An Identity for Brutes?

[Indystruck]

19 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

The problem is that there is no objective standard . . . other than DPS.  Some players like to eke out every possible drop.  I take it that you are one of them.

 

But you have to realize that not everyone plays the way that you do.  Nor do they want to.  You keep insinuating, or outright stating, that makes them . . . less.

 

This is a game that can be played many ways.  Your way is not the only way.

 

And even if your way was the only way there will always be one powerset or one AT at the top of the chart and another at the bottom; Unless we just give everyone the exact same attack stats.  And that, to me, would be boring and worse.

 

 

Ah "if everyone's super, no one will be," which assumes "hey we need something to be just, bad. really bad. that way we can point at them, and laugh".

 

Well, no. All ships are raised by the buff wave. If you like to feel super, and there's buffs based around high end testing, guess what! That buff trickles down. 

 

Will there always be a top performer and a bottom performer? Yes. Would it be boring if they all just had the same numbers (let's ignore the current dev focus on a damage formula which does exactly that for the purposes of your theoretical argument)? Yes. 

 

Does that mean you can't at least make the gulf between an underperforming set or archetype and an overperforming one a great deal smaller? No, no it does not.

[ScarySai]

32 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

The problem is that there is no objective standard . . . other than DPS.  Some players like to eke out every possible drop.  I take it that you are one of them.

 

But you have to realize that not everyone plays the way that you do.  Nor do they want to.  You keep insinuating, or outright stating, that makes them . . . less.

 

This is a game that can be played many ways.  Your way is not the only way.

 

And even if your way was the only way there will always be one powerset or one AT at the top of the chart and another at the bottom; Unless we just give everyone the exact same attack stats.  And that, to me, would be boring and worse.

 

With respect, this is entirely irrelevant to a balance discussion.

 

And we do have objective standards, that's how metas are formed. It's not typically just some crazy guy making things up, and everyone blindly obeys.

Edited April 19 by ScarySai

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

To be clear, I have no more authority than any other player to dictate the direction of the game.  The devs will do what they do.

 

And to further clarify, I am not against a buff to brutes in general, depending on what that buff might be.  I specifically agree and stated that the Brute ATOs are lacking in comparison with the others.

 

11 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Ah "if everyone's super, no one will be," which assumes "hey we need something to be just, bad. really bad. that way we can point at them, and laugh".

 

I didn't say that, or anything close to that.

 

12 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Does that mean you can't at least make the gulf between an underperforming set or archetype and an overperforming one a great deal smaller?

 

I did say that I thought the goal should be to have a small deviation from the best to the worst.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

5 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

With respect, this is entirely irrelevant to a balance discussion.

 

 

Damage as measured by DPS is irrelevant to balance?

 

6 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

And we do have objective standards, that's how metas are formed. It's not typically just some crazy guy making things up, and everyone blindly obeys.

 

Metas are formed not by a crazy guy, but by a crazy team that figures out a way to beat the unbeatable and then everyone copies that until another crazy team finds a way to do it faster or easier.

 

But I'd be interested to hear about what objective standards you mean.

[Etched]

Maybe this is just me but I thought brutes had a standin title of Veng Bait. Has this changed or are they still veng bait?

 

Now on a serious note.

 

The way brutes are currently I have a better chance on my blaster. 

 

@Etched

[ScarySai]

20 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Damage as measured by DPS is irrelevant to balance?

 

Now who's putting words in people's mouths? Your main points are irrelevant to a balance discussion. Stating the obvious fact of there always going to be a top, a bottom, and some variance, and that different playstyles exist adds nothing to the discourse.

 

 

Wow doesn't balance warlocks around the players who kill rabbits for 'teh lulz'. Nor should they, they dont matter in a balance discussion. How would that even work? Personally, I dont want to know.

 

They balance around the people actually playing their class to at least a competent level.

20 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Metas are formed not by a crazy guy, but by a crazy team that figures out a way to beat the unbeatable and then everyone copies that until another crazy team finds a way to do it faster or easier

 

And how do they achieve this? By objective measurements in performance outside of raw dps. We don't need a parser to figure that stuff out (though a good one would be quite nice.)

Edited April 19 by ScarySai

[ThatGuyCDude]

Nudging Brutes towards control as well would give them a great deal of distinguishing identity from the other three (point five) Melee Archetypes, and I believe it could be done without risking stomping all over other controller roles: the key is in replacing Build Up.

Build Up is boring (press button, damage up, wait for button).  Build Up on Brutes is especially boring.  Let's dump it for a Fury spender... a point blank area of effect crowd control stun hold "ROAR" with more duration the higher the Fury bar was before you emptied it.  It'd make the power a panic button, boost survival of the Brute AND the team without hammering more defense or resistance, and force the player to actually monitor their Fury bar and refill it after hitting their panic button.

