely to perform in a team. Whilst you can certainly compare those builds with each other and draw conclusions from it, the number and variety of builds being tested is far too limited to be meaningfully representative of "Defenders" and "Controllers" as a whole - there are simply so many possible build variations that you cannot directly extrapolate from such a limited subset of them to produce a meaningful outcome; at least not whilst maintaining a reasonable level of accuracy and statistical confidence. So whilst these threads are certainly entertaining (I enjoy the artwork and bios in particular) unfortunately as far as I can tell it's falling well short of its stated goals - because the testing methodology being employed is far too limited to measure "Defenders vs Controllers" with a reasonable level of statistical confidence. Again, I agree with the first section here - with 25 data points you are indeed very likely going to start to see meaningful trends emerge. But those trends are only meaningful for each character being tested. There seems to be a very big assumption going on here that the results for these 10 characters can be extrapolated to provide an accurate indication of how the Defender and Controller ATs will perform in relation to each other; rather than merely an accurate indication of how this particular subset of characters will perform in relation to each other. And that's what I'm taking issue with here - you've looked at 10 out of the possible 459 primary/secondary powerset combinations tested (let alone the potential variation in power selection, enhancement slotting, power pools, epic pools, incarnate choices, etc) which is at best only covering 2.18% of the possible builds. Therefore I do not believe that this experiment allows you to state with any level of confidence that "Controllers outperformed Defenders, and reliably so"... just that "these Controllers outperformed these Defenders, and reliably so". And lets be clear; I'm not demanding in the slightest that you test all 204 (Controller) and 255 (Defender) powerset combos here. Because (i) that's sheer madness and (ii) doubtless even after that someone else would object because (for example) "your Time Manipulation Controller should have been using both Power Boost and Radial Clarion to boost the effectiveness of Far Sight like a real character would have done..." 🙄. The sheer enormity of build customisations available in CoX simply doesn't lend itself to trying to model things based on random sampling; at least not without unfeasibly large sample sizes; and different people have very different notions about building characters and pushing min-maxed numbers. One person might go deep into DPS; and another into maximum mitigation; and another might try for both whilst making minimal build concessions - so one person's Controller (or even Mastermind) could easily beat another person's Defender in pure buffing potential. Squeezing maximum performance out of each of my characters is something I personally rather enjoy making a game out of; but lots of other people simply don't care in the slightest - so there are myriad unknown and/or uncontrollable variables that can muddy the waters. However it's still an entertaining thread with lots of good and useful data, and the results seem perfectly valid for what is actually being tested. So thumbs up 👍

I agree that the concept behind that approach (performing a very large number of tests, with whatever variables you don't care about effectively being "randomised" in an attempt to average any disparity out) is indeed potentially sound. But it only holds up if you can perform a sufficiently high number of tests that the results start to stabilize. The more tests the better, obviously, but I think it's fair to say that picking just 5 possible powerset combinations out of a possible 204 (Controller) and 255 (Defender) is hardly exhaustive. And whilst testing a larger number of those possible combinations might begin to reduce the margin of error to more acceptable levels... that doesn't factor in all the possible Epic/Patron/Pool power combinations, let alone Incarnate ability selection, individual power picks or enhancement slotting choices. The number of potential variables in play is simply too large for this to be a feasible testing methodology. If instead the variables were kept as static as possible (e.g. working out what the most average/median offensive Defender and Controller powersets are, then using only those sets in each of the tests) then that might allow any performance disparity between the two ATs to be highlighted with a much smaller sample size. But it likely won't be as entertaining to play; and would still result in arguments like "but Dark Blast unfairly favours Defender -ToHit scalars because you end up with more survivability wiggle room which just lets you procbomb everything".

Depending on the powerset and team composition, sure. Sonic Resonance will pull much more weight with bigger base scalars, but Kinetics is going to be capping the team's damage regardless of whether they're a Defender or a Controller or a Mastermind. However the fact that Defenders (and Corruptors) get a damage orientated blast set with the potential for highly procable blasts and AoEs matters more. Min-maxed they are runaway winners outside of specific edge cases such as a Procbombed Arsenal Control in an AE farm or a Perma PA Illusion Controller vs a pylon. Also Controller damage has taken a nosedive recently since Plant Control got smacked with the nerfbat and the introduction of variable recharge AoE controls (it's great for control, but rubbish for proc activation rates). My opinion on the the whole premise is still that Defenders are usually more valuable to an optimized team and Controllers more valuable to an unoptimized one; and that using different Offensive Powersets each time will just skew any attempt at comparison to the point where you might as well be comparing Apples to Cauliflowers. But hey, it's a game. Just as long as you're enjoying the ride... 🎠

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=dominator_control.earth_control.animate_stone&at=dominator Poor Mr. Poo always gets left out...

