Sancerre

nin is generally weaker unless you lean into cycling the t9 with unleash potential. the heal is too small to generally matter and the DDR difference is substantial. mind you -- SR can cycle the t9 with unleash potential as well and is 'better' at it but nin has the unique advantage of having the endurance clicky within its own powerset to offset the crash (if timed well)... which otherwise needs to be done with ageless incarnate or blue candy. nin is still a relatively strong set for scrappers. also it goes underappreciated on scrapper/stalker HP pool but the SR resistance values scale with how low your HP is, so tankers become virtually immortal. final note -- the better question to this is why are so fixated on nin vs SR when energy aura is just all around better than both (granted i havent personally played it after the latest nerfs/changes to energy aura).

im a big fan of this as a concept but it is so incredibly difficult to change things in a single powerset (lookin at all you beanbag clowns out there) much less a sweeping change across an ARCHETYPE. the funny thing is -- the biggest reason scrapper and stalker feel so different is almost entirely because of the way their ATOs completely warp their gameplay around them... and the biggest complaint in this thread is about how brute ATO procs may as well not exist. someone in this thread suggested earlier about more interesting/engaging ways to manage rage, but i dont think that would go over well with the community. i think if any 'big' change were to happen to brute AT... the ATO proc is the simple approach especially because people 'opt-in' to using it. as an aside -- something interesting about stalkers in a team environment... the buildup insta-recharge proc can be vastly dilluted via party buffs, or even outright pointless if you are already damage capped with an attentive kinetics in the party. but its really hard to quantify so many of these variables in a team environment especially because if someone was trying to craft the 'perfect' team comp... why are we even considering a stalker would be in there to benefit! i think this should be generally echo'd across the board for just melee period... doesnt need it to be a brute specific thought. 7 foot cones/pbaoes are a crime against humanity. 8 foot cones/pbaoes are barely tolerable.

it lost the aoe proc bomb damage. it is still just as tanky...ish. radiation therapy is now just strictly for durability/resilience... some would argue its less effective than before but most people werent using it for resilience/durability anyways. that said, if the main goal was to scoop up extra aoe damage in your secondary then you lose that aspect here. i dont feel like savage melee is hurting in that department particularly but having radiation proc bomb may have swayed you to taking focused accuracy utility instead of fireball for example... so it has its own impacts. overall still a great armor set but people may value the radiation therapy proc bomb differently.

what is even the point of this post? YOU felt the need to quote that specific line as though you were targeted. nobody else did what you did. do you have something to say about it beyond petty squabbles? you didnt even declare a position here with this post. just want to remain an argumentative enigma, always shape-shifting to win whatever argument you create on the spot.

you can say you did not push 'force multiplier' but you literally did. and i chose the exact phrase you used like 10 times -- 'force multiplier'. your post is still there, you can re-read it if you forgot what you typed. are we just trying to argue in bad faith here? i feel like i agree with you in a lot of ways other than you adamantly wanting to be disagreeable. i am fine with you not liking my hot take to make tanker/brute resilience more relatively meaningful but you follow-up by agreeing with me that tanker/brute resilience levels ultimately dont matter.... you just appear to believe that is a good thing! really depends how you are talking about 'active farming' and whether or not that includes teammates... even if your own afk/follow multi-boxed 'teammates. granted i am personally ignorant of any controller/mastermind/dominator farming builds, i have not personally experienced anything better than brutes at solo farming +4/x8... tankers being a comfortable second place after the nerfs (whereas before you could argue tankers being better perhaps). it is really hard to beat out the persistent damage auras and taunt (punchvoke) is a huge deal. scrapper taunt aura just doesnt cut it and they have a difficult time surviving endless farm style without amplifiers and/or inspiration lottery. perhaps i am just not enlightened here on ranged ATs that excel at solo farming x4/+8 here. stalker hide provides a 1.88% defense to all in combat. i guess you consider this 'non negligible'? if that is where you want to die on your hill, so be it. im not sure where you might find a defense power that provides a smaller benefit, but that is 'non negligible' to you, sure. stealth is time consuming mechanic that is fun/interesting in maybe the first 20 levels and when playing solo but you definitely are not winning any time attacks if you are waiting 8 seconds between every pack to re-stealth... nor is any team running door missions or TFs going to care to wait for your ass hanging in the back for stealth. placate is very good yes, in its own nuanced ways. i think most folks prefer the taunt aura on scrappers (which you brought up) for speed clearing. i was very happy with the placate change when it happened but scrappers still typically outperform stalkers in every metric on average... outliers with specific powerset combinations, which you should acknowledge as outliers like you do with brute stone armor. despite all that, i still feel like stalkers are in a fine place because they are close enough to scrappers and the outlier combinations that they do shine on are quite good... even if they could use a small polishing on actually ensuring they are the king of single target melee DPS (scrappers are) instead of single target melee burst damage (ok stalkers you win here).

