Captain Powerhouse

Thaaaat is not true, but its an understandable confusion given one of the AT names. Class = Archetype (the game internally calls it both in here and there.) Tanker = AT/Class Tank = Role

To be fair, although tankers are the main focus of the changes, there are many reasons why the thread is called "Tank Updates" and not "Tanker Updates", these changes, from the start, have touched two of the 3 tanking capable archetypes. Alas: Kheldians will be looked at later, there is only so much testing that can be done at once and keep things somewhat focused. I could do 1000 changes tomorrow, but that would result in an incredibly chaotic feedback cycle.

Kheldian pass will be way later and way different. A Kheldian does not have to have its tank form balanced around the idea that there is already a main tank in the team, because it is part of the AT design that they can shift roles on the fly. There is not currently a path, but ideally, the tank form would be more effective at holding aggro and tanking, while multi-form building be a bit more easy to achieve.

There is no good one-size-fits-all fixes for stalkers. Doing this to placate would just give more AoE to every stalker, and some of the later sets didn't lose any AoE on their stalker transition. This could make some Stalker AoE too good even when compared to other ATs, and it would still keep MA and EM relatively under-performing. Any fix to those two sets needs to be tailor made for them and not meddle with Assassination, Placate or Build Up, powers that are shared among all Stalker Melee sets.

If I have time later i'll split off this thread, but it seems that until the next patch the discussion on the tanker changes has pretty much reached it's end. That said: as much as I would like to address Stalker issues for EM and MA, due to the removal of their only AoE powers, it's highly unlikely that these sets will ever get their AoEs inserted back in. It would require some drastic game changes or breaking the cottage rule.

I must have missed those when they came through, thought that stuff happened WAY earlier (same time as the storm kick chun-li animation removal,) but then again, I didnt really play MA until the tanker version (I never got over the removal of that awesomely slow-but-cool storm kick... might also be why my timeline for the set stops there.)

I don’t recall there being any animation time changes for martial arts after the storm kick change very early on. They did change recharge times and damage for better dps, and added some new mechanic to Eagle Claw that boosts crit rate, but that was all Castle’s area. The blaster T1/2 normalization was for different reasons relating with making all the “usable while mezzed” powers “equal” for blasters.

Damage resistances were never taken into account when designing power sets. Well, almost never. There were two exceptions: 1) For years they avoided giving players more psi powers in fear of PvP balance (no longer an issue after they patched every psi hole in PvP only) 2) For years they opted to ignore Dual Pistol issues “because it could switch into toxic mode, a rarely resisted type” (something that was wrong, it’s one of the most heavily resisted types by some of the most recurring end-game enemies.) For the most part, the only metric used by devs to design offensive powers was powers dpa, and even then the tools were not were too powerful, reason why some sets are either way too good or way too weak.

Nope. Only looking at passive resistances. Toggles and clicks are being left alone, for the time being, as players can attempt to prevent their activations or somehow drop toggles.

Hmm these powers should be tagged as not dropping if mezzed, all player toggles that only affect self are supposed to. Ill look into this (it i don’t forget among all the other things I got going on right now.)

Some Melee Powersets will be looked at later after this is out of the way. The rage crash avoidance will actually be rolled back on next patch, the set will be looked at in more detail later, but not until another project is done: go through every single entity in the game and re-balance enemy damage resistances.

Short answer: the set wont be ported as is. It's defenses are too high, Energy Drain's +Def is too much, so that power likely has to be replaced with something else for the tanker version, at minimum. A little? Energy Drain should had never been changed from a heal to +defense.

Just a typo.

OK I hope this calms down the last few days of discussions: brutes wont be nerfed any further. In fact, the next patch has a buff to brute fury generation on teams. And just tongue in cheek: the only way brute resist cap would go down to 85% is if tanker resist cap also goes down to 85%. But there is no plan to do that at this time (or ever, ever ever.)

