Brutal Justice

The first generation of my namesake and main from live, Brutal Justice, was an inv/stone tank that didn’t have temp invuln, unyielding, or invincibility. Just the passives, dull pain, and unstoppable. I didn’t want the glow from the toggles. This was post ED and before nofx and IO’s. I managed to tank for teams all the time because stone melee is just that good at controlling mobs with kd, stun, and a mag 4 hold. This is when I realized a tanks main role is to just absorb the alpha. After that, even if you’re mezzed, the team will handle the group no problem. Sure I died every once in a while when a normal build would not have, but I proudly sported my MoSTF badge. I learned I am not tanker god. I am tanker team expeditor. I am less than the whole. It made me a better player and better tanker

I thought the impervious skin mez/+regen IO, while not unique, the +regen aspect of the IO was unique and you could only apply it once. Is this not actually the case?

Why would you take multiples to 50 built to survive OUTSIDE of granite if you hate it so much. “Absolute garbage for 31/37 levels” ”I hate it more every time I play it” ”I am HATING leveling it right now”. I feel I addressed your comparisons to ice. Having multiple lvl 50’s doesn’t mean a whole lot. In this game anybody can fall down a flight of stairs and be lvl 50 before they hit the bottom. I can really only go off of what you say about playing it. Which is can’t this, can’t that. I addressed those can nots with solutions available right now. I am sure you have many extremely capable toons built up with IO’s. I wasn’t challenging your skill, more so challenging your playstyle. There is a difference between player skill and build skill though. A person can make an awesome build, and of course that toon will play awesome. But a skilled player can squeak out performance with less. When player skill can’t squeak, tanking ghost widow or recluse for example, granite picks up the slack. Hating it it so much and calling it trash outside of granite, why wouldn’t I assume you hit granite level and respec out of everything? Just because you said you don’t? Why would the opinion of somebody who does something multiple times, all while hating it so much, carry any weight. What’s that definition of insanity? Something something is the definition of insanity? Nailed it! Who is it, Jack Nomind, who makes the no set builds? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s a man after my own heart right there. Old school knowledge passed on. Anybody who has read even small amounts on the forums can build a soft capped anything with IO’s. If you want to homogenize everything just soft cap everything. The problem with stone armor is, even soft capped it still requires different play. Or it breaks your softcap build mold and requires different sets and goals to play like all the other soft capped builds. If you want all sets to play the same then stay away from the sets that require something different. Let people who don’t want all their toons to play the same enjoy those sets. Trick Shooter has been rallying for trick arrow for what, over a decade? You know why his opinion is important? Because he enjoys the set, doesn’t want it to change, and instead sees minor tweaks that it could use without changing what it does or how it plays . If he hated it so much and wanted it changed, then his words too, would be lost in the chum bucket of Internet forums Learn to play, LOL. Remove the -damage from granite. And while we are at it, NERF REGEN!

Ice gets energy absorption at level 26, 6 whole levels before granite. Energy absorption is the pinnacle of ice and might as well be its tier 9. Before that it suffers just as much end issues as stone armor. How many npc’s have mezzing powers in each mob? After the 1 or 2 are dead in a mob you can turn rooted off. You’re probably one of those tanks that stays until every last single minion is dead. You should be a second or two ahead of your team so they don’t have to wait for you at the next group. They just jump right in. Rooted recharges in 4 seconds. Turn it off 1 second before you leave the current group and, without breaking stride, 1 second before the alpha of the next group. You have 3 seconds in between group aggro. That’s easily done. It requires a different play style. Different play styles are a good thing. Homogenization is not. Mobility is not that big of an issue in a fight. Run into the highest threat area and taunt the area outside of that to bring them in. If you’re there 1 second before your team, as you should be, then the group will have a chance to callapse on you. Tanks don’t generally need the mobility of the dps or support in a fight. You point out end management and slows with -dam. That’s a special component of ice. Stone can’t apply fear and -to hit like dark, or stun. It can’t burn like fire, +recharge like electric. But invulnerability can’t do any of those things either, does that make it worse than ice? But you won’t let stone have more psi defense, and if things get real bad, granite? Each set has strengths and weaknesses. You’re just not letting stone have its strengths. Maybe running around cycling your 5 other toggles, as needed, in stone armor makes you a bit more of a brick than a super tank. When things get real though, stone gets real. Instead of hiding in a block of ice while your team handles the ouchies. Use granite as an active/reactive power, not a passive. It’s like willpower vs regen in play style. Passive vs reactive. Granite is a corner stone, not THE stone. Like energy absorption, invincibility, dark regen, etc. Remove those and those sets are not that good. Talking numbers, ice and stone are pretty equal. Talking uniques, without letting stone have its uniques, obviously ice would be better. It’s a playstyle and mindset regarding granite that needs addressed. Players just see a granite with a pocket kin running around and think that’s THE only way, and anything less is trash.

After looking at your numbers comparison between ice ant stone, I have a couple issues to address. I noticed you added combat jumping for ice, I know you can’t run combat jumping with rooted but still it looks like you have 4% more positional defense for ice, likely from combat jumping. That is part of your disparity in defense numbers. Also, even with only one target for energy absorption, that is a defense number you reach after eating the alpha. I don’t have access to the actual numbers but I would guess the raw numbers for the two sets are very similar in terms of def per toggle. The fire and ice resistance difference is fairly marginal considering not many ice attacks are pure cold damage with no lethal component to get picked up by the s/l defense. If rooted didn’t cause -movement and combat jumping to detoggle, I feel it would be a great power. People discount +regen too quickly, especially paired with earth’s embrace. Rooted also stacks mez protection with granite. You can stack the click mez protection but that’s not quite the equivalent. I propose taking your lvl 15 ice tank into the Positron tf and fighting ruin mages, and then doing the same with your lvl 15 stone. Teams being equal I think I would put my money on the stone tank. It would more or less be a value test between rooted’s +regen and chilling embrace. Even at lvl 50 I see these two sets, ice and stone, as more or less equivalent. That’s without the t9’s. Factor in the tier nine and ice can take a seat in terms of durability. Most brutes or tanks will get shredded by heavy early level psi damage, that’s a mob issue red side, not a powerset issue. Granite also only turns off 4 powers, 5/9 still have value during granite. Numbers wise it looks to me like you’re supposed to play stone armor outside of granite and toggle into granite when stuff hits the fan. Players just see granite and it’s numbers and want to be perma granite. If you respec out of your other armors and can’t keep up with a team, that’s your build issues. If a team is moving so fast you can’t keep up then you don’t even need granite, use your other 3-4 armors. Detoggle rooted after a couple seconds in a mob and retoggle while running into the next alpha. With IO’s, stone armor has never been better. You don’t lose your set bonuses when you toggle on granite. Players just need to break the mentality of getting granite and respecing out of the rest of their build, it’s unnecessary. Use granite like any other tier 9 and you’ll only find rooted needs active management, as opposed to set and forget. Without granite it may not be the tippy top of all tanks when balanced on SO’s, but it’s highly capable. Granite is there for those times when you NEED to be that tippy top tank, not for the mundane every day mob beat down, but when the need arises, stone steps up while the others take notes. Just remove the -damage from granite, it’s unnecessary these days and thematically incorrect!

I am fine with the -run speed and maybe the -recharge. The -damage really doesn’t make sense though. If anything, I would rather keep the -recharge and have +damage. Thematically that makes more sense to me than the -damage penalty just for the sake of some archaic balance ideas. I turn into a giant rock monster and NOW I hit softer? I don’t think so. Pre granite I just toggle rooted on while running into a mob. It’s active for the alpha strike. Then once the boss is down, or the mezzing npc, I just turn it off and it’s ready to cycle back on by the next mob. It’s a bit like playing a regen toon. You just have to actively manage your powers. I enjoy regen so I also enjoy the management of early stone. I like that stone plays a bit differently from other sets. I like that it requires a different build plan even with IO’s. Building less for survival and more for run speed and other things adds spice to the game. Taking teleport instead of super jump for the 50th time adds spice. If we want to help stone armor just replace the damage penalty with a damage boost. In the current game, and thematically, this penalty is absolutely unnecessary and needs to go.

