Brutal Justice

I built a brute specifically to run whirlwind. Sudden acceleration and the force feedback procs and the power is gravy. The biggest issue is managing the extreme end cost of the power. .9 something end drain plus another -1 end proc in the power. If these changes go live I will be rerolling the brute as a tank. If they ever port regen to tanks then I’ll have no reason to build a brute. Do you even whirlwind bro?

Granite has its own mez protection. Running rooted just gives you double protection and regen

Wooo 🥳 ice armor should have some absorb because it coined the effect. invuln’s invincibility should get a deflect mechanic that deals proportional damage back at its attacks super reflexes... well... already has avoidance in pvp so I guess... nerf regen!

I would argue absorb may actually be original to ice armor. When dodging attacks it will often float the word above your head “absorbed” rather than dodged. It has done this for as long as I can remember, long before the absorb mechanic existed. Ice armor was absorbing before absorption was cool 🥶

Is it possible it doesn’t break hide if you drop it without hitting any enemies, and then it breaks hide if you drop it at their feet? I am pretty sure this is what happens with burn. If I drop it without hitting anything it doesn’t break hide. If I drop it at their feet it breaks hide.

Uh... the point is it’s a power selection and not a costume... you’re still a 2’ fairy you’re just encased in 10 feet of rock. If the 2’ fairy hits with X damage. I would expect the 2’ fairy in 2 tons of rock to hit with X+ damage. So yes, I am serious. Granite should have +damage. Your costume shouldn’t affect anything.

Remove the -damage and add +damage instead. No way that huge rock monster hits softer than the 2’ fairy it was for 32 levels.

Regen for brutes does have a taunt aura in integration. I see a lot of people asking for at least an aura and never see anybody point this out.

Very good read Billy!

Nobody is trying to take damage away from tanks. Tanks do pretty decent damage as they are. Their biggest damage struggle simply comes from powers coming later in level and putting more focus on survival than damage with those early slots. Just as an early level brute, scrapper, or stalker tend to be quite squishy. Nobody is advocating for “we must have 1 tanker on every team!” Most people are advocating for uniqueness not homogenization. Mustard to your ketchup. Not catsup to your ketchup. CoH has never tried to be comic accurate because Super Man is a bad character. Once Super Man is on the scene the rest of the league might as well sit down because either Super Man can handle it himself or the lesser heroes will end up paste. “Hey Green Arrow, give me a hand over here.” “Sure thing Clark!” -splat CoH has balance between archetypes. That was always the goal of the devs. Nerf Regen! Balance is necessary in a game that wants to survive. Replayability is vital to the life of a game. In CoH this comes in the form of alts. I believe the level headed people who want to see the game be around for a long time understand you can’t just buff buff buff. I believe the original devs understood this as well which is why they made many unpopular changes and very rarely listened to the buff buff buff crowd. The heart and soul of this game is in the different archetypes and those archetypes have to have balance. Nobody is asking for 1 hero to equal 3 minions. Nobody is asking for the required holy trinity. Nobody is trying to turn this game into WoW. People are asking for diversity. People are posting how it feels to play. I want to see raw data between an inv/broadsword and a broadsword/inv. Any archetype. An elec Armor/ice melee vs an ice melee/elec. Equal slotting in the attacks. Etc. I want to see to what degree these level of buffs upsets the balance.

Stone melee wasn’t included because the tier 1 is already better than the tier 2 dpa wise

How about some tower defense type of maps/missions. Where enemies come at you so fast your incarnate nukes can’t keep up. Not annoying mobs with annoying amounts of debuffs. Standard amounts of debuffs and trickery is good. Tanks have a hard time holding aggro. Chaos ensues. Everybody is clicking all the powers, push all the buttons! The respec trials became much more fun when the wait was removed. There are a couple Croatoa missions, that if sped up, would achieve this Lock them out for level 50 content to prevent power leveling. As long as AE farms exist they won’t cause farming issues. I would rather be overcome by shear numbers than debuffs that turn me into NOT a super hero

I think the .95 modifier and damage cap are fine. The max targets is probably good too. The end increase is great. The increased range and arc is the offender. Personally I don’t think +damage is the right direction for tanks. Also the fault swap is not good.

