Tanks and Brutes question

[Snarky]

Now that we have been talking about it the Devs have decided to “revisit” Brutes.   Now, as you know, they will buff Tanks again.  But they have something special planned for those pesky Brutes…

 

[catsi563]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

As someone else pointed out this fact is a keystone to current game mechanics regarding Brutes.

 

Because the Devs envisioned Redside Tank (Mastermind...) tactics were somewhat slow....  Leroy Jenkins style Brutes rushed forward and just figured it out on the fly.

 

This rewarded Brutes with a huge amount of Fury.  Which decayed quite rapidly in the old days....before the "FU Nerf"  Changing the Brutes Fury decay was a reach around for screwing them so hard with a Fury cap.  The only problem was it was another nail in the Brute Coffin.  Because Brute players now had endless Fury even if they stood around scratching their butts.  Leading to (if you can imagine) even worse Brute tactics and worse Brute players.  

 

Brutes are a sad shadow of what they once were.  And then you buff the Tank with extra AoE, increadibly good ATO procs and numerous gift bags for the stars and Brutes are just snowmen in a texas summer.  Not around for long.

 

exactly this led to what effectively could be called suicide brutes which would just kamikaze through entire maps either clearing out or getting finally overwhelmed just to keep their fury bar maxed out.  where as a scrapper or MM could just take a moment rest get some fresh pets out and move on between encounters 

I still think brutes have a place mind you they just arent the dps bulldozers they used to be but backed up by a team that can move with them they can roll a good ways into a map and smash their hearts content

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, catsi563 said:

mind you they just arent the dps bulldozers they used to be but backed up by a team that can move with them they can roll a good ways into a map and smash their hearts content

so can sentinels

[WumpusRat]

12 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The current damage to survivability meta strongly favors the tanker.  It is significantly easier for a tanker to add brute damage in the form of damage procs than it is for a brute to add tanker survivability.

 

Normally when I build my tankers and brutes I'm after set bonuses, not looking to slot as many procs as possible and be forced to take hasten, lotg mule powers and everything else I can cram into the build to try and get as much global recharge as possible.

Hence why my brutes tend to vastly out-damage my tankers. 

For normal mission running, would a brute with normal slotting whose attacks are on 3-5 second cooldowns clear faster or slower than a tanker who relies on randomized procs? Or are proc-tankers basically trying to run around and herd up a bunch of stuff so that when they DO attack their procs have a higher chance of going off? 

I'd think that would slow down killing rather than speed it up, vs a brute who can just jump into any given group, wipe it out, and be running to the next group while the tanker is still herding up mobs. 

Maybe I just don't get the whole "proc meta" thing, though.

[tidge]

8 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Or are proc-tankers basically trying to run around and herd up a bunch of stuff so that when they DO attack their procs have a higher chance of going off?

 

The 'Tanker Buff' was that the area of their Melee AoE attacks increased, so they will have more possible targets near them as compared to a Brute using the same attack. It's not that their %proc rates are different, it's just that they have more potential targets. This buff was IMO a pretty fair one, as Tankers used to commonly take a long time to clean up all the scrubs in a spawn. Of course: most of the mobs in a typical spawn are scrubs, so hitting more of them with %damage whittles the size of the spawn even faster than it used to (for Tankers). It used to be embarrassingly slow for (some) Tankers to clear large numbers of scrubs, let alone a couple of bosses being in the mix (at least for the ones I played).

 

For me: Tanking play-style hasn't changed, except that I'm far less worried about quick-changing targets (for Punchvoke) when a Tanker is completely surrounded. The only circumstances when I do anything like 'herding' with a Tanker for my own benefit are:

• The spawn is down to a small number of hard targets; I'll drag these to the next spawn if it is close by
• There is another spawn in range that I want to get the attention of; this is essentially dragging the next spawn to me