Maelwys

Yep, in Build 5 (the current one) they adjusted the damage dealt to "Overcap" targets (whenever Tankers hit >5 targets for most cones and >10 for most regular AoEs). Instead of the previous compounding reduction (where target #12 took less damage than target #11) they made it a flat reduction where everything over the cap takes the same -67% less damage. It's very unpopular so hopefully it's going to see further tweaks. To be fair, they've also stated that they're going to be revoking the radius changes to all melee cones, which should drastically reduce the negative impact on powersets like Dual Blades, Staff and Titan Weapons.

Because the damage of Foot Stomp never followed the regular power design formula for damage scaling in the first place. It's the exception; not the rule. (And that's part of why the Devs are hesitant to proliferate the Super Strength powerset across to Scrappers; alongside Rage obviously!) To illustrate this: look at Spine Burst and Tremor and Axe Cyclone. They also have a 15ft radius on other ATs; but their base damage on Tankers is 55 (Tremor) and 48-plus-a-chance-for-DoT (Spines) and 53 (Axe Cyclone). Foot Stomp's is 75. Therefore making the base damage of Frozen Aura 58 (as it is on Brainstorm currently) with a 15ft radius is actually a bit higher than those other (non Footstomp) 15ft AoEs. Yes, the result of the radius changes definitely negatively affected specific powersets much more then others; but the numbers are still "balanced" according to the power design formulas. And the upcoming rollback of the radius increases to Melee Cones will help smooth things out again for powersets like Dual Blades, Titan Weapons and Staff.

Given that 6-proccing attacks actually benefits Brutes more than Tankers (due to their lower base damage values) unless you're constantly surrounded by >10 easily-hittable targets I suspect it wouldn't matter much. IIRC target saturation tends not to be a thing for most of a Trapdoor run and isn't a factor at all in Pylon times. Procbombing definitely skews some AoEs more than others though; especially if they're 15ft base radius and take a FF +rech (I'm looking at you Footstomp and Axe Cyclone!)

The radius and target count buffs were previously baked into the Gauntlet inherent. They didn't show up in the individual powers other than as a Target cap equation. (See the the various Tanker AoEs and Cones in CoDv2, which include lines like the below) Max Targets: 16 - 6 * Source.Mode?(kDisable_GauntletTargetCap) Max Targets Hit See Expression Above Historically Ice has been seen as one of the worst defensive powersets in terms of damage mitigation. Low resistances (other than to Cold) and low Defense Debuff Resistance. It does have decent +MaxHP and very good Recharge Rate debuff resistances though. However it's getting some love in the upcoming patch. Icy Bastion is miles better than Hibernate. Rime and Hoarfrost are IMO roughly interchangeable. Personally I'd still go with Stone due to the additional survivability plus the offensive buffs from Brimstone Armor and Minerals. But good alternative options if you prefer a more Defense focused set are Super Reflexes or Energy Aura (despite some upcoming minor nerfs to Energy Aura).

