Infinitum

Against any of that. Like I said I have done it on several different types. Tanker honestly gets excess survivability - which only comes into play on hard mode type content. I can build a scrapper and stalker to survive just as good as my tankers also while doing vastly more damage - the health bar moves more but it is still survivable. Any of that is possible - and let me answer this before I am asked. I prefer tankers because I identify with them and have since live. It is a nostalgia thing that I am elated they now have more damage to be more relevant.

I mean I can survive as good as an equivalent tanker - with more damage especially single target.

They still won't have any trouble soloing +4/8 anything. Unless it's Regen of course

Sure they can - maybe not to suit a no insp buffed enemy ITF. But that isn't normal and shouldn't be a point of balance. I have done it on several.

It is - when there is a reason behind it.

To be honest. I don't know. What about when the brute gets more mitigation at level 32 and now can outpace the tanker? I really don't know - it's been at least 2 years since I have leveled up like that and probably live days since I used SOs.

It actually is when a very small portion of the population was playing them. There was a reason. Brute's we're > Tankers for most things because you could build them to tanker levels of survivability with vastly more damage. Now it's just an agreeable amount of more dmg due to the tanker buff IMO

Well that's based on my opinion but anything within the range of -1 to +4 and 1 to 8. All the ITF tricks most people don't even know exist that even open the debate for a tanker having an edge over any other AT.

Yeah I don't get it either.

That's not a very good argument because its premise isn't factual. There isn't much different between Brute and tanker gameplay if built right with normal content. But usually people gravitate towards the shiny and new. Which is/was tankers. Just to push the limits in a new way - doesn't mean they are an outlier.

I would love to see a new statistics report to see where they are now in comparison.

This. Tankers we're pretty much pigeon bombed before the change by most of the population outside of the invul/SS crowd for obvious reasons. Now they are more fun and have a more viable role again to at least be competitive.

Because there are more than a handful of other ways that are easier and prove otherwise.

It was just one example - mainly because the discussion started around EM equipped characters

That's the equivalent of getting upset at a tear in the airplanes seat when the wing is falling off though.

There is a lot of random luck rolled into a haul like that for either one. Not to mention, skill mistakes, fatigue, and potentially unrecognized bias. I dunno. I wouldn't want to sink the time into a test like that honestly.

There isn't much about this game that is balanced perfectly. There are way more egregious outliers than the dmg buff tankers received. It's just something to accept and enjoy as they make whatever changes they can make.

EM tankers don't get ET until T9 and AOE is just decent on tankers - we all know what makes EM shine these days. Basically Brute's can be fully kitted out the same or sooner because they get all of the attacks sooner and usually the T9 defensive power is crap anyway - so the usually peak around the same time a tanker does anyway.

You have touched on a few things here that are issues that I believe if corrected would fix all the issues you see between tankers and Brute's. 1. Procs - shouldn't be in the conversation but are - but also are due for a change soon. They do favor tankers - that is not a tanker issue but a proc issue 2. The ATOs. The tanker ATO is stronger, but again not a Tanker issue so much as I honestly think the Brute ATOs served a purpose at one point but now are no longer as effective and need to be updated either with more dmg or more mitigation or both. I believe those two changes would go a long way towards reconciliation of the Tanker/Brute dynamic that some perceive as a problem - and I would agree with those two areas. As far as gameplay goes - I am not seeing any glaring issues that says either one are out of place.

Wait. Should I have downvoted you?

