Thinking of switching from brute to tanker for farm.

[LordBob]

I currently use a ss/fire brute for farming (i hate spines) and im leveling up a rad/fire brute to replace him. with the new tanker changes tanker is looking like it might slightly edge out brute. also i was wondering if someone could point me to a guide that explains how the contaminate proc works for rad melee.

[Saikochoro]

I was also curious about this. With the tanker buffs I was wondering if they can now farm as fast as brutes. 
 

I know brutes have fury going for them, which will boost their damage quite a bit above tankers even with the tanker base damage increase. I was however wondering if the tanker aoe buffs (target cap increase and size increase) is enough to narrow the damage gap or even eliminate it.

 

I know burn makes up a tremendous amount of the damage and am not sure what target caps (if any) it has. So wasn’t sure if that will influence it also. 

[Rokkeb]

Main reason right now is the fear from burn on brutes. its so lame. 

[Digirium]

My go to farm is a spines/fire brute -- the taunt bug on brutes at the moment prompted me to roll a fire/spines tanker and see what it's like to farm. Yes, more targets are hit with AoE attacks and it's nice seeing an extra amount of damage numbers floating up -- those numbers are smaller, however, so it's a trade-off. Comparison: farm tanker feels slightly slower than a farm brute but they're in the same ball-park. Plus point at the moment, until the taunt bug is eventually patched, is that NPCs in the farm are not running about everywhere for the farm tanker, so it feels a little more productive. YMMV on farm tanker vs brute.

[Infinitum]

7 hours ago, Digirium said:

My go to farm is a spines/fire brute -- the taunt bug on brutes at the moment prompted me to roll a fire/spines tanker and see what it's like to farm. Yes, more targets are hit with AoE attacks and it's nice seeing an extra amount of damage numbers floating up -- those numbers are smaller, however, so it's a trade-off. Comparison: farm tanker feels slightly slower than a farm brute but they're in the same ball-park. Plus point at the moment, until the taunt bug is eventually patched, is that NPCs in the farm are not running about everywhere for the farm tanker, so it feels a little more productive. YMMV on farm tanker vs brute.

I havent noticed a grouping issue on my Rad Fire Brute, I have leveled up 2 characters to 50 in about 7 hours total (broken up in intervals) this last week too.

[Digirium]

3 hours ago, Infinitum said:

I havent noticed a grouping issue on my Rad Fire Brute, I have leveled up 2 characters to 50 in about 7 hours total (broken up in intervals) this last week too.

Taunt aura on brutes is currently broken, a fix is being tested but not deployed to live yet -- please see beta patch notes 29 January, 2020. The effect, as noted in the OP, is that NPCs run in and out of brute auras. Supposedly, there is a ritual that helps circumvent the brute's taunt aura defect and I've been following it - toggle auras off and on across session changes. It doesn't seem to help a lot, firing brute taunt seems to help. May be a rad/fire farm brute isn't being affected so much with the taunt aura bug?

[Auroxis]

Fire/Rad Tankers can farm as well as Rad/Fire Brutes according to tests made by @macskull

 

 

[SinergyX]

Not only the target cap on their abilities (though i believe burn still has the 5 on the initial tick), the increase to 0.95 melee gives it that bit of extra oompf to get near brute.

The damage then scales up exponentially, just some fictional numbers, a tank can do the same damage at 400% bonus compared to a 600% brute.

 

However, as burn makes up the most of the damage, wich has a 5 target initial tick and summons (as burn is) isnt increased on limit, i doubt u gain the upperhand there. So the split there is the melee attack caps, presumable the increase just makes up the bit less top damage of a tank, as the fast runners pretty much spam red's nonstop. 

