Are there any powersets which are better on Brute than on other AT's ?

[Erratic1]

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

If you gave them huge amounts of survivability such that, like Tankers, they could start to devote a ton of build space to procs, they might surpass Scrappers and then we'd have two ATs again -- Tankers and Brutes.

 

As opposed to having Scrapper and Tankers, eh? It is quite literally suboptimal to bring Brutes to a group.

 

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

If you gave them huge amounts of survivability such that, like Tankers, they could start to devote a ton of build space to procs, they might surpass Scrappers and then we'd have two ATs again -- Tankers and Brutes.  That's not preferable to the current situation of two valid ATs: Tankers and Scrappers.

 

Everything after the word "If" above is you, given I quite literally wrote (and you quoted), "The simple solution would be to give Brutes a boost in their survivability. To Tanker levels? No." Everything that follows is you knockdown your own creation and nothing I put forth.

 

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

This is crazy.  The Tanker buff was just an overcorrection.  Nobody set out to rub their hands together and try to invalidate Brutes, they just misunderstood how powerful the buff was.

 

You forget, Brute damage caps were nerfed. So Brutes brought down in damage and Tankers buffed. Not just Tankers boosted and nothing else occurred.

 

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

Seems like a lot of work to go and do that to a very uncertain reward and hard to really explore the playtesting.

 

You're right. Let's do what has been happening...NOTHING.

 

Well, glad we solved that. "We'd love to do something but nothing can be done, not even fix the utterly craptastic ATO Brutes have" because "It might go too far." 🙄

4 hours ago, aethereal said:

With respect, touch grass.

 

I am going to offer true respect and say nothing to this.

[Erratic1]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

 

Here you go @CYPHERPUNK, plenty of people who do not play Brutes, ("I just prefer other ATs, honestly.") and only show up in this thread but otherwise do not discuss Brutes, building them, or playing them, asserting that Brutes are fine. This is why Brutes are as they are and will remain as they are.

 

Good luck with your Brutes. I've made my final one. To the extent I play CoH, for melee I do Tankers and Scrapper. I would advise you to do the same.

[aethereal]

5 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

As opposed to having Scrapper and Tankers, eh? It is quite literally suboptimal to bring Brutes to a group.

 

You're so emotional about this topic that you don't read what people say, and you're like, "Oh my god I'm going to shock you by saying this: Brutes are suboptimal!"

 

I said right from the start that Brutes are invalidated by Scrappers and Tankers.  Yes, they're quite literally suboptimal.  You aren't arguing with anyone.  But despite your deeply emotional beliefs, no, it's not in fact better to have Brutes invalidate another class than it is for another class to invalidate Brutes.  If we can't figure out a way for all three of Brutes, Scrappers, and Tankers to be valid at the same time, there's no point in fixing Brutes.  No, it's not about turns or retribution or penance.

 

5 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

Everything after the word "If" above is you, given I quite literally wrote (and you quoted), "The simple solution would be to give Brutes a boost in their survivability. To Tanker levels? No." Everything that follows is you knockdown your own creation and nothing I put forth.

 

I don't think you read what I wrote, which was about Brutes invalidating Scrappers, not Tankers.

 

Just to be clear, though: the likely result of slightly raising the defensive values of Brutes is "nothing."  They probably remain just as invalidated as ever: Tankers continue to outclass them in clear-speed (because they continue to have better AoE and largely similar ST), and Scrappers continue to outclass them in DPS both AoE and ST, and Scrappers are durable enough that it doesn't matter if Brutes are a little more durable than Scrappers.  Again, remember that back before the Tanker buffs, Tanks were largely invalidated by Brutes despite having way better defensive scores.

 

But the build environment is complex, and it's hard to predict exactly when builders will be able to leverage additional baseline durability into higher proc performance that would allow Brutes to out-damage Scrappers.  There's no real way for Brutes to outclass Tankers this way: the extra target caps are too potent.  But maybe at some point they do outclass Scrappers.

 

5 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

You're right. Let's do what has been happening...NOTHING.

