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It's just unfortunate that the set doesn't see any real buff until level 38. Given that below 28, it's a pretty weak set with only four damaging powers, of which one is utter garbage, that's a bit disappointing. You can't even meet the rule-of-thumb for a complete ST attack chain without either using the now even more execrable Jab-sans-Bruising or dipping into a power pool.

I tend to run (and just retested on a L24 Claws/En Brute) about 50 Fury solo'ing on 0x0yn. At the end of boss fights in that testing I was around 65 Fury (I believe my DM/Regen tends to be a touch higher than that at L50+3, but I don't run at +1x0 often, so it's hard to be sure). I don't find it hard at all to maintain 40+ Fury in any situation.

I did during the Revenant Hero Project test (L31/34) and in the early PI radio tests (L40/43).. But it was just one L30 IO. It said the range was increased to 12', but the area still said 10'. I meant to test to see if it was simply firing at 12' and not hitting things at that range, but I forgot. Unfortunately I put Annihilations in it at 50. I'll have to go to RWZ and use the 2nd build to test that... After testing, it seems to enhance the size of the AoE. I targeted the middle dummy and backed up until Frost wouldn't fire. Then I added 3 L50 Range IOs (it says 15.85', with the area still saying 10') and Frost hit the three middle dummies. Then I backed up again until it just fired and hit the middle dummy, and it appeared to be just about the additional distance expected. A 15.85', 180 degree, 16 target Frost is pretty amazing. Just for the heck of it I slotted a Cardiac Partial Core Revamp and that extended the range out to 17' (and once again the queued out of range attack fired as soon as I slotted it). Standing right up close to the middle dummy I can hit all 5.

I rolled a new test tanker. This one SD/Ice with the Leadership pool. I started out running Jim Temblor's arc through flashback with an L22 build using L25 IOs (I've run this arc around 100 times, so it's a good benchmark). The first mission was set at 0x1nn. It was as easy as you'd expect, but compared to running an Ice Melee Tanker on live, it was night and day. This one solo'ed reasonably well (though not great) while what is currently live for Ice Melee is torturous. For the 2nd and 3rd mission I boosted myself to 25 to add Hasten to the build to help offset the fact that Ice Melee doesn't get a single damaging power between 5 and 27 (inclusive). I also added some basic. relatively cheap, specials I usually buy in the 22-27 range. And I turned on bosses (0x1yn). For the final two missions Hasten made a big difference and I would say the toon played well. I needed three small insps against red-conning EB, but that's it. Overall, the performance was not as good as a Brute, Scrapper or Stalker, but was good enough. Certainly better than running a Defender or even a Corruptor through the arc. And with Ice Melee, that's saying something. I had no END issues despite running Assault and not slotting EndRdx into my attacks, each of which had 1 Rech. The arc of Frost is amazing and really helps the low level Ice Melee be a bit less pathetic. I next bumped the toon to 31 and ran the Revenant Hero Project arc (another arc I commonly run on live). I didn't add the sets to give me more acc than L25 IOs. So I stuck at 0x3yn for the first few missions. Everything went quite smoothly, thanks to the addition of 2 more attacks (Shield Charge and Freezing Touch). I decided to bump myself to 34 for the final two missions and up diff to 0x6yn. I also added LotG specials to my build. It was a bit slow with Frost having to do most of the AoE damage, but surprisingly good for an Ice Melee toon missing Frozen Aura. I finally started having some END shortages due to Assault+Maneuvers (with one EndRdx each) and no EndRdx in the attacks. Next I bumped myself to 40 to run PI radios. With Frozen Aura added and some sets slotted to reduce attack END use, this was a breeze against Carnies and Council at 0x6yn. So I bumped myself to 43 to add tactics and upped diff to +2x8yn. It was still a breeze and the play felt almost Brute like. Lastly I leveled up to 50, fully slotted the build and ran some missions at +4x8yn. It was actually slower than I expected, and the missions against Carnies and Arachnos were a bit of a slog. Still, the toon played far, far better than it would on live. Overall my sense is that the damage/AoE changes are close or on target. (I still question the Damage Cap, however.) I think giving Tankers Defender level team buffs may be a bit much and I dislike it on principle. Defenders' Leadership buffs should be better than any other AT's, IMO. Lastly I'm a bit disappointed in the Taunt target reduction, though I didn't get to test that in any meaningful way.

Because they have a Res cap of 75% and Brutes have a Res cap of 90%. So with high end builds Brutes can have 3 times the survivability of Scrappers. The damage difference at the high end is much, much smaller than this. In SO/solo play, they are comparable. Scrappers might even be a bit better. But at the top end, it's not particularly close.