To be fair, those are the sort of teams where having Taunt and/or Fold Space are invaluable. Because if you can't drag the spawn you're currently fighting into a fresh spawn, then you can always drag the fresh spawn to you instead.

Are there less than eleven mobs? If yes, then it'll be a Scrapper with a Taunt Aura. If no, then before i28p2 the answer would have been a Tanker... but now it's a Scrapper with a Taunt Aura. Brutes do not clear things the fastest, unless those things are trying to run away and you can't stop them without Punchvoke. They do however have a much higher survivability ceiling than a Scrapper... so in content where 90% resistance matters they can pull ahead.

This bit speaks to me. Whilst testing the Tanker changes on Brainstorm I had to explain multiple times that my playstyle does not involve completely killing off one group of foes before moving on to the next group. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who feel that keeping your AoE Target Caps saturated by constantly dragging the leftovers from one spawn into the middle of the next spawn is "doing it wrong"... 🤷‍♂️ (I could understand if it was in a lowbie teaming situation where maintaining rock-solid aggro control overly mattered, but this was pure endgame solo performance testing!) If someone isn't consistently leveraging those Tanker larger target caps; then IMO it's pretty obviously that they're going to be underperforming. The good news is that if you didn't constantly fight >10 foes before the patch then it's rather unlikely that you'll notice much of a drop in performance... ⛅

Most Tanker AoEs do have a slightly lower proc activation rate than before, due to the larger radius now being part of the baseline attack instead of a global buff. But yes, it's definitely still worth proccing them; unless you really need to use them for muling set bonuses. And ST attacks (and Cones in the end!) were not touched.

Whilst this is true... another way to look at it is that for the vast majority of the game (without thinking of extreme survivability scenarios...) Tankers often simply don't need to chase additional resistance or defence or MaxHP; because with just bog-standard ED-capped slotting of their core abilities and no set bonuses a Tanker's elevated base values result in a substantially higher immortality line than an equivalent Brute. And that baseline survivability ends up being more than enough to survive indefinitely against whatever they're likely to be fighting (outside of very specific content). Especially with ATOs; because the Superior Might of the Tanker proc is so damn good. And if you find yourself in the position of not having to care one whit about increasing your character's survivability, that frees you up from having to take certain powers (like the fighting pool) and lets you concentrate entirely on ramping up your damage output via global recharge and oodles of damage procs. Yes, building for damage over survivability is horrible and meta and immersion breaking and everything; but there's no denying that it's efficient and effective.