this is not the right way to view the damage scale. you have BASE damage that gets amplified by the 'enhanced damage' bonus. fury damage bonus is added in the same bucket of 'enhanced damage'. Fury makes FURTHER enhanced damage relatively less effective (dilution). your starting point is fine but then presumes you never use stuff like damage enhancements, build up, get buffs from teammates, or use red inspirations. brute baseline of fury will typically hover around 90 or 180% enhanced damage so all of the previously mentioned ways to get more enhanced damage are diluted from that 180% enhanced damage baseline... and that is before figuring in critical hits scrappers can leverage. brutes have a higher enhanced damage cap to 'offset' this but it is kind of rare to hit that (outside of buildup), much less maintain that unless you have a very attentive kinetics next to you and the party allows the kin to press fulcrum shift before blowing shit up (ironic sometimes but an aside). Notably for brutes, people often recommend NOT running musculature incarnate (instead opting for stuff like vigor) for this reason. regarding critical hits and the ATO itself, you can slot the orange version starting at level 10 and it is half as effective but still strong. regarding placement of the ATO proc, there are different ways to deal with it but typically there are very specific powers to place it in for -single target- chains in each powerset... which may or may not be the T9 power. overwhelmingly, it is not the T9 power. for aoe clear, it may be more effective to place it attacks that cleave because (like FF recharge proc) you only need it to 'proc' on a single critter of however many you hit... but most knowledgeable scrappers wont deviate from the 'established' powers very much (nuance with titan weapons and maybe some others where a cleave power is also a strong single target option). ive mode the joke about scrapper casino plenty and it is fairly frustrating TBH, even with the purple proc. the great debate around scrappers vs stalkers is almost entirely centered around 2 things, 1 of which being if you want to play the scrapper casino or have the more 'controlled/consistent' crit activation of stalker... the other being the taunt aura. also there are 2 ATOs -- the other one is just a global increase to crit chance across all powers. i do agree with brute resilience buffs (addressed in small nuanced ways), but it doesnt fix the problem that people are complaining about in this thread because even blaster resilience is 'solved' to become a god when you bring in party buffs. without addressing the critter to-hit soft cap (or inversely player defense soft cap), the resistance and HP caps being higher on tanker/brute basically doesnt matter for 99.9% of critters you run into.

you want people to talk with you, i get it. hello friend. go ahead and provide your dissertation that AKTHUALLY you never cared about brute solo performance.

why bring brute ever to what? i cant remember the last time anybody rejected anything i played on account of the AT i was playing. Hell, you often just whisper 'plz invite' and the party leader doesnt even know what they are inviting until you are on the same map. where is this misguided energy of constant brute rejection coming from? but if you do want to carve out the role that brutes are best at... brutes are 100% the winner at farms. not particularly pinnacle content but you get rewarded handsomely all the same. where do you imagine stalkers have better survivability options that scrapper? the defense/resistance values are generically the same and they have lower base/max HP. depending on the armor set, stalkers needing to have hide inserted into their tree can be a serious active detriment (replacing a critical skill), other times it can be a benefit (when it replaces an outright skip power) but hide isnt even that good. the point of the comment is that......... going by the seemingly suggested formula of more durability = less damage, more damage = less durability... then stalkers should reign supreme on the damage scale because they are the least durable of the 4. yet somehow you are suggesting that stalkers are more durable than scrappers.... i can only imagine in bad faith but you can go ahead and provide some looney toons explanation on this one. i can look forward to a sensible chuckle. regarding tanker aoe damage -- i certainly understand you dont want/need to justify yourself in every single topic to every random forum-goer with the latest spreadsheet backing up your statements. that said, i have seen empirical evidence from others contradicting your statements about brute vs tanker damage after the tanker nerfs. but i guess i should believe you over others? i view you as uninformed with the recent updates on this topic, but we can agree to disagree here if your ego is getting in the way. i actually dont understand what you are trying to get at regarding my 'whining'. sure sure -- i didnt do any of the 'work' like the spreadsheet jockeys have. we can go in circles here about opinions being worthless. we invalidate each other! i wonder why you even bothered replying to someone pointless like me in that regard. i dont understand your assessment of Ston's research. again -- brutes fit snuggly in between scrappers and tankers at that time. now tankers have been nerfed, so brutes are RELATIVELY CLOSER to scrappers damage wise than they are to tankers (because tankers have drifted further away). that should be a good thing for your stance? are we agreeing here? a lot of your argumentation is around relative power levels. tankers get nerfed so that makes brutes relatively stronger, but you dont view it that way because brutes were not buffed directly. convenient.

