Vanden

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.

I’m just gonna be that guy: we should maybe consider removing or reducing the single-target taunt from Brute attacks. I think that’s the number one thing that makes Brutes step on Tankers’ toes in a team setting. Brutes would still have their high threat modifier and Taunt over Confront in their primaries, so they wouldn’t become completely useless for holding aggro, and Fury could be tweaked to build better when enemies aren’t attacking the Brute. I know this wouldn’t be popular, but I do think it would work.

It actually isn’t called Cloaking Device any more...

+1

Yes, although to attune it you’d have to slot it, combine it with an enhancement catalyst, and then unslot it with an unslotter. Better to sell the enhancement you have on the market and then buy an attuned one with the money from that; it’s the same price to buy unattuned and attuned. Attunement and boosting are mutually exclusive. You can’t boost attuned enhancements, and attuning boosted enhancements makes them lose the boosts. You can’t slot both the standard and superior versions of unique enhancements.

I kinda like how they are now. They aren't too challenging, and having at most one level shift means players who've only just started down the incarnate path can contribute nearly as much as a player with tier 4 powers in all six slots.

I don't think "dizzy" will make sense as a way to indicate the enemy will take more damage, especially when right now it's universally used to indicate stuns or holds. The shattering armor effect makes a lot more sense in that regard.

I don't think that's necessary. There's enough superfluous floating text already. Does the entire team really need to know, in no uncertain terms, when a Scrapper gets a critical chance bonus, or a Sentinel gets some bonus absorb?

I've always felt like the orange damage numbers were enough of a visual indicator of damage procs going off for me.

Many procs (mostly the control procs) have some visual FX when they activate, to let players know they've gone off. Could we possibly add one to the -Res procs? The ones in Achilles' Heel, Annihilation, and Fury of the Gladiator. Shatter Armor from the VEAT Mace Mastery pool, has a pretty good FX for this, I think; it's basically a, well, shattering sort of effect, easy to notice, but also fairly concept-agnostic. It wouldn't look weird on a mismatched character, like the electric field in the Devastation proc, or the ice block in the Blistering Cold proc. It'd be nice to know when they're working without having to watch the combat log like a hawk.

Well now don't forget that here on Homecoming we have much easier access to enhancement boosters and purple sets than we did on Live. You may be able to get those slots from somewhere else; for example, if, like me, you put 3 slots into Build Up and Aim for recharge, you can now get away with only two slots in each, with 50+5 common recharge IOs, for virtually identical recharge.

I tried using the Jump Pack with the slotting I mentioned above, and I also got the 87.95mph flight cap. I also turned on Afterburner in the first mission of Mender Ramiel's arc, while under the effects of Limitless Radial Freeeem, and the cap was again 87.95mph. Turning on the Jump Pack as well had no effect at that point. So it looks like 87.95mph is the absolute cap for flight speed, and the slotting in my earlier post gets you a mere 1.72mph short of it.

Oh. Well there's nothing you can do to prevent Repel from Hurricane. As for the recharge proc, besides "it would go off occasionally," I don't have an answer for you.

Whirlwind is a toggle like any other. The only thing that sets it apart from other toggles is that it overrrides your normal idle and movement animations while it's active. And it doesn't do repel.