Auroxis

Only change I'd make is moving the purple proc from Flares to Blazing Bolt, the extra slot can be taken from Maneuvers. Updated the OP.

In that case neither Punch nor Jab would be used in the top chain anyway since Gloom, Haymaker and Cross Punch exist.

If Bruising is returning then Jab isn't much worse than Punch since you just want a fast attack to apply it. Also, sometimes fast attacks with lower DPA are actually better than slower attacks with higher DPA, if you have other much higher DPA attacks you wanna get to (KoB, Haymaker, Cross Punch) and a slower animation filler doesn't quite fit.

Keep in mind these resistance numbers are likely reached with temporary buffs (melee hybrid and rune of protection), I suspect the defense is mostly from scorpion shield and winter IO sets.

Your Inv/DM is probably the least impacted by these changes, no damage aura or AoE's besides Soul Drain and Shadow Maul. Does your build have Cross Punch? I haven't tested it with the new patch yet and it should be pretty good. I tried Bio/Staff on some +4 carnies. The AoE is massive, fairly fast at clearing the packs (unless i get darkest night spammed which floors my ToHit) but in a 1v1 boss fight it's about as slow as it was before. I also wanted to pylon test it, but since the pylons are level 54 now i can't compare my results with anything.

It wasn't true with your latest change to snipes. You could have gone ahead with making ToHit no longer affect snipes at all, but you chose not to and made it scale damage a bit. As a result, no one had to respec (outside of PvP'ers) and there was minimal discomfort. The point is to avoid negatively affecting players, and keeping T1/T2 powers as they are and simply buffing Bruising does just that. Pull back some of the damage buffs to balance it out and keep the AoE buffs.

I'm definitely not ecstatic to have the "opportunity" to go through 30 minutes of respeccing and re-arranging my power tray on most of my tankers. Nor am I ecstatic to have a -res debuff power taken away from my character.

Doesn't matter, still need to respec to be optimal.

The difference is that a player optimized his power choices to have the best attack chain. Now after the patch, it's no longer the best attack chain and he has to respec in order to have the best attack chain.

You caught me on semantics then. What I should have said is reaching old levels of optimized DPS. Or "If you wanna keep having the best attack chain".

That's the point, there's a "better attack chain" now from most powersets which requires a respec in order to obtain.

Yes, but we're giving tankers a massive AoE buff here which makes the issue of current Bruising not helping AoE insignificant. And even if it is resistable, it's still a -13% resistance debuff to +3 (most +4's are +3 due to the alpha slot).

Perhaps you're misunderstanding? If you only get it on respec, the current players on live will experience a DPS decrease on most powersets (since T1 attacks usually have less DPA) and will only reach old DPS levels once they respec to get the better DPA attack since Bruising isn't bundled in with their current attack anymore. That's your opinion, I hope you realize it's not the only one that matters.

So yes, forcing a respec to reach old DPS levels. And even if you reach old DPS levels, you're still removing the team damage buff feature by taking away the -res.

"Nobody", yet there are several people in this thread who are against the change. You can't just take away features from players without giving them something similar in return. As for "Nobody's being forced to respec" maybe I missed it somewhere in the thread, but I didn't see a confirmation of existing T1 power choices being changed and it's not as if we can test it (what happens to enhancements that can't fit in the new power?).

What matters isn't what team leaders think, it's that you're taking a feature away from players as well as telling them to respec to reach similar DPS numbers (still without the -res). As for TW, you can nerf the set as a whole in another patch. No need to specifically target tanker TW, and even if there was a need you could have done it in a way that didn't impact power selection as much.

It can be argued that if you crank it up too high then the class takes on a new identity of being an AoE specialist which eclipses the tank role it had before. Also, you didn't mention the Bruising change which removes a feature from the class. Yes the damage buff is an argument for it, that it circumvents the cottage rule if you buff up the damage, but you're still taking the team damage buff aspect away as well as messing up existing attack chains (forcing respecs) or in TW's case applying a nerf.

The top DPS attack chain for TW tanker no longer greatly buffs your defense, and requires picking up an extra power in order to reach old numbers. I'm not gonna bother replying to you on this if all you're capable of is being facetious.

TW has a feature no other powersets have on Tanker, with the defense buff also having strong offensive capabilities. If you wanna argue for nerfs, you can nerf TW as a whole and not focus on the Tanker version of it. You can also nerf it without forcing players to take extra powers (Crushing Blow in this case) they otherwise wouldn't have needed to pick up in order to be optimal.

TW isn't being touched in the T1-T2 swap, but it is being touched in the Bruising removal. Bruising enabled Defensive Sweep to be used in an offensive attack chain, something Scrappers and Brutes didn't have. With the removal of Bruising from Defensive Sweep, it loses its spot in offensive attack chains and gets relegated to defensive use only. That's a feature removed (not changed to achieve similar results or having more features added on top) which fits the definition of breaking the cottage rule.

So if I have Defensive Sweep in my TW attack chain for the -res and +def, and this patch goes through, does the cottage rule not apply? I either grab Crushing Blow (a power I didn't need to pick up before) to make up for the -res loss and lose the +Def in my attack chain as a result, or stick with Defensive Sweep and face lower levels of DPS resulting from the loss of Bruising. In essence the game is telling me "tough luck, your fault for playing TW".

My idea from a while back was adding an inherent power: Tanker's Assurance PBAoE, Team (But not Self) +DMG, +To Hit "Being near a Tanker puts your mind at ease, increasing your Damage and Chance to Hit".

Bruising could have been buffed. Tankers could have also received a support passive that buffs your teammates' damage, to expand on the role of being a team anchor.

I've built a lot of Tankers and Brutes. I know how to get Brutes to the caps, and how to get Tankers there too. Brutes require more investment, you just can't argue against that simple fact. It's an advantage no matter how insignificant you wanna make it out to be. With damage cap Brutes win by a hair. Heck some Tankers might even beat Brutes there once you factor in stuff like slightly better debuff values on -res powers (Evolving Armor, Rend Armor, Eye of the Storm, Rib Cracker, and Arctic Breath). The Tanker's ease of building can also benefit your DPS by making it easier to slot procs instead of recharge/accuracy/endurance reduction enhancements. We're changing so much about the Tanker here, that adding extra QoL in the form of +20 endurance seems superfluous and unnecessary.

You can cap them with far less ease, which means you need to sacrifice elsewhere (probably in recharge). If you wanna argue for not "needing" the extra mitigation that's one thing, but you can't argue against the fact that Tanker has better Brute mitigation numbers. Especially once you factor in the ATO proc. It does change the equation, the Tanker is almost identical to the Brute in terms of single target DPS in that scenario, while still retaining all other advantages. Tankers don't usually take ageless anyway, mine often take Rebirth for the extra healing unless I'm playing a set like Bio. Also if the change is irrelevant, why include it in the first place? Why make Tanker the only class with such an advantage?