WumpusRat

I'm curious what you're slotting into CJ to get you extra defense. Because none of the defense sets have a S/L +defense set bonus. <edit> Maybe I'm just reading what you wrote in a way you didn't intend though, after reading it several more times. But yes, you can build your slotting specifically towards S/L def, but it limits you to what you're able to effectively engage. My Inv/SS tanker right now has about 45% S/L def, and 35-40% to everything else. With the bonus def from invincibility, she's basically capped against anything but psi. And a good chunk of that comes from weave and maneuvers. I run about 7 toggles, and have no end problems at all unless I run into multiple sappers.

It has the same endurance cost as tough. And with just 2-3 slots you can get it up to 7% defense, which is a pretty huge jump. If you're not looking to get a lot out of defense though, you could skip it.

Same here. The extra resists and defense means I can look around for some other set bonuses I might have to forgo otherwise, and opens up slotting a lot more.

You can get pretty close on a granite tank, though. Defense and resists both capped (though still with a slight psi hole). The only thing you're really lacking is the capped damage.

Except that if I tried to put this build together by just buying all the IOs off the AH, it would cost far more than that. I'd rather spend merits (which I accumulate by going after badges and stuff) rather than sitting and playing the AH.

My current Inv/SS tanker is fully kitted out, and I spent probably a grand total of 50 million on her. I bought the two ATO sets for 1200 merits, and everything else was either bought via recipe and crafted, or converted into what I wanted by starting with an uncommon junk item. All total, I probably spent about 150 merits converting stuff, so 1350ish merits and ~50 million for my full build, which has all the heal set procs, 5 LotG globals, gladiator and steadfast +def, 5 unbreakable guard sets, etc. Converting junk recipes into something useful can save you a HUGE amount of money. Especially if you get even a tiny bit lucky. Typically I'd blip something around in the uncommon random until it got a defense/resist/heal set, then flip it through that until I got the set I wanted, then do an in-set conversion. Longest one was like 30 flips, which ended up being about 45 converters, or 15 merits. But 15 merits for a LotG global? Sure. 🙂

And what he did was by no means "regular gameplay". Unless you want to consider a massively IO'd out and incarnated character "standard play" now, for balance purposes?

Ah. Yeah, I don't agree with lowering brute resistance caps either. Having their base be lower and having to work a bit harder to reach the cap is fine. I just agree with the idea that tankers need their damage raised since right now they simply have no comparison to brutes in the end-game (and often while leveling in teams, as well, since teammates can buff brutes up to reach tanker level durability, while still having all the extra damage). I think making tankers better at aoe damage gives them their own flavor, without trying to make them "brutes v2".

I honestly don't even see why rage needs to have a crash. Super strength is balanced around the person having rage active. The set under-performs quite a bit without it. Just turn it into something similar to the clickable status protections that some sets have, and disable stacking. You could even fiddle with the cooldown if you wanted to make it harder to make perma. But no other damage boost has the drawback rage does. Sure, they don't last as long, but those other sets were built around the idea of buildup/aim/etc being a "limit break" power rather than an "always on, this brings your damage up to par" power. IMO, remove the crash, remove stacking. Call it a day.

Have they said they were going to lower brute resistance caps? I haven't heard that tossed around as an actual option, except by a couple of players.

You don't need to balance it around "every combo that could exist". You can't balance around every possible slotting setup with SO's, so why suddenly claim that taking IOs into consideration is impossible? As Myshkin said, you simply need to use a general idea of what IO sets are going to do. In the case of brutes, IO sets are, generally, going to bring their defenses up to par with tankers. Because the gap isn't all that wide, set bonuses can very quickly eliminate it, as both of them are close to the hard upper limit in terms of resistance. On the other hand, the gap between tanker damage and brute damage is, even with massive IO slotting, insurmountable. Nothing will allow tankers to deal the same damage as brutes. Even though brutes can achieve parity in defenses. And that's where you run into the situation where we're at right now. There is almost zero reason to create a tanker. Brutes do everything they can do, AND deal vastly more damage on top of it. So this change seeks to address that, and bring them back into some level of near-parity with one another. Tankers are a bit more resilient, brutes deal more damage. Flip sides of the same coin, and a choice based on which flavor you'd prefer, rather than one being objectively better in every way.

