Were Brutes that Badly Nerfed?

[drgantz]

I've seen many posts about people being upset about Brute nerfs.  At first, I thought that it was mostly about attracting aggro.  I just saw other posts saying that either Brutes had dmg reduced and/or Tankers got dmg increased.

I have a Brute in his 40s.  I don't mind re-starting him at level 1, since I enjoy the journey but am trying to decide betweeen Brute and Tanker.

I mostly group for TFs and radios.  I don't solo much and I don't PVP.

He's StJ/WP.

He's a homage to the great Al Bundy.

[Astralock]

Brutes were nerfed (the damage max was lowered a bit), but it's mostly that Tankers were overbuffed to the point that Tankers are now overpowered.  Unless you want to play Energy Aura or Regeneration, Tanker is the objectively superior AT.  Every time.

[Gobbledigook]

Brutes are still very good and some deemed them overpowered pre nerf. Some did not like the nerf.

Tankers got a needed buff, which some did not like also. Was it too much? maybe with the extra AoE lol.

 

If you want to tank more then roll a Tanker and if you want better damage then roll a Brute but the Tankers extra AoE does help it clear mobs fast but a Brute will win on a single target.

 

It's best to make your own judgement.

[WumpusRat]

I think a lot of it stems from how people are building characters and declaring certain ATs "overpowered".

 

The current "meta" for building seems to be to stuff as many procs into each attack as possible, and build tons of global recharge, to make the procs go off as much as they can. This tends to benefit tankers a lot, since procs aren't affected by +damage, so it boosts their damage substantially.

 

If you go for more set-bonus oriented builds, brutes are still a good bit ahead of tankers in terms of damage, especially when they get rolling. Tankers hit more targets with aoes, but brutes deal significantly more damage per attack.

 

[kito]

And if/wen the nurf hammer hits procs it will hit tanks the hardest I think. I doubt brutes will feel it as they don't need to over buff there DMG to hit like a tank they need to over buff there defence to tank like a tank.

[Gulbasaur]

Brutes occupy a difficult spot between tankers and scrappers. Scrappers have passively gained more survivability due to how easy it is to build up defence and resists with IO set bonuses, and tankers were buffed so that they have now got better AoE powers, as well as a general damage buff.

 

Solo, a scrapper will out-damage a brute almost every time. Solo, a tanker will out-survive a brute. 

 

There's nothing wrong with them, they just don't shine outside of a few niche instances. 

[twozerofoxtrot]

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

The current "meta" for building seems to be to stuff as many procs into each attack as possible, and build tons of global recharge, to make the procs go off as much as they can. This tends to benefit tankers a lot, since procs aren't affected by +damage, so it boosts their damage substantially.

 

Nail on the head.  When discussing what is good or best assumptions are often made on the character being at the end of their journey, often with Incarnate powers in play.

 

 

Brutes, if leveled outside of farms and PI teams, without the benefit of a mysterious financial backer pumping lots of inf into their baby-level slotting,  are going to feel a lot better to drive than a Tanker pre-30 in most cases.

 

Fury's benefit is a lot stronger when your looking at 2-3 available slots per power (avg).

 

And because during those lower levels Tankers are often left with only a few organic attacks, Brutes feel a lot less punishing to solo with.

 

6 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

Tankers got a needed buff, which some did not like also.

 

And they were indirectly buffed more when the power availability changes occurred in Page 5.  Brutes getting access to protection T8 and T9 is often a lot less impactful during leveling than Tankers getting access to their attack T8 and T9s.

[kito]

1 hour ago, Gulbasaur said:

There's nothing wrong with them, they just don't shine outside of a few niche instances. 

 

Like farming. Not often I see tank/scrapper farm build if they where so much better in every way the brute would not rule the farms. 

 

But I guess yes if you want to power games to the peak off all content the brute would be unneeded.