It might make more sense if you look at it as a "Before vs After"... but instead of the "BEFORE" being "Tankers on the Current Live Servers" it's "What Tankers were like prior to the last round of changes in Issue 26 Page 4" Consider that before i26P4: Tankers had the same Radiuses and Target caps on their PBAoEs as Scrappers + Brutes did; but a much lower Melee Damage Scalar of 0.8. Scrappers had a scalar of 1.125, meaning that Scrappers did 1.125/0.8=141% of a Tanker's damage for every Single Target and AoE that they landed, BEFORE CRITS. Brutes had a scalar of 0.75, but with Fury they were typically getting a ~140% damage buff (assuming ~70 Fury - remember that Fury decayed much faster!) on top of that. Tankers also had a much lower damage cap - 400% compared to 500% for Scrappers and 775% for Brutes. Then after the i26P4 changes: Tanker's Melee Scalar became 0.95 and their damage cap got raised to 500%. And honestly? IMO that would have been enough of a performance boost by itself to bring them back into balance and justify their existence. But they ALSO got a Target cap increase and a Radius increase; the latter of which was coded as a "global buff" so that attack base damage remained the same as before. These were both really good buffs. Too good. Crazy good. They meant that mechanically-speaking Tankers became the only melee damage AT that was worth bringing along on teams unless you were specifically going up against very tough single targets (and even then Scrappers and Stalkers only won out due to the crazy Critical Hit rates they can achieve when fully min-maxed!) What the Devs now appear to be trying to do on Brainstorm is to adjust Tanker overall AoE damage output (e.g. pairing back the runaway crazy numbers that an AoE-focused Tanker can achieve) whilst maintaining Tanker larger AoE target caps and their heightened Single Target damage output. They've left the higher Melee Damage Scalar in place, meaning that Tanker Single Target damage is still higher than before (although melee Cones currently have reduced base damage; they're going to be undoing that) - Tick. They've kept the higher AoE Target Caps - Tick. They are still attempting to find the best way of rebalancing their overall AoE damage. - In Progress. The specific things that the Devs have been trying here to "rebalance" Tanker AoE damage actually also make sense when looked at in the context of pre-i26p4. By removing the global radius increase granted in i26p4 (which raised the base radius of each Tanker AoE power without reducing their base damage) they effectively reset the radius of Tanker AoE abilities back to "normal"; allowing them to make further "new" adjustments. They then increased the individual radius of Tanker AoE powers. The base damage of those powers was reduced accordingly; as per the standard power design formulas (e.g. the larger the radius, the less the damage!). This is not actually a "nerf" when viewed in terms of CoX power balance; although it is in terms of damage-per-activation. Albeit the new Tanker higher melee damage scalar of 0.95 means their damage is still roughly on par with pre i26p4. They then implemented "overcap" damage reduction on any Targets hit by Tanker AoEs (and Cones) beyond the regular caps. This, again, is not a nerf when viewed in terms of pre-i26p4 Tankers - they had the same target cap limits as everyone else; therefore being able to deal any damage beyond those limits is actually a "buff"! That said... I personally still don't quite agree with where the Devs are currently apparently going to be setting Tanker balance going forward... As noted above; the radius tweaks have had the unfortunate effect of reducing Tanker AoE damage per power activation (which hurts Tankers whenever they are fighting less targets; let alone a single target!) and when combined with the "overcap" reductions it feels extremely harsh compared to Tankers on Live (even if being able to deal 33% of their AoEs' damage to up to 6 extra targets might technically be a mechanical increase over pre-i26p4 Tankers). And also... if the only effect of Tanker's "Gauntlet" inherent is now punchvoke plus a very slight bit of potential additional damage on their AoEs then that is; frankly; very underwhelming. So I am personally still in favour of lowering the overcap damage reduction by quite a bit; IMO its current -67% flat reduction should be at most a flat 50%; and ideally I'd prefer it to be set to an exponential scaling reduction of 20% or lower. And perhaps buff the Taunt duration on Tanker Punchvoke whilst you're at it (say 150% of what it is currently). Alternatively; another way to approach it would be to leave the current overcap damage reduction values in place but increase the Tanker base Taunt duration and Aggro limits (say from 17 mobs to ~24-32 mobs) in order for them to become better at holding the attention of those much bigger groups that they're hurting.

I think it's one of the Secondaries that'll be getting off pretty lightly actually. Throw Spines (like Claws' Shockwave) was never affected by the radius changes and they're apparently reverting it on all the other Cones like Ripper. Spine Burst (15ft Base radius) and Quills (dunno why, it just didn't) both never had their radiuses increased by Gauntlet in the first place so also shouldn't see any drop in base damage. The proposed "Overcap" damage reductions, if they remain in place, will affect them however. So if you're hitting more than 5 foes with Ripper or more than 10 with Spine Burst then you'll start to see a reduction in damage compared to what's currently on Live. But Quills and Throw Spines, again, shouldn't be affected as they both have a static target cap. Ironically it's the oddities that made Spines comparatively less OP on Tankers and Scrappers but more attractive on Brutes (e.g. all of its attacks and their DoTs benefit from Fury but not Gauntlet or Crits!) that'll save it from being hit overly hard by the nerf bat.

I'd go the other way; frankly. Tankers = "hold aggro; more mitigation focused; inflict similar or very slightly less ST and AoE damage than Brutes but with the AoE damage spread out over more targets." Brutes = "hold aggro; balanced between offense and mitigation; inflict decent levels of both ST and AoE damage." Scrappers = "largely ignore aggro control; more focused on offense than mitigation; inflict slightly more ST and AoE damage than Brutes." Stalkers = "inherently stealthy so completely ignore aggro control; much more focused on offense than mitigation; much more ST damage at the expense of AoE." IMO there's no need for "hard" Crowd Control like mez effects outside of a specific powersets (like Dark Armor). Scrappers and Stalkers are actually IMO currently both in a reasonably good place balancewise (aside from possibly requiring a slight ATO rebalance; but a general PPM mechanic rework would solve that). Tankers are hopefully likewise going to be in a good place after the intended effects of this new rework are realised (although getting the AoE spread balance 'just right' might take some followup tweaks in future patches - as we've pointed out previously the "overcap" damage reduction is currently a flat -67% which is overly harsh). Brutes' main issue is IMO their ATOs; which at present are both total cowdung and so add very little in terms of practical performance benefit; resulting in a major performance disparity between Brutes and the other melee ATs at level 50 whenever all of them are "optimized"... I've suggested some reworks to help resolve this issue before; but realistically one of their ATO procs/globals needs to give them a tangible increase in damage output (rather than an utterly negligible fury buff) and the other a tangible increase in survivability (like Absorb or +MaxHP/+Defence/+Resistance... rather than a virtually unnoticeable Regeneration Rate buff).

Fair enough. Luckily two of the currently-top-tier sets for "Active" all-round play have a Damage Aura: Bio Armor (Genetic Contamination DoT; plus Evolving Armor -Res) and Stone Armor (Non-Granite. Mud Pots DoT plus Brimstone Armor Procs). Of those two options... Bio has a hefty chunk of Absorb and more Regeneration/Recovery; but it has a gap in S/L Defense and lowish native resistances to E/N/F/C damage and it really wants as much global recharge as you can throw at it. Stone is far less reliant on global recharge, has native Defense Debuff Resistance and its only real defense hole is in F/C (which is easy to attain via set bonuses); but it has lowish native resistances to S/L/E/N damage (outside of Granite). Bio really wants a secondary offensive powerset that grants +Def and/or +Res (so Titan Weapons; Martial Arts; Staff; Broadsword, Katana, etc.) but Stone can realistically cope with anything (as long as you're taking Tough from the fighting pool and picking up some set bonuses). One of my favourite all-round BRUTES that can AFK AE Tank is a RadMelee/StoneArmor - and that combo would be much more forgiving (and so easier/cheaper to build) on a Tanker. Radiation Armor is another option; and its resistance spread is very good... but it's got much lower MaxHP and regeneration and zero native defense compared to Bio or Stone; and its AoE damage output from ground Zero and Radiation Therapy is getting drastically reduced in the upcoming new patch on Brainstorm. Dark Armor may also be a contender - it's getting some love on Brainstorm with the next patch; and has a very solid array of self-healing and damage resistances. But it has no Absorb, low +Defense and no DDR... as well as currently no +MaxHP or +Recovery (although there is a bit coming with the rework on Brainstorm). Finally... another way to go would be Super Reflexes + Radiation Melee. SR's high Defense, capped DDR and Scaling Damage Resistances can make it almost immortal when slotted up; so the only thing it's missing is a damage aura and some self-healing (which RadMelee provides). Not as offensively powerful; but a very easy ride.

Staff. The optimal attack chain grants you constant additional Defense (via Guarded Spin) and Resistance (via Sky Splitter with Perfection of Body). It's not going to be setting any records for ST damage (although it's getting a bit better on Brainstorm) but it's got a lot of utility and makes it considerably easier for a layered defensive powerset like BioArmor to reach the caps. Also... you don't need double damage aura unless you're AFK farming. Spines and RadMelee aren't great for active damage dealing purposes and they bring little in the way of additional utility aside from Radiation Siphon's Heal.

It depends. On Live right now (prior to the proposed nerfs on Brainstorm kicking in!) there are some specific defensive powersets that combo extremely well with Fury but less so for Gauntlet's radius and target cap buffs. Like Stone Armor (Brimstone Procs) and Fiery Aura (Burn) and even Radiation Armor (Ground Zero). The offensive powersets have a few standouts also, such as Spines (Spine Burst is a 15ft Base Radius AoE and Quills doesn't benefit from Gauntlet but does from Fury). And then there are multiple Epic/Patron AoEs that have a 15ft radius and 16 target cap by default. Overall for most combos, sure, Tankers are ridiculously ahead as long as they can keep maximum target saturation and I'm definitely of the opinion that as an AT their AoE damage output needs reduced for balance purposes. But there are always edge cases; and that's why I still have a few (carefully built!) Brutes in my current character stable. Even for AE Farming.

Conjure Gazebo!!

This sounds about right. FWIW, including the average proceeds from drops; an AE Asteroid Farming session with three accounts almost always works out at roughly 300-320m per hour total for me. That's with two toons AFK Farming and another one Active Farming (whilst most of my attention is on a movie or show of some kind streaming on another screen... so it's not exactly pushing any skill boundaries and could easily be pushed faster/higher at the cost of being less relaxing!). The two AFK farmers each tend to pull a little more than half of what the Active Farmer does. I honestly don't farm that often though, as a billion inf per character feels "good enough" for me and I've never really bothered stashing more in endless global emails to myself or in placeholder bids on the AH. And before anyone points it out, yes playing the market is still more efficient/faster/etc!! 😛

Combustion and Spine Burst both have a base radius of 15ft, just like Foot Stomp. (You can see this by looking at their stats on other ATs - like Brute Spines and Blaster Fire Manipulation). As such the Tanker versions didn't need their radius buffed and so didn't get their base damage reduced.

