Kimuji

It was harder because the content hasn't changed much (it has changed it quantity but not in difficulty), while character stats have gone sky high. There was no such thing as capping all your res or all your defenses. Even less so on a Scrapper or a Brute. Blasters were complete glass canons, Tankers were not immortal. Sets had holes, they were incomplete it was fully intentional. And yet the game was fun. CoH took liberties with the trinity but it did not threw away AT complementarities. Characters are so tough now that the only solution the devs found to increase difficulty in the Incarnate Trials is to add irresistible damage for the boss fights (which hurts Tankers just as much as the other ATs). I completely disagree with your Blaster's example, this is exactly why you see threads like "Addressing the Tanker Brute Connundrum". Sure that's funny for you as a Blaster to tank everything, now do you think things are just as funny from the Tanker or even the Brute's perspective when they deal half your damage while their taunts and CC are completely useless because everyone survives regardless. Don't get me wrong I like what IOs brought to the game in terms of diversity but it also had negative side effect by allowing players to plug all the weaknesses that were intentionally introduced in all sets for the sake of encouraging team play. It has changed mentalities. Some people can't deal with weaknessess anymore, they just expect to play a character without any flaw and able to solo everything. This is a very short sighted definition of 'fun'.

My point was: the game was WAY harder and people were still having fun. And what other power set gives you a permanent +80% damage/+20 to hit buff that you can easily stack with itself? Like Sniktch said, an execptional buff must come with an exceptional cost.

IO sets + Incarnate + Rage's def debuff still means more defense left than the old Rage crash without -def in the pre IO era. I guess Pre-IO players were super elite gamers if they managed to play this game without all these now "essential" crutches. That's everything that is going wrong with this game in a nutshell. No, Blasters were never meant to laugh at alphas. And no it's not because it's a super hero themed game that you are supposed to steamroll everything. And SS isn't obsolete, res based armors don't really care about the -def crash, even Invuln isn't affected that much. Even with the crash SS is still very popular, just to put things into perspective compare how many Super Strength and Energy Melee Brute/Tankers you meet in game. No SS isn't in a bad place.

Why does half of the suggestions include increased damage? It's like people are begging for the follow up Thread once they realize why it was a bad idea: "Addressing the Brute Tanker Cunnundrum, make Brutes relevant again". And then there will be another thread to 'fix' this "Addressing the Tanker Brute Cunnundrum V3, make Tankers relevant again". Etc... If there's nothing we can do about aggro cap, maybe there are other leads we can follow. I don't know if that's fesable but what if we could include a specific team threat debuff to Gauntlet? It would only apply to Defenders, Corruptors, Blasters, Controllers and Dominators (basically only to ATs without a defensive set). When a Tanker is in the team they would get a debuff on their threat generation, making them less likely to be targeted. It would help to circumvent the aggro cap, when the Tanker gets past it mobs would preferably target brutes, scrappers, sentiels etc. and go for the support/CC/squishy last.

Thanks for the clarification!

So now we're asking for Brutes to be nerfed into oblivion... Lovely. And this is untrue, Brutes were intended to be able to tank from the start. That's why they have a taunt aura, a taunt power and a threat multiplier on their attacks. When Villain and Hero sides were clearly separated Brutes were the Villains' tanks. Brutes are meant to be able to tank if they chose to. Your suggestions would simply make Brutes completely useless. The objective of this topic is to find ways improve Tankers in what they're meant to be (the best shields), NOT breaking Brutes.

Rise to the challenge is identical between Tankers and Brutes, 300% for both. And it has another issue: a ridiculously short duration, the taunt effect fades before it is reapplied. Rise to the Challenge is notoriously bad. Beta Decay is also +300% but it has a longer duration so it's not as bad as RttC. But regarding Beta Decay the difference between ATs is intriguing, it might be just an impression but I have felt several times that it was easier to pull enemies out of my /Rad Tanker's aggro than with my other Tankers/Brutes (except Willpower of course). I wouldn't mind a clarification on Taunt magnitude's effect indeed. But to be on the safe side I'd bump the Tanker's values to match those of the Brute.

For Brutes Beta Decay is a 400%/Mag 4 taunt aura whereas it is only 300%/Mag 3 for Tankers. As I can't imagine it being intentional (why the hell would you want the Tanker's aura worse at holding aggro than the Brute's?) I am assuming it is a bug.

There's an easy fix before all these suggestions that doesn't put any balancing at risk (because it's a fix not an added feature): Makes all taunt auras 400% with a decent duration for Tankers! Seriously what is the idea behind making Willpower's Rise To the Challenge so stupidly bad at holding aggro (only 300% with a ridiculously short duration) ? Why is Radiation Armor's Beta Decay 400% on Brutes and only 300% on Tankers? (figures checked with city of data, 13.6s taunt mag 4 for Brutes vs 13.6s taunt mag 3 for Tankers) It doesn't make sense at all. These are easy fixes and shouldn't even be debated.