i would personally just take game balance in a different direction. you are looking for ways to push (effective) brute damage higher through party amplification -- the more fundamental problem here is that scrapper resilience levels are already sufficient when team buffs are applied. double HP and bumping resistance caps from 75% to 90% makes a huge difference numbers wise but also is completely unnecessary in most situations. defense is entirely too powerful. Brutes and Tankers need to be markedly be more resilient in a way that actually matters. why are resistance soft caps bumped but not defense soft caps? -- or really why does a random frail blaster get to achieve the same level of dodging capabilities as the super hulk mega tank... being colorful there for fun. choosing to pick the tanky class should have more impact than being a punchvoke bot. also to address the other point of party scaling -- there have been vocal folks in this thread that are unsatisfied with brute SOLO performance, much less a team environment. cant please everyone anyways......... the point of my post anyways is pretty close to what you were getting at -- if you want to homogenize everything down to the PURE roles and only bring the absolute necessities with the highest value (chasing the META), these roles that are 'somewhere in the middle' like brute and sentinel do not serve a purpose.. and you could argue defender as well (because general opinion right now is that corruptors are 'superior'). when chasing the META, the conversation will flip instantly when game balance shifts even 1%. This design 'imbalance' can NEVER BE SOLVED. Someone is going to be the 'loser' even if that 'loser' is only 1% worse.

you are reframing the question for your purposes. but anyways -- you just posed the framework yourself here: Tankers have the best survivability and Scrappers have the best damage. but there are 4 melee ATs... so what are the other 2 (brutes and stalkers) supposed to be doing? why do scrappers get to deal the most damage? shouldnt stalkers? regarding tankers -- with the new tanker adjustments, some spreadsheet junkies are reporting that brutes actually do MORE damage to 10 targets (as a sum) than tankers do to 16 targets (as a sum). im not the one doing the math here but it doesnt look like you did either. you come here with claims and feelings that brutes are miles behind scrapper damage and tankers also do the same/more damage than brutes but never provide anything of substance. Ston did the most research that anyone has ever formally documented on this whole thing a couple years back at this point -- and the results were that brute damage (SOLO) is snugly inbetween scrappers and tankers... and in the passage of time, tankers have now been nerfed. come here with something to disprove Ston. or explain why Ston's results are bad/biased/whatever. In a perfectly balanced game, where should brutes be performing that Ston did NOT demonstrate?

i feel like with the recent sweep at tankers, brutes are in a good spot relative to tankers. the discussion around brute's usefulness is foundationally biased here with regards to brute vs scrapper -- all this chatter about scrapper doing more damage than brute so why bring a brute? flip the script. if a scrapper did less damage than brute, why bring a scrapper? there are four (4) melee ATs here all competing for validation (yes stalkers exist too, not that anyone here seems to care). in a world where you are chasing META -- if one is 'better' then the other is 'worse'. period. if you crunch out the numbers and spreadsheet this stuff, SOMEONE is going to win and be META. and really the problem is specific powerset combinations. nobody is complaining that kinetic melee/electric armor scrappers are too strong -- because super strength/fire brute will win out by a mile here... hell i bet a tanker would. there are substantial deviations between AT powersets that you may consider subtle if you arent leveraging them... like having 50% more MAX HP on a brute, but it wont matter much if you pick an armor set that never touches your max HP because the base HP value of brute and scrapper is basically the same. or the BIG deal breaker -- taunt auras. myself and many others swear they will never touch a scrapper armor set without a taunt aura... meanwhile brute has it all baked in without thinking about it. anyways, i think brutes could use some MINOR buffs/quality of life but are generally in a 'fine' spot with respect to the 4 melee ATs. also important to note -- brutes are already 'fine' even with garbage ATOs, so i think that says a lot.