I can understand the defense being a bit lower, but having 26% less resists is puzzling. Out of curiosity, what sets are you building, and how are you slotting them? Because pretty much every brute I've made hits the resist/defense caps without all that much effort if it's with a set that already has a lot of either.

Another option could be to make Hurl function as a targeted AOE. You grab something (maybe even use the Propel code, just so you can throw random things) and then have it deal targeted AOE damage. If the object is big enough, it could hit multiple targets. If it's a smaller object, it might shatter and cause shrapnel. Etc. Personally I almost never use Hurl, since it's a long animation and poor damage. Though the upgrade to ranged damage will help the latter part.

Ideally what I'd like to see (although it would require a complete rebalancing of the game from the ground up, in addition to a lot of nerfs/adjustments, which means it'll never happen) would be that each AT has one thing that it's objectively the best at. No other AT is as good at that thing as they are, despite having similar powersets. For instance: Defenders - best buffs Corruptors - best debuffs Tankers - best damage mitigation Brutes - best aoe melee damage etc.

I'd love to see that, actually. Give it a small targeted AOE, especially given the animation for it.

Tanker damage is ... ehh, okay-ish. At least IMO. It's certainly not great, and it does feel a bit annoying at times to have to hit a minion 4-5 times to drop it, when my Brutes were dropping them in 2 swings with the same sets/powers. It feels much the same way Defenders do to me. "I could do this so much better as a different AT..." But at least Defenders have a definitive advantage over other ATs that have the same powersets, in that you can't close the gap in the power of buffs/debuffs, since those don't have a fixed upper limit, while resists hit a hard cap that both Tankers and Brutes can hit easily. The main problem, at least to me, is that back when the two sides were separate, there wasn't an issue with Tankers competing directly with Brutes. But now that you can play either AT on either side, you end up directly comparing them, since they fill the same general role. And there really isn't anything a Tanker can say "I do this better than a Brute". Giving them some minor team buffs (because let's face it, they'd have to be pretty minor otherwise you start stepping on the toes of Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Masterminds) wouldn't really make people think "We need a Tanker". It's kind of the same boat the Sentinel is in. They don't really do anything better than anyone else, so there's no reason for people to really WANT them around vs another AT that brings more to the table. And yes, 20:1 was hyperbole for the sake of effect. But if you look at the actual number of 50th levels of each (since a lot of people give up on characters at low/mid levels and never play them again, which makes counting them for "actual population" a bit off), Brutes outnumber Tankers about 5-6:1. Even if you remove ALL spine/fire Brutes from the equation, it's still 2:1. The other problem is that in order to really make Tankers and Brutes separate and distinct, you'd have to change some core parts of each AT. And at this point in the game, there's no way that's going to happen. So fiddling with damage numbers to bring Tankers up a bit and make them a more viable pick when it comes to "Brute or Tanker?" is the simplest solution. But that's my two cents.

The problem that I see with this is that you'd be pushing Tankers more and more into a "you're only useful if you're grouped" AT. Even the original devs realized that having a team-only inherent (such as the Defender 'Vigilance') wasn't the best way to go. One could argue that Stalkers and Scrappers are very similar to what they're doing with Tankers and Brutes. Yet I don't see anyone lobbying to delete one of them and just merge the two together. Having Tankers be better at something than Brutes is needed. Because right now there really isn't anything you'd WANT a Tanker for over a Brute. Brutes have the same resist caps and vastly superior damage. There's a reason that Brutes outnumber Tankers like 20:1.

Hm. Okay, so as to not derail the thread, gonna send you a PM to ask more questions, cause this is confusing me. 🙂

This math kind of puzzles me, to be honest. It seems like a lot more moving parts than are necessary. Maybe I'm just not 'getting it' or something, but based on the modifiers and such, it kind of works out in my head like this: Hypothetical attack with base damage of 100 70% Fury = +140% damage bonus Slotting = +95% damage bonus (let's say) Rage = +80% damage bonus For a total of +315% damage bonus. So 315 total damage Brute melee multiple is .75, so the the final damage would be 315 * .75 = 236 Is that math right? If so, then that would mean the tanker (with the same attack) would be: Rage = +80% damage bonus Slotting = +95% damage bonus For a total of +175% damage bonus So 175 total damage Tank melee multiple is (currently) .8, so the final damage output would be 140 With the new .9 multiple, it would be 157 If that's accurate, the brute is doing WAY more than 27% more damage.

