Maelwys

The display bug with Eye of the Storm appears to currently be even worse than usual on Brainstorm - it really threw me for a loop earlier as I thought for a second they'd reverted the Tanker AoE attack radius change (which is in reality still applying and reducing its base damage in combat compared to Live). I had to go Pylon whomping on both Live and Test to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

Yeah; I actually edited the original shortly after posting to include a note that FE damage was included in the display figures. The proposed damage reductions apply to damage from FE in exactly the same as they do to "real" base damage though; so it's still showing the correct proportional effect. If it's overly bothering anyone then when I get home I'll redo the figures without any FE contribution as they'd be shown in the combat log instead of in the powers display. [Edit: Done. The original post should now have the "correct" combat-log matching values for the Staff Cones. I've also included average regular (non FE) DoT damage for FSC]

FWIW; this is what the effect of the Tanker AoE/Cone radius changes combined with the Tanker AoE/Cone "overcap" damage reductions currently looks like: That's attack in-game listed base damage per activation at level 50 - no damage enhancement; let alone incarnates or procs. [EDIT: although note that the game does include normalised values for Fiery Embrace in its display figures; so what's shown above will be a bit higher across the board than what you'd actually see in the combat log!] [EDIT #2: Have removed the Fiery Embrace contribution since it was confusing matters. And also tweaked Fire Sword Circle's figure to use the correct average DoT damage values whilst I was at it!] So as things stand, 15ft base AoEs like Footstomp are going to be the least affected (and you can see that the values in its bar stay green for longer) but they'll still suffer a bit. The most affected will be Cone attacks (such as Guarded Spin which can hit 10 foes on Brainstorm and still not reach the same overall damage as hitting 5 foes on Live!) Single Target Attacks (and a few specific "Ranged" Cones like Shockwave and Throw Spines AFAIK) are the only Secondary Powerset attacks not impacted at all. (Also I purposely omitted Eye of the Storm; as the damage for it currently has a display discrepancy on Brainstorm) And FWIW, this shows why if I had to pick then I'm more in favour of keeping the "Overcap" damage reduction changes than the Gauntlet radius changes. Currently Tanker secondaries that rely heavily on cones (like Staff!) to fill out their attack chain are actually having their Single Target damage drastically cut... 😭

There's an oddity going on with Eye of the Storm now on Brainstorm... It looks like it's not getting the same reduction to base damage as other "<15ft base radius" Tanker AoEs. Live: Brainstorm: But it turns out that's only in the power details screen. In the combat log it's actually still dealing greatly reduced damage. Live: Brainstorm: I wondered if this was unique to Staff on Tankers; but it's not. If you look at the numbers being displayed for EoTS on Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes they're waaaay bigger in the Power Details Screen on Brainstorm than they are in the Power Details Screen on Live... but it doesn't translate into a real increase in the combat log.

What "absolutely mentioned" damage scalar nerf? The only blanket adjustments to Tanker scalars I'm aware of are to Melee_Buff_Dmg (which affects Damage Buffs, like Rage and Build Up) and to Melee_Debuff_Res_Dmg / Ranged_Debuff_Res_Dmg (which affect Resistance Debuffs, like Evolving Armor and Melt Armor). If there was a nerf to the "damage scalars" (Melee_Damage and Ranged_Damage - the ones that are used to determine the damage dealt by attack powers!) then you'd see that reflected on Brainstorm as reduced base damage for Single Target attacks and AoE attacks with a 15ft base range (like Footstomp) rather than just for smaller AoEs and Cones.

Fair. However regardless of whether it's intentional or not; if they're keeping things as-is then they'll need to be a damn sight more clear about it in the patch notes. Because it's pretty clear that this: just means "we've tweaked Tanker AoE radius a bit" to most people. If the reader cares about min-maxing and/or is inclined towards using spreadsheets then they might realise that this will negatively impact proc activation likelihood... but I can count the number of people who have realised it means a reduction in AoE base damage on one hand. So far the rest have needed it pointed out and/or screamed at them.

Actually... yeah. What Moon said. If you're just back and your goal isn't actually farming just for the sake of farming (I actually quite enjoy generating wares for the AH rather than just flipping them) then there are plenty of folk who will gladly mail you a sizable chunk of of starter cash. And FWIW "Marketeering" (or at least playing Enhancement Convertor Roulette) is often a much faster way to gain raw influence. There's a whole forum dedicated to it. If you don't actually want to farm influence; and you don't want to bother playing the market... just play the game. Whilst levelling up; save your merits and trade them for Enhancement Boosters/Convertors to sell. Then at 50, just play whatever content you like. Inf (and drops) will flow.

There's a Sir Mix-a-Lot song in there somewhere... 😜 I used to main a Regen Scrapper. I'm not exactly a stranger to nerfs. Doesn't really matter to me if a change is Small or Large; but I much prefer ones that make sense to implement and are balanced properly.

For the most part; buffing yourself with another account isn't worth it when farming. You get a greater return (still!) from running three different independent farms. Two accounts each running an AFK farmer (a melee toon at 90% Resistance and 45% Defence + at least 35 HP/Sec passive Regeneration; with 2x Damage Auras and one big PBAoE attack set to autofire); and the third account running an Active Farmer (which doesn't need as much survivability; just lots of high-damage AoEs to spam on everything). If you're just starting out; and you don't have at least one farming toon min/maxxed yet; then sure you could grab a reasonably-tough melee toon plus a Cold Domination buffbot to shore up their Defense and Fire Resistances. But you definitely won't need a Kinetic... as whenever you're Active farming; you should be combining and chugging red inspirations and therefore always be at or near the damage cap anyway. AA's farming guide here is still relevant (at least until the build that's on Beta right now hits Live; and all the folk currently using Tankers swap back to Brutes again!) 😛

My money's on OCD. VEAT MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1 Blaster MeleeBuffDmg = 0.125 Scrapper MeleeBuffDmg = 0.125 Stalker MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1 Brute MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1 Tanker MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1 Heavens! We can't have a low-to-medium damage AT like a Tanker buffing their own damage by the same scale as a Stalker or a Brute, can we? That'd be sheer madness. Similar deal for the -res scaling change. VEAT MeleeDebuffResDmg = 1.0 Blaster MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.7 Scrapper MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75 Stalker MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75 Brute MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75 Tanker MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.8 OMGWTFBBQ it's 0.05 too high! All those oodles of -resistance debuffs that Tankers get access to are far too strong! WE MUST SMITE IT WITH THE MIGHTY NERF BAT! ...yeah, it's pretty pointless. 🙄

Nope. Inspirations ignore the AT modifiers, it's a flat bonus to everyone (like Call to Justice; and Assault Core Embodiment stacks) Stuff like perfection of Body Stacks, Rage, Build Up (which all use the Melee_Buff_Dmg scalar instead of Melee_Ones) are affected. Brainstorm Live

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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