Bill Z Bubba

How's your pylon time? Edit: To anyone else reading this, it's from pylon times that I get a very good idea how fast a character will take down AVs and thus affect the solo time of TFs.

Sorry, forgot this part. I am a junkie for numerical balance. It's why I felt pushed to raise the question in the first place. But I get now that A: it doesn't really matter and B: I'm way outvoted. So I'll see myself out of room for balance discussions and instead just enjoy that I can still play at all.

Nothing. It means absolutely nothing except that the tank survives when the brute doesn't. And, honestly, unless pulling stupid tricks like Werner Rules ITFs, it's just not going to matter one way or the other. Then again, in "normal" game play, might as well bring anything because we're all stupidly OP at this point. Even I have vastly more squishies in my stable than back before the snap for no other reason but that I can buy mez protection and I'm rich so why not?

Ok guys and gals, I'm just gonna recant. Tanks are not clearing missions faster than brutes. I was mistaken, mea culpa, my bad. That said, tanks were still grossly overbuffed, are putting out far too much damage for being a damage secondary archetype, their speed at clearing maps is still too close to brutes for all the extra mitigation they have and I'm not seeing any kind of balance there. But these are opinions. And facts are facts. My statement that I was seeing tanks clear maps faster because of the added AoE is not holding up to my scrutiny and testing. Even my claws/sr brute is faster on average than my sr/claws tank so I'm either misremembering what I was doing on beta before the changes went live, or something else is amiss. Either way, I was wrong. Edit: And the brutes are still only 30 seconds faster than the tanks on pylon times. That seems ludicrous to me.

Thanks to the ease of getting T4ed farming Heather's arc, DA has seen far more of my game time than any other zone except MAYBE Cimerora. Cuz I do love me some ITFs.

I found big robot Siege in General Villains. And there's now a big robot on the other side of this asteroid just waitin for a beatdown as a lvl 54 AV. Woot. Edit: Not a woot. This is the BAF version with his rings of death. He doesn't have those in Maria's arc.

Storm Kick is providing +10% base def to all positions on tanks? WTH? For 13.6 seconds? WTF? But that's only for Tanks and Brutes, while Scrappers and Stalkers get nothing? /headdesk-headdesk-headdesk

I'll try again but last time I did it just sat there doing nothing. EDIT: "There are too few players to own the event."

Can't start that solo.

Maria's arc. But he shows up randomly, if I recall correctly, so if anyone knows of a better way to get him in a mission, I'd love to hear it. Or would it be easiest to create a quick AE mission with him? Would he have his real stats?

I don't have a single elec armor user. I should fix that. And go with a secondary that isn't claws, em or mace. Maybe savage.

My BZBs repond with, "Stupid Rularuu." Siege at +4 halted my god tank as I was still getting incarnated out. His heal outdid my DPS. I should revisit that fight after the next respec. And this was with a character that now takes about 1.5 hours to solo a normal max diff ITF. So, yea, exceptions occur. That's a good thing.

That's my experience running DA repeatables at 50+3. All the rewards of running +4/x8 with the effort of +1/x8.

Sounds like a plan.

I couldn't get mine better than that. BU - ET long - TF - ET short - Gloom - BS and BU is only usable every 3 chain, I think. Still haven't figured out if BU is better before or after that first ET.

No, I don't agree. It'd be an interesting experiment, though. Get fully T4ed, then crank up a second build with nothing but basic IOs. I suspect that there would a drastic change in performance for the worse. With around a 99.99% certainty.

They only demonstrate the brute's single target damage superiority. When they're available to use, sure. But with something like shield charge, you're lucky to have enough recharge in it to use once per spawn. And this is the crux of it all and why I think utilizing a repeatable mission with 2 bosses per spawn is the way to go. And testing it at +4/x8 (or whatever diff is survivable) with basic IOs not only gives us those bosses but makes it far less likely that we're just slaughtering all the minions with a single AoE.

There are no AVs and GMs in this test. If we want to test out single target DPS, that's what pylons are for. What I'm attempting to determine is whether tanks on the whole were overbuffed for whatever is "normal" gameplay. And while I seek out AVs and soloing TFs, I've been repeatedly told that ain't "normal" and I'm an "edge case." So what would your test be to determine the above?