[Gulbasaur]

13 minutes ago, kito said:

But I guess yes if you want to power games to the peak off all content the brute would be unneeded.

It's similar to the defender vs corruptor debate - outside of some niche examples*, the answer is "whichever you enjoy the most". I like my brute. I like my tanker. I loved my stalker. 

Regen brutes tanking Hamidon would be another as they recover from the untyped damage pretty much instantly, although everyone spams incarnates anyway so it's less crucial. 

* Solo, they're roughly equivalent on raw DPS. Some defenders can buff much harder than is needed by the average team, especially when they buff something with a fairly low effective cap like defence, so you might as well bring a corruptor in a team setting as the defender inherent primarily helps them solo. Some support sets are substantially stronger on a defender, particularly strong debuff sets or outliers like storm summoning which uses pseudopets that don't proc scourge so work out fractionally higher DPS on a defender. 

[tidge]

My opinion only: I appreciate living in a Homecoming era in which there are a relatively small number of voices complaining that "Tankers are over-powered" as compared to the days when there were more (possibly the same number just louder) voices that "Tankers are obviously inferior to Brutes and no one should play them."

 

The rest of this post is informed by the  solo play experience.

 

The Homecoming decisions (which affect all AT) such as lowering level requirements for powers, and also NOT touching %damage procs, have done a LOT for smoothing the play experience (in my experience) across ATs (not just Brutes/Tankers) for both:

• "Casual" leveling and experiencing of content organically
• Full-kit, post-level 50 builds with full slots/enhancements and Incarnates

Fundamentally, across a majority of content, the mechanics of the game reward players for the most enemy defeats in the shortest period of time. Once any AT is in the second bullet category (full-kit), it really should not be preordained that some AT must take an order of magnitude more time to complete typical content(*1). Yes, there will be some difference due to the inherent damage scales (which is why I hope %procs remain untouched), but it isn't worth being upset that across primary/secondaries one AT clears a x8 spawn map on average 5% faster than another specific AT takes to clear the same map. (*2)

 

(*1) Specific to recent improvements to Tankers, the increased AoE is pretty much just improving the ability of Tankers to clean up groups of scrubs faster than before the change. Because of how Fury can benefit from a large spawn attacking a Brute, I casually wonder if some of the Brute angst is because a Tanker's wider AoE means that the tanker isn't simply sitting in a large spawn only slowly defeating the entire spawn (modulo the use of Build Up) like the Tankers used to have to do.

 

(*2) Prior to City of Villains, there was a near-constant chatter about how Scrappers made Tankers irrelevant!

[aethereal]

6 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

The current "meta" for building seems to be to stuff as many procs into each attack as possible, and build tons of global recharge, to make the procs go off as much as they can. This tends to benefit tankers a lot, since procs aren't affected by +damage, so it boosts their damage substantially.

 

I assure you that brutes benefit  more from procs than any other melee AT, if you're just looking in isolation at how much more damage they get from slotting a proc.

 

To the extent that tanks have a proc advantage, it's simply that they can throw away more set bonuses and still hit survivability goals, while Brutes (and Scrappers, and Stalkers) need to use many more set bonuses if they're going to survive solo at high difficulty.  So it's easier for tanks to fit large numbers of procs into their build.  But each proc benefits a brute mildly more.

[aethereal]

9 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Solo, a scrapper will out-damage a brute almost every time. 

I think this is easy to overstate.  Yes, top end scrappers do a ton of damage (honestly enough to need a nerf).  But scrappers outdamage brutes only with very efficient use of the Superior ATO2.  Before level 50, before perma-hasten, or with somewhat inefficient choices of where to put the ATO2, scrappers do equal or less damage than brutes.

 

A good change would be to move some of the performance of the ATO2 into the ATO1 or into the base inherent of scrappers to both nerf very high end scrappers and buff all other scrappers.

Edited January 10, 2023 by aethereal

[lemming]

My own experience, YMMV.