chance to hit softcap is 95%, not sure where you heard 90% from. you want to reference +4 critters typically but you can drop that number if you feel like you would be fighting against critters at lower levels typically. perhaps you may have been confused about procs -- they have a 90% maximum chance to occur on each skill use. procs are a giant rabbit hole to talk about so i recommend searching for a better resource here but generally speaking 'standard' procs are 3.5 ppm and do ~72 damage at level cap -- you can use a total of FIVE (5) of the same across your build. 'purple' procs are 4.5 ppm and do ~107 damage at level cap -- you can only use ONE (1) of the same across your build. ppm or procs per minute is the giant rabbit hole there... just know that SLOTTED recharge and incarnate alpha recharge (like agility paragon) will severely effect your proc rate; however, GLOBAL recharge does NOT effect proc rate. so generally speaking, anything you are putting procs in, you want to avoid putting recharge in... unless you are willing to take the hit or the procs per minute math actually doesnt hurt the skill's proc chance at the recharge you slotted in. sting of the manticore is a very good set (and especially the 3 piece bonus) but the 2 of the 3 enhancements you chose are what i would consider the 'bad' ones. again, generally avoid recharge like the plague if you are doing any procs in the skill. damage/acc, damage/end, and toxic proc are golden. you took out the apoc shadow damage proc, you do want to be using purple procs somewhere cause they are 'better'. im not a big fan of decimation build up proc personally so i would swap out apoc shadow proc here but up to you. something to specifically note about glue arrow -- it is extremely good BUT the procs are only on the single target you have selected... beyond that i think there is some miniscule chance it would proc over its duration in the area... but if it does, its not worth talking about. 100% worth proc bombing for single target damage chains anyways, as you have. as far as ignite vs flamethrower... my opinion is that you want BOTH. ignite and sniper are your 2 staple single target buttons to rotate with. they are both very high damage. flamethrower and m30 are your aoe (and buckshot to a lesser extent), alongside full auto as your NUKE. in the aoe tree there, m30's damage is not 'spectacular' whereas flamethrower can really put down some serious damage. my build is below, for reference. do note that i would change various things (especially full auto) but doing respecs can be annoying and the build is serviceable enough for me. Blaster (Assault Rifle - Tactical Arrow).mbd

agreed although i would say 120 degree 10 foot cones usually feel relatively fine. 7 foot cones of any arc size are a crime against humanity.

people will give very conflicting advice on character builds and it mostly is centered around the last point i made before... how much 'self sufficiency' do you want to gear for. you can otherwise PRESUME that your teammates will always be a pack of kinetics, cold, fire, and nature corrupters all way full leadership toggles to max out your health/regen/recovery/recharge/defense/resist/attack/to-hit without you needing to worry about where your build might be lacking... cause that definitely always happens. or you can mail yourself a million inspirations so that you are unloading a full tray of candy every pack of enemies because it is definitely super fun to be playing mailbox management simulator instead of arresting baddies. regarding the defense soft cap there is nuance around that topic with incarnate critters, defense shredding, and to-hit buffs. 45% is your standard soft cap and will serve you will as a target for general purposes anyways. if you are building for 'solo' self sufficiency, a realistic/achievable target is 32.5% RANGED defense and presume to stay flying so that melee doesnt happen. 1 small purple inspiration adds 12.5% defense while active, which gets you to softcap when you feel like you need it. another target is presuming you go for BARRIER incarnate which will provide AT LEAST a consistent 5% defense boost as long as you press the button every 2 minutes... in which case you can subtract 5% from your target defense. i mentioned it before however... away from parties that are rotating barrier, blasters probably want to be running clarion incarnate for the mez protection. play long enough on that toon and you should probably have both anyways... so you can cater to the situation. something else to consider away from slots and set bonuses -- fire epic pool for bonfire specifically is extremely strong. it really is a see it to believe it kind of thing... it just creates a full on endless bounce house for the critters and also synergizes well with oil slick arrow because it ignites it. if you do go bonfire it REQUIRES KB>KD sudden accel IO in it. some build specific points otherwise... in my opinion... i dont find buckshoot needs KB > KD conversion unless you are fighting clockwork... should be able to replace with FF recharge proc i dont find flash arrow and ESD arrow to be useful but if you like them, have at it. you got extra slots in health and stamina for end recovery... i personally feel like you probably have way more endurance than you need without them. you could probably save 2 slots for something else there. eagle eye recovery is actually just super strong. feel this out though... your mileage may vary. flamethrower is extremely good. cones are often really bad but flamethrower actually has good arc radius and has good proc rate out the box. you want intuition radial paragon over musculature radial paragon incarnate. you trade endurance recovery (which you have excess of) for range, which is extremely strong on AR cones (buckshot, flamethrower, full auto). can look at different ways to slot attacks. particularly, 2 piece bombardment gives +5% range, which adds up if you slot the bonus in 2-3 attacks. not always practical but a nice way to sneak in extra range on top of intuition. also dont overlook some sets that might seem lower tier at first glance... a fun example is the artillery set in ranged aoe attacks provides (in total) 4% ranged defense at 6 piece. surveillance is ok -- if you are going to pick it, you should 100% be adding a slot for achilles heel -res proc. otherwise i dont see much point in picking up the power. general note about stealth -- it provides ~2% defense in combat, ~6% defense out of combat. beware of mids totals. sniper rifle is missing accuracy -- chasing set bonuses can be a trap sometimes. 30 HP isnt worth missing 10% of your sniper shots. m30 grenade is light on accuracy but up to you there. it is slotted nicely for damage and the 2pc winters bonus is nice to have.