^EDIT^: Not a stun, a hold.

Edited April 20 by ThatGuyCDude
Typo & clarification

[macskull]

Just now, ThatGuyCDude said:

Nudging Brutes towards control as well would give them a great deal of distinguishing identity from the other three (point five) Melee Archetypes, and I believe it could be done without risking stomping all over other controller rolls: the key is in replacing Build Up.

Build Up is boring (press button, damage up, wait for button).  Build Up on Brutes is especially boring.  Let's dump it for a Fury spender... a point blank area of effect crowd control stun "ROAR" with more duration the higher the Fury bar was before you emptied it.  It'd make the power a panic button, boost survival of the Brute AND the team without hammering more defense or resistance, and force the player to actually monitor their Fury bar and refill it after hitting their panic button.

The issue I see with something like this is that non-hold controls are pretty much an afterthought in higher-performing teams and this wouldn't really do anything to address the perception that Brutes are lacking in those situations. If controls as a whole got an overhaul, perhaps this might have merit.

[ThatGuyCDude]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

The issue I see with something like this is that non-hold controls are pretty much an afterthought in higher-performing teams and this wouldn't really do anything to address the perception that Brutes are lacking in those situations. If controls as a whole got an overhaul, perhaps this might have merit.

Right, I used the wrong term.  It would be a high-magnitude Hold, the kind that deactivates toggle powers and prevents the targets from acting at all, not a Sleep or a Disorient.  There's a bunch of synonyms for similar effects that do varying degrees of the same thing, and sometimes I get them mixed up.  The power descriptions aren't consistent about them either, which makes the matter more difficult to keep straight.

The drawback is the Brute only has one of them, in this one power, and they dump their damage to use it.

[gabrilend]

I had an idea, and I moved it to this thread

 

EDIT: I'm going to post this in it's own thread, so it can get more focused discussion. Sorry for distracting from the discussion of the changes proposed by OP, carry on...

Edited April 20 by gabrilend
Removed comment content and placed it in it's own post

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

Right, I used the wrong term.  It would be a high-magnitude Hold, the kind that deactivates toggle powers and prevents the targets from acting at all, not a Sleep or a Disorient.  There's a bunch of synonyms for similar effects that do varying degrees of the same thing, and sometimes I get them mixed up.  The power descriptions aren't consistent about them either, which makes the matter more difficult to keep straight.

The drawback is the Brute only has one of them, in this one power, and they dump their damage to use it.

 

I like it. And it's not really a drawback when building fury isn't really an issue.

[Azari]

6 hours ago, Videra said:

What is a Brute's purpose?

Scrappers don’t have Super Strength 😞

[Shin Magmus]

3 hours ago, Azari said:

Scrappers don’t have Super Strength 😞

...yet

 

And Tankers perform much better with SS than Brutes do.  It's one of the sets where the disparity in clear times between Tankers and Brutes (when using the same sets) is actually highest. 

[Azari]

3 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

...yet

 

And Tankers perform much better with SS than Brutes do.  It's one of the sets where the disparity in clear times between Tankers and Brutes (when using the same sets) is actually highest. 

I know Tanks have better AOE but what about ST DPS?

[Shin Magmus]

5 minutes ago, Azari said:

I know Tanks have better AOE but what about ST DPS?

As mentioned earlier, 3 overall mathematical truths apply to Brute vs Tanker in the current version of the game. 

 

1 - All +dmg is proportionately weaker on Brutes than it is on other melee ATs.  Additionally, Brutes get lower numbers than they should on powers like Build Up and Rage.

 

2 - At the damage caps, Brutes only hit 15% harder than Tankers: but due to target caps this microscopic advantage only really applies to damage auras and single target powers.

 

3 - The gap between Brute and Tanker performance even in cherrypicked situations where the Brute is doing slightly better, always shrinks as you add an even amount of +dmg to the Brute and the Tanker.  Doublestacked Rage is quite literally the peak example of adding flat +dmg.

[Troo]

6 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

As mentioned earlier, 3 overall mathematical truths apply to Brute vs Tanker in the current version of the game. 

 

Shin you are saying Tanks out perform Brutes in nearly all situations?

 

Full teams, smaller teams, <5 targets, >5 targets, even level, +4, level 20, 30, 40, 50, 50+, etc.

 

If you are describing specifically 54/8 or hard mode content, I will not contest.