I've leveled a bunch of brutes, scrappers, stalkers, and tankers.   They all work very well while doing solo stuff, even though played differently.  I tend to base the build more on concept than "best".   I also don't tend to frankenslot for procs.

Tankers I lean into survivability, Scrappers into damage and being a bit more dynamic in their fighting.  Brutes I work toward being able to do either, just not quite as well.  (Stalkers I like doing a bunch of solo stuff with them, but sorta like a more fragile scrapper)

 

I'll say that the ATOs for each are with the exception for Brute's Fury, good.  The boost to Fury is usually wasted.

 

I think they could be tuned a little up, there's a large gap between a very well built brute and a tossed together one.  Tankers on the other hand, you can be sloppy in the build and still do pretty well on survival.  I do like where the tankers are currently.

[WumpusRat]

One thing I've thought would work is tweaking brutes' defensive values to put them midway between tankers and scrappers. They have the same caps as tankers, but struggle a lot more to reach them. 

 

Currently, brutes/scrappers get 22.5% base for a lot of their resist shields, while tankers get 30%.

Why not split the difference for brutes, and tweak them up to 26%? 

 

It would make hitting defensive values a bit easier, and let them lean more heavily into their damage.

[Gobbledigook]

35 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

One thing I've thought would work is tweaking brutes' defensive values to put them midway between tankers and scrappers. They have the same caps as tankers, but struggle a lot more to reach them. 

 

Currently, brutes/scrappers get 22.5% base for a lot of their resist shields, while tankers get 30%.

Why not split the difference for brutes, and tweak them up to 26%? 

 

It would make hitting defensive values a bit easier, and let them lean more heavily into their damage.

I think that could potentially make them overpowered. 

 

I play my Brutes like a Scrapper, for damage. Ill end up with similar stats to a Scrapper but with more health and a few better resists, but i won't do as much damage as the Scrapper. Put that Brute in a team with a few buffs flying around and that Brute can now have Tanker resists and good damage.

 

The Brute may need a tweak here and there(Not the only AT to need that), especially it's ATO but they are still a good AT, just in an awkward position between Tanker and Scrapper.

[twozerofoxtrot]

4 hours ago, lemming said:

I'll say that the ATOs for each are with the exception for Brute's Fury, good.  The boost to Fury is usually wasted.

 

58 minutes ago, Gobbledegook said:

especially it's ATO

 

Oh man. Yes.

 

I really wish this worked more like a buildup proc, similar to Acendency of the Dominator proc, but with capped stacking. Basically the damage version of Might of the Tanker proc.  Would help Brutes top out their damage cap without external buffs.

[drgantz]

6 hours ago, lemming said:

I think they could be tuned a little up, there's a large gap between a very well built brute and a tossed together one.  Tankers on the other hand, you can be sloppy in the build and still do pretty well on survival.  I do like where the tankers are currently.

This is an excellent comment.  I don't go into super planning for my builds.  I just figure it out as I go along.  For this reason, a Tanker might be better for me.

[Zect]

18 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

The current "meta" for building seems to be to stuff as many procs into each attack as possible, and build tons of global recharge, to make the procs go off as much as they can. This tends to benefit tankers a lot, since procs aren't affected by +damage, so it boosts their damage substantially.

 

If you go for more set-bonus oriented builds, brutes are still a good bit ahead of tankers in terms of damage, especially when they get rolling. Tankers hit more targets with aoes, but brutes deal significantly more damage per attack.

 

Brutes outdamage tankers in general; this is still the case.

 

The issue with brute/tanker balance is more that tanker damage has been buffed excessively, to the point that tankers now have a more optimal ratio of survivability to damage. This is especially true on res sets since res is very tough to build for and tankers have an advantage in capping EN res (the hardest res to build for) with their ATIO.