 

Well, glad we solved that. "We'd love to do something but nothing can be done, not even fix the utterly craptastic ATO Brutes have" because "It might go too far." 🙄

 

Homecoming's whole balance doctrine is not based in "let's make a speculative change, see what happens, and tweak."  This is nothing particularly to do with Brutes.  They just don't say, "Well, this current status quo is bad and we don't quite know what to do, so let's make a change for the sake of a change and see how the environment responds."

 

Like, look at regen.  Obviously has been in a bad way forever.  Are they making little changes again and again?  Nope.  Or Kinetic Melee.  Or Broadsword.  Energy Blast.  Archery.

 

They make big changes that they think will conclusively solve a problem with a strong theory for what the new status quo will be.

 

Is that a good doctrine of balance change?  Eh.  I'm not personally in love with it.  But it's not insane: they clearly think that constant change is frustrating for players and perhaps strains their very limited development resources.  Whether they're right or wrong, it's got nothing to do with Brutes.

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, aethereal said:

Given that we are in a status quo in which we have two of three of Brutes/Tankers/Scrappers valid, it doesn't make sense to go and try to make a change to switch which two are valid.

 

This.

 

IMO when you're soloing there's not a huge amount of difference, Brutes still underperform offensively but their higher mitigation caps can still be relevant and it's basically just the ATOs that are to blame for the Scrapper dominance, not the rest of the AT.

 

 

However on teams...

 

Tankers are valid because they're the AoE damage Melee AT. And they can tank harder stuff with minimal support.

 

Scrappers are valid because they're the Single Target damage Melee AT. And they can still tank stuff, although choosing one of the secondary sets that has a Taunt Aura definitely helps.

 

Stalkers can sometimes be more useful than a Scrapper depending on the team's goal and composition. They approach Scrapper levels of Single Target damage (especially if there isn't a Kin on the team since they can lean more into build up autorecharges) and they get stealth and some limited aggro control. They do just fine at [Elite] boss-killing but they can't really tank and their AoE damage is typically worse than a Scrapper.

 

Brutes are currently what you pick if you can't get one of the others, or if you like the player and have a "pity spot" free.

 

Want aggro control and AoE damage? Tanker.

Want Single Target damage and aggro control? Scrapper.

Want only Single Target damage and Stealth and/or don't have a Kin? Stalker.

Want aggro control and lesser Single Target damage plus X? Brute.

 

Realistically something needs to change so that we can find a decent value for X.

 

Personally I still like the idea of making Fury and/or the Brute ATOs provide minor AoE effects - buffs to teammates or debuffs to enemies. But whatever it is it'll be a balancing act so as not to invalidate either Scrappers or Tankers.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

You're so emotional about this topic that you don't read what people say, and you're like, "Oh my god I'm going to shock you by saying this: Brutes are suboptimal!"

 

You don't know me, so don't presume you know my emotional state. 

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

I said right from the start that Brutes are invalidated by Scrappers and Tankers.  Yes, they're quite literally suboptimal.

 

And you are fine with them being suboptimal. Not much more needs to be said.

 

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

And you are fine with them being suboptimal.

 

[Citation Needed]

 

I don't see anyone in this thread who is fine with Brutes being suboptimal.

 

What I see is two people who are both annoyed that Brutes have become irrelevant, with one stressing extreme caution in implementing big sweeping changes in case those changes make us end up in exactly the same situation but with a different melee AT now occupying the "suboptimal" position.

 

Attaining balance is certainly possible, but it's not going to be straightforward.