My take on the whole brute vs tanker thing, as someone who plays both a lot, is about like this: What is the reason to choose a tanker over a brute, on Homecoming? Because right now, brutes do pretty much everything a tanker can do, AND have much higher damage output. Sure, it takes them a little bit longer to reach the defense/resist caps that a tanker can, primarily because of the higher base values for the tanker and getting their defensive powers earlier, but when you get to 50th level and start getting all IO'd out, the difference is meaningless. The damage difference, however, is still there. And still very, very apparent. Hence why 90% of farm characters are brutes. This change feels like it will make the choice more of a flavor one, rather than "pick this because it's objectively better". Tankers will now be "the aoe meleer", having larger radius and cones, and the ability to hit more targets. While brutes will still deal more damage, and having the same defensive goalposts. There will likely be power combos that people will argue "but tankers are better at this combo than brutes!", and they'll be right. But isn't it better to have MORE options, rather than one AT being objectively worse than another even though they perform the same task? Imagine if corruptors could hit the same buff/debuff goalposts that defenders could. But their damage numbers weren't changed. Why would ANYONE play a defender, at that point, other than simply because they liked the inherent, or wanted some powers earlier?

It's also a problem with CoX's rng. It has a very bad habit of being "streaky", especially with generating excessive amounts of very high numbers. That's why they had to implement the streakbreaker in the first place, because we kept pointing out how often, even with 95% to hit, you'd get strings of 4, 5, 6, or more misses in a row. Even now, I can certainly notice strings of misses (or pseudo-misses, due to streakbreaker) with 95% to hit. Miss, streakbreaker, miss, streakbreaker, miss, streakbreaker, miss, etc. And it happens even more often at around 75-80% to hit, where I'll quite often miss multiple swings in a row, the streakbreaker will kick in, and I'll go back to missing some more. The odds of that happening so often are extremely small. But it happens regularly. Another thing I've noticed is that the rng for MOBS seems to function quite differently than it does for players. I've done some combat testing where, if mobs have about a 20-25% chance to hit me, they'll still land blows fairly regularly. On the other hand, if I'm debuffed to the point of only having 20-25% to hit, I'll land MAYBE one in ten swings. Consistently. And if I'm somehow dropped down to a 5-10% to hit, I MIGHT land one blow in fifty. If I'm lucky.

I had gone into edit mode to move a few things around, and the game in its infinite wisdom decided "Nah, you want to grab this salvage rack over here, and move it randomly somewhere in the base! Oh, and for your convenience I'm also disabling Ctrl-Z, lolololololololol!" So now one of my salvage racks has vanished into the ether, the game won't let me delete it because it has salvage in it, and I can't find it anywhere in the base. Anyone know any way I can find where the hell the game decided to move it to? <edit> Okay, I managed to correct the problem. Since I was building on top of the actual base area, when the game grabbed and flung it, it moved it down INTO the base, even though it was set to have the room fully filled in. It just phased the object into the solid wall. I hollowed out the room and saw it, so managed to move it back up into position again. So if this happens to someone else, this could be a solution to fix it.

I haven't gotten a SS character up into incarnate levels yet myself, though my current tanker is almost there. Honestly I have no idea if incarnate abilities will even do damage while you're rage-crashed, since the debuff is like -9990% damage. So for 10 seconds you basically do zero damage once you crash. Judgement nukes might not suffer from that though. I'd have to test it out on pineapple and see. Like I said, personally I think they should just do away with double stacking, and eliminate the crash all together. Make it function like a lot of the clicky status protection stuff. Doesn't take a lot to make it perma, and you could just set-and-forget.

There are plenty of ways to get recharge outside of IO sets. Hasten, speed boost, chrono shift, temp powers, etc. Willpower's T9 was set at a shorter cooldown than some, and isn't affected by +recharge (or -recharge, either, I believe), just to make it different. I doubt they did it because of IO sets. The main point was saying "just use an incarnate ability while you're rage-crashed" seems a bit silly to say given that you can get rage at well below incarnate level.

To be fair, if the game is meant to be balanced around SO's without taking into account IOs and other things, it shouldn't be balanced around the use of incarnate abilities either.