siolfir

My thoughts on the "balance" between the sets: For Stone Melee, use the Dominator animations for Tremor (2.5 sec) and Hurl Boulder (1.5 sec), and call it a day. That would bump the DPA on Tremor a bit so you don't feel like using it is a colossal waste of time, and since the increased target cap affects Fault for Tankers, you get an extra 6 things you can stun-lock permanently, so losing a bit of AoE damage for it isn't that bad. I personally prefer a flip-flop of Seismic Smash and Tremor for the Tanker version (which matches the Brute tier order), but that means no AoEs until 32 - others may prefer them earlier, especially given the Tanker's newfound focus on melee AoE. If you wanted to be really nice, you could remove the extra half second of animation time that was added to each the Mallets (they used to be 1.11 and 1.13 sec); that would increase the single target DPS to nearly top-tier just on the powers themselves. Super Strength is already getting the ability to avoid a 10 second -damage crash by not stacking Rage, which is a slight buff; with that in mind, making Jab something worth having in your tray and reducing the animation for Hurl to the shorter one would likely be good enough. I'd suggest going to 3 second recharge with the corresponding damage and endurance cost increases for Jab, and add a brief (5 sec) -10% resistance secondary effect so that you could keep it up by spamming the power - it makes sense since you're "softening them up" by jabbing at them anyway. For an added bonus, reduce the KB to .67 on Hand Clap so you don't have to waste the slot for the KB-to-KD IO in it to not throw everyone away from you, reduce the recharge to 20 seconds to match Fault, and it has the same benefits with the increased target cap and permanent stunlock ability without any ground-based requirement. For both sets, if there's any decision on changing Hurl/Hurl Boulder to an AoE, I'd suggest a thin cone, similar to Piercing Rounds in Dual Pistols, so that you hit everything with the boulder on it's way to the target; this would give Tankers the edge on the boost since the arc would be doubled compared to the Brute (and possibly Dominator) versions, but it would still mostly act as a single-target attack. It makes more sense than throwing it and it exploding into shrapnel. I might go with a 10 degree arc base instead of 5, though - the boulder is a bit wider than the bullets. I still think that Energy Melee is still getting the worst of everything, having only a single AoE that wasn't that great in the first place. It'll likely never happen, but my recommendation would be to completely undo the ET nerf and go back to the 1-second animation so it at least has something to recommend it; the ridiculous DPA of ET was pseudo-AoE damage because you could switch targets that much faster. The shorter Total Focus animation that Dominators got would be nice also, but with a 1 second ET back I could see where that might be considered overkill on single-target DPS, plus a reduced animation time on both would hurt the PvP damage on both - not that I think it's being used for anything. I realize that this will make it a single-target damage outlier, but I don't care: let some sets specialize in niche areas and actually be good at them; buffing the AoE damage doesn't make as much sense to me since that just turns it into Rad Melee, a set that I play but get annoyed at the long animations of.

Competitive with what? It gets competitive with other melee sets with just single-stacked Rage. So you want it to add to-hit and debuff accuracy? Not really seeing the point, there, and the to-hit bonus is the only reason my SS Brute bothered to take Rage.

That is magnificent. That is exactly why I always leave Prompt Team Teleport enabled.

And when they're scanning the room to see where the boss is in the next spawn over, it means you can shoot the boss first! 😄

To address a couple of things brought up: I've deliberately wandered off into a different direction in a few cases - usually defeat alls - when I'm running my IO'd out Brute and the rest of the team can handle the spawns without me. Let's face it, running a Citadel at even con isn't all that hard, and splitting up just reduces the amount of time that it takes to clear the base(s), whether your attempting a speedrun or not. I also am one of those people that will run into the next spawn once the previous group is down to mop-up duty, although I'll hang around for the bosses and/or try to pull them along with me to the next spawn if I'm supposed to be the primary tank. And yes, I'm also well aware that there is an aggro cap, and I try to grab spillover from tanks that aren't, and try to pull multiple x8 spawns together - but I also expect characters to be able to handle a minion or two while I'm attacking the bosses and Lts to keep them on me. As for knockback... my rule is pretty simple: if I'm a melee and you knock something that's attacking me away, then I expect you to take care of it (and yourself). If I knock something away from you, I expect myself to take care of it. Yeah, but it's a Synapse - that's not much of an exaggeration. And even the ones that start off wanting to kill everything on every map usually say "yes" when I ask if I can stealth to the objectives once you get to the part that you can stealth.

