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If it simply made Brutes easier to play then it would be a QoL change. It doesn't do just that though, it actually makes Brutes better in a fair bit of the end game content - or anywhere there is competition for aggro (which includes control, which reduces aggro).

This is a typo, the actual new target cap is 10.

In the above I note some oddities... Cleave, as I mentioned in my previous post, seems like it's breaking the new rules. Then we have a melee cone in One Thousand Cuts that is breaking the rules a la Crowd Control for other ATs. However it gets the target cap increase that Crowd Control is denied despite having a smaller arc (90 deg buffed to 135 instead of 180 ignoring the buff) and length (7' instead of 8' for War Mace), so that its area 57% as large while its target cap is 160% that of Crowd Control. Breath of Fire, Frost and Repulsing Torrent are all ranged cones. I believe the only other ones in the melee sets are Shockwave and Throw Spines, which aren't getting the target cap or arc increases (presumably because the sets do a lot of AoE to begin with). So these seem like they establish a rule for ranged cones getting 16 targets like spheres. Spinning Strike hitting 16... good luck with that. Pendulum and Crowd Control keeping the 180 degree arc and ignoring the buff seems odd. Couldn't you have changed them to 120 degrees and let them have the buff a la Slice and Flashing Steel? Lightning Clap and Hand Clap get fixed radii and hence no proc benefit, but Fault gets the proc benefit of the smaller base radius and offsetting buff? That seems inconsistent. Of course, Fault is ranged instead of PB, recharges 50% faster and only does KD instead of KB out of the box, and so is already a better power (it does have a longer animation/cast though). Lastly... I'm not sure why Slice and Flashing Steel are picked out for getting little effective buff. They could easily have been given a 120 degree arc instead of 90. Perhaps BS and Kat are over-performing in AoE too?

I hit 2 quite often with Golden Dragonfly, Head Splitter and Cleave. Hitting more than 2 is a challenge though. And even hitting 2 more than once in a single fight isn't that common, it's usually just the first use in a fight that gets 2. Hitting 5 is all but impossible. Anyway, I'm assuming that Cleave retaining its 10 target cap on Brutes and Scrappers and getting 16 on Tankers is an oversight, since it is essentially the same power as Golden Dragonfly and Head Splitter.

I'm not crazy about this at all. Cones now get a 50% area increase with a 100% target cap increase while spheres get a 125% area increase and 60% target cap increase.

This power now has a buffable 15' radius while it's kindred powers - Stone Melee / Fault and Super Strength / Hand Clap (which is identical to Lightning Clap) - had their radii reduced to 10'. I'm all for diversity, and the larger radius is offset (at least to some extent) by the lower proc chance. However, I wonder if that was intentional.

I was the one who posted the explicit details, not Biosphere. There aren't that many exceptions if you consider the rules to be those Siolfir noted: Cones with 5 target caps in I26.3 get increased to 10 Cones and spheres with 10 target caps in I26.3 get increased to 16 If you use those instead of "Cones = 10 / Spheres = 16" then the exceptions are limited to just unchanged target caps in the following powers: Claws / Shockwave - 10 instead of boosted to 16 Dark Melee / Soul Drain - 10 Spines / Spine Burst - 10 Titan Weapons / Defensive Sweep - 5 instead of boosted to 10 Titan Weapons / Titan Sweep - 5 As far as the target caps are concerned, it appears that Captain Powerhouse applied systematic changes based upon the design choices noted by Siolfir to the I26.3 powers and then dialed some of them back for balance purposes in sets he deemed to be over-performing: Claws, Spines and Titan Weapons. It appears Soul Drain is the only power that was singled out as being an issue on its own. All of the other oddball target caps exist in I26.3 and aren't new to this patch. I personally would like to see the benchmarks too, as my general sense is that they differ a bit from what I think. Captain Powerhouse's seem to value target cap increases more, while mine value area increases more, for example. [Edit:] Probably just a difference in how we play the game. I solo a lot and try to move through the fights quickly, which means clumping things up is less important to me and my metrics. His metrics may be more like the wider player base, but herding seems to be all but dead, so I'm not sure if my play-style is really much different than the norm. If anything, I'd say I like to clump things more than most. As evidenced by the frequency with which I was using Hurricane to pack groups during the Penny Yin TF I ran during the latest stress test (I was playing a Fire/Storm Controller and we had two Scrappers and two Brutes but not a lot of aggro management).