The issue with that is - it really isn't too close because none of this is balanced around what can solo hard mode content and what can't. In normal content everything plays as it should - where if you are kitted out most content outside of the hard mode stuff will not bother you to any degree worth noting - furthermore no tanker is going to out damage a corruptor, blaster, scrapper, stalker, brute, a well built mastermind even, and probably more that I haven't mentioned here - and in most cases it's not close with what I have seen on here. That is why my point of how much will the addition of X AT make in the time of any hard mode content is valid - because normal content - just about anything beats out the tanker damage wise still and can survive the threat on top of the better damage. That is debatable, in fact before the tanker changes - aside from loyalty there wasn't much reason to take a Tanker over a brute because a brute can survive anything a Tanker could in normal content and dish out way more damage and still does dish out way more damage, even with AOEs even though they hit fewer targets - it is still more damage on the target caps they hit - which is increasingly valid the higher the enemy is. For instance a Tanker AOE may not one shot a group of lieutenants, but a Brute's will. I had one tanker and 5 Brute's prior to the tanker changes - even though I have always been a die hard tanker - there was just no logical reason to roll Tankers over Brute's then - aside from content like hard mode ITFs that aren't what is considered routine. Secondly before the change and even now with normal content anything past level 30 is going to be able survive anything if the build is kitted out properly (with a few late blooming exceptions across all ATs) and still level faster than a tanker. As it stands now I have all 4 melee ATs and for equivalent builds - the tanker doesn't stand out enough on damage to say "yeah this was overturned" but it does give me a legitimate reason to roll a tanker over a brute again - which was the goal.

It may be nitpicking but the scrapper shouldn't survive that level of incoming damage as well as a Tanker regardless of what kind of damage the tanker is able to output - because the tanker is still outputting less damage than the other 3 equivalent ATs but able to take on more incoming damage. In regular content - I really haven't found anything that is threatening enough to give any EM based AT I have more than it can handle - but there again a fully kitted out build should operate that way. So IMO should a Tanker outperform the rest on a max diff hard mode ITF? Absolutely - because that is way way outside the norm of what content is - and also opens the door for this question - sure a Tanker can solo that, but how much faster would that run with a brute, scrapper or stalker attached with the tanker absorbing agro as it should? That's the real question and test here. I would say if the time isn't improved by a decent factor you may have a point, however if the time drastically improves - that is functioning as intended

My EM/EA stalker took a pylon out in 57 seconds. The EM/EA Scrapper in 1 min 28 seconds. I can't remember my Fire/EM time but it seems familiar that it was in the 2 1/2 min range. EM just synergizes well with taking out hard targets no matter what AT it is on. I think it is more of an EM's AV smashing ability than a Tanker issue - yeah tankers use EM and survive better than any other AT, but EM vaporizes anything in its way if you can survive which is evident anytime you do a hard target test across every AT. For instance my pylon testing with EM time ranking: 1. Stalker 2. Scrapper 3. Brute 4. Tanker Which is how it should look. Take the dmg set outside of EM compared to EM will not or ever yield the same result for a comparison.

It is in the way the enemy dmg types tag what defense is affected. For instance - if it was split dmg typed between smashing/lethal it previously tagged smashing lethal defense - after these changes it will tag the more rare on the split - toxic in this case. Invuls have a weakness especially in defense to toxic and psi - luckily I have always built my invuls to have high toxic and psi resists - around 70%, also utilized the ehanced healing factor of dull pain, and finally built high melee defense also - so the only real threats are AOE and ranged. So it doesn't affect my invuls too badly. The Devs also granted typed defense based armors like invul slight levels of toxic and psi resists and defense baked into existing powers to take some of the sting from this change out, but it is still a good idea to slot for those damage types - especially now. It doesn't affect resist based sets like Rad, Elec, Dark, and Fire - nor positional defense based sets like Shield, SR, Ninjitsu, nor Regen based sets like Willpower and Bio. That is why I think Shield may be slightly more durable than Invul now however, because it blocks/dodges more incoming damage and has almost as much resists than an invul has. See below: Shield Invul

Not necessarily true about invul - honestly I am back to thinking Shield may have the edge currently and also in the future given the typed defense changes on the horizon (which will nick invul a little) - but not by much. To that point it is highly insignificant the amount of separation between the survivability of all the armor sets. They are all unkillable in the right hands facing normal content.