Buff Brutes... or Nerf Tanks.

[nihilii]

Things I can think of:

- 3 minutes to 4 minutes doesn't quite map out to +25%, because Pylons regen. A 3 minute Pylon time is 340 DPS. A 4 minute Pylon time is 287 DPS. 340/287 = 1.185 = +18.5%

- +18.5% * 0.65 (+4 AV) = +12%. Still far from the 5% to 8% you're seeing, to be sure. But if for example you were using a character primarily using lethal damage, it would explain the results on its own (many AVs have lethal resistance, some up to 50%). If you're primarily dealing smashing damage, it likely accounts for some (but not all) of your results.

 

-res procs don't mean much in primarily AoE environments, I agree. Especially as if you're going from Pylon to AoE, you likely have your -res procs in ST attacks. My experience is the same as yours in that area - there's no functional difference with damage procs. So the -res procs are neutral against trash, and useful against tough targets.

[Sovera]

13 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Things I can think of:

- 3 minutes to 4 minutes doesn't quite map out to +25%, because Pylons regen. A 3 minute Pylon time is 340 DPS. A 4 minute Pylon time is 287 DPS. 340/287 = 1.185 = +18.5%

- +18.5% * 0.65 (+4 AV) = +12%. Still far from the 5% to 8% you're seeing, to be sure. But if for example you were using a character primarily using lethal damage, it would explain the results on its own (many AVs have lethal resistance, some up to 50%). If you're primarily dealing smashing damage, it likely accounts for some (but not all) of your results.

 

-res procs don't mean much in primarily AoE environments, I agree. Especially as if you're going from Pylon to AoE, you likely have your -res procs in ST attacks. My experience is the same as yours in that area - there's no functional difference with damage procs. So the -res procs are neutral against trash, and useful against tough targets.

 

That's the sort of mathmagic Bopper started going on about when I invoked him on the subject. I'm sure this is relevant in the rarefied heights you eggheads frequent ( :p )  but for the rest of us a 4 minute run turning into a 3 minute run is a 25% boost. With both you and Bopper agreeing on the subject you're undoubtedly right it can be trimmed to an actual 12% damage boost but I'm not going to confuse myself others by adding it.

 

As for the AV that's maybe probably right (I don't argue maths) but % are about %. One thing can resist more, but if we run both tests and the % is the same that's what I take into consideration. The fact I (random numbers) take 50% HP of one S/L resisting AV after 5 minutes and then the next AV has no S/L resistances and I take 80% HP does not matter if I run the same test with a -res proc and the first AV lost 5-8% more HP and the second one also lost 5-8% more HP.

 

What might influence more is the damage proc I used being resisted because that would influence the run instead of -res versus empty slot. But still, I posted the numbers and they were steady, there were no 10-15% or 2% outliers. It was very solidly in the 5% to 8% range each time.

 

 

13 minutes ago, nihilii said:

-res procs don't mean much in primarily AoE environments, I agree. Especially as if you're going from Pylon to AoE, you likely have your -res procs in ST attacks. My experience is the same as yours in that area - there's no functional difference with damage procs. So the -res procs are neutral against trash, and useful against tough targets.

 

I had at least one in Burn which is very good at inflicting procs. At +4 with plenty of bosses surviving long once the dross is burn (hehe) there were plenty of chances to apply the -res to at least part of the population. How and if this factors in I've no real clue. Me chimp, me test, me post results.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Sovera

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

I completely disagree with Brutal Justice's pet crusade, but can't help but admire his ability to insert it into absolutely every single thread.

 

It's like our very own Godwin's Law.

 

Whether Blaster vs Sentinel, Tanker vs Brute, or power color customisation... If a thread lasts long enough, Brutal Justice will show up and advocate for defense to be nerfed to 40%.

 

Agreed. I’m not sure what Nathaniel Essex there is smoking, however, he really should share with the class because it would be fun to be that high.

[America's Angel]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

 

-res skew results because they inflate them. Suddenly 25% or more damage increase from using two of them. 'Just look at the damage my character does!'

 

Then we leave a pylon, go do a normal map, time it while using -res, then time it not using a -res. Same times. Where is the 25% damage increase? We solo fight a regular +4 (+3 with Alpha) AV and the 25% damage increase from having the -res procs slotted turns into as low as 5%.

