Sancerre

the downside to the set is the lethal damage type. otherwise -- savage leap carries the set a lot. savage leap is an insane button in all kinds of ways both for AoE damage (especially) but it is also just a strong button even for single target at point blank when proc bomb'd. but generally all of the buttons are 'solid' aside from hemo. hemo is technically fine as well, but not really a point to it over any of the other single target buttons along the way. shred is the other 'stinker' button but it is fine DPA if you are hitting 3+ targets. last frustration is savage melee's build-up variant is a very long 2 second cast compared to any other standard build-up... but you learn to live with it. overall performance, when combined with fire, dark, or psychic patron pools is very strong.

for context hasten provides 70% global recharge. the proc provides 100% (for 5 seconds). the FF recharge proc was important enough for Ston to literally list out how many times it proc'd in his pylon tests. he has a column for it. is it up permanently in combat? No -- but if you make a proper build intending to utilize it... and you have a powerset that can utilize it... you can easily have 50%+ active uptime on the proc while in combat for single target affairs. in saturated aoe content, you are virtually guaranteed it goes off on every use of axe cyclone, for example. im not sure where you draw the line at reliable vs unreliable here. **to also acknowledge Ston also made a separate column for -res procs that are very meaningful in sustained duration pylon tests but far less useful in actual combat against anything smaller than elite bosses (regular bosses arguable). -res and global recharge are apples and oranges here, before anyone tries to make a comparison. Do you need to use FF recharge? Do you need to use Hasten? the other way to look at this situation is -- we dont need to be concerned about shaving some time off certain content. ok fair take. why is concerned that brute might be slower at clearing certain content than scrapper by any metric. well turns out we dont need to be concerned about shaving time off certain content. case closed. mystery solved. turns out scrappers brutes tankers and stalkers were all equally just as good all along, dont worry about the details. nothing more to discuss here folks! **btw what are you doing with your 'defense mules'? lotg 7.5% recharge perhaps?

i would argue brute is better than scrapper before purple scrapper ato already. agreed with you anyways -- and that is why the ATO should not need to be nerfed. if they did want to nerf it, they should buff scrapper baseline in compensation... just round out some of the volatility of playing scrapper. the ATO, as a standalone, is incredibly overpowered though -- i dont think there is a stronger single enhancement you can slot in the game. ** FF recharge proc is quite overpowered as well as a close second **

the scrapper superior ATO is indeed over-powered. the feeling people get describing a different playstyle with scrapper is because this ATO warps gameplay around it. just like the stalker ATOs, but my personal opinion is that the stalker ATOs feel more balanced or have a healthier curve associated with it (?) - hard to describe. i dont think the scrapper ATO should need to be nerfed anyways. scrapper magic is in playing the crit casino. i think a lot alt-itis folks that try out scrappers and stalkers get this perception that stalkers do more damage than scrappers because the stalker ATOs 'unlock' stalker gameplay even at the rare version (orange), but scrappers dont really feel this performance shift 'unlocked' until the very rare (purple) version. so if you never fully flesh out your scrapper at 50, you dont feel that impact of playing the high roller crit casino, especially with power combinations that can abuse FF recharge adjacently. and meanwhile, brutes are just brutes. there is nothing there that differentiates them playstyle wise. yes fury exists as a theme, but it literally just exists. you dont 'manage' fury. it floods up to 85-90 very quickly and then it exists there without thought... and you can look at the extra resource bar oscillate between 85-90 for fun i guess. anyways, in regards to stalker, i think an interesting take-away from the scrapper vs brute debate is that nobody is really looking to acknowledge stalker as a 'threat' to brute identity... or even just the numbers for that matter.

solo scrapper without taunt aura is a big fail and you wont convince me otherwise. in any case, it sounds like you are enjoying your /nin scrapper.

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?