 

The tanker melee damage scalar is 0.95 (buffed from 0.80). You just need to ask yourself whether an armored, mez protected AT with tanker scalar HP and tanker scalar defenses should be doing 95% of blaster base melee dps, and you'll see why brutes should not be tuned up; tankers need to be tuned down.

[aethereal]

I find that people are strangely unwilling to approach Brutes from a perspective of "what powersets really work well on a Brute"?  Like, everyone's happy to say that the Brute is a marginal AT, but it seems like few people are willing to say, "Okay, so how do we play to its strengths?"

 

Like, I see people recommend Energy Aura on a Brute.  Energy Aura is of course a solid set anywhere, but it's like the number one example of, "You might as well make it on a Scrapper."  It's defense-based, so the Brute higher resist cap is largely irrelevant on it.  It retains its taunt aura on a Scrapper.  It has Energize, which makes some use of Brute's higher hp, but honestly a Scrapper is going to be 99.5% as durable as a Brute in Energy Aura.

 

Invulnerability is a little more tilted towards Brutes, but not much.

 

I want to see several of these things checked on a Brute:

 

1.  Armor set can reasonably get above 75% resistance in several different resists.

2.  Damage aura (or two!)

3.  Armor set leverages Brute hit points by having significant heals/regen.

4.  Armor set has no taunt aura on a Scrapper.

5.  Attack set has an advantage on a Brute vs a Scrapper

 

You don't have to check all five of those boxes to tip the balance towards a Brute vs a Scrapper, but if you don't check at least two or three, you should be asking yourself why not a scrapper.

 

Attack sets whose gimmick is a damage bonus should be avoided on Brutes:  Claws, Dual Blades, Super Strength, maybe Kinetic Melee.

 

Some armor sets that clearly work better on Brutes than Scrappers:  Electric, Fire, Dark, maybe Willpower and Rad.  And Regen, but Regen is pretty bad regardless.

Probably the only attack sets that are clearly better on a Brute than a Scrapper are Savage and Spines, but Martial Arts, Rad Melee, Fire, and Energy Melee provide some upside to Brutes.

 

On the flip side, why a Brute rather than a Tank, you again want to talk about damage auras, and having some kind of solid single-target chain, since it's going to be an uphill battle for a Brute to outperform a Tank solely in AoE.

Edited January 11, 2023 by aethereal

[twozerofoxtrot]

I think there are a lot of good points raised in the above post. However this...
 

6 hours ago, aethereal said:

Attack sets whose gimmick is a damage bonus should be avoided on Brutes:  Claws, Dual Blades, Super Strength, maybe Kinetic Melee.

 

...is at least 50% incorrect.  

Claw's gimmick is that it's fast, hits like a truck, and has a solid ST and AoE chain (lmao spin>spin>spin). Follow Up is just sort of winmore.

Super Strength... is very strong on Brutes. Arguably the strongest by recent estimates.  +160 damage still matters, even with Brute's weird relationship to the damage stat. +40 ToHit matters an awful lot more and will potentially save you power picks. Lastly, Foot Stomp is the only AoE that gives Brutes 15ft of smash, on top of all else it has going for it, making it a crucial power in catching up to Tanker AoE clearing superiority. 

 

 

[Gobbledigook]

11 hours ago, Zect said:

 

Brutes outdamage tankers in general; this is still the case.

 

The issue with brute/tanker balance is more that tanker damage has been buffed excessively, to the point that tankers now have a more optimal ratio of survivability to damage. This is especially true on res sets since res is very tough to build for and tankers have an advantage in capping EN res (the hardest res to build for) with their ATIO.

 

The tanker melee damage scalar is 0.95 (buffed from 0.80). You just need to ask yourself whether an armored, mez protected AT with tanker scalar HP and tanker scalar defenses should be doing 95% of blaster base melee dps, and you'll see why brutes should not be tuned up; tankers need to be tuned down.

I think it is the Tankers extra AoE that is tipping the scale a little not the Scalar. Tankers need to be able to take on hard targets also, of which they aren't even the best at doing and Brutes do it even better. 

