[The Spider's Handbook: An Incomplete Guide to VEATs]

4 hours ago, Koopak said:

I definitely feel you are underselling Fort's mez capabilities. The luke warm response to a dps AT having access to an AoE Hold of the same strength (or with Fate Sealed, more) than a Controller deserves more highlight.

 

Hybrid Forts are extremely powerful for many reasons, cc is not one those reasons.

 

Dominate with procs is just a crazy power, and the aoe confuse does aoe confuse things. If you wanna stretch that as "CC" capabilities, pop off I guess.

[Buff Controllers and Dominators by doubling the effect and endurance cost of melee AT defensive powers]

10 hours ago, gabrilend said:

Wow, I'm honored to have had the same thought as him 🥰

 

That is not a good thing.

[Buff Controllers and Dominators by doubling the effect and endurance cost of melee AT defensive powers]

The kitchen is on fire, stop cooking.

[Alignment Powers in Modern CoH]

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

[An Identity for Brutes?]

1 hour ago, wjrasmussen said:

Oh, so the game is balanced now.  I disagree that it is balanced around IOs.

 

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

[An Identity for Brutes?]

52 minutes ago, Troo said:

Shin you are saying Tanks out perform Brutes in nearly all situations?

 

Full teams, smaller teams, <5 targets, >5 targets, even level, +4, level 20, 30, 40, 50, 50+, etc.

 

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.

[Bio/Dark what's all the Hype well I see now.]

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.

[Heal or No Heal?]

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.

[Death before Surrender - an idea for an addition to the Brute fury mechanic]

30 minutes ago, Troo said:

and to anyone trying to say Brutes were never in the middle of Tankers and Scrappers for survivability and damage. Please see below

 

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

[Death before Surrender - an idea for an addition to the Brute fury mechanic]

13 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Which in turn will make scrappers and stalkers need a damage buff ..

 

No, not really.

 

1 hour ago, gabrilend said:

which should help them feel more aligned mechanically to their identity as a "middle-ground" between scrappers and tankers

 

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. 

[ARS VS AV AND CONTAINMENT]

Try making your target wet.

[Death before Surrender - an idea for an addition to the Brute fury mechanic]

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

20 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Damage as measured by DPS is irrelevant to balance?

 

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.

20 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Metas are formed not by a crazy guy, but by a crazy team that figures out a way to beat the unbeatable and then everyone copies that until another crazy team finds a way to do it faster or easier

 

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.)

[An Identity for Brutes?]

32 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

The problem is that there is no objective standard . . . other than DPS.  Some players like to eke out every possible drop.  I take it that you are one of them.

 

But you have to realize that not everyone plays the way that you do.  Nor do they want to.  You keep insinuating, or outright stating, that makes them . . . less.

 

This is a game that can be played many ways.  Your way is not the only way.

 

And even if your way was the only way there will always be one powerset or one AT at the top of the chart and another at the bottom; Unless we just give everyone the exact same attack stats.  And that, to me, would be boring and worse.

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

12 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

But, as stated by Videra, you also have team buffs, and might use inspirations and other purchasable buffs to get to those caps.  I also understand that some of those might not be available at 4* play.  But you will have Barrier spam and team buffs.

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

7 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Please explain:  Where are you getting that from?  Why is *come from* between asterisks?  And why is solo play a vacuum?

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

31 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Does the presumed fact automatically make the entire AT bad? 

Don't other ATs also do less damage than stalkers and scrappers and even brutes?

 Does that make them bad too?

"Well, they also aren't as tanky as tanks."  OK, let's accept that as true.  But aren't brutes, on average, sturdier than stalkers and scrappers?  

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Pretty much this. Also after the Fire Armor changes . . . I am very way when I see someone suggest changes they think everyone wants that might very make a set or AT worse for multiple players of said set or AT.

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

1 minute ago, Ston said:

Problem I see here is Tankers and Scrappers are better jack of all trades melee ATs. They can both do the job of brutes while having higher ceilings in durability or dps. Tanker because of recent buffs to their inherent ability. Scrappers because of ATOs. Brutes don’t really have anything makes them a good replacement for either of those ATs. Even if they can’t reach the same levels of performance, they should have a tool that’s more interactive that makes them at least a “fun” alternative to those ATs. 

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

23 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

     Well you can blame the current Powers Team for that.  The devs have passively acknowledged that Spines original animation times and DPAs are terrible, which is why Blasters/Doms get a much more powerful Lunge (Skewer), Dom Impale animation was sped up, and Blaster Thorn Burst animation was sped up.  By changing these numbers and buffing these powers, they are admitting that the powers were underperforming: which is a correct statement, they sucked.

 

     At the same time, the actual OG Spines powers that Thorns and Plant Manipulation are based on, were deliberately not buffed.  Spines is intentionally not buffed and kept bad, for the same reason that Radiation Melee is not buffed and kept bad: some people use it for farming.  The Powers Team is literally more concerned about keeping AE Farmers down, than with making all of the powersets be similarly good at the actual video game outside of AE.

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

3 minutes ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

what happened to fire armor?

I don't farm so I'm apparently out of the loop

 

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.

[An Identity for Brutes?]

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

[Kheldian Inherent Revamp]

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.

[Can endurance cost get suppressed while travel powers are suppressed?]

On 4/17/2024 at 8:57 AM, Uun said:

I'm not aware of any toggle in the game that stops using endurance while it's suppressed.

 

I missed the part where that matters.