Sovera

But you seem stuck that one test is game play conditions and the other is a DPS test, and that the DPS test is not a gameplay conditions test. Yes, you are correct.

Did you miss the part where I mentioned -two- tests, one of which is 'normal game play conditions'?

Pylons are a metric, flawed as it may be. At least we know how much damage gets done. But chasing the maximum better pylon time has ruined the concept of testing a build since it's all about stacking -res procs and effects despite the minimal effect they have in regular gameplay. As for 'unless double stacked', double stacked is the normal way it goes in any minimally IO slotted build that has Hasten in. It's not chased, it just happens on its own, and actually requires an effort on the part of the user in not letting it double stack.

The devs don't need to be defended. It's a suggestion forum, suggestions are made. Devs see them. Devs decide to implement them. Or not. Lawyering from players is not a part of the equation.

Gloom improves every build it is inserted in, but honestly give Sav/Stone a try. Very sturdy and Fury pumps the bleed DoTs, Brimstone DoTs, Mud Pots, while Sav with its two AoEs can keep on clearing groups. When I tried EM/Stone Whirling Hands and Brimstone did not make AoE clearing feel good.

I've taken a break from the game but I'm actually pondering making a new Tanker and come back since CoH is my comfort game. Tbh and not something people want to hear in the Tanker forums, but Brutes are just better to play the game. Game does not ask or require uber tanky and anything that kills a Brute will also kill a Tanker. When both survive without a problem the question is why pick the version that does less damage. Which, despite some -very- vocal people (love ya, Bill) the Tanker firmly is. Perhaps in a world without Incarnates or 50 inf inspirations that can be restocked between missions. Reasons to pick Tanker is for the combos. Which is why despite what I just ranted about Tankers I'll be making one. I've refined my oldie Fire/Energy Melee, with its two early-ish AoEs and EM to counter a Tanker's lower damage, to not need Tough toggled on and have Energy Punch instead of Barrage (Barrage 'steals' Focus). Barrage still needs to be taken but it is going to be muled and I want to test if the leveling experience feels better with it. To be honest it should have replaced Fire/Claws as the 'dragon' option, but I've a soft spot for Fire/Claws. I'll post the pylon times later if the leveling felt good, and maybe replace Claws with it.

The damage was lower than I liked and DoT damage is not a good mesh for CoH. Perhaps if there was a mode with harder enemies. The AoE is nice and three PbAoEs are good for clearing faster though. The Brute version came out pretty amazing, especially the Savage/Stone with Brimstone helping and Fury pumping out the myriad DoTs. But even that one it ended up slowly turning boring with the very fast attacks doing delayed damage. On tougher enemies Savage shines combined with it's Build-up mechanic that ensures 100% bleed chance. Start hitting things and see the numbers climbing. Hit a hard enemy and see its HP disappearing a flurry of whittled numbers. But then fight the minion by its side and here we are hitting it 3-4 times, and often hitting it a fifth just to be sure it dies after having experienced enemies alive on a sliver of HP after trusting the DoTs to kill it. That slows the actual gameplay, or it did with me.

Super Strength is one of the strongest sets. This is not gut feelings. We have tests. Tests have been posted. It both clears maps (Trapdoor test) and beats up pylons in pretty top tier echelons. But it does so only when double stacked even when it creates a loop of 10 seconds down and 50 seconds up. So simply asking for a buff won't do. What the set has is clunkyness and unacceptable downsides with the crash. Lets keep in mind it is 'top tier', not the best. Energy Melee has no downsides (the HP loss is tiny and countered by regen alone, and that's if the armor set does not have a heal) on top of phenomenal CC that can stun even AVs, on top of being the top tier damage. So reworking Super Strength to not have Rage's crash should not be a big deal. Handclap definitely needs to do damage though (sonic damage, yes?) because all sets should have an early AoE. A better rework than Fault though since Stone Melee -still- has no early level AoE thanks to Fault being a terrible power even after the rework (yes, it can CC, but the damage is crummy and the accuracy coupled with the recharge compounds how it is a level 50 power-when-all-the-IOs-are-in-place). I would say lower Rage's power to... 50% or something. Two stacked it would grant 100% instead of 160%. Claws goes around with 70% with two stacked Follow-Up. Or rename Rage to Adrenaline and make it a mini-Fury mechanic where the longer the fight goes on the more Adrenaline is pumping and the damage gets higher (I favor this approach since it is proactive, people do not just hang around while their Rage stacks gets higher merely by existing). 'Adrenaline' is a good concept, but it can be called whatever. Even 'Seriousness' (but it does not roll off the tongue) because even Super-man or Goku will invariably start the fight with taps and as they realize the enemy is not being defeated they up the strength of their blows. So it's less Hulk raging and more 'oh, okay, you're not stopping, but you're also not dying, so it's safe to hit you harder'. What a lot of people seem to forget is that these power-ups do not exist in a vacuum. Despite Claws going around with a perpetual 70% damage boost it has not crushed the competition (it's actually a well made set, but tests have not shown it to be a monster and what it does comes more out of being able to slot two -res procs), and this is because the damage of the attacks is slightly lowered to compensate. Same as Super-Strength being mathematically pretty bad without Rage. So walking around with a mini-Fury effect does not have to be OP when the rest of the rest is balanced around it. What really matters is the mechanics of Rage and 10 seconds twiddling thumbs is -bad-. It is not fun. Unfun designs have no place in a -game-.