Because it did need to be fixed. I have already posted detailed explanations of the WHY: But to restate the most relevant bits: In i26p4 Tankers got their base damage buffed and their damage limit increased and their target caps increased and their cone arc size increased and their AoE radius increased and their buff modifiers increased and their power ordering tweaked to provide better AoE capability. Tanker: Ranged damage modifier increased from 0.5 to 0.8, Melee damage modifier increased from 0.8 to 0.95, Bruise has been removed in favour of a flat damage scale increase. Buff modifiers increased to match Controller values. Damage buff cap increased from 400% to 500%. AoEs Most Tanker Melee AoE powers have had their target caps increased. Most cones now have a 10 target cap. Most PBAoEs now have a 16 target cap. Tanker now gets an inherent buff to the radius of AoE attacks and arc of cones. +50% for AoEs. +50% for cones. Some powers are unaffected by this buff. This is noted on the power description. Power Acquisition Levels To improve Tanker AoE capability during level up progression, the following powers had their acquisition levels changed: Battle Axe > Whirling Axe = 20, Swoop = 28 Martial Arts > Dragon Tail = 20, Focus Chi = 28, Crippling Axe Kick = 35 Stone Melee> Tremor = 28, Hurl Boulder = 35 War Mace > Whirling Mace = 20, Clobber = 28 Overnight Tankers almost closed the gap on the other melee ATs in terms of Single Target damage; and began dominating in terms of AoE damage. At least when you discount ATOs. Tankers needed their AoE damage output reduced because it was outright mechanically unbalanced (bigger target caps + larger coverage range + high base damage) compared to other ATs, which was causing a total nightmare for the Devs whenever they were trying to balance individual powerset performance across multiple ATs. Hyperbole notwithstanding, it's worth pointing out that the current reductions in damage are a minute fraction of what was originally being proposed on Test. We repeatedly talked them out of the severe and unbalanced nerfs because hordes of us tested the crap out of them and mathed and graphed it all out. The devs engaged and apologised and explained things (including addressing requests about rebalancing individual powersets like SS) and asked us for testing results including very specific same-powerset-across-different-AT tests ...and eventually the vast majority of the proposed nerfs were undone and we were left with what hit live. Yes, Tanker Damage has been nerfed. However a nerf was needed. No it's not perfect; but it's very close to being balanced now (IMO the changes to MeleeBuffDamage and MeleeDebuffResDamage were pretty pointless; but the AoE Overcap damage reduction was NOT. I do think that the overcap damage reduction numbers are currently set a smidge too high though; since currently a Tanker is dealing slightly less damage to 16 Targets than a Brute is dealing to 10... but I'm also expecting them to tweak things a bit further before the dust finally settles - we know a balance pass is coming!) However it's worth pointing out that asking "Are you suggesting tanks now lower their survive-ability just to kill a boss" is very much missing the point. A major effort went into ensuring that Tanker AoE damage got reduced whilst keeping Tanker Single Target damage effectively exactly the same ("Build Up" and "Rage" etc. granting a 10% lower damage buff notwithstanding). The original radius changes proposed by the Devs on Brainstorm were causing a reduction in the base damage of Tanker Cones as well as any AoEs that had a base radius <15ft. This caused powersets that use cones as part of their regular Single Target attack chain (like Staff and Titan Weapons) to be disproportionally negatively impacted; and caused powersets that have 15ft base radius AoEs (like Super Strength and Battle Axe) to drastically outperform the rest of the pack. Those imbalances were highlighted and proven and to be fair the Devs listened and addressed them. And as a result; what hit Live has drastically reduced Tanker AoE damage output whenever they're surrounded by >10 foes (with a slight reduction when fighting 10 or fewer foes); but NOT their Single Target damage output. There are still a few lingering issues with individual powersets like Radiation Armor - but that's not a reflection on the Tanker inherent changes. And FWIW Damage Resistance for both Tankers and Brutes still caps out at 90% (not 80%; I've no idea where you were getting that from!) and it's still much easier to reach that cap on Tankers because of their higher base values. Which leads to one of the classic arguments for Brutes underperforming; even before Tanker higher Target Caps and AoE radiuses were considered: "it takes me more effort to hit the same survivability thresholds as a Tanker, so I need to make more build sacrifices" (also occasionally phrased as "Tankers get to slot more damage procs than me!!") especially whenever you factor in the ATO performance disparity. I believe that was the idea. After i26p4; Tankers had the best survivability plus decent ST damage and the best AoE damage of all the melee ATs. After i28p2; Tankers still have the best survivability plus decent ST damage (whilst the "damage buff" powers got a slight reduction; powers like Build Up granting +70% damage instead of +80% is not particularly bothersome and the impact on Super Strength Double-Stacked Rage users was already pointed out and responded to on Brainstorm despite the fact that it translates to only a ~5.2% difference in actual average damage output in a real-world scenario) however their AoE damage has been reduced to fall very roughly into line with an equivalently built and slotted Brute. So if you want them to deal more AoE damage; you'll need to alter your build - more global recharge, more AoEs; more damage procs, whatever.

Forcefield is the obvious one, or standing inside a Bonfire (with no KB>KD slotted in it). Things with Slow patches too... Dark Miasma, Traps, Time Manipulation, Marine? My Bots/Traps MM was rather good at playing "Tower Defense" back in the day; setting up multiple "kill zones" with the Ranged Henchmen and various clusters of Caltrops and Trip Mines etc. for incoming ambushes in things like the Terra Volta Reactor and that one Croatoa mission.

Rage went from +80% to 70% damage per stack, so that's a loss of 20% for the double stackers. Realistically with Musculature and ED-capped damage aspect enhancement that'll result in going from ~385% damage to ~365% damage, or a proportional drop in damage output of ~5.19%. Whilst yes it's a nerf, it's hardly "amazingly" lower. And Damage Procs and Set bonuses and Assault Hybrid and Interface Incarnate abilities etc etc will all lessen the impact.

Just did a quick test of Ground Zero and looks like the fix to its Proc rate may have been applied too - I'm seeing ~90% activation rates again on mobs in Cimerora. Was it missed in the patch notes perchance?