Bill Z Bubba

Nah, different bubba.

Nope. It's currently in my build but I never use it and I'm about to respec out of it. Any extra mitigation I need I get fully from Rebirth +regen and the Tank AT IO +damres and +absorb procs. Edit: Back on topic, it still confuses me just how often people ignore range as mitigation. This game doesn't throw out NEARLY as much damage at range as it does in melee and Sentinels sit pretty with mez protection, armor and can perpetually hover blast with no need to ever go into melee.

Oh that's easy. Shield/EM tank.

It's an imperfect world. Screws fall out all the time. But this is why we have other games! For something to do when we can't log into CoH.

Not at all. I see no reason why scrappers shouldn't have taunt auras just like brutes. Full stop. Everything else going on between the 4 melee sets is an entirely different conversation that has gone nowhere and never will.

I hear ya.

Or shield. But I grok the rest of the post. So what we're really seeing here is a need to buff scrapper damage AND give them all taunt auras.

I don't know why my brain is fixating on this but are there any explanations as to why this might be?

But by your math, that's still only 180% more mitigation (not the 250% stated earlier) and the brute has to constantly be running at both the defense softcap and damres hard cap 100% of the time. I know none of mine do that. Generally speaking, especially where def debuffs are in play, (yea, ok, I like the ITF a bit much) my resist based sets are sitting in negative defense land unless I've got ageless radial cranked. And sometimes even then. But back on topic, yes please to taunt auras for scrappers.

Using identical builds for claws/sr, the scrapper takes down a pylon in 3 mins, the brute 4. That works out to around 341 DPS for the scrap and 288 for the brute. Scrap is doing 18% more damage. So that's certainly in line with your 10-20 figure. Not sure where you're getting the 250% more survivable, though, when the brute gets identical base values and only 12% more HP.

You got all that and closed the kb and slow holes? This build in your thread? Edit: Why yes, I do keep forgetting about storm kick and its +10% defense.

Soooo, this dark/stone tank... She ain't gonna win no awards for damage output, but for aggro control and all around actual tanking, she's the best I got. Between all the aoes, soft controls and fold space, she's really amazing.

Balance has nothing to do with flamewars and baiting. Such things are very easy to avoid reading and even easier to avoid being part of.

and now it's gone. nevermind...

No. I solo at max diff. At low diffs, the blaster will stomp everyone else because there's zero chance of defeat. Edit: I guess I should add, I solo at max diff at 50+ with fully tricked out builds. If I'm soloing at lvl 1, I'm obviously not at max diff. If I was going to do a 100% solo run from 1 to 50, it would be with a brute for melee or a sentinel for range.

Dunno about the rest, but if we're just throwing out anecdotes, my time/fire defender has better clear speeds than my fire/time blaster just due to Time Manipulation's awesome buffs and debuffs. Does that mean the defender is actually outdamaging the blaster or does it mean that in the long run, the defender spends less time/energy staying alive and more time blasting that the blaster? By the same token, my fire/bio sent outperforms my fire/time blaster as well, for the exact same reason. The blaster spends more time dealing with mez and faceplants than the sentinel does. Would I ever say that the sentinel is out-blasting the blaster? Nope. But in the overall he still performs better thanks to his armors even while doing less DPS. Edit: Well, actually, a faceplanted blaster's DPS drops to zero while licking dirt, so maybe DPS is the wrong term to use.

That's not what he was saying at all. Blaster Nrg Blast Power Blast: (1.0 * Ranged_Damage) points of Energy damage (all affected targets) (0.64 * Ranged_Damage) points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) Defender Nrg Blast Power Blast: (1.0 * Ranged_Damage) points of Energy damage (all affected targets) (0.64 * Ranged_Damage) points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) Sentinel Nrg Blast Power Blast: (1.0 * Ranged_Damage) points of Energy damage (all affected targets) (0.64 * Ranged_Damage) points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) They are the exact same attack doing exactly the same base damage which is then applied to the AT Ranged_Damage Modifier. Edit: Oh.. I must correct myself. The sentinel attack recharges in 7 sec where the blaster/defender attack recharges in 8. That's odd.

For me, just waiting for the cooldowns is enough of a reason not to die. And yea... all those toggles as@Heracleanotes.

How much recharge does T4 ageless core provide at its lowest value?

I know @Soverawill say otherwise, but I still find you lose a lot of build choices plugging all the holes in FA. And there are many.

That's how I explain it for my brute and tank SR users.

As any ostrich or penguin will tell you, having wings without the ability to fly suuuuuuucks. Actually looking at the build now. I could go ageless instead of rebirth to cover the end costs but that loss of regen and the occasional heal may get messy when doing stupid tanker tricks. But the extra 15% damage.... mmmmm. Wondering just how many seconds that would take off my pylon time.

HUA. But a counter question... how do you fit in the leadership pool? They only give us 4 + Epic and I've already got Fly, Fighting, Hasten and Combat Jumping! Edit: Welllll... guess I could drop CJ for Maneuvers... tweak out some end from somewhere to cover it. Edit2: Damnit, Nihilii, now I HAVE to respec my shield/em tank.

Dunno about others, but for me, balance is its own goal, much akin to making other things beautiful in the world.

Bah! Tanks are already overbuffed all to hell. And I know HELL! In all seriousness, though, I greatly dislike the fact that in my entire roster the character that has the easiest time soloing the ITF is a tank and this is only partially due to the extreme mitigation the AT provides but it's coupled with pretty grotesque levels of ST damage. At this point, we should NOT be comparing anything to what tanks can pull off because the last batch of tanker buffs broke the AT completely.