Increase the Brute Damage Scale

[twozerofoxtrot]

YOU HEARD ME.

 

Look let's end this strife. People are losing their minds that blaster sets aren't feeling blasty and Brutes have been standing out in the rain for like 3 years kicking the same dented Wolf Spider helmet against the wall, muttering about how tankers and scrappers stole their lunchbox.

 

Give those grumpy gusses a lil' bump. Just bit. Like up to .8 or heavens forbid .825. They still have a damage cap that looks anemic compared to i6 so it's not gonna run away anywhere and we'll get more out of much maligned damage boost stat.

 

That's all I got, probably didn't need to explain the obvious and brilliant logic of this idea in the first place but hey, I like to be thorough. 

 

 

Let the harsh words and thumbs down commence.

 

[Yaliw]

Brutes are fine. It's stupid easy to max fury already, they easily reach 90% resistance and have the second highest hp pool. What do they even need? They should be in-between scrappers and tankers.

[Gobbledigook]

I do not think increasing it to .8 or possibly .825 is a step too far. Tankers have been buffed and Scrappers are a top dps. Giving the Brute a little more damage would not knock Scrappers off their pedestal but it would give them a little better place between Scrapper/Tanker and Tankers are in a very good spot at moment.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Gobbledigook

[0th Power]

To me, brutes feel and perform as they should.

[FupDup]

Once upon a time, people observed/complained that Brutes were the kings of the game and that they made other ATs more or less obsolete in most content. This can be observed by going into the old demographics thread and seeing that Brutes outnumbered almost everyone, even with fire farmers removed from the equation. 

 

 

 

 

I have a really, really hard time believing that Brutes are weak in light of this (very old) data. The main thing that happened since then was that Tankers got their damage buffed massively, to the point that they can clear maps faster than any other melee AT while still having the toughest armor. Put these clues together and there's a clear answer as to what happened: Tanker damage output got buffed to the point where they could just straight up replace Brutes in every way. 

 

However, walking back the Tanker buffs even a tiny bit would likely cause an extreme meltdown because people don't like their toys being touched, even for good reason. So really, the only kind of buffs I'd humor to Brutes include: 

 

A. Better ATO procs

B. Slightly higher armor modifiers so that they sit between Tankers and Scrappers (right now they lean much closer to Scrappers for the most part)

 

I will fiercely protest any kind of damage buff because then we could easily repeat history, making both Tankers and Scrappers obsolete to Brutes like they used to be. 

[Ebo]

46 minutes ago, FupDup said:

Once upon a time, people observed/complained that Brutes were the kings of the game and that they made other ATs more or less obsolete in most content. This can be observed by going into the old demographics thread and seeing that Brutes outnumbered almost everyone, even with fire farmers removed from the equation....

This data does not show that Brutes make anyone obsolete.

It shows that Brutes were a very popular AT at the time, but the same could be said of Blasters.

 

What it does show is interesting groupings of preferred ATs (Brute, Blaster, MM, Scrapper, Tanker, Troller) and less preferred ATs (Defender, Sent, Corruptor, Dom, Stalker), with VEATs at the bottom as least popular.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Ebo

[FupDup]

2 minutes ago, Ebo said:

This data does not show that Brutes make anyone obsolete.

It shows that Brutes were a very popular AT at the time, but the same could be said of Blasters.

Popularity and power often go hand-in-hand in video games. There are plenty of people who go against the "meta" to build their preferred playstyle/fantasy (I'm a Sentinel main, so I know), but in basically any game you can observe that when something is discovered as being super stronk it tends to rocket up in popularity. 

 

I would really be interested in seeing an updated version of those graphs to see how much Tankers went up since their buffs, and how much Brutes went down since Tankers got buffed to replace them. 

[Ebo]

As you said, popularity "often" follows power, or, in other words, they correlate- and correlation does not imply causation.

 

Popularity is affected by many factors, with the AT's actual power being only one. If AT popularity is the gauge of viability, the VEATS are clearly all woefully underpowered and need massive buffs immediately.

[FupDup]

1 minute ago, Ebo said:

As you said, popularity "often" follows power, or, in other words, they correlate- and correlation does not imply causation.

 

Popularity is affected by many factors, with the AT's actual power being only one. If AT popularity is the gauge of viability, the VEATS are clearly all woefully underpowered and need massive buffs immediately.

VEATs do actually have a fair number of problems. They've got some good options but also a lot of pretty bad ones, like Banes being just worse than Stalkers. There's a reason most of them wind up being either Crabberminds or Huntsmen. 