I am not talking about pylon times. What is the optimal attack chain for war mace? Clobber, shatter, jawbreaker? Again, I don’t have actual numbers but percents should be the same due to modifier. I’ll make some up. Clobber-120 shatter-100 jawbreaker-95 scrapper- 120x1.15=150. 165 with 10% crit 100x1.15=115. 127 with 10% crit 95x1.15=109. 120 with 10% crit tanker- 120x.95=114 100x.95=95 95x.95=90 scrapper deals 539 damage if they hit two targets with shatter tanker deals 394 damage if they hit two targets with shatter the scrapper deals 27% more damage if the tank hits 3 targets with shatter 489 damage if the tank hits 4 targets with shatter 584 damage. This may not use in game numbers, and it’s not a DPS calculation, but it is using one cycle of the attack chain so it should be consistent from one cycle to infinity. If you cycle your target with each cycle of the chain. Then this shows if you’re fighting 4 targets that don’t die in 3 cycles of the attack chain, the tank has the faster clear time. It doesn’t matter if the targets have 3 million hp or 3 thousand. All they need is enough to survive 3 cycles of the chain and the tank wins. That’s 4 targets! if you’re fighting a typical x8 mob with 1 boss, just target the boss and the larger tank aoe on shatter will melt everything else while you kill the boss. The scrapper will kill the boss faster but be stuck with clean up. Average gameplay doesn’t care as much about dps as it does how much damage can you deal in 3-4 hits. In 3 hits the tank only has to hit 4 targets with one of those hits for a total of 6 actual hits to out damage a scrapper doing 2 hits with one attack for 4 actual hits 6 hits to pass 4 hits from a scrapper seems balanced, because it currently is! With aoe increases those 2 extra hits are inconsequential.

How about some numbers? I don’t have access to the actual numbers at the moment so I’ll use some easy numbers. War mace scrapper vs tanker. Let’s look at shatter. Scrappers have a 1.15 damage scale? New tanks .95. Scrapper: if shatter does 100 base damage, apply modifier, 115 damage. 10% critical chance on a boss. After 10 hits the average is 127 damage Tanker: if shatter does 100 base damage, apply modifier, 95 damage. After 10 hits the average is 95 damage. If the scrapper hits 2 targets every strike that’s 127x2=254 damage per strike. If the tanker hits 2 targets every time that’s 95x2=190 damage per strike. All good. With the aoe changes maybe the tank can hit 3 targets every strike. 95x3=285 damage per strike. Scrapper still hits 2 for 254 It’s not out of the question the tank could hit 5 with each strike with these new buffs. 95x5=475 damage per strike. I chose shatter because it’s a narrow cone like headsplitter, shadowmaul, cleave. It will be much easier for the tank to hit multiple enemies than the scrapper. Add on whirling mace and crowd control also hitting more! The scrapper deals 33% more damage to a single hard target, ie AV, 1% of the game. The other 99% of the game, smashing bosses down to minions, the tank pulls ahead in teams and solo because they can easily hit more targets and survive more targets. Its like my spines v energy melee comparison. The scrapper kills one target much faster. The tank drops all 3 at the same time. If the scrapper does 33% more damage I’ll give the clear speed to the scrapper do to better single target. Add a 4th boss and it’s probably equal. Add anymore and the tank pulls away because the scrapper can’t reliably hit as many targets as the tank. The scrapper might not even have the durability to survive any more targets. Increased aoe damage is fun but it’s not the right direction for the archetype. It’s not power creep at this point. It’s power inflation! Power leap?