Galaxy Brain my be the only person who read my previous post all the way to the bottom so I thought maybe I would flesh out the idea a little more. To give tanks some uniqueness and to reinforce their mentality, without taking away from brutes, I propose an ally only effect for every tank, unique to their primary and archetype version. The numbers would obviously be small enough to not step on the toes of the support classes. Nobody ever said “we don’t need an empathy because rad armor has Teh HEALZ!” I would also like to see more suggestions on these abilities. I just threw some together real quick. Radiation Armor - Ground Zero - remove the ally heal from non tank versions. Done Electric Armor - Energize - ally +recharge 5% to allies within range. Your outburst of electricity energizes your teammates as well. Bio Armor - Genetic Contamination - ally +regen. Your genetics contaminate allies within range boosting their regeneration rate. Dark Armor - Cloak of Fear - ally +res fear, confusion. Your allies can’t imagine anything more frightening than you! Fiery Aura - Fiery Embrace - ally +dam 5% to allies within range. Your allies are fired up, fire, moar damage! Ice armor - Energy Absorption - ally +Absorb. Your allies within range are splashed with excess energy providing a cache of hp to tap into. Invulnerability - Invincibility - ally +res all. Your allies are inspired by you and are able to shrug off some damage. Shield Defense - Grant Cover - remove +def from other archetypes. Add foe -range to all archetypes. Enemies can hit allies near you but struggle to reach those behind your shield. Stone Armor - Rooted - ally +knockdown protection mag2? Your able to root allies within range to prevent them from falling. Super Reflexes - Lucky - ally +to hit. You’re lucky improving your teams overall luck. Willpower - Rise to the Challenge - ally +end. Your team is inspired and able to push on a little longer. Again, the numbers should be fairly small and adjusted for things like recharge and toggle vs click vs passive. Stone armor was the most difficult because of granite. I was also trying to keep within a theme for each set. Fire is the damage set, stone is the tankiest set, etc. More input, more ideas!

I don’t see increasing taunt magnitude or duration for tanks helping their issues with brutes. A brute can hold 100% aggro. A tank being able to hold aggro off of the brute is not helpful at the higher levels. With bruising being self casting and not stacking with other sources of bruising it’s still an issues of not wanting more then one tank on a team. No other archetype is diminished from having another of their kind on the same team quite like a tank. There are cases where having more than one tank could be beneficial but, in the majority of play, the team would be better served with any other archetype replacing that second tank. Tanks are my favorite archetype because I spend a lot of time in the lowers levels where they see their most impact on teams. I also don’t have a “one tank rule”. I love all tank teams. Tanker Tuesday’s! It’s just facts that more than one is less efficient than replacing that second tank with anything else. I think the easiest way to add more value to tanks is to increase their leadership values. That would be a “super easy” adjustment the devs could do. Tanks improving their teams makes sense. Brutes smashing faces makes sense. Somebody mentioned wanting an actual tanker for a tank as opposed to a brute because the person playing the tank has that tanker mentality, you have confidence in what the tank player is going to do, you can never trust a brute. The brute would just as soon smash you if your hit box turned red. The tank is there to protect. Ideally, tanks should have more powers like grant cover from shields or ground zero from rad armor. Ground zero for the tanks should be just like it is. As a tank with a tank mentality it feels good to be able to physically help another teammate. The other archetype ground zeros should have the heal removed to distinguish the tanks version and mentality. Grant cover should have a pve or self affecting aspect added to it and the +def to teammates unique to the tanks version. Pick a power from every armor set and give the tank version a team only affect. Each armor could have its unique affect as well. Electric armor’s energize gives the team a small recharge boost when used. Invincibility gives the whole team +to-hit. Examples like that unique to the tank versions of the power. With this the only person who had something taken away was rad armor and shield armor. Brutes with these powers more than likely only take them to slot a LotG or have a pbaoe damage power anyways. Same with scrappers and stalkers. This also helps with multiple tank teams.

Put a Theft of Essence chance for +end in dark regeneration and that will make a huge impact on your endurance management. It basically makes dark regen end free instead of sucking your end dry. Or at least it did back on live. I’m not super well versed on how procs like that work these days.

Thanks for the responses. Yeah, the plan is to overcome granite penalties.

Does the gift of the ancients 7.5 movement speed proc stack with the set bonus 7.5 movement speed for a possible total of 75% movement speed? Thanks

Just took down the first skulls AV, chernobog?, at lvl 12 with a necro/nature without losing a zombie. No enhancements slotted. The debuff toggle in nature also has a small amount of -regen.

Which is more useful a ta/fire defender or a fire/ta blaster? A debuffed mob or a dead mob? The animation time on acid arrow is too long! By the time it hits a mob they are already half dead if not more dead. Glue arrow chased by a fireball seems to get just as much milage. The flash arrow in tactical arrow needs to be resistible like smoke grenade. Tactical arrow has taken trick arrows lunch money and kicked sand in it’s face. I am still playing trick arrow solely for the fun mechanic of oil slick.