 

And that skews the filter by which builds are looked at. It is no longer 'my damage is X' but rather 'my damage is X +25%', and then arguments are built around how such and such AT combo can do X (+25%) because it can slot more -res procs into them as if that X(+25%) happened outside of the narrow pylon test confines.

 

 

 

Other than that -res are fine with the pylon test if testing between builds, but in that case they both need the -res slotted in as well. It's a nitro boost and both builds need it so they can be compared. That X combo can slot more -res procs does not make it better than Z combo outside of pylons since -res procs have so little impact in actual gameplay.

 

I don't know how this works for PvP. I'm pretty surprised -res procs are used there since I thought it was a bursty meta but I live and a I learn.

 

 

A pylon defeated with single-target damage isn't equivalent to a map full of mobs mostly killed by AoEs. -Res procs or no, single-target DPS is not the benchmark for how fast something will clear missions. (I.e. If something has great single-target damage, that doesn't mean it has great AoE damage.) So the comparison doesn't really work.

 

A better comparison would be Pylons to other single hard targets such as EBs, AVs, and GMs. In this context, much like Pylon tests, -res procs in ST attacks absolutely increase your DPS. (In some cases more than versus a Pylon!)

 

So there's no skewing involved. In those settings where single target DPS matters, -res procs pretty much always perform the same way.

 

As for PvP, yes -res procs have a place. 1v1 tends to be more sustained damage than burst. Especially in melee vs melee fights. And even in the super-bursty 8v8 matches, if the target caller is a Poison, they'll often put an Achilles in Envenom so that the target's res is floored before the spike.

[Sovera]

3 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

 

A better comparison would be Pylons to other single hard targets such as EBs, AVs, and GMs. In this context, much like Pylon tests, -res procs in ST attacks absolutely increase your DPS. (In some cases more than versus a Pylon!)

 

This runs contrary to my tests. I welcome tested results instead of math though. We are still talking of solo scenarios, right?

[America's Angel]

45 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

This runs contrary to my tests. I welcome tested results instead of math though. We are still talking of solo scenarios, right?

 

Claws/Regen PvP build vs a level 54 AV Archon Burkholder:

 

With -res procs:

4:38

 

With the -res procs switched for a damage proc:
5:24

Edited May 21, 2021 by America's Angel

[Sovera]

8 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

 

Claws/Regen PvP build vs a level 54 AV Archon Burkholder:

 

With -res procs:

4:38

 

With the -res procs switched for a damage proc:
5:24

 

This is the sort of tests I was talking about. Between Tanker and Brute there is a significant deviance. I will mock a test by not using Fiery Embrace nor Burn.

 

Where did you find him? Isn't he a 30-40 arch-villain?

[America's Angel]

2 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

This is the sort of tests I was talking about. Between Tanker and Brute there is a significant deviance. I will mock a test by not using Fiery Embrace nor Burn.

 

Where did you find him? Isn't he a 30-40 arch-villain?

 

He should be available in the AE under Council.

[Sovera]

1 minute ago, America's Angel said:

 

He should be available in the AE under Council.

 

Yes, but it shows him as level 30-40. Could you mention what mission you used to find him?

[arcane]

6 hours ago, America's Angel said:

 

I only posted the videos to show that Brutes have the potential to do good damage. If I was going to do the pylons again with an actual PvE Claws build I'd probably want to switch from vigor to musculature, switch from degenerative 75% -hp to whichever one of the reactive ones is best, lose some of the PvP mitigation tools in favor of assault and adrenal booster, and possibly switch out Body Mastery for Soul Mastery and pick up Gloom. (Unless the switch to musculature necessitated keeping body mastery for the extra recovery and performance shifter procs.)

 

Whatever I end up changing, the result would be the same: a faster time than the ~2:10-2:20 min time my PvP Claws Brute  got.

 

Speaking of, I just took my ss/inv PvP build into RWZ and dropped a Pylon in just under 1:50:

 

 

As above, if I was going to make a PvE build for this, I'd do a lot differently.

Yes but you haven’t addressed the primary point of my post.
 

Yes you could ditch some PvP tools in favor of more DPS friendly stuff. But if you were to honestly make a PvE build... since, you know, people don’t make pylon builds, they make their PvE builds and test the S/T fraction of their DPS on pylons... if you were to do that, you need to account for having several other powers that don’t help you against pylons.

 

If you ditched your PvP toys but didn’t pick up and slot Spin, Shockwave, probably slotted Weave and/or Maneuvers since you’re a Regen, maybe Dark Obliteration, etc... that would be irrelevant since that’s... not comparable to anything we here are referring to as a PvE build. That’d just be a relatively useless pylon time gimmick build.