Fire Armor is one of the reasons to go Brute instead of Scrapper. Burn is very sweet and on a good recharge compared to the 'mini nukes' like Shield Charge who have the recharge of a nuke but do just a bit more than a regular PbAoE (regular PbAoE outdamaging handily Shield Charge in the time it takes to recharge). On a Tanker in particular it makes all the non palatable sets with no early AoEs something that can handle AoE situations. The fancy Fire-Armor-for-Scrappers is Radiation Armor because it has -two- pbAoEs in the secondary. Sadly in my experiments Radiation Therapy is not the equal to Burn in making sets-with-no-early-AoE palatable, but once out of that early phase the burst of primary-based-AoE followed by Ground Zero and Radiation Therapy does decimate things. The Trapdoor thread in these Scrapper forums has a lot of data and shows that Rad Armor is the 'new' big fancy, but also that Bio Armor lacks such and still gets about the same times on account of its mechanics (that said Rad Armor is beefier).

I'm sure some would use Discord. It is a different culture though and there's not much to be done other than adapting to it. Personally I don't look much at what others are running because I log in and play what I want. Do I want to do an ITF? A Tinpex? An arc? I advertise and people join me instead of the other way around.

Keep in mind Slow debuff protection protects against recharge as well. It is the main reason anyone builds for that. Not all enemies do -recharge, but those who do can neuter attacks -and- defensive clickies. Again, just something to come back to if you notice this is a problem. You can probably add 5% from Barrier. Barrier is a good Destiny slot to use as a panic button. Between the ATO stacks and Barrier to be honest most of my resist tanks don't even have Tough toggled up and it is only taken because I have to to reach Weave. Just playing Devil's Advocate but in theory you'll be using Siphon in AoE situations anyway since you do not have enough AoE to just keep on cycling. If you were to take Touch of Fear you can actually do a rotation of ToF, Shadow Maul, ToF, Siphon. Repeat. While ToF is not great the spammability of the power makes the gap closer between other AoE powers. When we're in AoE situations we usually want to continue AoE, not use ST powers. This is an old build I gave a quick polish before posting. S/L at 40% for Barrier's 5% to finish capping, everything but Cold and Psi requiring one more ATO stack and Barrier to reach 90% (or just three stacks of the ATO), powers slotted, damage procs, Tough still needs to be toggled on but meh, Radiation Armor sweats endurance. As a bonus it has Gloom and Dark Obliteration and the travel powers can be subbed for whatever, Tactics isn't needed (it's no FA). Considering the damage I'd consider ToF instead of Dark Obliteration since Dark Obliteration is 160 damage on a 10 second CD while ToF can be obtained sooner (push Gamma Boost to 30 or such) and goes for 133 damage on a 2.5 second timer (ergo ToF, Shadow Maul, ToF). Two ToFs makes 260 damage and it's already ahead of Dark Obliteration while this one is still recharging. Bigger radius on Obliteration though, but thanks to the Tanker increased radius it's 9y wide which is decent-ish on top of soft CC. Anyway, see if some of the slotting ideas are of help.

Posting your build would let us tweak it, though that would usually involve a lot of moolah. Though it is not hard to earn. About two weeks of playing the game once at 50, or less if playing with merits. Best part is that once earned the gear can be thrown at your next alt preventing re-grinding all the cash again.

Bit more resistances (except fire/cold, but they are not terribly important or common, unlike S/L and E/N), immunity to -ToHit debuffs, less AoE thanks to not having Dark Obliteration, maybe more ST despite having Gloom just comparing (Fury at zero for both, but added Musculature's 33% to both as well) ET (435 VS 617) and TF (430 VS 492). Though Gloom's so OP it may still come out ahead despite its slotting. We would only know if tested on a pylon/trapdoor. Rest of the slotting is a bit all over the place tbh, and I do dislike powers underslotted. Anyway, can see for yourself.

One stack of the ATO Another near 14% from the other two stacks, another 5% if going Barrier for whatever reason. The heal from Radiation Siphon probably counts as 'resistance' if Bopper was reading this since it adds 'time until defeat' in the alphabet soup of a math that he uses.

You don't need to go over 90% resistances. Your Tanker ATO will give three stacks of 6.7% of which Mids only accounts for one, and even that single one you're already over 90%. Anything over 90% is wasted. Instead try aiming lower and leave two stacks (roughly 14%, or in Mids lowering the resistances to 83%-ish. This will free some slots. Nvm, I see Meltdown was toggled on. Swapping the slotting between Shadow Maul and Siphon Life ensures you get the ATO stacks during ST as well as during AoE situations, where you'll not be using Shadow Maul in purely ST moments. Also, slash and psi are not great procs, so swapping them for their energy and negative counterparts is a bit of easy min maxing. No need for Kismet since your attacks are already good enough to hit +3 enemies even without it and without Soul Drain who definitely puts them over the hit cap. Now, unfortunately I feel obliged to say these are just minor min maxes. To truly min max it you would have to rebuild it near from scratch since you have a resist based tank who is not resist capped and doesn't have enough S/L defense to help survival (though some disagree about the use of S/L defense since it gets shorn off by -def attacks). The heals and the shield will help and for, say, 80% of the content you will probably survive (especially since Melt down and/or Barrier can be panic buttons, as well as inspirations being a thing), but truly min maxed you'd be at 90% (with two stacks of ATO and 5% from Barrier, so roughly 77% on Mids) on top of 45% to S/L (with 5% from Barrier, so 40% on Mids). The game does not REQUIRE brutal min maxing to survive though so you might find your build to be enough to handle whatever content you decide to throw it at, but if you find yourself squishy then consider these points. I did some minor tweaks which I recommend.

Radiation Melee is #1 on a Brute in my book. Not that it does the best ever damage, but seeing it from all angles. Exemplars well with an early AoE, forgiving and easy ST rotation, built in heal (won't do miracles, but it does top off HP that's being whittled). For a new player I would recommend Stone Armor since it achieves greatness, but if wanting to go offense then Fire Armor. It's squishier but can be made sturdy and survives on the merit of killing stuff before they have the time to kill you (not joshing. Dropping Burn is enough to kill half a spawn with that one click). Energy Melee hits the hardest but has a more complicated rotation, gaps in the rotation, weaker AoE, and, capital sin in my book, exemplars worse. It's what I would recommend when desiring to always play at max level though. CoH being what CoH is you'll probably just make and play them all.

Made one. Same ST as EM/Fire, worse AoE, much sturdier.

As Pulverizer (sorry man, I can't make myself misspell the name :D) said I've a Fire Armor/Stone Tank in my signature. Fire is pretty sturdy though it mainly works on kill first instead of 'go in and AFK in the middle of things' like most tanks like to brag about. It was not the combo I liked the most (though I loved the lava skins in Stone since it made the combo so visually thematic) but it has built in CC and good sources for Force Feedback procs which further help with survival.

My own build for pointers. I've taken to use it as my 'main' due to how exemplary it exemplars despite EM/Fire being brute damage without -res finnickyness. It does behave better in the Trapdoor test than the EM version though. I did not pick Shockwave though. Burn and Spin is all the AoE the build needs (IMO) with Shockwave actually slowing down the arresting. It has value for mitigation with the KD but I don't feel that I need it and I noticed the skill was just gathering dust, hence it is not picked. Your build does reach the mitigation values needed and wanted but it lacks some QoL like procs in Burn which elevate the damage from warm breeze to blowtorch. Regardless pick what slotting seems useful and incorporate in your own build.

Something like this? One free power to take whatever. Taunt, maybe?

Something like this. I keep trying to like StJ but the damage being funneled to Crushing Uppercut and removed from the builders does not make it very satisfying to me.

Indeed. Just look over the Brunker thread.

I don't math like that. I hit something while Assault is up. Then I turn it off and hit something again. Then I use an online math calculator to see the difference. That is how I saw Assault was worth 4-5% and Musculature 45% is worth 15%.

Alternating Meltdown and Hybrid might have worth.

Claws/Rad Scrapper. I did this test a few days back on an unprocbomb-ed build. 5:44 5:45 An improvement on the 7 minutes of just Spin and 7:33 adding Shockwave. 3:01 on the pylon. Improvement of about a minute from adding procced RT with its -res to the rotation. Claws/Fire Brute is still ahead.