Totally Innocent was allowed for my Mind/Dark Dominator, though. On the old servers I had Little Bunny Pew Pew (Mind/Energy Dom) - a friend took the name on Reunion: I decided not to make Slow Poke (spines/stone Brute). As a less punny, but still amusing character, here's Bad Cliche:

I knew that they use the melee modifier already, but I missed the word epic (twice!) in the first post of the other feedback thread, and thought that all of the ranged powers were being adjusted to use the ranged modifier. 😞 In that case, I'll go back and edit it.

Because I've seen a few responses but nobody else mentioned it: click-to-move (as in "go to this location") doesn't work, but clicking both mouse buttons has to walk forward, and while holding the right mouse button you can change direction (which works while holding the left mouse button to move forward), so as long as you're not trying to jump you can use the mouse for movement. I always bind different keys for targetenemynear (target the closest enemy), targetenemynext (cycles through enemies, which is what Tab does), and targetenemyprev (cycles backwards, in case you went too far).

I don't remember seeing any one summary post of exceptions, but IIRC the inherent bonus should only affect arcs of 90 degrees or smaller and double the arc (so a 90 degree arc is better than a 120 degree arc for Tankers), and radial AoEs (TAoE/PBAoE) with a radius of 10 feet or smaller would have their radius increased by 60% (which is why Foot Stomp was reduced to 10' for Tankers). I think I remembered seeing posts about Throw Spines, Shockwave, and anything in Titan Weapons being exceptions that wouldn't receive the bonus, but I don't remember if there was anything else. @Captain Powerhouse, could you please post a list of the exceptions? If nothing else, it might help someone testing find out if an expected exception is being included.

Highlighted for those skimming: There is no upgrade to ranged damage, for either Tankers or Brutes. Well, the modifier was increased, but all of the ranged powers in primary, secondary, or ancillary (ie, epic) pools for both Brutes and Tankers were using the melee damage modifier instead of the ranged modifier. That means that the only power affected at the time of the change was in Sorcery - now there are the attacks in Force of Will - and all other ranged attacks are going to do the same damage they're doing on live. Nothing to see here, I'm just apparently blind. Again, apparently I'm slotting this proc into the wrong power. To reiterate, I have this proc slotted and don't maintain anywhere near 90% Fury unless I'm constantly aggro-capped on a farm. Please, enlighten us all how every Brute with this proc is constantly at 90%+ on Fury with little to no effort. It's not like I don't have plenty of respecs to burn to move it if it's just in the wrong power.

I agree with this, which is why I like the AoE boost; Brutes will still deal more damage in most common scenarios, but there are cases where Tankers are going to do more even using the same power - how common those situations are is what @Auroxis and @Captain Powerhouse were discussing. I agree with the point that the 50% Fury number isn't one I would use for sustained damage since it's usually not going to be that low for a Brute that's being active, but I thought that the "near 100%" was a bit of a reach when coming back. The number is, as it usually is in cherry-picked situations on both sides, somewhere in the middle - although I will say in my experience it's on the higher side of the middle more often. I thought that there was a post in the other thread stating that the increased target cap was only applicable to the melee set - in this case, only Foot Stomp. It would be easier to saturate targets due to the increased AoE size, but for Foot Stomp that's only a 1' increase.

Near 100%? Really? I usually use 70-80% as the go-to number for sustained Brute damage, with spikes up to about 90% - sure you get bonus Fury against AVs and EBs but it also decays faster at higher levels. Apparently I'm putting my bonus Fury proc in the wrong power, because I've never sustained anything above 90% on a routine basis. And that's at the aggro cap while farming.

To answer the marginally-related question, Judgement is flagged to ignore outside buffs, so your only benefit from double-stacking Rage before using it is the +tohit - it's not going to hit for 1000 damage that way. The flip side of that is that since it ignores outside buffs for damage that also means that it ignores the -damage during the crash (like the prestige attacks from the P2W vendor, or the Bio Armor Offensive Adaptation extra hits).

That was one of the premises behind the changes, though - you may not agree with it, but it was stated as one of the design goals of the changes in the other thread.

Which changes timing, but doesn't make it lesser. Edited to include the rest of the quote, since you left it out and it's feedback on Rage: