ScarySai

That is not a good thing.

The kitchen is on fire, stop cooking.

This has my support, there's no real reason for it to remain as-is at this point.

Well it's nice that you feel that way, but the devs outright said they do multiple times.

Every situation except maybe a prolonged ST fight at damage cap favors tanks, where the advantage for brute is 13% or lower depending on the set. If you dispute this, just know you have an uphill battle that very much isn't in your favor.

The main advantage is survival. Dark covers the weaknesses of most of the top sets, being SR, shield, Bio. rad and invuln, hard to kill any of them with how strong the DL heal is on a tanker. If your goal is to murder things harder than any other melee short of a min/maxed axe/bio scrapper, make a bio/martial or a rad/ss tanker.

Since the minion recharge changes I consider them more expendable now than ever. If I can heal them without risk, sure, but I don't try to keep them topped off ever. Just cap their defense and send them out.

Ah yes, the same stat page that put blasters as an 8 on melee damage.

No, not really. 1: It doesn't help brutes in a meaningful capacity even if we assume the most unrealistic best case scenario for your idea. 2: Being the 'middle ground' was never their identity.

Try making your target wet.

The fury acting as a second life thing is a fun idea I thought up awhile ago, but ultimately, this doesn't help brutes right now, especially if you're going to gimp their HP by 25% to do it. Everything else here would actively make them worse.

Now who's putting words in people's mouths? Your main points are irrelevant to a balance discussion. Stating the obvious fact of there always going to be a top, a bottom, and some variance, and that different playstyles exist adds nothing to the discourse. Wow doesn't balance warlocks around the players who kill rabbits for 'teh lulz'. Nor should they, they dont matter in a balance discussion. How would that even work? Personally, I dont want to know. They balance around the people actually playing their class to at least a competent level. And how do they achieve this? By objective measurements in performance outside of raw dps. We don't need a parser to figure that stuff out (though a good one would be quite nice.)

With respect, this is entirely irrelevant to a balance discussion. And we do have objective standards, that's how metas are formed. It's not typically just some crazy guy making things up, and everyone blindly obeys.

That's fine if you just want to discuss normal play, but when it comes to balance, this is a terrible argument. Does kinetic melee not need a buff because I can eat a bunch of reds and do more damage than someone who isn't? Is regen better than bio or stone because I can keep a tray full of purples and oranges on me at all times? Is sentinel good because some -res is better than no -res? A barrier'd fire scrapper is capable of replacing a brute in the hardest content of the game, and they don't even have a taunt aura, if we really want to bring things like that into it. It doesn't help the case of brutes, and only really spreads the general misinformation.

I actually directly proved that tank nerfs wouldn't make brutes more desirable a few months ago, so I do hope the solution isn't just to nuke tanks. They should keep some of the power they've been given - but brutes should have something that makes you want to roll a brute. I can't even fathom a brute I could tolerate right now if procs got whacked, they're more dependent on them than tanks are. Maybe by default, since the entire scrapper class would crumble if the ato gets caught in the blast. Then we're back to square one and literally nobody is happy, lol.

Solo play is inherently a vacuum, there are no external factors besides what you bring with you. Outside of barrier, temps, t9s or mog, you're not capping a brute's stats with the same ease as a tank, even with a good build.

1. Yes, because they do not shine in any areas, and scrappers/tanks can easily take their place even in the hardest content while having areas they excel in. Look at 4* comps with a taunter, you're not gonna see a brute unless it's regen, but more often than not, it will be a scrapper or tank. 2. Absolutely. Blasters are the chosen one, corruptors and defenders multiply the damage of themselves and their peers, supporting the team without being useless themselves, Kheldians, are slated for a rework, sentinels are the laughing stock of the game, masterminds are slated for a rework, control ATs such as dominators and controllers are largely considered weak at the high end and in need of a rework. 3. Among other things, yes. 4. No, brutes have higher caps than stalkers and scrappers, but share the same scales, a well made brute is not significantly more durable than it's scrapper counterpart outside of external factors on average. Even defensively kitted brutes won't be getting too far past the 70s in all res without neutering their damage, at that point, you're just a gimped tank.

I'll never understand how the creators of axe cyclone could possibly take issue with the armor meant for sacrificing durability for damage ending up doing more damage.

A lot of people don't realize that Brutes were only the popular tank AT eons ago because they were essentially the only option. This isn't 2008, Stalkers are good, Scrappers actually do something now, and tanks aren't a joke AT anymore.

For some outlandish reason, they did this with stone assault too, but refuse to buff Stone and SS's version of hurl for some vague, nebulous balance-related consideration that doesn't make any sense at all.

Burn across the board for every AT was nuked from orbit, barely does any notable damage now, procs worse, and only spawns one patch. In essence, you have to proc it to do anything, funnily enough. Brute burn was bugged in a way that heavily benefitted them. The patches spawned close to a mob's level and benefitted from fury, so instead of burn needing to be procced to do ANYTHING to a mob, things that stood in your burn took a lot of damage over time. This is the only reason fire armor was so popular on brutes for farming, and why rad tanks for active farming have largely taken over. Now call me crazy, but maybe that's how the power should work.

And since then, Tanks got turbo buffed, and one of the only reasons to make a brute - fire armor, got nerfed into essentially irrelevance.

I just think each form should have its own inherent in addition to the base. I think things like this conflict with the playstyle and overcomplicate something simple.

I missed the part where that matters.

Sentinels should have longer range than anyone in the game imo. They are built like a sniper, with lower target caps and such - but lack a snipe, lack any notable damage, and lack pretty much any redeeming qualities. Even peacebringers laugh at them. If you could build a sentinel to be some eye in the sky sniper, that'd be...something?