I felt comfortable bumping TF's damage because with such a long animation the DPA will never be really impressive. Even with ET's base damage it's still below an "equivalent" power like Super Strength's Knockout Blow. The problem with Energy Tranfer's current animation is its length. That's why ET isn't that great despite its very good base damage, it is held back by an almost 3 seconds cast time. Unfortunately we can't keep the animation and make it go faster. If we keep ET's current animation and want to make its DPA decent we'll have to increase its base damage even higher in order to compensate, which would be a bit ridiculous given how good it is to begin with.

So, after a look at Angelhood's Brute's DPA comparison I made a few calculations to what it would be like to undo some of EM's nerfs. If you look at the damage column everything looks pretty normal. But once we factor in the animation times EM falls appart. The DPA (damage per activation time) is pretty grim. I'd like to keep EM's original animations but to do so Total Focus requires a buff in order to remain a relevant power. So let's bump it to Energy Transfer level. Current Total Focus: 148.5 / 3.432 = 43.269 DPA Tweaked Total Focus: 190.2 / 3.432 = 55.361 DPA That's a bit better, we're just slightly below Knockout Blow (without rage) now. Now let's have a look at Energy Transfer. Current Energy Transfer: 190.2 / 2.904 = 65.496 DPA Yeah same DPA as Knockout Blow without Rage but we're paying with our own HPs to acheive that. This is not how it should work. Let's give ET its pre-nerf animation back. 190.2 / 1.188 = 160.101 DPA Yeah Energy Transfer used sting quite a bit. And when you compare with its current DPA you can see that the nerf went completely over the top. With these two tweaks EM would be back among the best single target attack sets. Some may think that 160 DPA is just too much. But it's what it used to be pre-nerfs and when there weren't many other very strong sets around (yes Titan Weapons I'm looking at you). The game has changed since then. Energy Transfer drains your own HPs, around 156 at lvl 50. And Energy Melee's AoE capabilities are among the worst. So honestly it doesn't bother me, and that's kind of the point EM's signature is meh/bad AoE and kickass single target. Now if even by CoX's new standards the majority thinks that the old Energy Transfer is still too strong I have a middle road suggestion. Casts times are tied to animations so we have to find something that is not too quick, not too slow and that doesn't look bad. And to me Street Justice's Sweeping Cross looks like the best candidate. Here's what it looks like when we look at the DPA: 190.2 / 1.848‬ = 102.922 DPA That's decent. However it's still miles away from the old Energy Transfer, so I don't really see why we should still pay with our own HPs to get these numbers. So that's it, here are my suggestions: - Total Focus keeps its animation and gets its damage bumped to Energy Transfer level. - Energy Transfer gets its old animation back /or/ Energy Transfer gets Street Justice's Sweeping Cross animation and the self damage is removed (why would it still be called energy transfer though...). But I'd say that regarding Energy Transfer, I like option 1 better than option 2 (and it's easier to implement).

I wasn't suggesting the - to hit/res debuff for the Tanker's own benefit, they don't need it (if they're decently built). If you make the -hit debuff last longer than the taunt duration it will benefit the whole team. Actually even if lasts just as long it will still make AoEs less threatening to the rest of the team. AoEs are a big uncovered area for Tankers, you can hold as much aggro as you want but if the mobs are spamming AoEs your team will still take significant damage (Nemesis are pretty good are ruinning a tank's efforts with their heavy AoEs for instance). Now if a Tanker could help mitigate this AoE damage, that would be a noticeable advantage over Brutes for keeping everyone safe. IMO that's what Tankers should be, a reassuring sight for the squishier elements of a team "Cool we've got a Tanker I can focus more on doing my job and less on staying alive".

But then they complain if you set limits. Try to suggest some nerfs in the IO system. It's not that it is a lot cause, it's just that no AT is essential. It depends on the team composition. Now if we want to differenciate Tankers from Brutes more, increasing the damage potential of Tankers seems to be going in the exact opposite direction. That would make Tankers and Brutes even more similar (and we'd get the opposite debate "Why make a Brute when you can make a Tanker and deal the same damage while being immortal"). The best angle IMO is aggro management. We can make the Tanker's CC better in quality, like improving Taunt that many Tankers tend to skip now.