I think it does. Brutes outperform every other AT. Some by a very wide margin. Captain Powerhouse told us he believes Brutes have 90% the survivability of Tankers and wants Tankers to do 90% of the damage. Having two ATs outperform all the rest is a bad idea. So, the implication is that if Brutes aren't going to get nerfed and Tankers will be buffed to match them, then the devs must believe one of the following: Brutes aren't actually outperforming other ATs.* Brutes and Tankers only have to be balanced against each other, not all the rest of the ATs. The other ATs need to be buffed. * I think it's undeniable that they are in terms of top end performance. They are also the most popular AT; there are 50% more Brutes than Scrappers, and twice as many as there are Tankers. Two classes that are very similar and for the most part share the same power choices. I believe the reason they are more popular than Tankers - damage/ease of play solo - is being addressed in this patch. But what is the reason for this popularity over Scrappers? It's not as if Scrapper survivability sucks, and they typically do a bit more damage, so why are Brutes 50% more popular? I think it's because at the high end they are up to three times as tough. Scrappers simply can't reach Brute levels of high end performance using the same sets. The only time they are close is using low-Res sets such as Super Reflexes. And it's no random fact that the four least popular Brute secondaries are Def-based (Ice, Stone - mostly Def outside Granite, Energy Aura and Super Reflexes). The only principally Def-based set not at the bottom is Shield Defense, with it's offensive buffs (it's in the middle, ranking 6th of 13 sets). By comparison Def-based sets rank 2nd, 4th and 5th for Scrappers (SR, SD and Nin) out of 13 (Ice and Energy Aura are still at the bottom, as with Brutes) And the #1 set isn't Res based either, it's Regen (which ranks 4th for Brutes). It certainly looks as if Brutes are preferred because of the high-end performance of Res-based secondaries.

So, does that mean you intend to buff Scrappers, so that they too compete with Brutes?

And this is why I thought the first step in balancing Tankers should have been to nerf Brutes. My concern with the damage cap increase is that the high end performance of Tankers is raised so much that a nerf to Brutes seems out of the question. Meaning that the next move is to buff Scrappers (Brutes clearly outperform Scrappers at the high end too). Then Stalkers. Then...

I actually like powers with drawbacks. For two reasons. One, they tend to increase diversity instead of having all sets the same with merely cosmetic difference (see Champions Online). They also tend to give strong positives to the power, which can be leveraged by good builds and play while the drawbacks are similarly mitigated by the same. So, give me plus/minus powers instead of a bunch of zeroes.

Of course, Bruising can't stack. Which means that in fights where it matters (AVs/GMs), one Tanker gets value from it and the rest don't. Most of those other -Res effects you referred to are also AoE (Nature being the exception).

So, likely rework 5 powers (Rage, Hand Clap, Jab, Punch and Hurl) instead of just tweaking Rage. Ignore all the extreme suggestions for Rage that suggest it's hard to balance. They aren't coming from Captain Powerhouse. What Capt P has done isn't radical. He moved the END cost from the crash to the cast, added a mechanic to avoid the rest of the crash, and made the crash mitigation debuff more balanced. That's it. Three relatively minor changes (and the last I would call closer to a bug fix than anything else), not a complete rework of the entire AT (giving every Tanker Rage or something similar) as has been suggested by some, nor a complete reworking of the set, as has been suggested by many.

Hmmmm... now I want to know what Granite looks like running Ripper.

My Kin/DP Def build (the actual toon is still at level 22) has 15.24s recharge on FS using +70% from Hasten (perma), +20% from Siphon Speed (I can easily get higher than that if I want to, even at 22), Spiritual Core Paragon (T4), 2 L50 IOs and 78.75% in set bonuses (2 Purpled ATO sets, 4 LotGs, 3 6.25 and 2 5s).

Of COURSE it's tainted the entire pizza. SMH

Pineapples are the new anchovies. Neither belongs on a pizza unless the chooser is going to be the only one eating it.

I started playing an SS Tanker just over 15 years ago. To me the crash simply belongs there. And with the current situation your comparing using something you may or may not have to using a little patience and attentiveness to not click the power too soon. Honestly though, the farmers are probably gobbling all the reds they have anyway, so that stacked Rage advantage is actually less than advertised. To summarize my position: I'm OK with the way Rage is on live except for the imbalance of the -Def debuff. So this version on Pineapple is pretty close to what I would do myself. I don't think that stackable Rage is really all that and a bag of chips, so I wouldn't mind all that much if it went away. I just find catering to those too lazy to take Rage off auto-fire annoying. I can get crashless Rage with this change if I want it by exercising a tiny bit of patience and attentiveness. If we're doing single stack Rage then let's get rid of the click altogether and make it a toggle with an END cost chosen to make most people want to 2 slot it with EndRdx (say 0.4-0.52 E/s). Rage should probably be renamed to something that doesn't mean "uncontrolled anger", especially if there is to be no crash.

