Auroxis

There are already some powerset balance changes, as the arc/radius/target cap buffs do not apply to all sets equally: And the removal of Bruising hurts some sets more than others.

While also giving the Brute a Fury head-start and an attacking foe to maintain it. Regardless this is far from the only scenario where Tanker reaches 90% or more of the Brute's DPS. That'd be fine in a vacuum, but there's also AoE and resilience to consider where the Tanker has a big advantage.

In that case I was correct in saying a bit more damage buffs would put the Tanker even closer to the Brute for DPS(and an even bigger AoE advantage), since you weren't at the Tanker's cap for the majority of the time. But the Brute's cap is also harder to reach than the Tanker's, because even with maxed Hybrid Core, Musculature and double Rage you only hit the Tanker's cap when the gauss proc was active. The Tanker ceiling is not "much" lower either due to the modifiers, in a scenario where both classes are capped the numbers wouldn't change much from your test results.

I'm not quite sure which values you're referring to (including enhancements+musculature? Gauss proc?) but if you were constantly at that sweet spot where the Tanker is just about capped and the Brute isn't, your times should be closer to 97% than 93%. Feel free to refer to the table I posted on page 2.

It can also go even higher in the Tankers favor with a bit of outside damage buffs and less Fury, and it's far from the only scenario where Tankers reach similar levels of DPS while retaining their AoE/Resilience advantages.

90% was just the goal to reach "at cap", not stated to be the goal for regular gameplay. Keep in mind the Tanker didn't need to build up to 70% Fury, is more resilient, and has superior AoE.

I didn't know about the Spines target cap, only one person tested farm comparisons and apparently he used a FA/Spines-Spines/FA comparison. I'm now inclined to run some FA/Rad-Rad/FA comparisons but I won't have playing time in the coming week.

"Overflow aggro" is the exact thing the Tanker AoE buffs will mitigate. And it doesn't happen that often.

The constant 70% or above number only applies when you're the main tank in a combat scenario without CC and little downtime. Why should the other scenarios of being a secondary/tertiary tank, or having lots of cc on your team, or having downtime between fights be disregarded when you're balancing a class? This is a beta server, nothing is live yet.

Let me reiterate, I'm not saying that just because double Rage puts Tankers on even DPS grounds with a similar Brute that the Tanker's damage should be lowered. I'm saying that it should be lowered because of the AoE and Resilience advantages, combined with the multiple buff scenarios that let Tankers reach identical levels of damage, including: Double rage, Against All Odds, Soul Drain, Gauss Proc+IO sets+Incarnates, Fulcrum Shift, Leadership stacking, Overgrowth, and more. It's just Tanker AoE that's overtuned, and reducing the melee damage modifier plus bringing back Bruising in some form takes care of it without harming DPS.

I'm saying it's too common a scenario, not that it shouldn't happen. I've been very vocal about how I'd like Tankers to change so that couldn't be further from the truth.

Foot Stomp can hit up to six more targets (60% more) and has a 6.67% bigger radius. Damage Aura has a 60% bigger radius. Cross Punch has a 100% wider arc. And if you wanna be fancy, Spring Attack's damage cap is low so it doesn't benefit much from Fury.

The Gloom build was about 5% ahead before the -res changes, but both chains used Weaken Resolve. So the only difference is Melt Armor, which will do less -res but suffer less from diminishing returns.

If you're talking about the ideal SS AoE scenario, you have Foot Stomp, Damage Aura, Cross Punch, and an epic pool AoE(Two if you wanna disable your KD via Elec Fences). So even with the slightly lower numbers on the Epic Pool AoE, the raw damage is still about the same. And once you add up the increased target cap/radius/arc it goes way in favor of Tanker. As for the scenario being too specific, like I said before it's just an example. Double rage gets you to that 100% point, as well as Against All Odds, Soul Drain, Gauss Proc+IO sets+Incarnates, Fulcrum Shift, Leadership stacking, Overgrowth, and more. You're in luck, because I happened to test both chains on the same Bio/SS character using alternate builds. One using Cross Punch (only took boxing) and Melt Armor, and one using Gloom. The Gloom chain was slightly ahead, but that's due to Weaken Resolve and Achilles' Heel proc giving diminishing returns on -res from Melt Armor. I much preferred the Cross Punch+Melt Armor build since it provided more AoE and debuffs, and Gloom's DoT nature brings it down a bit for me in normal gameplay. Well, extreme buffs aren't needed and mediocre buffs get you to 100%. But I get your point about the caps. Scrapper numbers are a little murky because of how the class relies on ATO's to move ahead of the pack. For AoE I have no doubt the current tanker is more like 100% or more, but for single target it seems to hit the mark. I do think Brutes should be considered more for damage comparisons just because the class is advertised in-game as a DPS class first and a Tank class second.