 

I'm mainly focusing on other sets, that just can go around being tank as well doing some farming, and from the 9 sets tested (4 brutes, 5 tanks), oddly my bio/katana currently running second. I assume 'farmers' (as a sidejob) tankers gain the upperhand once they rely more on their attacks where majority is buffed on targetcap. However, due placement of the mobs and arcs of certain attacks, i doubt you hit more mobs at all dispite the higher cap (footstomp easily can hit 16, however fire breath is quite tricky to even hit 6, let alone hit 10).  For staff i tried guarded spin several times, my best consistent hits were 7 targets, dispite it went 6->10, i only manage to hit 1 extra target wich unlikely can push tank up to brute level.

[Digirium]

2 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Fire/Rad Tankers can farm as well as Rad/Fire Brutes according to tests made by @macskull

 

 

 

I see farm brute still ahead, slightly, to farm tanker but not as massively as before -- this is due to fury. In either scenario, the edge case of how many red inspirations are available to consume during a farm can swing it one direction or another. A tanker is more viable to farm with than it used to be.

[Infinitum]

4 hours ago, Digirium said:

Taunt aura on brutes is currently broken, a fix is being tested but not deployed to live yet -- please see beta patch notes 29 January, 2020. The effect, as noted in the OP, is that NPCs run in and out of brute auras. Supposedly, there is a ritual that helps circumvent the brute's taunt aura defect and I've been following it - toggle auras off and on across session changes. It doesn't seem to help a lot, firing brute taunt seems to help. May be a rad/fire farm brute isn't being affected so much with the taunt aura bug?

May be the case because honestly if I hadn't just read brutes were having issues here, I wouldn't have seen it in practice. 

 

They clump to me and stay till they are ashes.

[Rokkeb]

5 hours ago, Infinitum said:

May be the case because honestly if I hadn't just read brutes were having issues here, I wouldn't have seen it in practice. 

 

They clump to me and stay till they are ashes.

My spines fire brute is heavily nerfed by the taunt bug. Nothing stays on him anymore. It feels like I'm back to playing a shadow priest in wow, and just spamming fear on everything. 

 

Leveling a fire/claws tanker to replace him now. 

 

Also dang it Bobby, now I have an itch to try and recreate my shadow priest from wow in CoH. Hmm maybe a dark/dark corrupted.

[Infinitum]

3 hours ago, Rokkeb said:

My spines fire brute is heavily nerfed by the taunt bug. Nothing stays on him anymore. It feels like I'm back to playing a shadow priest in wow, and just spamming fear on everything. 

 

Leveling a fire/claws tanker to replace him now. 

 

Also dang it Bobby, now I have an itch to try and recreate my shadow priest from wow in CoH. Hmm maybe a dark/dark corrupted.

dang thats nuts, my rad/fire isnt missing a beat, in fact in AEing right now

[macskull]

14 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Fire/Rad Tankers can farm as well as Rad/Fire Brutes according to tests made by @macskull

 

 

To be fair that was a comparison of a single powerset combination, though I don't think the results would be much different for any set. I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a powerset that leverages the increased Tanker target caps to the point where it would clearly outperform a Rad/Fire Brute. Basically my take on it is that a Tanker will farm fairly well after the changes if that's something you're really interested in, but the Brute is still going to be better. In the earlier versions of the Tanker changes my opinion was different, but the damage cap going from 600% to 500% and the radius/arc buffs being 50% instead of 100% made a big difference.

[Olivia Crowley]

I have been playing a fire/rad tanker for my farmer for a while. I started it when we first caught wind of the tanker buffs. Boy, that was a bit of a wait! While the clear speed was 'fine' and passable before, it's much more solid now.

 

I, personally, went the tanker route because 1. i've played brutes to death but never gave tankers as much of a chance (even before brutes existed) and 2. FA has a rep for being ultra squishy, but that's just not the case with tanker values. Even on live I wasn't a big fan of a character whose only purpose was to live in fire farms and do nothing else, so this time around I whipped up a tanker that I felt comfy bringing to all forms of content.

