Vanden

It seems ridiculous to me! With both, you jump 50% faster than you run at base. I always took Swift and never Hurdle before Stamina was inherent, because I hate how Hurdle turns you into a bunny-hopping weirdo if you want to move fast. I asked Castle once why it was that way, and all he said was "Weird math." Which makes no sense to me, since Combat Jumping barely increases your jump speed at all, so it doesn't seem like Hurdle HAS to make you jump faster in order to work.

Fly is already at the flight speed cap at all levels. There's nothing for the Jump Pack to buff. Try using it with Hover, or while Afterburner is running too.

If you read the description for the power you'd see that it's working as intended, many of the buffs kick in when the power is toggled off.

You'll appreciate your 50 more if you earn it.

I think it's a hoax.

I tried out the new Total Focus for Doms, I was afraid it'd look silly but it's fine. I like it. The only problem is the "whoosh" sound is synched with the normal, slow animation. Any chance a new one could be made that syncs with the new one? Edit: BUG! Power Burst in Energy Assault plays no sound on activation.

Well, forgive me if I'm out of line, but that makes it sound like you have endurance issues if you don't pace yourself. I tried out your build with the changes I posted about earlier (plus a few more) on Justin, and I was pretty pleased with the results. Just seems a shame to have so much melee and AoE defense and no powers to really take advantage of it. But I did notice a few other things you could improve on your build. For example, why Positron's Blast in Fire Breath? You could put Ragnarok in there and get better versions of all its set bonuses. You could even 5-slot Ragnarok minus the Damage IO, and keep the Positron's proc in exchance for losing the toxic and psi resist bonus. Also, you've six-slotted Ring of Fire with Enfeebled Operation to get the melee defense bonuses, but since you said your playstyle is to hover out of range and blast, why do you need the melee defense? You could put an Apocalypse or Gravitational Anchor set in there for more global recharge, for example, or put the slots into Melt Armor for some recharge and accuracy, or put some slots into Fly and Afterburner to make them faster. Lastly, about the endurance thing. I break into hives if I don't try to maximize recovery, so when I tried the build on Justin I changed the slotting for Cauterizing Aura. Instead of the Preventive Medicine set, I put 2 50+5 End Mod IOs, 2 50+5 Heal IOs, and a Performance shifter proc, and moved the last slot to Stamina for a 50+5 End Mod IO. (This cost a little global recharge, but I made some of it up by swapping the Positron's Blast in Fire Breath for Ragnarok, like I said above.) I actually forgot to slot the Panacea proc in Health, but had absolutely no end problems without it using that slotting, so you could put the Preventive Medicine proc in Health instead so you don't have to lose that proc.

(And the ninjas' version in the Summer Blockbuster too) Getting slowed to a crawl when fighting these guys suuuuuucks. If our characters have slow resistance, I'd like to be able to benefit from it.

It's the same as on the regular servers, a yellow circle when fast snipe is active. That said, I can foresee an issue where even though this isn't a nerf, it could feel like a nerf. On the normal servers, when you get that yellow ring, it's like a big "push me!" sign that you want to jump on. Now, that yellow ring is on pretty much all the time, but if you've been conditioned to nail that ring every time it appears, the damage will feel lower because the ring doesn't appear with the 22% ToHit threshold that makes the damage identical to what it used to be. Maybe the ring could be a different color if you have 22% or more ToHit?

Been trying out the 64-bit client, haven't noticed any real issues. We'll have to try to get a mothership raid or Hamidon raid running on Justin to see if our modern machines are still bottlenecking.

Do these numbers stack, for 100% damage total on the first attack, or is 80% the actual total damage buff (meaning it's a 60% damage buff that suppresses in combat)?

Issue 24 was left in a very incomplete state on the test server when the game was closed. Homecoming team is trying to figure out what the Live devs' final plans were for some changes and implement them, according to Leandro.

Only if you don't read anything else. On the live shards, to achieve fast snipe, you need 22% +ToHit. That'll get you a 2.76 scale damage attack. On Justin, while in combat, if you have that same 22% ToHit, the fast snipe still does 2.76 scale damage. You are just able to use fast snipe without the ToHit, but at lower damage scale.

Blasters haven't been nerfed.