Because the 90% disadvantage in capped scenarios is used to justify the AoE/Resilience advantages, while the more common buff scenarios can get the Tanker to 100%. Double Rage is an outlier, but it's just one buff scenario out of many.

Well, if they're attacking you. Sometimes they're cc'd/defeated/aggro onto someone else before that happens. Fury also has to be built up. In the AV scenario it takes some time before just your attacks get you to high fury, and in regular gameplay there's downtime before each pack of mobs.

I didn't say "just take Cross Punch", just pointing out the Tanker advantage Brutes don't have. Your point about Cross Punch has more to do with Super Strength as a whole rather than Tankers specifically.

You misunderstood. When both the Tanker and the Brute are at 2x Rage, and Brute is at 50% Fury, they both have the same levels of melee damage. And team buffs work similarly on other powersets, you can replace 2x Rage with Fulcrum Shift in those cases.

Tanker Foot Stomp has a 16 target cap to Brute's 10. That's 60% higher potential AoE damage. Tanker can also get more out of Cross Punch than Brute, since the arc is doubled. And Rage makes up for not having Fury, so much that in 50% fury and 2x Rage the Tanker deals identical levels of raw melee damage.

Bringing Bruising back in some form or another and reducing the melee damage modifier would be the best way to keep Tanker from becoming significantly better than Brute at AoE, since that way you're not reducing the Tanker's effective single target DPS. In fact you're increasing it at the early-game, where Tanker struggles most in comparison to Brute. For the record I'm talking AoE in regular team scenarios, Brutes are still slightly ahead in AE Farms which utilize multiple ranged attacks and easily saturate 100% Fury, while in normal gameplay the Brute hovers around 25-75% Fury.

That's due to the damage scale, before bringing target cap into the equation.

Keep in mind that on SS with 2xRage, a Tanker matches a Brute's raw damage output on 50% Fury while having better AoE and resilience.

Updated damage chart: For fury, it'll be: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% For enhancement+damage buffs, it'll be: 0%,100%, 200%, 300%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 600% Calculation will be: (0.95*(1+enh))/(0.75*(1+enh+fury)). Comparison with before (550% and 775%): 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 0% 1.27 0.84 0.63 0.5 0.42 100% 1.27 1.01 0.84 0.72 0.63 200% 1.27 1.09 0.95 0.84 0.76 300% 1.27 1.13 1.01 0.92 0.84 400% 1.27 1.15 1.06 0.97 0.9 450% 1.27 1.17 1.07 1 0.93 500% 1.16 1.07 1 0.93 0.9 600% 0.99 0.93 0.9 0.9 0.9 And after (500% and 700%): 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 0% 1.27 0.84 0.63 0.5 0.42 100% 1.27 1.01 0.84 0.72 0.63 200% 1.27 1.09 0.95 0.84 0.76 300% 1.27 1.13 1.01 0.92 0.84 400% 1.27 1.15 1.06 0.97 0.9 450% 1.27 1.06 0.97 0.9 0.9 500% 1.06 0.97 0.9 0.9 0.9 600% 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 Do you guys think the Tanker's advantage in the 300% and 400% areas is problematic considering the AoE and resilience advantage? Would you take a damage modifier reduction from 0.95 to 0.9, if it meant getting the Radius buffs back to +100% or getting Bruising back?

Fortunata now has access to Weaken Resolve which can slot four 90% procs, one of which is Achilles' Heel which Fortunata didn't have access to before. It also has -15% res, a modifier only SoA and Defenders currently have.

I quite like it, though I understand why some players wouldn't and adding an option to hide it might be more trouble than it's worth.