Auroxis

To be clear I want the 20% -res to stay, not necessarily in the form of Bruising.

In both scenarios you're taking away features from players. What matters isn't only what you think the class should have, but also what it currently has. And has had for the past 10 years.

That's almost the same as the total resistance debuff output from radiation emission/pain/thermal/time/nature on a corruptor. Would you be ok as a corruptor if the -res got replaced with an AoE and a higher damage multiplier?

Against a +4 AV with the rare alpha slot (making it +3) it's a 13% resistance debuff before resistances.

It's a nerf in AV fights and a buff for clearing. I do think the AoE buffs are sufficient for clearing and would rather have a bruising buff over the damage buff, but I'm just reiterating my previous words at this point.

Sure I don't mind not having this discussion ITT, but multiplying damage taken isn't just "more damage" in my book, you can agree to disagree. Let's just end it here.

What? Resistance debuffs multiply damage taken by the target from all sources, how is that not a force multiplier?

Cottage rule has nothing to do with what a class "should" do, it's about taking away features from players without giving a similar feature to replace it. In this case, the feature being taken away is force multiplication against single targets. And a higher melee damage multiplier and damage cap aren't similar enough to replace that.

Well a better example would be that good aggro management also bundles up mobs to make them easier to AoE down, like those scattered mobs at the start of Apex. AoE them and then hide behind an obstacle while your team is finishing up on the last pack, and stuff goes down a lot faster.

I guess it depends on your definition of "Support": If you mean "keeps teammates alive", then aggro management does just that. If you mean buffs/heals to keep your teammates alive, then the only examples are higher values on Grant Cover and the existence of Ground Zero (shared by scrapper and brute). If you mean "force multiplier", then the higher values on -res powers and Bruising are a thing (on live, at least).

Welp, thanks for clearing that up. I hope we get some kind of force multiplier to replace it.

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.