[CYPHERPUNK]

ya it really seems pretty simple imho

 

looking at the HP scaling on the HC wiki , tanks>brutes>scraps>stalky , you can logically presume that avg DPS for each AT should be the converse of that , and clearly buffing the aoe and tgt caps for tanks has unbalanced this , but imho not necessarily in a bad way , it just that not enough was done [and like was mentioned , the simultaneous nerfing of brute dmg cap seems entirely unwarranted]

 

tanks SHOULD be the most durable , and they are , they have the highest base HP and since the armors are primary for them its a LOT easier to hit the caps for def/res

 

stalkys SHOULD deal the most ST burst DMG , and they do [or at least they used to , maybe im out of the loop but stj/bio stalkers were top tier dps awhile back]

 

scraps and brutes are the closest and were designed intentionally to be effectively inter-change-able , the community trying to invalidate or min/max and AT out of efficiency is missing the point , and if HC is balancing around this then maybe they have lost the plot

 

scraps with crits will and should always have the potential to deal more burst dmg than brutes , with fury brutes should be able to deal more consistent dmg ; mathematically this is going to average out very closely , and ofc this muddys the waters

 

what probably should not be happening on a regular basis is for a tanker to be clearing mobs faster than an equivalent brute , obvs there are always going to be edge/outlier cases with a game as complex as CoX , but in general , if a tank is hitting more tgts consistently , then the brute should be dealing significantly more dmg to compensate

 

i think it makes sense for tanks to have higher tgt aggro caps [this fits into their AT design] , and im fine with them getting larger aoes as well , but they probably didnt need the dmg buff in that case ; ie pick one , either more dmg OR more aoe , but not both [becuz obvs larger aoe and more tgts IS effectively and additional overall dps increase]

 

we all know the brute ATOs are lame/weak , simple solution? buff/fix them , give them dmg procs and/or -foe regen/resist ; another option? make fury give +3% dmg instead of +2% ; additionally/also? maybe give brutes 50% of the aoe/tgt cap increase that tanks were given , ie less aoe than tanks but more than scraps/stalk [ie in-line with the HP scalar tiers]

 

as far as peak dmg potential goes , its obvs way more complex ingame/real scenarios , but it seems like raising the dmg cap for stalkers and scrappers would make more sense than lowering the cap for brutes [assuming the original AT base scalars] , ie return brutes to 800% cap , push scraps to 600% cap and stalks to 700% cap , so that the order is the reverse of their AT base HP scalar tier order [excluding the brutes outlier highest cap due to their having the lowest AT base dmg scalars] ; this would ensure that on big teams , the stalks and scraps would continue to deal superior dps , while the brute would continue to fill the mid-role that they were always designed to be

 

TLDR - maybe give brutes 50% of the tank aoe/tgt cap boosts or lower tanks dmg scalar if they are going to keep the aoe boosts exclusive , and/or improve the brute ATO with dmg procs/degen , and/or increase fury +dmg% , and/or adjust/revert AT dmg caps

 

for those unaware heres a quick breakdown of the ATOs for the above discussed ATs

stalk guile - 30% chance to insta-hide

assass mark - 5% chance to refresh build-up

 

scrap strike - global +3-6% boost to crit chance

crit strike - 60% chance for proc to give the next atk +50% crit chance

 

brute fury - proc to give 7 fury

unrelenting - proc to give 6% endreduc and 20% regen - ie less than 2 hp/sec

 

gauntlet fist - proc for 400-500 absorb shield

might of tank - 90% chance for +6.7% ALL resist for 10 sec - this will be up all the time

 

so how about this instead

brute fury - purple dmg proc equivalent plus foe -regen or -resist

unrelenting - global +100% regen and +25% end recovery

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

You don't know me, so don't presume you know my emotional state. 

 

 

My brother in Christ, what I presume is that you are the same person who wrote three posts prior:

 

"My posting on these forums had dropped considerably because I am still working my way through the stages of grief and have not quite made it to acceptance."

[tidge]

To answer the title question of the thread: I think Savage Melee is best on Brutes, but I will disclose that I am not relying on an assessment of comparison that relies on using Cross Punch or Pylons. Savage Melee certainly feels suboptimal on Scrappers. It isn't miserable, just that it feels like getting Fury bonuses on the DoT would be better for this primary.

