Bill Z Bubba

We are capable of agreement. I am capable of separating my ability to have fun from my views of balance. Which is why I have an em/shield brute and identically built shield/em tank on beta. It's why I have a claws/sr scrapper, brute and sr/claws tank. You're right when doing strict data crunching, that is the way to go. And what we've all agreed on with various amounts of testing is that for clearing maps the brute still beats the tank. Where the arguments all come from is that some of us think the time difference is far too close between the two while others don't. In the end, as you can see from the back and forth, it doesn't matter at all. Some of us just like arguing for one reason or another. I can type til I'm blue in the face but don't expect what I see as a problem to ever be corrected. But I'm stubborn to a fault.

What you provide is hardly evidence of anything. Do you honestly believe that a tank takes twice as many attacks using the exact same attack chain as the brute with the same animations but only takes 30 seconds more time to down a pylon? Do you really believe that's how math works? Because you'd be wrong. As usual. We get it.

Nope. Whole game is far too broken for that. At this point it's nothing but random thought experiments. I would love to see a CoH that was mathematically meaningful. Where archetype choice meant something. Where cast time was always taken into account for damage dealt. Where secondary affects of powers were universally utilized and balanced. Instead, we've got a game where the only reason end-game content (read itrial "raids") isn't soloed or duoed or trioed on the regular is because it won't allow you to start them with that few people. I love this game. Always have. But it does bum me out to see what it has become and appears to be going down a path of becoming worse because of it. I get that there are some players that are very happy that their pet AT has finally become the "god" of the game and any attempt to roll that back sends them flying off into drooling psychosis. But that has nothing to do with balance.

Lies. If it were true, then identically built tanks would be doing 50% less DPS against pylons. You know this is a false statement, why continue to make it?

Where "most content" equates to a max diff that I can solo with a defender now. 4.5 mins for a claws tank vs 4 for the claws brute. That's not me cherry picking, it's you ignoring reality. Brutes are NOT taking out bosses with 50% less hits than tanks. Side note: I would also nerf brute mitigation caps and buff their base values to be exactly 50% between tank and scrapper values.

Now you're grasping to avoid the problem. I know I can build em and shield on all 4 and I know exactly how it'll turn out, which will be exactly as the claws and sr tests turned out. It changes nothing. Tanks were overbuffed. Some people don't care. Some of us find it ridiculous. And I'll keep playing my ludicrously broken shield/em tank and continue doing ridiculous things with it that I certainly shouldn't be able to do. And I'll continue coming into these threads stating the same damn thing: they didn't need the buff, the didn't deserve the buff and the sure as hell shouldn't be in the same damage dealing league at all as their damage PRIMARY counterparts.

See last post.

That bit about the pylon was an amusing anecdote. Not a test. And I stated so. Doesn't change the fact that a damage secondary archetype is now pushing out nearly the same damage as a damage primary archetype while having superior mitigation thanks to it being an armor primary archetype. There's no cherry picking, there's no exaggeration. The changes did nothing but balance more than it was already broken. So let's take it to the logical conclusion. Bump defender and controller base damage mods up to tank level and we'll call it a day. Why not at this point? What's it matter?

Perhaps that would have been a better solution for tanks, too.

They were only too slow for all those people that demanded that tankers be the Superman of CoH. There's weren't too slow for anyone with enough sense to grasp that their heightened mitigation should mean their damage should suck. They are a damage secondary class after all. Just like defenders.

No they didn't. They did enough damage to get through a mission, just like a defender. They could solo normal content without issue. Their damage output was fine in comparison to their mitigation. The buff was unnecessary and unwarranted.

I would change that to say, "being inferior tanks with barely superior damage output." I just soloed an MA/Elec Brute to 33/34 then PLed her to 50. Now I'm staring at an empty Mids build and wondering why I'm bothering. I think I'm entering the phase where, thanks to all the ridiculous powercreep both before and after the snap, that I'm reminded of Syndrome... when everyone's super, no one is. All that extra damage that a stalker or scrapper can dish out doesn't mean much when they can't sit in the middle of Rom and his fluffies without faceplanting and tank damage is so close to brute damage while having greater build allowance thanks to higher base values, it's just gotten to the point where I wonder why I bother with anything but this ridiculous shield/em tank other than, "well, that other set looks cooler."

Point was, stating something has "enough" mitigation for whatever we decide is "normal" gameplay has nothing to do with powerset or archetype balance. Balance should come from math, not feeling.

My time/fire defender survives well enough and dishes out enough damage to clear the map.

I don't disagree. I don't agree that any tank should ever outdamage any scrapper in any case anywhere or anyhow. Just found it amusing. To put it another way, an Energy tank shouldn't even be able to get a better pylon time than a Spines scrapper since no scrapper can ever reach tank mitigation values. And, yes, I know, powerset balance within an AT was never this game's strong suit either.

A fun side note... found out my shield/em tank, with saturated AAO, has better single target damage than my claws/sr scrapper. Not by much, granted, bout 5 seconds faster than the scrapper's average, bet if I ran more tests they'd even out around 3 minutes on a pylon... but it amused me. A tank... taking down a pylon in the same time as a scrapper. With vastly more mitigation. BALANCE!

Master Brawler wins in my book and I wish it would get ported to all the other SR users. You're not actually forgoing mez protection if you take it. The protection gets moved to your first two toggles instead. The only benefit to PB at this point is that you can click it while mezzed as a breakfree but as long as your toggles are up if you take MB, getting mezzed in the first place becomes a non-issue.

I've only got a few claws. Claws/SR, Claws/SR, SR/Claws, Claws/FA, Claws/Bio, Bio/Claws.... think that's it actually.

Followup is fun. Doublestacking FU (or more in extreme cases) makes spin and shockwave into truly glorious creatures.

Yes, you can self-gimp by running at max diff at level 12 with SOs. That sounds awful.

There's quite a few sets that shine early and then fall behind. I've enjoyed running content on my new ma/elec brute. It has reminded me of how the old days felt. That ain't a bad thing. I've enjoyed the sudden faceplants from that vanguard group. That's the kind of content change to affect balance that I like seeing.

It's not self-gimping to have options. It's self-gimping to choose them, especially when there's no added reward to doing so other than "I did it." Just as not bothering with IOs at all is self-gimping. I self-gimped to run the Werner rules ITF just to see if I could. There was no reward from doing it other than adding my name to a list. Folks say this or that is "hard" but that's a lie. It's not hard. None of this is hard. It's a video game. Digging ditches in frozen tundra is hard. Making massive inf to afford IOs isn't hard. Anyone can do it with a fire farmer or a single tricked out character farmin DA repeatables. We can all, of course, choose not to. We can choose not to PL alts or farm for inf or run with nothing but SOs at +0/x1 from 1 to 50 and only get incarnate loot from running I-trials. But that, too, is self-gimping. It's all extremely easy to choose otherwise.

/claws tanks chuckle

Yes, but there's a huge difference between balancing a game and self-gimping in an attempt to correct for said lack of balance.

Does the AT IO proc that puts you back into hide function if you don't have the Hide power toggled on? If so, build to cover the non-hidden defense values lost and then just remove it from your tray and never bother with it again. I've been thinking about doing that just so I could have a stalker in my stable.