AFAIK Sky Spitter itself isn't doing any more damage. But it is whenever you use it under 3 stacks of Perfection. I'm getting ~415 on Live and ~495 on Brainstorm vs a Training Pylon (ED-capped damage with Musculature + 3x Perfection of Body stacks but no other Buffs/Debuffs) The "bonus damage" is the third hit (ignoring the proc activations).

Thank you, sincerely, for the response and explanation. And for listening to the feedback. I think it's rather telling that few (if any?) posts here have been of the opinion that Tanker damage post i26p4 is balanced and undeserving of a nerf... instead we've simply been trying to point out that the proposed reductions seem to be going a bit too far. I believe that the rollback of the radius changes to all melee Cones is definitely going to help alleviate the single target damage performance decrease I've observed in specific powersets (like Staff and TW) that rely more on those to shore up their attack chains. Regarding AoEs... as others here have pointed out, this new tech to only apply a reduction against "overcap" foes has a lot of promise for introducing new methods of balancing, and therefore is a positive thing. But getting the numbers on it just right will be a bit trickier. Personally I prefer the idea of a compounding exponential damage reduction (as it means you're still dealing a large proportion of damage whenever you're not achieving full target saturation - like when fighting "only" 12-14 enemies) but a flat reduction is definitely more straightforward and likely much easier for non-math-heads to understand. However I do still think that a 67% flat reduction to "overcap" enemies when combined with the base damage reduction due to radius changes is a bit harsh, since my tests are still showing that Tanker AoEs would achieve full damage spread (where hitting 16 targets on Brainstorm equates with hitting 10 targets on Live) with a 50% flat reduction (or with about a 21-22% exponential reduction). With that in mind, I would suggest setting the flat reduction at 50% and then adjusting further (up or down!) in future smaller patches if required as more data comes in though wider gameplay testing on Live. The goal that Tankers inflict similar (or slightly reduced) levels of damage compared to Brutes but spread over a greater number of foes is a good one, IMO, and if that's where the overall aim is here then it definitely helps clear things up a bit regarding HC developer intent for melee AT power balancing... which again, is greatly appreciated. IMO Single Target (and Cone) damage should be in a good place again with the rollback mentioned above. So that leaves the very careful rebalancing of their AoE damage (which as mentioned above, I think we all agree is needed... it's just a question of how much!) in order that they don't become mechanically obsolete on teams over a Brute.

Because I've not directly addressed this new 'design notes' section yet: Apparently the goal was originally to allow Tankers "to better compete with Brutes in damage in a way that was distinct by focussing on AoE output". Now the goal is to have Tankers "still deal more damage than they had in the past, and be AoE specialists among the melee ATs". However with the proposed changes currently on Brainstorm; I can see no mechanical benefit to bringing a Tanker over a Brute for either AoE damage output or AoE Aggro Control. And I suspect that one of the major reasons things have gone screwy is this statement: The bolded section is IMO a fallacy. Tanker Cones and AoEs are NOT dealing +100% or +60% more damage to the group on Brainstorm compared to Live. The radius buffs on Brainstorm have already reduced their base damage; so they are dealing an average of ~22% less damage than before. In addition, Tanker Melee Cone attacks can NOT "easily" hit 10/5 enemies. Especially with the reduced arcs that they have on Brainstorm. If the Devs really want to simply make Tankers deal the same damage across more targets - normalising their AoE damage so that Tanker AoEs inflict the same overall damage against 16 targets on Brainstorm as they currently do against 10 targets on Live ... then realistically they should be inflicting a flat "overcap" damage reduction of about 50%; or a compounding "overcap" diminishing return of about -21% (so that target 16 takes 21% less damage than target 15, which takes 21% less damage than target 14, etc, etc.). And if the "sweet spot" is lower, then reduce the reduction. Cones could have a slightly harsher reduction, but IMO it's so darn difficult to consistently catch a high (let alone saturated) number of targets within a 90 degree melee cone (yes, even when I'm AE farming!) that this is a moot point and so they could easily just be treated the same as regular AoEs. And if instead the Devs (as stated above) truly want to make Tankers "AoE specialists among the melee ATs" then IMO they really need to apply less of a reduction; or just bin either the radius changes or the overcap reduction mechanic completely. Personally from my own testing; my Tankers' Single Target damage output has dropped noticeably (because a lot of their attack chains contain at least one Cone or AoE; which are now doing less base damage - this is disproportionally affecting my Staff and Titan Weapon Tankers; and the Staff Tanker already has poor Single Target damage!). My Tankers' AoE damage output on the other hand has drastically plummeted. The impact is so bad that if the changes on Brainstorm go live as-is then I honestly cannot currently conscience the idea of me bringing any of my Tankers on a "kill most" or "kill all" Team over an identically built Brute; unless that Tanker is Super Strength or Battle Axe (due to Foot Stomp and Axe Cyclone not being as negatively impacted). This is very obviously not a good place for Tankers to be heading balancewise, so I would again implore the Devs to please reconsider the extent of the proposed changes and only apply either the radius changes or the "overcap" reductions, but not both.