Alright this is very close to the "brutes vs tankers" thread so instead of posting another wall of text and repeat myself I'll get right to the conculsion. I think that the Tanker's Taunt could get a buff. Currently you can build a very good tanker without Taunt, which is an absolute nonesense to me. It shouldn't be, it's the Tankers iconic power. Taunt has to be more desirable. There are several options: - larger area of effect - set max targets to 8 or 10 - increase the -range debuff (but not to 100% that would be broken) - add a small -to hit (or -damage) debuff We could probably combine two or three of these options. But not all four, that would be broken.

This is purely a min-maxer debate at this point... Tankers being useless is a gross exageration. Or if we're going that way all ATs are useless: with good support you won't need a Tank (Tanker or Brute) for aggro management, with the right buff/debuff combo you won't need scrappers/blasters/stalkers/brute for DPS, with good aggro management you won't need much support etc... I've never seen a team that was in need of a tank complain because a Tanker answered the call instead of a Brute. Those complaining about Brutes being too good are the same who will tell you that your Brute is bad if you haven't capped your S/L res and soft capped your defenses. Only those who see the game through min-maxing consider Tanker as an irrelevant AT. There are the same recurring debates on the builds channel on Discord about Defenders being irrelevant because Corruptors or Controllers can fill the same role while bringing more damage or control. Controllers being bad at control compared to Dominators, Stalkers being poorman scrapper and vice versa etc... Players are happy to squeeze every little bonus they can out of the IO system and then complain that balance is broken. Can Tankers do their job? Yes and they're very good at it. We could appease the min-maxing crowd with some tweaks like adding another -20% res bruise effect to the secondary set's biggest PBAoE/AoE that wouldn't stack with itself or the Tier 1 bruise (because we don't want to turn Tankers into /Sonic defenders). But the same min-maxing crowd would then complain that it's not fair because some sets have larger AoEs than others. We could address the issue at the root, i.e the ridiculous amount of +def and + res bonuses given by the IO sets. But first, this is an impossible amount of work with a high risk of breaking things even further, and second again the min-maxing crowd would be on the warpath to defend their overtuned builds (including Tanker players because their characters would also be affected). Or we could improve taunt's effectiveness for Tankers, either a larger radius, a bigger -range debuff to force mobs to get closer or increase the target cap from 5 to 8 (10?) or, why the hell not, a small - to hit debuff. It always irks me when I see on people the help channel saying that taunt is a wasted power on a Tanker because you can still perfectly fill your role without it. And the sad truth is that's they're right, you can make a good Tanker without Taunt. Taunt is part of the Tanker's signature, you shouldn't be able to work your way around it easily. So yes, out of all of this, I think that a better and more desirable Taunt would be the most sensible tweak and the less likely to break anything (because the majority of the requests here can be summarized as "I want to do more damage with my Tanker").

Well, same as most of the posters here. I made an (pve) EM brute, thinking it would be like old times: bad aoe but very good single target damage. I thought I knew what I was getting into and the bad aoe wasn't a turn off to me. But I as was leveling up I realized that EM had been hit really hard with the nerf bat. Even the single target damage is disappointing. Total Focus damage is not on par with the super long animation time and Energy Transfert has become extremely slow. I've read some posts stating that EM wasn't nerfed because of pvp and I couldn't disagree more. Because EM was kind of "OP" in PVP, it had the highest single target damage AND stacking stuns was ridiculously easy. That was the stun + damage combo that made people complain, not the damage alone. A vocal portion of the pvp players had been crying for years for an EM nerf (mostly on the Heroes side, where only tanks had access to EM). So I can't believe that it is not what sparked the intent to revisit (nerf to oblivion) EM. The funny part is, as "OP" as EM might have been in pvp it was still not enough to counter Regen's OPness. Yes the best and "OP" melee set couldn't beat the scrapper's Regen. And EM never was the best set for pve, but it was alright no one minded. Now, new powers sets have been introduced, some older sets have been overhauled and they're competitive with the newer ones. I don't think EM needs to be held back anymore I'd say just let it be what it was meant to be: subpar aoe with excellent single target damage. I don't really see what harm reverting the nerf could cause. EM would still be inferior to most other sets when it comes to AOE and top tier for single target. It's not like we don't have other sets like TW that destroys everything in both AOE and Single Target... I'm not a big fan of making EM competitive AOE wise and let its single target as it is. This is not EM. I don't really like the "let's give it a cone", "let's keep TF as it is but make it aoe damage" fixes. This is not EM's signature. I can live with mediocre AOE capabilities. People have always been choosing EM for burst and single target damage. That's what EM has always been about, and that's what it should be. As for the pvp crowd, just make the stuns harder to stack against players? (And that's one of the reasons why Regen was holding its own so well against EM, Regen is virtually immune to stuns).