The Tanker Inherent doubles that arc.

There's no reason to deviate from the practice if the deviation is meaningless or otherwise unnecessary. Captain Powerhouse only appears to be deviating from the rules when he considers a set OP and in need of reigning in. He, unfortunately, isn't changing things for the under-performing sets at this time. Nor does he appear to be going power-by-power. Repulsing Torrent, for example, doesn't get the Throw Spines/Shockwave treatment, presumably because CP doesn't think Kinetic Melee is over-performing. Frost, btw, can hit its target cap. It's a 180 degree 10' cone that is NOT treated as a melee attack for Range enhancement. So you can easily get it to half of a 14' sphere. You won't hit 16 often, but it's possible, and hitting more than 10 isn't uncommon at all.

Simply to stick to systematic rules instead of having to craft every power individually is reason enough. It's just good design practice. As for Quills, it is an oblate sphere (vertical distance is doubled, resulting in a flattened sphere, as can be seen in Dispersion Bubble and similar powers), so there is some possibility that you might be able to pack 11+ fliers in the volume around a flying Spines Tanker. I just don't think it will result in more than a tiny, tiny increase in average number of foes hit.

No, but I think it is pretty clear that it is due to Spines having lots of AoE to begin with. Now it gets a meaningless target cap increase to Quills (try hitting more than 10 with an 8' radius AoE where you are occupying the middle of that space yourself), a proc chance increase (and nothing else) for Spine Burst, a target cap increase for Throw Spines, and a full buff for Ripper. It appears that Captain Powerhouse is using the buffs to narrow the gaps between the best AoE sets and those behind. Unfortunately that means the best AoE sets get relatively less from the buffs due to all of the exceptions applied to their powers, while the AoE light sets get relatively less due to having little to benefit from the buffs to begin with. So new gaps are opening up at the bottom end as the gaps at the top end narrow. Dark Melee, Energy Melee and Street Justice just don't have much to benefit from the buffs. Two of the three are good at ST at least. Energy Melee is just not good at anything any more. It will rank near the bottom in ST and area damage, Mitigation is not especially good, as the reliable stuns are tied to very long animation times and a power that does very little damage and is taken by absolutely no one. And even aggro generation will be in the bottom 3 with Dark Melee and Street Justice. In the next group Stone Melee and Super Strength have little more to benefit and have those powers not getting area buffs (as their radii were reduced in reciprocal proportion), just proc chance and target cap increases. With only one of the two powers in each set being a damage power to boot. So those five low AoE sets and Spines aren't doing very well with the buffs, relatively speaking. At least Energy Melee and Super Strength should be on Captain Powerhouse's short list of sets needing reworking. The more I look at Energy Melee the more I wonder how it has made it to this point as is.

I'm definitely in favor of more specific information instead of rules with numerous exception you have to track down yourself.

Here are the exceptions to the area attack target cap rules (10 for cones, 16 for spheres)). And a possible explanation as to why. Battle Axe Cleave gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a cap of 10 in I26.3, rather than 5. However, you're unlikely to hit 16 with a 40 degree, 10' cone. Dark Melee Soul Drain gets 10 targets instead of 16. It's primarily a target-scaling self-buff rather than an attack. Dual Blades One Thousand Cuts gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. Fiery Melee Breath of Fire gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. Ice Melee Frost gets 16 targets instead of 10 Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. Katana Golden Dragonfly gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. (Broadsword / Head Splitter hits only 5 in I26.3.) Kinetic Melee Repulsing Torrent gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. Spines Spine Burst only gets 10 targets instead of 16. I believe this was done because Captain Powerhouse felt Spines was over-performing with the changes. Throw Spines gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. Titan Weapons Defensive Sweep only gets 5 targets instead of 10. Again, I think Captain Powerhouse believes Titan Weapons over-performs with the standard changes. Titan Sweep only gets 5 targets instead of 10. As above. War Mace Crowd Control gets 16 targets instead of 10. Has a target cap of 10 in I26.3. One power not listed above that obeys the stated rules, but would be an exception if we used "a target cap of 10 is increased to 16" as a rule instead, would be Claws / Shockwave; which hits 10 in both I26.3 and I26.4rc3. I believe the buff to it was also skipped because Captain Powerhouse felt Claws was over-performing otherwise. Note that it also ignores the arc increase buff, and so is unchanged from I26.3. Making it one of only three Tanker melee set AoE damage powers (the two early Titan Weapons cones listed above being the others) that get no buff at all in I26.4rc3. Every other one either gets more targets, more area, both or just a proc chance increase due to reduced area regained through the Inherent buff. Spine Burst is the only power in the last category, as all the other spheres reduced from 15' to 10' also get target cap increases. Those are Fiery Melee / Combustion, Stone Melee / Tremor, Super Strength / Foot Stomp and Titan Weapons / Whirling Smash. [Edit:] I missed the non-damaging powers that had there radii proportionately decreased. Those are: Stone Melee / Fault and Super Strength / Hand Clap. Interestingly, Electrical Melee / Lightning Clap still owns a 15' radius and in this latest patch no longer ignores the buff. I suspect that is a mistake. So, yeah, there are a lot of exceptions to the stated rules, but many of those are because there are exceptions to the rules in I26.3 to begin with.