Clarification here: all ranged attacks on melee sets are considered melee for their modifiers, just like all melee PBAoE in Blast sets use ranger modifiers. So hurl did benefit from the melee mod damage increase. As for a list of powers that are affected or not, the list is not finalized and rather not put a list up that might change. The target caps are listed in game, easy to find. I likely will add a tool tip note to powers that ignore the effect by the end, if I don’t just lower the area of those powers like I did with foot stomp.

PvP damage should not have changed, there are different modifier tables at play in PvP and those were not changed. There might be some issues here and there with epic pools that should had been addressed in the last patch.

Weaken Resolve was hit by the same bug as Melt Armor, it's -res was also too high and is now lower. Note the bug affected both brutes and tankers. On top of that, given all the things Weaken Resolve does, it was also considered a bit too strong in the -res department and is getting lowered in a future patch (for everyone.)

Was this before or after Tanker -Res was reduced in Weaken REsolve and MeltArmor?

But now you are talking about very specific situations, and then, not specific enough. I have mentioned this a few times, but how does that all interact with using Epic pool AoEs? You cant make any decent AoE spam with Foot Stomp alone, even at extremely high recharge you need at least one more power, and that is almost certainly going to be an Epic pool attack that is scale damage 0.8 for Tankers and 0.75 scale damage for Brutes. As for attack chain, I don't personally do this (due to theme) but most SS builds i see tend to incorporate Gloom for optimal DPS. That Gloom will continue to be using a 0.8 modifier for tankers. It will continue to bring better DPS than Haymaker, but the impact on relative tanker/brute balance wont be as simple as looking at a single number. The 90% cap goal is just for the caps. It's a limit, how far can extreme buffs take the AT. It's not meant to keep both ATs at a permanent 90%/100% relationship. That is practically impossible with the way Brutes work mechanically. The only "constant" relationship being attempted is single target Tanker/Scrapper where the Tanker should be doing around 75% the damage of an equivalent scrapper, and that also gets murky because their Epics are different, and scrapper +Dmg is also significantly higher.

"Near" I really mean around 95 (highest I ever see) in a farm. When 50% is part of the conversation, I consider that "near" (although Auroxis himself claimed being able to saturate fury in farms also.) If I am playing missions, I do stay around 80%-89%. With enough enemies i hit 80% without attacking. With 7 critters I'm likely to hit 60% before within a handful attacks. So, I'm not sure what scenario I would ever consider 50% fury to be a realistic representation of brute gameplay.

And how realistic is that? Because in my experience, if brutes have multiple foes on them, they are at near 100% fury. And fury has bonus +fury built in when you fight EBs.AVs and the like that makes sure you always stay above 70% so long you continue attacking.

If I didn't care what anyone thinks, It's very likely none of the iteration we seen so far would had happened.

Yes, it is a nerf. Yes I did say i was not planning to nerf brutes (not sure if i ever said any definitive "wont", i try to avoid speaking in certain terms like that but I know sometimes I fail.) Anyways, no one should try to cover the sky with one hand, this is a nerf. It is indeed a minor nerf that should only play a role in team and raid situations. @kenlon got it right earlier, my mind was changed after a lot of talk pointed the dynamic between brutes and blasters/scrappers. It's an AT that can tank, manage aggro, and deal lots of damage, and then it can also be buffed to deal higher damage scale than a Blaster. I wasn't planning to do it, I was focusing on the melee at balance, but I stated that "if tanker damage is too high at 5.5, then so is brute damage with a 7.75 cap". Once blasters entered the conversation, I really felt that indeed, if there was a time to do this, it was now. The result after this should be a more balanced field among tanking ATs (Kheldians will be touched at some point, sorry, those require a lot more work than can be done within the scope of this wave) and also a better position for raw DPS ATs that bring little to the team more than, well, raw dps. Anyways, I own it. It's a nerf, not out of a whim, but it's a nerf and I did say it was not in the table. I apologize, but still feel this needs to happen. I'll do my best to avoid such absolute statements in the future.

Don't think it is problematic, also the main reason to lower the -radius was toned down mostly because +100% of making taunt auras and other cc abilities way too good.

Not that I remember