 

TL;DR: just explaining why my experience says PvP s/t DPS > PvE s/t DPS.

Edited May 21, 2021 by arcane

[America's Angel]

18 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

Yes, but it shows him as level 30-40. Could you mention what mission you used to find him?

 

Select "Fight a Boss" for the mission objective.

 

Then set it to look like this:

 

 

You want this one:

 

 

  

14 minutes ago, arcane said:

Yes but you haven’t addressed the primary point of my post.
 

Yes you could ditch some PvP tools in favor of more DPS friendly stuff. But if you were to honestly make a PvE build... since, you know, people don’t make pylon builds, they make their PvE builds and test the S/T fraction of their DPS on pylons... if you were to do that, you need to account for having several other powers that don’t help you against pylons.

 

If you ditched your PvP toys but didn’t pick up and slot Spin, Shockwave, probably slotted Weave and/or Maneuvers since you’re a Regen, maybe Dark Obliteration, etc... that would be irrelevant since that’s... not comparable to anything we here are referring to as a PvE build. That’d just be a relatively useless pylon time gimmick build.

 

Yeah if I was making a PvE build I'd definitely pick up the AoEs. Wouldn't have any impact on Pylon times, though. (Or get in the way of the other stuff I'd do to improve the pylon time vs the PvP build's performance.)

Edited May 21, 2021 by America's Angel

[arcane]

Who knows.. I don’t do pylons. And I don’t PvP with melee either. I just know my PvP characters (I play, like, Ice/Poison, Beam blasters, etc.) absolutely hammer single targets whereas it’s just one of many things I have to focus on in PvE.

[Sovera]

This took longer than it needed since I had to re-learn how to use the AE, but I got it. Burk AV, level 54, fully tricked T4 out Tanker, Degenerative 75% chance for debuff. To mirror the invuln/regen/SR experience of the Brutes I did not use Fiery Embrace, Blazing Aura or Burn. No -res procs used.

 

I stopped the test at 5 minutes on the dot since I'm not masochistic.

 

Spoiler

 

I should be 30 seconds behind a Brute according to the pylon tests, but I think not. Someone cry me a river on the poor widdle Brutes whose damage is so bad compared to Tankers.

 

If others want to test for more data samples and not pass through my suffering I've published the mission as 'Burk Test'.

 

[Brutal Justice]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

Luckily, these resistance-based Scrappers have their choice of at least... counts... seven different pool powers which buff defense to everything. Meanwhile, the defense-based Scrappers can choose between... well, no, they can't really choose because there's only one pool power which grants resistance to everything, and it can only be used 1/3 of the time. There's Tough as well, but it only gives S/L resist. And this isn't even getting into the world of IOs where defense bonuses are usually more easy to acquire in meaningful numbers than their resistance counterparts, though the set bonus tweaks in Issue 24 went a long way to address this.

 

TL;DR: It is significantly easier for a resistance-based character to add defense through IOs and pool powers than it is for a defense-based character to add resistance.

 

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. 

[Brutal Justice]

10 hours ago, chi1701 said:

 

How would you re-balance the veat widow who has insane amount of defence? up to 100%+ defence and very little to no resistance

 

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%.  

[Brutal Justice]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

You'd expect the defense-based sets to be all the way at the top but as it turns out it's the hybrid def/res sets which win, even the ones which are nowhere near softcap. Super Reflexes, which is softcapped in this scenario, is solidly in the middle of the pack. Obviously the resistance-based/click-based sets fare worst since in this scenario the healing/regen/absorb of those sets is being completely ignored.

 

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.

[ABlueThingy]

12 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

 

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. 

What about reducing the base NPC To-hit by say... 5 percentage points.  And adding an additional 5 Accuracy to all NPCs?  So if you have no defenses nothing changes you're still at a 50% change to get hit.  But now everyone soft caps at 40% def no matter how many IOs they have.

 

Then just add in Elusivity only to sets that focus on it like SR and FF to let them push back up to the 45% cap.  You should be able to rejigger the math so those def focused ATs won't see much of change.   Maybe shave 10% off all the +def powers and convert it into Elusivity and make +def ENH also add to Elusivity.  It won't hit power creep that much as there's lots of other ways to squeeze survivbility out of the game but it would at least give some sets more of a mechanically unique identity. 
 