This should probably state that the Ranged modifier was increased to match the Melee modifier, and what that modifier is (0.75).

Ever? I find that hard to believe unless you never play at low levels and also never play BS, DB, Elect, Energy, Katana, Spines or Titan Weapons. All of which have decent T1s. Or Ice Melee, which has a hard time building an attack chain below level 28 without using Frozen Fists. Anyway... The hit in performance is at levels 1-15. Or perhaps more pertinently, the first one or two play sessions for a new player on a Tanker. Many people give up on Tankers as they are now within that time frame. And this patch will make them a bit worse at those levels. As I stated, it's more a matter of principal than practicality, but I think having Tankers get worse at one of the things they are already bad at is an unfortunately side effect of the form these buffs have morphed into.

Actually, they do. The DS doesn't kick in enough to offset the loss of Bruising until level 15. The AT modifiers scale in over the first 20 levels, so the Tanker DS increase from 0.8 to 0.95 is muted at low levels. At level 1, for example, the base damage is only 3% higher, and you've lost Bruising, so you are doing about 13% less damage (based on testing) on Pineapple than Live. Even at level 10 you are still doing about 10% less single target damage than on Live. So, it can take noticeably longer to level a Tanker by actually playing solo out of the box. Say, by running the David Wincott Hollows arc with its two early "Defeat All" missions. Or even by running an AE arc such as "Tunnel Witches". Mostly just a theoretical concern, except for the possibility of putting off newbs. And I hope that the devs want lots of new players to come play the game.

I mentioned similar issues in the last thread and CP responded. Apparently all but a few Tanker taunt auras are now handled by Gauntlet.

You're right that Tankers solo as well or better than most Controllers at low levels. But to me that just means Controllers need some sort of low level buff as well. Maybe Brawl simply needs to be improved for everyone so that those who are short on attacks can slot it out as an attack without completely wasting slots. I wonder if it would be OP, given that it costs no END, if it observed the DS as a function of Recharge time rule? Maybe lower its Recharge to 1.5s if so. Excellent news. I, and I believe many others, were laboring under a misperception. I don't know if Dark Regen is an issue or not; I haven't tested it in months. There were some Pool powers I had tested that weren't getting the buff before, but are now (Whirlwind and Takeoff). Hopefully you've got everything with the exception of the weirdness of pseudo-pets and such. I don't see a single Pool power that is marked as ignoring the buff. Nor a single Epic. So, Tanker Leadership is a 90' radius? Provoke 22.5'? Fire Ball, Dark Obliteration, etc at 22.5'? Darkest Night a massive 37.5'? As an aside: These are really hard to test. Spring Attack doesn't even give me combat spam, so it's useless testing it on the dummies.

Is there any concern over the hit to low level solo play that this patch entails? Due to the DS increase not completely factoring in until level 20, the loss of Bruising results in reduced ST damage for Tankers below level 15 or so. In my opinion the solo leveling experience of Tankers is actually worse on Pineapple until about level 20. Basically, until you have enough defenses and END to really benefit from the AoE buff. And, of course, you need to actually have AoE. So some sets see no benefit until substantially later. Meaning that they don't make up for the slower low level experience for some time. Stone Melee, for example, probably doesn't match the Live solo experience until around level 30. Of course, so many people don't actually play at low levels that it is probably only an issue for true newbies. Still, it bothers me as a game design issue that you are actually making one of the problems with Tankers worse with this patch.

Kinetic Melee benefits greatly from the buffs due to the massive area of Repulsing Torrent (it has the second largest area of any power affected by the buff, behind only Wall of Force, and more than 30% larger than the next closest). Burst having a 12' radius instead of 8' is pretty substantial as well.

This appears to be true only of those powers that are exceptions to the general rules. For example: Dark Regeneration doesn't say it isn't buffed. It's a 20' radius sphere, so it shouldn't be buffed, but where does the information regarding that fact reside? The "Inherents" definition in the Enhancement Screen is still blank, and there doesn't appear to be anywhere during the Character Creation process where the information on the buff is available at all. The only place I see that is under "Info" in the context menu when you right-click on the Inherent icon in your status tray. And it doesn't say anything about the arc and radius exceptions, and what it does say is in code-speak. There remains a very large hole in the documentation of the area buff.

How about the other pseudo pets? Do Lightning Rod, Savage Leap and Spring Attack get radius buffs? I'm assuming, based upon the Burn info, that they do not. (None are tagged as Area Effect attacks, despite taking AoE enhancements.) If they aren't buffed by the Tanker inherent, then it should say so in their descriptions. It would also be nice if there was definitive information *somewhere* on every AoE Tankers can get. Preferably right there in the power description for all powers that don't get the buff. I'd really like people to be able to know such things as whether the burst from hitting a Contaminated foe with single-target Radiation Melee attacks is buffed or not without having to test it or rely on word of mouth.

Many do, many don't. Unfortunately, the documentation is still less than ideal for this. The rules are: Sphere AoE powers with a radius larger than 10' will ignore the inherent area buff. Cone powers with an arc greater than 90 degree will ignore the inherent area buff. Powers marked as doing so in their description will ignore the inherent area buff. There are still some powers that seem to ignore the buff despite none of the above being true (Whirlwind and Takeoff are the only two I've found so far). Target caps are listed in the power data. To see if they're being raised you have to compare between live and Pineapple. Specifically, Dark Consumption gets both radius (8' buffed to 12' by the inherent) and target cap increases (10 to 16) while Dark Regeneration gets neither (20' radius, 10 target cap).

Does Rad Melee's Contaminated burst AoE get its radius buffed?

All those except Spring Attack and those powers with radii large than 10' or arcs greater than 90 degrees should be buffed. The latter categories catch most such powers I'm afraid. I haven't tested much yet though. Flurry isn't an AoE (or at least the data says it's not), despite the animation matching Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu. Here's my list of should/shouldn't (I'll change these to yes or no after testing myself or someone reporting that they tested it): Concealment / Misdirection - shouldn't Fighting / Cross Punch - YES Flight / Group Fly - shouldn't Force of Will / Might Leap / Takeoff - NO (it should be buffed based on its stats, but doesn't appear to be) Force of Will / Wall of Force - YES Leadership / all powers - shouldn't Leaping / Spring Attack - shouldn't (it's a pseudo-pet, and I don't think they inherit the buff) Presence / Provoke - shouldn't Presence / Invoke Panic - shouldn't Sorcery / Enflame - ???? (I think this is a pseudo-pet) Speed / Whirlwind - NO (it should be buffed based on its stats, but doesn't appear to be) Teleportation / Team Teleport - shouldn't Arctic Mastery / Shiver - shouldn't Arctic Mastery / Ice Storm - shouldn't Earth Mastery / Salt Crystals - shouldn't Earth Mastery / Quicksand - shouldn't Earth Mastery / Stalagmites - shouldn't Energy Mastery / Energy Torrent - YES Leviathan Mastery / School of Sharks - YES Leviathan Mastery / Arctic Breath - YES Leviathan Mastery / Bile Spray - YES Mace Mastery / Web Envelope - shouldn't Mace Mastery / Disruptor Blast - shouldn't Mu Mastery / Electric Fences - SHOULD Mu Mastery / Ball Lightning - shouldn't Mu Mastery / Static Discharge - SHOULD Pyre Mastery / Melt Armor - SHOULD Pyre Mastery / Fire Ball - shouldn't Soul Mastery / Soul Tentacles - SHOULD Soul Mastery / Darkest Night - shouldn't Soul Mastery / Dark Obliteration - shouldn't