 

This thread was resting in peace, and after a straightforward question about the change to the Brute Damage Cap (from January 2020) we immediately get a rehearsed monologue of "Brutes were nerfed" that several other users felt obligated to explain the circumstances around why (a) there was no "Brute nerf" and (b) bringing Tankers up so that they don't take an order of magnitude longer to clear maps than any other melee is a good thing. Luckily we didn't get re-burdened with the famous "testing" that shows one player's clear times are all roughly equivalent for content that ignores other ATs ... because that "analysis" is about seconds of difference which is treated like it is the end of the world... and all signs point to the "Brute nerf" being the consensus loss of "herp derp, Brutes great, Tankers bad" claims. If certain players hadn't been so eternally willing to default to being so public about "Brutes >> Tankers" I don't think we'd see so much hair-pulling.

 

Tankers were somewhat irrelevant on Live before CoV because Scrappers could pretty much do what Tankers could do, especially once the levels above 40 opened up.

 

As noted recently in this thread: There isn't a LOT of design space for distinguishing among melee classes, especially once they share 90%+ of primary/secondary choices. My personal suggestion (that I wouldn't really want to see implemented, out of respect for existing Brutes) for the Brute AT would be to take a page out of the Sentinel playbook... and somehow make the Fury mechanic work like an enemy debuff (in melee)... because melee has basically run out of design space for the "make this AT hit HARDER" and/or "make this AT resist BETTER".  If Brutes could reliably debuff enemies that ought to both "improve solo Brute clear times" (even though I think this is already a marginal concern) and "why team up with a Brute?" (even though I see no shortage of Brutes in team play).

 

 

[Erratic1]

41 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

My brother in Christ, what I presume is that you are the same person who wrote three posts prior:

 

"My posting on these forums had dropped considerably because I am still working my way through the stages of grief and have not quite made it to acceptance."

 

Don't try to word salad some sort of justification for your continued misbehavior. I suppose I should grant that English may not be your first (or even necessarily second or third) language and so you are working with some misunderstanding of it words.

 

The stage of grief before acceptance is depression. Am I depressed about the state I see Brutes in? Yes. That does not make me "emotional" in my posting. What it does is explain why I am even bothering, particularly when dealing with people who are much more interested in scoring Internet points than remotely dealing with the topic at hand.

 

So once again, I am telling you to step off that claim.

[Erratic1]

20 minutes ago, tidge said:

This thread was resting in peace, and after a straightforward question about the change to the Brute Damage Cap (from January 2020) we immediately get a rehearsed monologue of "Brutes were nerfed" that several other users felt obligated to explain the circumstances around why (a) there was no "Brute nerf" and (b) bringing Tankers up so that they don't take an order of magnitude longer to clear maps than any other melee is a good thing. Luckily we didn't get re-burdened with the famous "testing" that shows one player's clear times are all roughly equivalent for content that ignores other ATs ... because that "analysis" is about seconds of difference which is treated like it is the end of the world... and all signs point to the "Brute nerf" being the consensus loss of "herp derp, Brutes great, Tankers bad" claims.

 

Blah, blah, blah, Tanker, Tanker, Tanker..."I am afraid someone is coming after Tanker" is what the above is and explains so much about the pushback in this thread from you and others.

 

I have said nothing about Tankers needing to be nerd. I do not advocate it. So your, "herp derp", "want to make Brutes gods" crap is just that--crap. It is the repeated run-to claim of all those who are Tanker uber alles.

 

If you want to relevant, then perhaps deal with what has actually been said and offered in the thread.

Edited Sunday at 02:05 PM by Erratic1

[aethereal]

29 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Don't try to word salad some sort of justification for your continued misbehavior. I suppose I should grant that English may not be your first (or even necessarily second or third) language and so you are working with some misunderstanding of it words.

 

The stage of grief before acceptance is depression. Am I depressed about the state I see Brutes in? Yes. That does not make me "emotional" in my posting. What it does is explain why I am even bothering, particularly when dealing with people who are much more interested in scoring Internet points than remotely dealing with the topic at hand.

 

So once again, I am telling you to step off that claim.

 

I grant you that I of course do not have perfect knowledge into you.