Every class can solo now and the days of a Tanker standing taunting do nothing else has gone.

 

Blasters have ranged dps on a higher scalar and buff their own damage. Comparing a ranged dps AT to a melee AT and concluding the melee is nearly the dps on of the ranged AT?. 95% does sound more dramatic/sensational though lol.

 

Sentinels have received a damage buff and they are an armored AT with ranged survival, yet the limiting number of mobs they can hit makes it acceptable. Perhaps they should lower Brutes target caps and they would get a good damage buff to compensate 🙃.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Gobbledegook

[Yomo Kimyata]

Here's a simple model.  I'm not going to swear it's correct, but it makes sense to me.

 

In the beginning, there were two melee classes.  And they were distinguished by many factors but (IMO) primarily by two:  survivability and damage inflicted.  There was a tradeoff and if you wanted to do damage, you were a scrapper, and if you wanted to be unkillable, you were a tank.  In general, you wanted to do as much damage as possible while maintaining your safety profile (or to be as safe as possible while maintaining your damage profile.  And there was a fair amount of variation within the AT, but in general, the tank was more survivable and the scrapper inflicted more damage.  Also, you could characterize damage inflicted by ST or AoE and there were specialists for each.

 

With CoV they introduced brutes and stalkers, and the basic model continued.  Brutes ended up in a middle ground -- more survivable than scrappers, more damage than tankers.  Stalkers ended up mostly as ST damage dealers (and PvPlol gankers!!!) 

 

Now as time goes by, both on Live and then SCORE and HC, risk profiles began to change.  Survivability became easier to build for with IO sets.  Damage much less so.  Also, the penalties for not being survivable were reduced (xp debt became mostly irrelevant, travel times to get back to a mission became shorter, etc.).  The risk-reward profile shifted more towards damage, and people complained that they wanted to be able to do more of it.  Changes to ATs (not just specific builds) made achieving more damage for a given amount of safety significantly easier for some ATs, and that put a (perceived or actual, that's up to your interpretation) squeeze on the middle players.

 

I know, I know, I blame everything on power creep.  I have no problem with a specific well-crafted tanker being able to outperform a scrapper or brute on the safety/damage profile (and I realize that strong build can really help).  And I do love me some underdogs.  But when it's really easy to build up against limits like damage resist and defense and harder to build up against limits like damage caps (certainly solo), I do think that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of tanks.  Your opinion may differ.  No tankers were harmed in the writing of this post.

[Grimm2]

10 hours ago, aethereal said:

1.  Armor set can reasonably get above 75% resistance in several different resists.

2.  Damage aura (or two!)

3.  Armor set leverages Brute hit points by having significant heals/regen.

4.  Armor set has no taunt aura on a Scrapper.

5.  Attack set has an advantage on a Brute vs a Scrapper

I think Stone Armor might be the set that ticks most of these. 1 is a loss, and 5 is a wash, as Fury and crits buff the Brimstone proc. But 2, 3, 4 are all in favor of the Brute. 

 

I suppose Dark Armor might be the set I'd look at next after Stone.

[Gobbledigook]

39 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Here's a simple model.  I'm not going to swear it's correct, but it makes sense to me.

 

In the beginning, there were two melee classes.  And they were distinguished by many factors but (IMO) primarily by two:  survivability and damage inflicted.  There was a tradeoff and if you wanted to do damage, you were a scrapper, and if you wanted to be unkillable, you were a tank.  In general, you wanted to do as much damage as possible while maintaining your safety profile (or to be as safe as possible while maintaining your damage profile.  And there was a fair amount of variation within the AT, but in general, the tank was more survivable and the scrapper inflicted more damage.  Also, you could characterize damage inflicted by ST or AoE and there were specialists for each.