I wish they would proliferate regen to tanks. Tanking +4 x8 is not the standard for a bone stock tank. A tank doing that is either full of IO’s or has lots of support, both of which will benefit regen as well. The thing with regen is you have to play reactive not passive. A regen toon will see their health go up and down constantly. That’s the nature of the set in the same vein as super reflexes. Super reflexes is either largely untouched or hurting real bad. Regen’s health just goes up and down. If you come out the other end of a fight with the same hp as an invuln tank then you just tanked it equally well. It doesn’t matter if you were a roller coaster during the fight. Regen does have to use its clicks but it has a lot of them and between the 4 of them there should always be an option. Brutes already have it and can make good use of it. I think it could be ported directly to tanks with archetype appropriate numbers. It could use a bit of treatment like the sentinel version but I think it’s totally viable in its current state as well

I have been thinking about making an earth/savage for a while. Mostly I want to make a /savage so I can throw bees and crows at people. I picked earth because I need an earth control toon. Is there any synergy between these two sets? If /savage will synergise better with a different primary then I might go with that and just make two different toons. Also, I haven’t seen much on /savage so I don’t know about it’s lvl of performance. Is it bottom tier or just new and not many people are playing it yet? Thanks

Which patron pet is the best? I am partial to the toxic tarantula just because of coolness factor but I have no idea how it stacks up to the rest of the pets. I think I have used the mu guardian back on live but again, no idea how their performance compares. I find the patron pets fun, I just wanted to hear other people’s preferences and performance comparisons.

How do you slot your gremlins?

When I first saw tactical arrow my first thought was, they gave most of trick arrow to blasters... in an equivalent or better form. That’s not right. I love trick arrow. It needed help before, it needs more help now. An aoe immobilize won’t do much. Maybe if the set didn’t already have glue arrow, but it does. An aoe immob is not much different from glue arrow, which mobs can’t run out of like tar patch, rains, etc. if mobs are reaching melee range with glue arrow you’re doing something wrong. I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that tells me flash arrow’s -to-hit was unresistable on live. This might still be the case, I don’t know. I thought the unresistable aspect made it on par with other -to-hit powers when fighting AV’s because they resisted so much of the other sources. Thus justifying the low value. I wouldn’t mind a couple more points in flash arrow though. Acid arrow and disruption arrow need buffed period. I think Trickshooter nailed the changes for these. EMP arrow is good it just needs its recharge shortened. Considering the entire sets, radiation and trick arrow, trick arrow’s EMP arrow should be at least on par with the recharge of an accelerated metabolism boosted EMP. The last issue has less to do with trick arrow and more to do with pseudo pets. The archetype modifier for pseudo pets needs fixed. Right now corrupters are marginalizing defenders. Look at the team comps in the speed tf thread. Not a single blue shield. I am not trying to nerf other people, but it’s not right, and I think we all can see that.

Thank you for that. I was in error using the 2356 as the base. Which I got using all the numbers they provided. Curious to know if that base hp formula works for any of the archetypes or if that formula is just wrong. What is the base hp at lvl 50 for some of the other archetypes? Correction edit. I was actually making a mistake and using 2.2(the cap modifier) as the archetype modifier instead of 1.75. Using 1.75 gives the correct 1874. So the formula does work.

You’re misunderstanding what I am saying. How did you get the +89% hp to reach the cap? I got +50% hp to reach the cap. You must have used an incorrect number as the base. 2356 is the base. 3534 is the cap. The formula to find the base hp uses different numbers. (((1.75-1)*1)+1)*1070.8970=2356. That’s the base for a tanker at lvl 50. 3534-2356=1178hp difference. 1178/2356=.5. It would take 50% +hp to make up that 1178 hp difference between the base and the cap. The number you used to get 89% is 1874.1hp which is the number they provided as the base. 3534-1874=1660 difference in hp. 1660/1874=.885. So +89% hp to cover the difference. Using their own formula 1874 is incorrect. Of course somebody with a lvl 50 tank could just log on and confirm the base hp at lvl 50 in about 3 seconds. In short. I was saying your 89% was wrong because you used the wrong base number to reach it. Not your fault, you just used the number they provided. They provided the wrong number. At least according to their formula.

Yeah that’s the number I got using their formula. I was talking about how you got 89% +hp to reach that cap. You must have used the number they provided for the base hp of a tank at lvl 50. The number they provided is 1874. I felt like from live that seemed a little low so I used their formula to find the base hp at lvl 50 and came up with 2356 hp as the base for lvl 50. After that I figured you needed right around 50% +hp to reach the cap of 3534.

Thanks for the link. I think the lvl 50hp total they have listed for tanks is incorrect. I put the numbers into the equation and ended up with about 2356hp at lvl 50. I may have done some math wrong, I don’t have a lvl 50 tank to verify. If 2356 is correct then it looks like you only need about 50% to hit the cap at 50. Edited for math

What is the hp cap for tankers and how much +hp does it take to reach it? Thanks

Does full auto, flamethrower, and possibly ignite trigger scourge in the same way the rain powers do? Thanks

Thanks Adeon you’ve been answering all my questions today. :)