 

For example, on this topic that you self-describe yourself in grief about, that you obsessively post on to the near-exclusion of all other topics, when you make clear misinterpretations of what everyone else says into a simple "pro-or-anti Brute" frame, perhaps that's not emotionally driven.  Perhaps your reading comprehension is just terrible in this one specific way that works identically to how it would also work if you just quickly read everything through the filter of, "Everyone else must feel like they fall into the sides that I have decided are emotionally important."  Maybe it's just coincidence!

 

But I know how I'm betting.

 

And, genuinely, I suggest this to you:  you're clearly a smart guy.  You have good points.  But you are in fact emotional about this in a way that is not helpful to your aim to get people to agree with you that Brutes need buffs.  You've gotten so wrapped up into this that you're just out to make enemies of anyone who expresses any nuance.

 

Now, look, I don't really think it matters much what any of us post on this forum.  My experience after years at Homecoming is that the devs are gonna do what the devs are gonna do.  But to the extent that anyone does care what the opinion of the posters here is, I think you make yourself deeply dismissible by picking pointless fights with people who agree with you.

[tidge]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

If you want to relevant, then perhaps deal with what has actually been said and offered in the thread.

 

I'm eternally waiting to see evidence that "Brutes was nerfed (five years ago)". The only across-the-board "subtraction" from Brutes was the lowering of the damage buff cap, which was explicitly lowered from 775% to 700% because of the changes to Fury. I haven't seen any evidence that Brutes got worse in 2020, just that Tankers got better... and that for some classes of builds for some content, Tankers have "faster clear times" than Brutes post i26p4.

 

Unspoken for many of these "But won't anyone think of the Brutes?" threads is that these (slight) differences in "performance" between melee classes are dominated by consideration of full level 50 builds (with or without Incarnates) and pretty much ignore the progression and build possible build/slotting choices as different ATs level up. Tankers and Brutes have different level choices for similar powers; Scrappers and Brutes have different combat fundamentals while leveling.

 

As for what has "been offered"...

 

Increasing resistances for Brutes isn't going to do anything for Brute clear times, as "being defeated" isn't much of a problem for any of the melee classes. The suggestion to increase Brute's survivability to Tanker levels because "Tankers got a damage modifier increase from 0.8 to 0.95" is simply a tit-for-tat ask that would do nothing except make the two classes even less distinct, and would probably not change relative "clear times", unless there is something like a couple of enhancement slots across some builds that could be shuffled.

 

My personal assessment of ATOs across all the ATs is that the Brute ATO %procs (even considering Brute's Fury) don't really stand out as being the least useful... some ATO %proc are clearly great, others not so much. Utility certainly varies across levels and builds, again I feel like the focus is on level 50 builds.

 

 

[Sovera]

The real problem are procs. If we put all ATs playing without 6 procc-ing the attacks then the advantage of Tanks in doing so while relying on their above average defenses is lowered. As it is Brutes need to 'waste' slots in their attacks to raise their survival and cannot do the same six procs approach.

 

Even when they can do the six proc approach it still favors Tankers due to their AoE size.

 

To further adding problems to balancing not *everyone* is six proccing their attacks. The 1% will and post their braggart results and the other 99% will play 'normally' - if I may be excused the term and what is normal anyway? - so nerfs to the AT based on the 1% hurt the 99% and buffs to the 99% further boost the 1% who in turn make more bragging posts further dividing the forum community.

 

Bottom line, procs are the problem as they always were and will continue to be thanks to skewing results. Trying to balance 236 permutations (all the possible primary and secondary permutations Brutes have) will always have that looming ghost.

 

 

Sadly, and as correctly predicted, the harder content adds another wrinkle where only the 'best' ATs are taken. Pure mythic raiding WoW thing where if something is a few % lower than the best then it's shit and shunned.

[CYPHERPUNK]

9 hours ago, Sovera said:

The real problem are procs. If we put all ATs playing without 6 procc-ing the attacks then the advantage of Tanks in doing so while relying on their above average defenses is lowered. As it is Brutes need to 'waste' slots in their attacks to raise their survival and cannot do the same six procs approach.

 

Even when they can do the six proc approach it still favors Tankers due to their AoE size.