"What is already known" is the problem we're facing. I already know that tanks were overbuffed. The problem is all those demanding proof (as they should) of my claims. Using a static, repeatable mission, coupled with a difficulty that can lead to failure, properly timed and averaged out amongst various combinations, will provide us with a decent chunk of information, one way or the other.

Wow. I would have quit that team after the first pull.

Which is why I was using Galaxy Brain's Office Mission Simulator on the beta server. Then I just went spawn to spawn as we do normally. Only grabbing a second group's aggro if they were close enough. Granted, his critters don't dish out a normal amount of damage, another reason I was thinking basic IOs, but we could just as easily choose some standard enemy group and perhaps should. This way, a chosen difficulty might have relevance rather than both the brute and the tank being immortal.

That's kind of why I'm leaning toward basic IO builds. We all have different build philosophies. If I gear builds specifically for the test at hand, lower survivability for the tank while cranking proc damage as an example, I think the results will be skewed, especially if using the identical build for the brute. Built like that, the brute may not even survive the test. If we go with basic IOs, it will drastically reduce the disparities that we can tweak into the builds.

But what test that we can all agree upon? SOs? Basic IOs? Fully IOed but no incarnates? Edit: And of course by "we all" I mean those of us capable of having our opinions changed when presented with factual data.

I suspect that as a set's AoE capabilities go up, tanks will surpass brutes. With the EM/Shield, there was only whirling hands and the long recharge shield charge. This would explain why my claws/sr test had the tank win, as there my aoe chain is followup, focus, spin, shockwave, repeat.

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1466;698;1396;HEX;| |78DA4D93C952135114866FA7BB09191893101933202421A143DC290E55885002D14| |0D085551676C205A25D902250C2D257D0855BDD58AE7C07B78E2FA056B973C3E058| |BA8A277D7E487755D777EE7FCF708773F37BD3FE57B38FAE08A5FDAA65D66A2BC5F| |2B659ADCA6D3D6FAE57CA823EFF54C5B2A277A253BBA592E9262178E2B392979694| |06053EAC454EC569B926376BD228EE36464B72CD927BB2267C85AD2DCB98B12AEB1| |B3B5EDB2E56A55C6D63B9A15636D7FDF668419A551A745DAB56CAC6D4D6EAFE4ADE| |ACEDC8EDFD5EAA9EA27FA3B10CFBAB0BF1511522A7897C43536C4D159D8AADB9026| |090A98598F7DD7015755D197591E6115A92D99202C798AD69971DD3FA9A18D0C40D| |8A555147459D6ED4E9469D20EAF8C857C73AF56161E7B34873DBD5EBBAFB9EC6FE2| |6B3A7049699675641C98C53AC87F3299E34E7EB030B34E7432D5F8CB507A4B5619F| |6DE7793F7D17980393E045E6D025DEE7D073AEB548B11DBC4F57C7219FF1D01133F| |A9DB9493E5DC8DF95E13C5103CC326313608EF3C7321CBB44B101CE2F02E3BCDE9B| |A485503334A3DADAF02C38C774914F986BBAC29F38D7F067E6D92F4C957C7A398FD| |EFB0B73BFC1BFCCD17FE039304C0183D42314DB8FFBEDC7FD2670BF09DC6F02F75B| |24DF41AC77106794C219A5704655F289E08C226F30F79639F60E7C0F7E6066BE329| |729368E7DC4913F83FC9963E638EA8CFF007F327B287604BD328275674FD64D2E49| |F44A12FDF3821A258D5AE918E7C85EE633C9CE11139AC81DB09EBB8EF1371E7BA89| |6817CC63C6BA24788096813A83BA039DE6D9D3E11D14E5F6D7DC1393B4968514541| |3B7DA942B1230EBCA4A06F14F4CD5153D39545AEE55D028B4CFF32788BD97E9B79E| |8CC97E47CC74D4D551E73DFB63F6176FEE1F7D1F994C705F2CD6107771DB6E9B04B| |0E7B3ED0B4E3C1A63D136EDADE50D37EE6F07F196FDAFF019136D3A4| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Here's my current BZB Scrap build for reference.