I suggested these types of buffs clear back on page 4 of that disaster of a thread. These types of buffs are all a tanker needs to differentiate itself from the other archetypes. They wouldn’t step on any bodies toes. Nobody refuses a defender because ground zero has a team heal! I understand this more than likely requires more dev work than these proposed changes but it’s the correct way to separate tanks and brutes. If it’s the quickest and easiest fix the devs are looking for then just lower the brutes resist cap to 80. Different play-style from scrappers with higher hp and slightly higher resistance. Higher damage than tanks with less durability. Done. Balanced. SOs and IOS

My criteria for selecting an AT for a new toon generally follows these rules. If tankability is my primary goal I roll a tank. After that it depends on the intricacies of the power sets. If I am focused on the secondary then I tend to roll resist based secondaries as brutes and defense as scrappers. Regen as a brute as well because I want the higher hp cap and the taunt aura. If I’m focused on the primary then it’s brutes and scraps vs stalkers. Brutes and scraps get rolled together and are determined by the above. I’ll play any secondary as a stalker so primary is the only determining factor there. If these changes make it live, anything that would have rolled as a brute will be rolled as a tank. Largely scrappers as well will become tanks. The damage increase plus the aoe increase is too much! Do I want to hit 2 guys with shadow maul or 10 guys? Tough call. 2 guys with shatter or 10 guys? And so on. Somebody already showed their tank can farm faster than their brute now. Brutes were faster than scrappers I believe. I don’t farm but these results will transfer to normal play easily due to their survivability. I will have no reason to play a scrapper or brute. If the game is supposed to be balanced around SOs, then it’s already fairly balanced. Brutes and tanks clash in the IO world. This will decimate brutes and scrappers in the SO world. For comparison. If I go to Crey’s Folly at lvl 35 and fight 3 rikti bosses with my spines toon and then with my energy melee toon, which one clears the 3 bosses quickest? The spines! Energy melee easily kills one boss faster but spines kills all 3 at the same time. If the durability is there, the more targets available, the farther ahead spines pulls. These new tanks could probably clear 6 bosses in the time it takes the others to clear 4. 1v4 still favors scraps and brutes. The tank can survive 6 so why fight 4? Clear speed 1v6 tank wins. I call cottage rule on the entire archetype! You don’t want to change how they are played? This will absolutely change their play-style! Fault swapped with tremor sums up all these changes. Stop tanking and start killing. Currently in the SO world, all archetypes have their place. Enter the IO world and every bodies toes get stepped on. These changes go live? Tanks will overshadow two whole archetypes in SOs! RIP brutes and scrappers...

Fault to 35 is a nerf for stone melee!

Proliferate regen!

I like the higher base endurance. I won’t really miss bruising. I don’t think higher damage is the way to go to differentiate tanks. I am absolutely opposed to fault being swapped with tremor and moved to lvl 35! Fault, to me, is a corner stone of stone melee. You’re reducing my tanking ability in exchange for minor aoe! I am a tank first, damage second!

I think the slot level question was referring to the number of slots a power is able to have at certain levels of play. For instance, when you select your level 16 power it only has one slot and at level 17 would have a max of 3 slots. I have noticed if you do a respec at level 16 you are actually able to 6 slot that power you just selected. I don’t remember it acting in this way on live, I believe it tracked your level while placing your slots to prevent such shenanigans. This may have changed in one of the final issues of live and I don’t remember.

Does this mean you can slot two of the +fury IO’s? One from Brutes’s fury and one from Superior Brute’s Fury even though they are essentially the same unique? Basically, you can slot two full sets of Brute’s Fury or four full sets of ATO’s?

Hurricane used to completely prevent enemies from reaching melee with you. I don’t remember which issue they changed it but now hurricane is much less predictable. I believe they changed the tick rate and now enemies are able to wade into the storm and get some shots off before being pushed or flung out. This was changed during live. I foggily remember not even being able to reach a tsoo sorcerer to melee them. Way worse than they are now.

Repel was concerning hurricane. Leaping strike into a mob with hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, lightning storm. The chaos! I need whirlwind ever since they nerfed hurricane’s repel. How would the +rech proc work in whirlwind since it’s a toggle?

The last time I took whirlwind on a toon was probably never. Now I have a concept I just have to try but I know nothing about this power. Are you still able to attack, both melee and ranged, while running this power? Can I run whirlwind and hurricane at the same time? Is there an aoe immob that prevents repel? Inspired by the worst builds thread? Maybe. Bound for glory? Absolutely!