 

To further adding problems to balancing not *everyone* is six proccing their attacks. The 1% will and post their braggart results and the other 99% will play 'normally' - if I may be excused the term and what is normal anyway? - so nerfs to the AT based on the 1% hurt the 99% and buffs to the 99% further boost the 1% who in turn make more bragging posts further dividing the forum community.

 

Bottom line, procs are the problem as they always were and will continue to be thanks to skewing results. Trying to balance 236 permutations (all the possible primary and secondary permutations Brutes have) will always have that looming ghost.

 

 

Sadly, and as correctly predicted, the harder content adds another wrinkle where only the 'best' ATs are taken. Pure mythic raiding WoW thing where if something is a few % lower than the best then it's shit and shunned.

i dont know if procs are necessarily the 'problem' here as it were , but i do follow your logic ; ie tanks already get great defenses , so they dont need to make the kind of build slot sacrifices that brutes/scraps/stalky need to make to survive , thusly they go all-in on procs to get the most benefit and simultaneously not worry about the lower dmg scalar , AND even additionally like u said , having the bigger AOE and increase tgt caps means that a 6-slot proc in a big tanker AOE is doing triple/quadruple duty fr

 

imho the post-WoW MMORPG ideology is toxic/corrosive , its akin to a form of brainrot , ie they see things in only 1 way , ie there must be the unholy trinity/triforce of DPS/TANK/HEELORZ ; when City of Heroes and WoW were living side-by-side back in the day , COH stood as a testament that a game could be a LOT more than just an EQ clone , how many of us have memories of running TFs with 8 blasters? sure a team with defenders/tanks/etc certainly would be more well rounded , but CoH showed everyone that you could do anything with anything as long as you were determined and clever enough to do so , and even more-so once IOs came onto the scene [which brought us back some small measure of what we lost with the introduction of Enhancement Diversification... dark times]

 

and by saying this what im trying to elucidate is that any argument about 'which AT is the best at X?' should be answered with 'well they can all do X well, some might eek out a few % better or worse , but the better question is what/how/why do you want to do X' ie you can take down Giant Monsters ingame with any AT if played well , the amount of build diversity that we have amongst all of the ATs and powersets is so vast , that to sequester or sideline any AT becuz their pylon times are 5 sec shy of another AT/build/etc is the height of ludicrousness 

 

bottom line? tanks should be on average the most durable , but they should not also simultaneously be doing the most dmg and out-clearing brutes and scraps ; it certainly seems like the HC devs have over-buffed tanks in this aspect ; brutes imho should be doing some more dmg but they do not need to be made any more durable imho , whether they get a boost to fury dmg or what i dunno , but certainly their dmg cap did not need to be lowered , if anything it should be raised ; scraps and stalky are imho in a good spot , crits are uber powerful as they can 'break' the dmg cap , so these guys will always be the premiere AV/EB/Boss deleters in the the melee camps

 

it really does seem like the smartest course of action is to reduce the buffs to the tanks , they got over-boosted , the increases to AOE and tgt-caps and dmg scalar should be 50% less than what they are , ie gauntlet still gives tanks a boost just not quite so large as they have atm , becuz arguably tanks were in need of something , but they clearly went too far ; and ofc it should go without saying that tanks should have double/triple the AGGRO cap than the other ATs , i think that is perfectly thematically accurate and doesnt really break anything else in the same ways that dmg/aoe/etc does

[tidge]

The "Tankers outperforming Scrappers/Brutes" is somewhat marginal (when presented via "metrics"), and AFAIK only demonstrated in solo circumstances... that is to say, I don't recall a deep dive where two players tackled content with something like a "Blaster + _____" with the blank filled in alternating with Tankers/Scrappers/Brutes.... and the solo measures were mostly level 50 builds in level 50 content.

 

The larger AoE for Tankers does make a difference for %damage... but those larger AoE were IMO necessary to improve Tankers in their nominal role.(*1) As noted by @Sovera, this is a build choice that is impossible to know how large a percentage of population is actually choosing to do so. It may be more than 1% but it feels more like a 1% than a 99%. There are two common quips: "The forums are only a small fraction of the player base" and "the game isn't balanced around IOs".