[SinergyX]

14 hours ago, macskull said:

To be fair that was a comparison of a single powerset combination, though I don't think the results would be much different for any set. I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of a powerset that leverages the increased Tanker target caps to the point where it would clearly outperform a Rad/Fire Brute. Basically my take on it is that a Tanker will farm fairly well after the changes if that's something you're really interested in, but the Brute is still going to be better. In the earlier versions of the Tanker changes my opinion was different, but the damage cap going from 600% to 500% and the radius/arc buffs being 50% instead of 100% made a big difference.

The problem is you cant fully reproduce the exact same situation on both AT's, mobs wonder off (fear of burn), they stack up wrongly, there is no clean comparison to see wich of the 2 actualy run around faster. Only point is simply testing 1 power at its total damage and calculate from there. And even then it will be a story around fiery armor and burn (where both remain equal, 5 cap and a summon), where the actual attacks that got buffed have only portion of total damage done.

 

Fiery melee for example has tankside with 2 true AOE's, plus increased range and targetcap, one where brute looses alot. Other sets have mostly cones wich make hitting 10 quite the hard job (unless 180 degree), like staff you can hit the 16 on eye storm, but quite impossible 10 with the 2 cones. But then we fall back to fiery armor, majority of damage comes from burn. Then it just boils down how long can you keep up the cap damage buff (700 vs 500) where the difference will be shown. 

 

Im sure if you put a graph on bonus damage versus output, there will be a sweetspot for tanks to take over, but either below it or at the top, brutes remain the higher damage. Take fiery armor out of the equation and i think that sweet spot is alot bigger to certain sets. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by SinergyX

[Kaballah]

I made a fire/fire/pyre tanker to examine this and while I'm sure my build isn't hyper optimal, it's reasonably comparable - inf/hr is something like 80% of my spine/fire brute, using no insps or outside buffs.  However if you have some method of keeping your dmg bonus high without effort I have no doubt they'd be very comparable or perhaps the tanker would end up being even better.  The tanker is way more comfortable to drive though, can go AFK in a crowd of elites and has better endurance sustain despite having an attack chain that on paper should be more expensive.

[Kaballah]

6 hours ago, Tsurupettan said:

FA has a rep for being ultra squishy, but that's just not the case with tanker values. Even on live I wasn't a big fan of a character whose only purpose was to live in fire farms and do nothing else, so this time around I whipped up a tanker that I felt comfy bringing to all forms of content.

I agree my fire armor tank feels very capable vs. almost all of the content, except the stuff that most other tanks have problems with (malta, some combinations of IDF spawns, the like)

[SinergyX]

1 hour ago, Kaballah said:

I agree my fire armor tank feels very capable vs. almost all of the content, except the stuff that most other tanks have problems with (malta, some combinations of IDF spawns, the like)

Fire tank has a bit more holes that other sets have covered, some have no -end or -recharge resist, others no -psi, lesser mez protect, its kinda fire got serious all of that 😛

[Kaballah]

Fire armor actually has 50% end drain resist on Consume while it is up (2 minutes, easily perma) and practically no sets have any -recharge resist (only Electric Armor that I can think of).  Only a couple of sets have tools vs psionic dmg.  What does "lesser mez protect" mean exactly, you have the same 13 points of status protect vs everything except KB as other tank sets?  and the KB you can easily fix with gear anyway

 

e: well okay not vs "everything", no protection vs confuse or terrorize, but I cannot recall that ever being a big deal

Edited February 10, 2020 by Kaballah

[macskull]

6 hours ago, SinergyX said:

The problem is you cant fully reproduce the exact same situation on both AT's, mobs wonder off (fear of burn), they stack up wrongly, there is no clean comparison to see wich of the 2 actualy run around faster. Only point is simply testing 1 power at its total damage and calculate from there. And even then it will be a story around fiery armor and burn (where both remain equal, 5 cap and a summon), where the actual attacks that got buffed have only portion of total damage done.

 

Fiery melee for example has tankside with 2 true AOE's, plus increased range and targetcap, one where brute looses alot. Other sets have mostly cones wich make hitting 10 quite the hard job (unless 180 degree), like staff you can hit the 16 on eye storm, but quite impossible 10 with the 2 cones. But then we fall back to fiery armor, majority of damage comes from burn. Then it just boils down how long can you keep up the cap damage buff (700 vs 500) where the difference will be shown. 