Corruptors are not as good at buffing/debuffing as Defenders, and Defenders are not as good at dealing damage as Corruptors. That's a fact, and you can't close that gap with IOs. However, you can close the survivability gap between Tankers and Brutes with IOs, and when you do, you have two ATs of identical survivability with indistinguishable aggro generation abilities, but one does much more damage. That's not the same situation Defenders and Corruptors are in. This is really downplaying the value of having someone on the team to take alphas and hold aggro. It is incredibly useful. Dominators can't do that nearly as reliably as a Brute or Tanker can. Well you kind of answered your own question here. Modifying the powers of one AT is also much less work and much less likely to have collateral effects that ripple through the whole game.

Maybe, but aggroing enemies is literally the entire purpose of the Tanker inherent (regardless of how that's actually implemented mechanically). There's a strong case for it. And there wouldn't be a Tanker/Brute conundrum if the only thing Brutes had was the potential to reach Tanker levels of survivability; Brutes' ability to grab and hold aggro just as well as a Tanker is an essential ingredient for that contentious soup.

It's what the Tanker AT is built to do, so unless we're gonna completely rework Tankers into something unrecognizable another AT shouldn't be able to do it exactly as well while also being better at damage.

Like I said, it's not about making the Tankers feel good about themselves. It's about what they bring to the team. If you invite a Tanker to your team, you know pretty much every enemy near that Tanker is going to be attacking them and not you. If you invite a Brute to your team, you know pretty much every enemy near that Brute is going to be attacking them and not you AND they'll also contribute a lot of DPS to the team. It's not a "More of A, Less of B" situation like it is with other similar ATs, it's more like "More of A, exactly as much B."

I would prefer to see well-thought out new sets than lazy ports.

I didn't mention T1 and T2 powers because we weren't talking about specific implementations of the idea until you said I wanted to turn Brutes into Scrappers; until then it was a more abstract discussion of the idea. And I haven't rejected any other ideas, I'm just arguing the merits of this one, because like I said, if we're serious about addressing the Tanker/Brute issue, it needs to be discussed. Brutes should be worse at grabbing aggro than Tankers, tanking is the whole point of the Tanker AT. Better than Scrappers but worse than Tankers at holding aggro is exactly the place a hybrid class like Brute should be, and it's definitely not where it is. Those arguments can be settled, because at the end of the day, all those ATs are noticeably better at something than the ATs they're being compared to.

I think you've jumped to conclusions about what exactly the changes I'd make would be. I wouldn't remove all taunt abilities from the Brute; the T1 and T2 primary powers would keep the single target taunts if it were up to me. The Taunt power itself would be unchanged. That's still a good amount of aggro management tools, the Brute just wouldn't be able to stand in a mob with a taunt aura running and throw out an AoE to grab all the aggro without even trying any more.

No AT pairing is affected to the degree that Tankers and Brutes are. Defenders and Corruptors, for example: Corruptors' secondary powers are only about 75% as effective as the Defender versions. Tankers and Brutes, on the other hand, there's virtually no discernible difference in their ability to control aggro. Not at all. Making Brutes less able to control aggro has a real, tangible effect on the value of a Tanker in a team, because now they're the only AT that can perform at that level. There's nothing psychosomatic about it.

Brutes were designed as tanks because they had to be at first, since there were no Tankers for villains to team with. Now the ATs are completely side-agnostic, and they really should be reexamined. Nerfing Brutes' auto-taunt is not as bad as giving Tankers a damage boost, because the former makes the ATs more distinct, while the latter makes them more alike. The only difference between Brutes' and Tankers aggro generation is that on single-target attacks, the Tanker can taunt enemies around the target too. Not even the taunt values are different, and since 90% of the enemies that will be affected by this AoE taunt are going to be in range of the player character's taunt aura anyway, it's almost no difference at all. Nerfing or removing the taunt effect from Brutes' attacks would make the difference in aggro generation between the two ATs actually meaningful in practice.

All that would do is make the Tanker feel better about themself because the enemies are attacking the Tanker and not the Brute. It wouldn’t change the fact the the Brute could hold the aggro just as well if the Tanker wasn’t there. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but if we’re serious about “addressing the Tanker/Brute conundrum” we have to at least consider the idea. We can’t just buff everything all the time, that can only lead to power creep.

Anyone ever play Freedom Force? The speedster in that game, Bullet, had a move called Fist Fusillade. That’s what Flurry should look like. I’ll see if I can find a video of it when I’m off work.