 

Also this might have to come with changes to squishy sets if it impacts them too hard. Maybe also maybe add in more -def protection here and there.

 

I'm not even saying this is a good idea mind you.  Just that if you're going to mess with the whole to-hit system there's a lot of ways you can go then just randomly capping it off.

 

 

[Brutal Justice]

8 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

First it's not bragging (anyone can do it), it's been fact for a long time.  Second the set unlike many resistance sets has no self heal or +health power, no way outside passive regeneration to recover the health lost to the hits they will take.  No Energize, no Dull Pain.  So to say it isn't balanced has a long way to go to make its case yet.

 

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.  

[Brutal Justice]

5 hours ago, nihilii said:

Whether Blaster vs Sentinel, Tanker vs Brute, or power color customisation... If a thread lasts long enough, Brutal Justice will show up and advocate for defense to be nerfed to 40%.

 

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!

[Apparition]

5 hours ago, nihilii said:

I completely disagree with Brutal Justice's pet crusade, but can't help but admire his ability to insert it into absolutely every single thread.

 

It's like our very own Godwin's Law.

 

Whether Blaster vs Sentinel, Tanker vs Brute, or power color customisation... If a thread lasts long enough, Brutal Justice will show up and advocate for defense to be nerfed to 40%.

 

Really, that’s when you know that the thread is over and it is time to move on.

[Brutal Justice]

29 minutes ago, ABlueThingy said:

What about reducing the base NPC To-hit by say... 5 percentage points.  And adding an additional 5 Accuracy to all NPCs?  So if you have no defenses nothing changes you're still at a 50% change to get hit.  But now everyone soft caps at 40% def no matter how many IOs they have.

 

Then just add in Elusivity only to sets that focus on it like SR and FF to let them push back up to the 45% cap.  You should be able to rejigger the math so those def focused ATs won't see much of change.   Maybe shave 10% off all the +def powers and convert it into Elusivity and make +def ENH also add to Elusivity.  It won't hit power creep that much as there's lots of other ways to squeeze survivbility out of the game but it would at least give some sets more of a mechanically unique identity. 
 

 

Also this might have to come with changes to squishy sets if it impacts them too hard. Maybe also maybe add in more -def protection here and there.

 

I'm not even saying this is a good idea mind you.  Just that if you're going to mess with the whole to-hit system there's a lot of ways you can go then just randomly capping it off.

 

 

 

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.  

[PeregrineFalcon]

Personally I like how the GM posted, warning us to be civil to the guy derailing the thread. But the guy derailing the thread? Nah, he's going to be allowed to go off on his one man crusade in every thread he touches and there's nothing we can do about it.

 

Because derailing every single thread with this horrible idea, that has nothing to do with the topic of the thread, that's ok. That's not rude at all. Nope. There's nothing uncivil about derailing every thread you post in. Nosiree!

[arcane]

I get you Brutal Justice. Just because your suggestion is unpopular as hell doesn’t mean it’s objectively stupid or merits the kind of sneering condescension you’ve gotten. Probably not gonna happen as it’s obviously crossing a line where the playerbase turns riotous, but you do you. If your suggestion was implemented tomorrow, I’d personally find it reasonable enough fwiw though SR and Ninjitsu scrappers etc might need some tweaks.

[Alchemystic]

[America's Angel]

  

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

This took longer than it needed since I had to re-learn how to use the AE, but I got it. Burk AV, level 54, fully tricked T4 out Tanker, Degenerative 75% chance for debuff. To mirror the invuln/regen/SR experience of the Brutes I did not use Fiery Embrace, Blazing Aura or Burn. No -res procs used.

 

I stopped the test at 5 minutes on the dot since I'm not masochistic.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I should be 30 seconds behind a Brute according to the pylon tests, but I think not. Someone cry me a river on the poor widdle Brutes whose damage is so bad compared to Tankers.

 

If others want to test for more data samples and not pass through my suffering I've published the mission as 'Burk Test'.

 

 

I made a Claws tank with the same attack power slotting/incarnates/+recharge as my Claws brute. (A clone!) I then fought Burkholder.

 

Dropped him in ~7:20.

 

My Brute can do it in ~4:40.

 

So yeah...Brute damage is fine. (Guess that's the thread over? )

 

2 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

 

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. 

 

Yeah I've always thought Scrappers and Stalkers should have a 90% res cap. It seems weird they have the same defense cap as Brutes/Tanks, but a different res cap.