burst vs slug is an interesting discussion. slug is objectively the better attack in isolation (higher dpa and higher proc rate) but both of them are kind of crap filler attacks and burst is faster as a filler attack (1 second vs 1.4 seconds). most of the time you have a better button to be pressing (ignite, snipe, glue arrow, etc)... burst or slug just helps you fill some gaps and the extra time slug takes makes it 'worse' in a way because the filler starts eating up time for the 'good' attack. slug can be worth proc bombing but you do probably want set bonuses -somewhere- in your build and both slug and burst are solid mules for defiant barrage set. the other interesting piece here is that burst almost recharges entirely in its own animation... meaning you can mostly spam the attack if you do get CC locked (blaster passive) and with defiant barrage proc in there... possible you break out that way. a bit incidental because inspirations exist and you probably take clarion anyways... away from barrier parties. away from that, buckshot is just kinda better than burst and slug for the reasons Zect already mentioned. its basically the same DPA but it is AoE so you kinda win if you hit at least 2 targets but even on 1 target... it is pretty similar. proc rate is worse than slug but because it is aoe, FF recharge becomes somewhat reliable in it. i would not recommend all 3 burst slug and buckshot in an optimized build but i would advocate for buckshot always and choice of either burst or slug (personal choice on burst) if you are going flight, you want evasive maneuvers OR combat jumping (this part has always been funny). evasive maneuvers is great. try it out. you will immediately feel the difference in flight control like you would with combat jumping on. tight, crisp, precise. keep in mind that the defense is lost when in combat but the flight control is big. as you noted, evasive maneuvers can still slot lotg recharge regardless of the def buff disappearing in combat, which is a strong option. what evasive maneuvers does allow you is to NOT 'waste' one of your 4 pools on combat jumping to get the flight control... and also strong resist to fly debuffs which can feel rare but sucks when you are glued to the floor. for full auto procs... it is a good question. proc rate is a beauty out the gates but any recharge added into it starts destroying it quickly. if you can afford it, it really glows up the damage on full auto A LOT. if you are going to chase set bonuses on full auto at all, i wouldnt bother with procs after adding recharge into it... unless you are doing something like 2 piece Winters (no recharge) for the slow resist. incidentally, be careful about using blasters wrath proc here because it comes with recharge... ironically destroying the proc rate of other 3.5 procs you would put next to it. also, ragnarok KD proc can be fun in full auto if you want/need more CC/safety... and there are only so many damage procs available anyways so not trading much to use it! there is always going to be a bit of a balancing act with set bonuses vs procs and how 'self sufficient' you want to try to build yourself to be. not really a right or wrong answer here. i think generally a good target is to hit perma-hasten by yourself (even if it is assuming incidental FF recharge procs in the cycle of it) and some nominal defense value (ranged in your case of flying) that you are comfortable with.