Or (and it's sad that this is what is passing for "hope" right now) they accidentally implemented a flat -67% reduction instead of a flat -33% reduction... But I've given up trying to predict what they're thinking so I'll just keep on making unhappy incredulous noises until the next build and/or we see what lands on Live... 🤷‍♂️

This. Tanker's inherent schtick is now apparently that their AoEs are bigger and can hit more targets. OK. But that's only beneficial if (i) it lets you inflict more overall damage and (ii) it lets you keep the attention of more targets. What we have currently on Brainstorm is that whilst Tanker AoEs still have a larger radius and target cap; they also inflict 20-30% less base damage. So you HAVE to hit 2-3 additional targets with your AoEs just to break-even with the overall damage that you would have inflicted with them if they'd had exactly the same 'unbuffed' radius and target caps as a Brute or Scrapper. However because of "overcap" damage reductions applying on top of this; hitting 2-3 targets is not enough to break even; and under the current build you can't even reach that break-even point after hitting all 16 foes. So for damage output; the increased AoE radius and target caps is a trap - the radius buff is actually actively hurting your performance. The increased range on Cones is almost as bad - they'll now sometimes reach a break-even point vs "unbuffed with 5 enemies" if you can hit 9+ enemies with them. (Meh!) And for aggro control? Tankers already have an AoE splash punchvoke effect and the aggro cap is 17 foes. So again, an increased target cap on AoEs is practically pointless. So yes, IMO if this is what the Tanker Inherent now gets us; we'd honestly be better off without it (aside from bog-standard AoE Punchvoke)

This. At this point I'm getting extremely disillusioned by the direction they're apparently taking. Surely an AT's Inherent should be granting them some kind of a benefit; rather than inflicting a measurable penalty?!? I'd honestly be happier if they removed all Tanker power Radius and Target Cap boosts; and dropped every effect from Gauntlet other than the AoE Punchvoke.

I was feeling slightly positive thinking they'd normalised it to a flat -33% reduction - "OK, that's not as good as we'd hoped but it might not be overly crippling...". But nah; it's a -67% reduction. At this point we'd be better off just losing the Tanker additional radius and Target caps completely and not giving them any inherent other than AoE punchvoke.

Looks like another change on Build #5: Initial opinion is: they've made things even worse. For AoEs (1-10 base targets, 11-16 "overcap" targets) a 67% flat damage reduction means always inflicting less damage than the last build's diminishing returns curve. For Cones (1-5 base targets, 6-10 "overcap" targets) a 67% flat damage reduction means inflicting less damage than before until you start hitting targets 9 and 10. 🤮

Think you're missing a base damage bump against target 15 there? (Doesn't make it much better mind...)

Cheers. So it's a flat reduction but -66.7% not a -33.3%. At least it's not diminishing returns (yuck!) anymore; but looks plenty harsh still unless you're hitting a large number of targets over the "cap".

At work so can't personally double check this yet... To me "Diminishing returns multiplier changed to a flat 0.3333 for all powers after the default target cap" implies that now if targets 1-10 would take X damage; then targets 11-16 would take (X*0.6667) damage [EDIT: it's (X*0.3333) damage as noted below!]. In other words, all "overcap" targets are now getting the same flat damage reduction rather than target 12 taking less damage than target 11. And also that Cones are now being treated the same as AoEs (rather than each having two different damage reduction curves)...? Also this: Reverted the radius increase on the following powers: Powers that are balanced as single target attacks: Powers that accept range enhancements: Is definitely welcome. Shall test when I get home. Although it's not going to be a silver bullet for powersets which have Single Target attack chains that include "regular" cones.