 

Im sure if you put a graph on bonus damage versus output, there will be a sweetspot for tanks to take over, but either below it or at the top, brutes remain the higher damage. Take fiery armor out of the equation and i think that sweet spot is alot bigger to certain sets. 

The closest way to reproduce the exact same situation on both ATs is to run both builds through identical content multiple times and compare results, to try and eliminate outliers  and variables and establish what you should be seeing, and that's exactly what I did. I didn't save the numbers, but what I saw was that both builds were pretty consistently in the 3:30-4:00 range on a particular AE farm.

 

Fiery melee on a Tanker will outperform its Brute counterpart simply because it's got a second PBAoE but Combustion's animation time is pretty awful, and then it's the question of whether it would outperform rad or spines and I'm pretty sure the answer is no simply because so much of your damage over a long period of time comes from that damage aura.

Edited February 10, 2020 by macskull

[Gobbledigook]

1 hour ago, Kaballah said:

Fire armor actually has 50% end drain resist on Consume while it is up (2 minutes, easily perma) and practically no sets have any -recharge resist (only Electric Armor that I can think of).  Only a couple of sets have tools vs psionic dmg.  What does "lesser mez protect" mean exactly, you have the same 13 points of status protect vs everything except KB as other tank sets?  and the KB you can easily fix with gear anyway

 

e: well okay not vs "everything", no protection vs confuse or terrorize, but I cannot recall that ever being a big deal

Ice armor?

[Kaballah]

What's your point?

[SinergyX]

3 hours ago, Kaballah said:

Fire armor actually has 50% end drain resist on Consume while it is up (2 minutes, easily perma) and practically no sets have any -recharge resist (only Electric Armor that I can think of).  Only a couple of sets have tools vs psionic dmg.  What does "lesser mez protect" mean exactly, you have the same 13 points of status protect vs everything except KB as other tank sets?  and the KB you can easily fix with gear anyway

 

e: well okay not vs "everything", no protection vs confuse or terrorize, but I cannot recall that ever being a big deal

Rad, stone (rooted), dark, all got 85%, inv got 25%, Bio got on -end (not -rec). As for -recharge, you would be amaxed, even Inv got 20, elec and rad got pretty high numbers, ice offcourse is master. Some lack the same KB (or repel), but cover that with -perc or even confuse/fear, im not saying fire armor is serious lacking, but its basicly quite a few hole to plug on fire armor, that apart of farming, i would pick any set over fire armor specialy on resist-sets (ok.. maybe not dark).

 

  

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Fiery melee on a Tanker will outperform its Brute counterpart simply because it's got a second PBAoE but Combustion's animation time is pretty awful, and then it's the question of whether it would outperform rad or spines and I'm pretty sure the answer is no simply because so much of your damage over a long period of time comes from that damage aura.

True, i was just looking at the bigger picture on other sets and combo's, where some sets can obtain the upperhand over brute, but remain far less effective on farming.

Edited February 11, 2020 by SinergyX

[Kaballah]

I get it that Fire is not the best in one category or another, but you're saying that 4 sets are better wrt endurance drain and the other 7 are worse.   Every set has some sort of hole or drawback.  The point is not that Fire is "better" than the other sets at whatever specific category, but that it's good enough for the great majority of content, and has problems with a few things the way most sets have problems with a few things.  Even my electric armor tank can eventually get overwhelmed by big enough piles of malta, even my ice armor tank would get mashed by stuff like Rularuu mobs.

 

e: huh I just noticed Fire/Temperature Protection also has 20% -recharge resist, go figure

Edited February 11, 2020 by Kaballah

[SinergyX]

No idea where you see i say 7 were worst and 4 are better, i just take random examples of sets, i just say overal Fire has the lesser side of plugging holes.