 

Another thing about VEATs is that there's not much reason to make alts of them since they all have the same primaries and secondaries, so you can just make multiple builds on one toon to play them all. For other ATs you can play around with entirely different primaries and secondaries so there's plenty of replayability and building options. 

[FupDup]

As for Tankers, here is the melee damage comparison that I referenced earlier:

 

 

Here are the two relevant charts from that thread: 

 

 

 

Tankers are clearing faster than Brutes with most primaries and in some cases faster than Scrappers too. 

 

This also proves my point about Brutes vs. Scrappers because many of these times are pretty close between the two. Buffing the Brute could easily make them outright stronger than Scrappers. 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by FupDup

[TheZag]

I think brutes could use something to carve out their place.  Right now they arent quite as durable as a tanker and dont do quite as much damage as a scrapper.  Being middle of the road might be fine but it would be nice for the middle of the road to have something.  I have an idea or 2 but ill have to make a new thread for it sometime so they can get shot down separately. 

 

[TheZag]

2 minutes ago, FupDup said:

 

 

Poor kinetic melee 😢

 

[lemming]

I would think listing numbers of each AT gets skewed by how many different combos some ATs have.

Epics, as said, you can just do multiple builds.

 

Blasters: 14 Primaries (and 15 in i6), and 15 secondaries.  So if you just want to try each primary & secondary, that's fifteen alts.

 

Time played is probably a better measurement if you exclude farming (maybe).

 

On improving Brutes:   Their ATO sets are not very good as discussed before, though they could use something in the basic setup too.

[Rudra]

I'm in favor of Brutes getting some love. All they've gotten since they were introduced were nerfs. Though I would also be in favor of Tankers getting nerfed a little instead since all they got since the Brutes were introduced were buffs. I personally think Tankers should never clear things faster than the same power set Scrappers.

[Arc-Mage]

2 hours ago, TheZag said:

 

Poor kinetic melee 😢

 

Kinetic Melee is to slow compared to other melee powers with similar damage. Until the power speed is increased or the Damage output is increased Kinetic Melee will continue to feel lacking.

[Gobbledigook]

Either a small damage or survival buff would help the Brute. It should be one or the other and not both.  Some other Brute gimmick could work also to give them a better niche.

 

Tanker +AoE was a little OTT and that is clearing trash fast, but Scrappers will clear a hard target MUCH faster. 

 

But Brutes are far from weak, a little extra tweak for them would be good.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Gobbledigook

[SwitchFade]

Your friendly neighborhood Stalker finds your debate amusing.

 

Kind of like.... "My Gremlin is faster than your Yugo!"

[Yaliw]

If anything, tanker damage needs a nerf. I think the tanker damage buff co.bined with their aoe potential buff was too much.

 

Now, I don't think it's DESTROYING THE GAME but I always saw the melee characters on a scale:

 

Stalkers > Scrappers > Brutes > Tankers

 

Damage to the left, Tankiness to the right.

[PoptartsNinja]

Brutes really want to be the first in to take the agro, because they need that initial burst of agro to boost their fury.

 

What if they had an out-of-combat bonus to all their defense/resistance sets that lingered for say 2-3 seconds after the fight started then reverted back to normal values? Something that would make them the alpha strike absorber while at the same time forcing them to deal with the spawn via damage like they do now?

[JasperStone]

Sure.

Drop their defense/resistance 

[twozerofoxtrot]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

I'm in favor of Brutes getting some love.

 

I'm going to wear this sign of approval for my idea like a badge of honor forever.

 

Honestly I feel like we're already there. Devs take note, even the harshest critic of change agrees. Shortlist this tweak for page 7!

[honoroit]

5 hours ago, Arc-Mage said:

Kinetic Melee is to slow compared to other melee powers with similar damage. Until the power speed is increased or the Damage output is increased Kinetic Melee will continue to feel lacking.

 

ted dubois can hit pretty hard tho

[Arc-Mage]

15 minutes ago, honoroit said:

 

ted dubois can hit pretty hard tho

Shit yeah. Ted’s awesome.

[Darkneblade]

Give them old version of defiance with some tweaks...

Nothing can absolutely go wrong, really.
 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Darkneblade

[Rigged]

11 hours ago, FupDup said:

A. Better ATO procs

B. Slightly higher armor modifiers so that they sit between Tankers and Scrappers (right now they lean much closer to Scrappers for the most part)

 

This is actually a really good idea. There is consistent whining all over demanding buffs to an AT in the form of higher damage, but that only creates an arms race where the new lowest complains endlessly for the same buff ad nauseum. Why not instead raise the brute's base defense and resist scaling so it actually is between a tanker and scrapper? This is a move that would entice me into play a brute, because right now they are far too similar build-wise to scrappers.