Brutal Justice

You are correct 40% defense is still stronger than 75% resistance. That’s why I put it in quotes. Its for for more than just sentinels.

Because the 45% soft cap available to all archetypes creates issues of devaluation for more than just sentinels. It creates issues even within the same archetypes. Dark blast vs fire blast as one example.

It would be 40% for non tank types. 45% for tank/brute. 43% EATs. 45% defense is “equivalent” to 90% resistance. 40% defense is “equivalent” to 75% resistance. 43% defense is “equivalent to 85% resistance. The sentinel could have DDR and would have mez protection. Those two things become much more valuable when you are below the 45% softcap. Leaving a valuable space of durability vs dps between the blaster and sentinel.

Seems like blasters and sentinels could coexist if there was a 40% defense hard cap. Considering the consensus that there isn’t an issue until full IO builds and incarnates come into play, and the internal balance issues of def vs res.

These are not problems isolated only to sentinels. This is really a problem with all but tanks and brutes. The 45% defense soft cap is more or less equivalent to the 90% resist hard cap. Therefore, anything with a hard cap lower than 90% greatly favors defense. A soft capped scrapper will survive roughly just under 3x longer than a resist hard capped scrapper. They will also kill much quicker dodging most debuffs. It’s a bit of an issue.

What if we brought their oxygen levels down from 45% to 40%? Even if it nerfs the sentinel a bit, they would become more viable due to their ability to breathe under water. Nerfing them both could result in two viable archetypes. One with more damage that is unable to breathe under water, and one with less damage that is capable of breathing under water. Currently the blaster cant breathe under water but they can hold their breath for long enough to make breathing unnecessary. Reducing their oxygen level would reduce their ability to hold their breath. Right now blasters are sperm whales and sentinels are giant squids. Sperm whales can’t breathe under water but can hold their breath long enough to kill the squid. If sperm whales couldn’t hold their breath long enough the squid would be able to hold the whale down until it has to release or be able to go deep enough as to avoid the whale all together. The whale would still have more brute strength but the squid would have more technique. 🐳 🦑

My tanks are tired of just taunting and holding aggro. I would like for taunt to give me a toggle that allows my tanks to crit. Shorter duration than scrapper crits, so they still feel useful, but strong enough I don’t have to chase runners. Shoot, am I in the right thread?

I think only invuln and willpower should have a taunt aura because it’s directly linked to their survival and they don’t have any sort of +damage mechanic that a lot of the other sets have. It should be removed from the other sets. Stalkers deal with this all the time and they do just fine. If you want to build your scrapper to be like a tank there should be sacrifices made. Confront already exists on every scrapper. Provoke is available to all, and with the addition of one more presence selection, unlocks a nice power in unrelenting. Incarnate taunt aura is available. There already exists multiple avenues to achieve a tanky scrapper. That’s great! Scrappers are not tanks/brutes and shouldn’t be holding aggro unless specifically built to do so.

I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a feature but it appears that only the scrapper version of total focus inherits the damage proc from fiery embrace. I know for sure my tank doesn’t get any added damage on total focus and it’s not listed under the power description. If it’s working as intended then that’s a bit of a bummer.

I disagree

I love stalkers and I like the suggestions offered by the OP. Demoralize is very useful at lower levels before you start to encounter very many unstoppable IOd toons. I would say stalkers are much more useful to your average PuG than a scrapper in those levels. They make a much better alpha breaker than a scrapper. Once the game shifts from trying to survive, to dps is king, the stalker starts to lose value quickly. It’s odd that this happens with a “glass canon” type archetype, but it’s what my experience has shown. Therefore, my suggestion, 40% defense hard cap for non tank types. Wait, isn’t this thread about buffing stalkers and wouldn’t that be a nerf to stalkers? Yes. Demoralize is the key however. If a stalker chooses to open with AS then they are able to essentially soft cap themselves and their teammates for a short duration. The value that stalkers enjoy at the lower levels is then still available at the higher levels once IOs have taken over. More value would be available in opening with AS and at the same time not be mandatory. It would maintain the value and flavor of the archetype that you experience at the lower levels into the final levels. I think the buffs suggested sound like reasonable quality of life buffs. I also think a bit of a spreadsheet nerf would result in a buff to play experience.

I am open to any suggestion that has a goal of adding value to other sets and curbing some of the power creep. I just figured setting a cap would require the least amount of dev work.

On the contrary. Anything with a red color scheme should have higher caps because we all know red cars are faster than non red cars. Do the math!

I also ignored any other forms of mitigation the defense toons have. SR for example has scaling resistance and 95% DDR. I did show the value of the DDR. shield has resistance and hp, ice has -rech, -dam, icy bastion. Defense sets are not just defense sets. You can’t bring in other forms for one and not the other. Electric armor and energy aura are for the most part exact counter parts to each other. Energy aura is considered one of the best, electric is bottom tier. The numbers comparing straight defense to straight resistance easily show a wide margin of performance.

Actually, I expect tanks to be more balanced because of their 90% resistance cap. The numbers provided have shown perfect balance between 45% defense and 90% resistance. It’s the 45% defense to 75% resistance of scrappers that is not balanced. Layered mitigation is always stronger than none layered. No surprise there either.

The VEATS and HEATS would have a 43% defense cap sort of inline with their 85% resistance cap. The widow wouldn’t need rebalanced. Any defense over 43% would act as a buffer against -def debuffs, absorbing the debuffs maintaining 43%.

This is all true but it’s not like the resistance scrapper just hits his 75% cap. He has to cover that gap in his main mitigation, which he probably only achieves in s/l and his main element, then chase the defense. With all those pool powers the defense toon can hit his cap to everything pretty easily then chase whatever else he wants because at 45% defense he lasts almost 3 times longer than the 75% cap scrapper. Meaning the defense toon has more dps and is hit with less debuffs also increasing dps.

I’ve actually stated this multiple times. You jumping in is not much of a gamble if you’re not standing there doing nothing. You want people to believe you’re taking some great gamble, but you’re not. You’re probably somewhat stealthed so you get your nuke off without retaliation, followed by more dps that renders most of the mob obsolete.

The 1000 dps was calculated from this type of multiple sources. Whether it’s death by 100 cuts or 1 cut, the average is still the average when the dps remains constant. You have outliers but no field of study uses those outliers as the result, they use the average of their results which includes the outliers.

Your bragging only makes the case stronger. Can an elec scrapper hard cap s/l resistance without IOs? How about f/c/n? Your scrapper covered it all, the other just face planted without a chance. That’s not balanced.

It’s not beside the point. If you want to swap the word balance with fair then it’s currently not fair to the resistance scrappers, which the numbers clearly show. A 40% def cap is not fair in its application but it is fair in its results. Which is also shown by the numbers.

I am confused. Does it cause cascading failure or would people go on their merry way? The point is to open avenues of value for more things than just more damage.

They could read the last beelion posts but they wouldn’t get anymore information than you just provided in this quote. Which is none

They jump in because they can and they know it’s not THAT big of a gamble.

You’re right. Every time you jump in it’s a gamble. It’s not a gamble for a resistance scrapper. He dies in 11 seconds and gets hit by 50% of the debuffs sent at him. That near certain death is not insignificant...