 

--------- -- ---------

 

It seemed to me that a Tank and a Brute were very effective together. Early in a fight, the Tank's splash damage hitting more targets with the Brute's smaller splash being able to increase the overall agro cap while quickly building fury to knockout the harder targets. Could two tanks do this? Sure, it's a fairly easy game, but not as effective with the remaining hard targets. On a steamroller team this might be nearly imperceptible but on a smaller lower level team it anecdotally seems to play out.

 

Solo, Tankers, pre-uber build, seem to struggle a bit in general with hard targets while other melees do better.. if they can stay standing.

 

[ScarySai]

52 minutes ago, Troo said:

Shin you are saying Tanks out perform Brutes in nearly all situations?

 

Full teams, smaller teams, <5 targets, >5 targets, even level, +4, level 20, 30, 40, 50, 50+, etc.

 

Every situation except maybe a prolonged ST fight at damage cap favors tanks, where the advantage for brute is 13% or lower depending on the set.

 

If you dispute this, just know you have an uphill battle that very much isn't in your favor.

Edited April 20 by ScarySai

[Shin Magmus]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

 

Shin you are saying Tanks out perform Brutes in nearly all situations?

 

I'm not "saying that".  It is that, but there are some contrarians who stubbornly refuse to see it.  Tankers DO outperform Brutes in nearly all situations.  "Welcome to the thread."

[Troo]

2 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Every situation except maybe a prolonged ST fight at damage cap favors tanks, where the advantage for brute is 13% or lower depending on the set.

 

If you dispute this, just know you have an uphill battle that very much isn't in your favor.

 

I am open minded enough to ask and hear Shin's answer and then try not to quibble over it. Simple clarification regarding context.

 

-------- -- --------

 

I and likely others would love to see the Brute ATO fixed if broken and would welcome a Brute buff so long as the tradeoff isn't punitive to existing characters for the benefit of mostly min/max endgame builds. This is normally my baseline.

[Troo]

6 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

I'm not "saying that".  It is that,

 

Thanks for the clarification on your position.

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Troo said:

 

I am open minded enough to ask and hear Shin's answer and then try not to quibble over it. Simple clarification regarding context.

 

-------- -- --------

 

I and likely others would love to see the Brute ATO fixed if broken and would welcome a Brute buff so long as the tradeoff isn't punitive to existing characters for the benefit of mostly min/max endgame builds. This is normally my baseline.

 

Well yeah the game is thankfully not balanced around min maxed builds. It's just ONE of the many things taken into account. The devs have said repeatedly (whether a lot of forum regulars like it or not) that the game is not balanced around IOs.

Edited April 20 by golstat2003

[Shin Magmus]

"The game" is a large thing, and parts of the game *are* balanced around IOs.  I-Trials are balanced around IOs for example.  Advanced Mode / TRHW Badge runs / superbosses like Omega K'Ong are definitely balanced around IOs.  There's a lot in this game, and reductively calling it "the game" doesn't make a good point. Synapse TF is balanced around SO's.

[wjrasmussen]

3 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

"The game" is a large thing, and parts of the game *are* balanced around IOs.  I-Trials are balanced around IOs for example.  Advanced Mode / TRHW Badge runs / superbosses like Omega K'Ong are definitely balanced around IOs.  There's a lot in this game, and reductively calling it "the game" doesn't make a good point. Synapse TF is balanced around SO's.

Oh, so the game is balanced now.  I disagree that it is balanced around IOs. 

[Doomrider]

17 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Well yeah the game is thankfully not balanced around min maxed builds. It's just ONE of the many things taken into account. The devs have said repeatedly (whether a lot of forum regulars like it or not) that the game is not balanced around IOs.

I know a lot of people still parrot this "balanced around SO's statement", but at this point, it kinda seems more like living with your head in the sand. It's also sometimes used as this weird "gotcha" attempt during balance discussions but provides no value to the conversation.
IO's have existed for a long time now, they make all content but especially more difficult content easier to succeed at, to the point where it's basically mandatory for the Hard Mode Taskforces.
Saying the game is balanced around SO's doesn't change that. And you can't begin to discuss balance or adjustments to an AT without considering IO's so what value does parroting this dated statement add to this conversation?

Also, can anyone provide an example where an AT was buffed, but said buff came with a tradeoff that was punitive to existing characters and ONLY provided value to those who min/maxed? I cannot think of one, but I'd love to know what such a statement would be in reference to.
 

Edited April 21 by Doomrider
missing grammar

[ScarySai]

1 hour ago, wjrasmussen said:

Oh, so the game is balanced now.  I disagree that it is balanced around IOs.

 

Well it's nice that you feel that way, but the devs outright said they do multiple times.