Your right, I should have been using a 68.68s cycle instead of 58.68s. I also thought the floor was 10% of base. I simply ignored it as unimportant given the error bars on the numbers being tossed about. Again, you've used a different stat than I would. This started as a discussion about the advantage of stackable Rage to min-maxers. So for the purposes of that discussion I would compare double Rage to single, not to no Rage at all. That is, just how much value are the so-called min-maxers getting out of stackable Rage? Using that stat your first test would be a 154.58% / 134.14% - 1 = 15.2% increase over single Rage. Very close to the 14.5% I calculated from your previous numbers and theory, even with the mistake. The second one shows just an 8.9% increase (140.27% / 128.85% - 1). I still consider these builds outliers and those numbers very close to the optimal best. And I will reiterate that in my opinion, outside of farming that level of buff isn't really a big deal. And even in farms it's probably about a 10% increase in INF earnings. So while that's significant, I don't think it makes stackable Rage a crazily OP thing like, say, Brutes in general. Now, double stacking without a crash would be a different story.

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Yeah, Brutes really need a buff. (That's sardonicism, in case anyone thought I was serious.) The END boost was given with the idea that Tankers take longer to kill stuff than Brutes and so use more END. This is particularly true at lower levels and in solo play. I see it more of a sop to help get people past the doldrums of leveling a Tanker.

Because the latter is the status quo, while the former is a significant change. EDIT: Besides, to me, the use friendliness is pretty minor. I can manage when to click Rage without any major thought or effort. So I find it a trivial QoL improvement at a real loss of choice and flexibility. Also, what are you doing now to avoid the crash? Not use Rage at all?

I don't think there is an easy any way to make the power only ignore buffs from others (as opposed to all buffs). Not that this is in any way a good idea. It's one set of players with a particular play style (wanting to auto-fire Rage) trying to get that catered to at a cost to everyone else. I also don't get the thinking of this whole line of reasoning. It's almost as if there are those that think that Rage comes with an auto-fire on it that can't be turned off. In reality, what's on test are two changes: The crash mitigation debuff is now split between Def and Res instead of all Def You can avoid the crash by not stacking Rage The first is a balance issue, the second a straight buff. Single Rage v stackable crashing Rage is a legitimate discussion, but the idea that this change somehow makes getting +Rech from others worse is non-sense. You will be no worse off with (2) from above than what is on live. It seems a bit petty to me to want to avoid clicking a power every 2 minutes so much that you are willing to force everyone who doesn't share your preferences to lose a power buff.

The best I could come up with was "Ferocity". A synonym of Rage, but with a more neutral connotation. Even if they keep the crash a name change to something like "Draw Upon Might" or "Buckle Up Buttercup" might be in order.

What you've calculated is how much you've improved Rage and another 38.5% buff by double stacking, not your DPS improvement. To perma double stack Rage you need it to recharge in 58.68s (one half the 120s buff duration minus the ArcanaTime Cast of 1.32s). That's 240/58.68 = 409% total recharge. Meaning 309% total +Rech. Let's assume perma-Hasten and drop that to a rounded 240%. That means you need something along the lines of fully recharge slotted Rage plus Spiritual or Agility Incarnate and another 125% or so global recharge to perma double stack Rage. If you're using Musculature (or another Alpha that doesn't buff Recharge) instead you need more along the lines of 140% global recharge. That's 5 LotGs, 5 Purple sets and another 52.5%. That's a huge investment. And with that you calculated a 41% improvement of your damage buff. Let's look at the DPS improvement now. Say you have perma double stack, 313.5% Damage from slotting (I've assumed Musculature is nowhere to be seen), the initial Rage stack, and the other 38.5% buff. So by stacking you're getting 11/12ths 78% as a buff (you lose some value to the 1.32s cast every 60s instead of every 120s), but you're losing 1/12th of 313.5% from the crash. That's about 45% of base damage gained. Or about a 14.5% DPS increase since you were doing 313.5% with a single stack. That's pretty significant, but it's also for an extreme case that shows double stacking Rage in its best light with a billion-plus INF build and at least T3 Alpha. At that point in a toon's life, you are likely either farming or on large teams running TFs and Trials. An increased DPS in the latter context probably isn't significant In the former? You can clear a map in about 87% the time a single stacker would. Given some setup and recycle time, you're probably earning about 10% more INF.

Maybe the "crash" of Rage is that when it wears off everyone on your aggro list gets it.

0.8 to 0.95. I forgot to factor that in. So, no, they didn't get new DS calculated. By my calcs Pendulum should be doing 117.47 and Crowd Control 100.11 with their new arcs (about 17% more damage each).