 

With CoV they introduced brutes and stalkers, and the basic model continued.  Brutes ended up in a middle ground -- more survivable than scrappers, more damage than tankers.  Stalkers ended up mostly as ST damage dealers (and PvPlol gankers!!!) 

 

Now as time goes by, both on Live and then SCORE and HC, risk profiles began to change.  Survivability became easier to build for with IO sets.  Damage much less so.  Also, the penalties for not being survivable were reduced (xp debt became mostly irrelevant, travel times to get back to a mission became shorter, etc.).  The risk-reward profile shifted more towards damage, and people complained that they wanted to be able to do more of it.  Changes to ATs (not just specific builds) made achieving more damage for a given amount of safety significantly easier for some ATs, and that put a (perceived or actual, that's up to your interpretation) squeeze on the middle players.

 

I know, I know, I blame everything on power creep.  I have no problem with a specific well-crafted tanker being able to outperform a scrapper or brute on the safety/damage profile (and I realize that strong build can really help).  And I do love me some underdogs.  But when it's really easy to build up against limits like damage resist and defense and harder to build up against limits like damage caps (certainly solo), I do think that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of tanks.  Your opinion may differ.  No tankers were harmed in the writing of this post.

But that is more to do with the IO's then as you say.

 

Damage is easy to build for in the form of procs. Do procs and IO sets need tweaking? probably.

 

A Brute with Fury hits harder than a Tanker but a Tanker hits more targets and is tougher generally. IO sets and procs can alter this either way.

 

It is going to be really hard to balance the Brute between the Scrapper and Tanker without affecting either of them. The best thing they should have done was Change/Delete the Brute entirely before porting it over as it is not really needed and people expect too much from it. They expect a Tanker with better damage or they expect the Scrapper/Tanker to be nerfed badly to make the Brute look better. But Tankers are in a good position with better survival than a Scrapper but a lot less damage. Brutes are the problem and not Tankers imo.

 

So the Brutes need a better niche where it is not stepping on the others toes. Whether that is a harder to maintain Fury but with greater rewards or a 2 stance approach jack of all trades but slightly less than the counterparts or something entirely different.

 

Buff Tankers or Scrappers and Tankers/Scrappers are happy but Brutes aren't, Buff Brutes and Scrappers or Tankers are not happy again. On and on it will go.

 

I think they had to be very careful where they went with the Sentinel also as to not upset other AT's.

 

Tweaks are ok. But what i can't get behind is the "Tanker OP...NERFFFF!!" caveman mentality without decent explanation. "Brute bad Hulk Smash!!!" and delete the Brute instead....fixed! 😁 

 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Gobbledegook

[Snarky]

On 1/9/2023 at 4:54 PM, drgantz said:

I've seen many posts about people being upset about Brute nerfs.  At first, I thought that it was mostly about attracting aggro.  I just saw other posts saying that either Brutes had dmg reduced and/or Tankers got dmg increased.

I have a Brute in his 40s.  I don't mind re-starting him at level 1, since I enjoy the journey but am trying to decide betweeen Brute and Tanker.

I mostly group for TFs and radios.  I don't solo much and I don't PVP.

He's StJ/WP.

He's a homage to the great Al Bundy.

Brutes have been scre... errr changed a few times.  The most memorable was "The great Brute Fury nerf"  Notice how your Fury bar never goes to the top?  Or does for 1 millisecond when you hit Villain archetype power and is squished before you can get an attack off?  Wasn't always like that.  It used to go to 11, or at least to 10.  Now it goes to 7?  8?  There are people who will tell you this was not a nerf.  Not many, but we got some nutballs out there.  Fury used to be hard to get and keep.  Brutes used ro have to work to keep capped....cannonballing fresh spawns to pump that bar, riding the line between madness survival and damage.  Now, yawn, Fury maintains itself and Tankers mostly out damage Brutes thanks to Tanker damage buffs and AoE increases on Tankers.

 

That is why I do not play Brutes anymore.  

Edited January 11, 2023 by Snarky