 

I don't think 'nerfing' %procs or the PPM system is the way to go, because the %damage pieces smooth out the differences in clear times (and all rewards, because rewards come from defeats) for all ATs. We need somewhat extreme magnification to see most of the differences in clear times between Scrappers/Tankers/Brutes, if we put Controllers on those plots we'd need to use log-paper. This argument about "how to improve/nerf ____" is like the rich arguing over the amount of gravy on a dish of roast beef while the poor nibble on bread crusts.

 

(*1) Also "bruising" was an opaque mechanic that really wasn't doing much of anything in terms of performing Tanker clear times, so good riddance.

 

 

 

 

[Sovera]

37 minutes ago, CYPHERPUNK said:

it really does seem like the smartest course of action is to reduce the buffs to the tanks , they got over-boosted , the increases to AOE and tgt-caps and dmg scalar should be 50% less than what they are , ie gauntlet still gives tanks a boost just not quite so large as they have atm , becuz arguably tanks were in need of something , but they clearly went too far ; and ofc it should go without saying that tanks should have double/triple the AGGRO cap than the other ATs , i think that is perfectly thematically accurate and doesnt really break anything else in the same ways that dmg/aoe/etc does

 

 

You really missed everything I said and went straight to 'Tankers should do 50% of their damage' uh?

[Thraxen]

I’m so ready for proc nerf. Every single post is proc proc proc.  I know this post is too lol. One damage proc per attack seems like an easy fix. 

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

 

You really missed everything I said and went straight to 'Tankers should do 50% of their damage' uh?

I think in fairness he said that the buff to Tanker damage should've been 50% as high as it was, not that tankers damage should be reduced by 50%.

[CYPHERPUNK]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

 

You really missed everything I said and went straight to 'Tankers should do 50% of their damage' uh?

i think you entirely misinterpreted my post =/ ; prior to the latest HC changes whatever it was i26p4 like someone else mentioned , i think it was argued that tanks needed some kind of luv , i think its perfectly rational to agree with this consensus [especially the increased aggro caps] , but i also think that the buffs were 'too much' , not that the buffs should be entirely reverted and not that tanks should be 50% less of what they currently are , is that not clear enough?

 

baseline tank prior to i26 = 100 

i26 buffs +100 = 200 , the suggestion is that 200 is too much , we are arguing for reducing those buffs byto 50 , thus the new tank would be =150 , still better than before , but not quite as OP as they currently are

 

tanks are supposed to be the durable ones , brutes and scraps are supposed to be the best mid-tier melee dps , ie they dish out WAY MORE dmg than tanks do , and as a tradeoff they are not quite as tough [or at least it costs more for them to build as such] , then stalky does the MOST epic melee burst dmg , but they are even more squish than scraps , but they have hide , ie the heroes have blasters , and the villains have stalkers , it was truly a brilliant design specialization from the OG devs back in the day ; if tanks are out-clearing the brutes , then either the brutes need to be doing more dmg or the tanks are overtuned , thats basically the long-short of it , and OFC there are always going to be the edge cases and outliers , but design-wise the HC devs should be focusing on the core base-use [ie big math avg/means/etc] cases , as like you yourself said , you dont want to be stepping on the 99% as a means to curtail the 1%

 

like this entire discussion is a derailment of the OP , but its specifically BECUZ tanks on HC completely fukn clear the other melee ATs atm , they 6-proc a bunch of AOEs and decimate the mobs , all the while practically invincible due to tanker primaries being such beefcake uber chads , thusly any/every discussion of 'hey what brute/scrap/etc should i make?' gets a comment about 'nah bro , brutes/scraps are washed now , make a tank instead and l2p' , if it was not for this scenario we would not be having this convo at all

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, CYPHERPUNK said:

like this entire discussion is a derailment of the OP , but its specifically BECUZ tanks on HC completely fukn clear the other melee ATs atm , they 6-proc a bunch of AOEs and decimate the mobs , all the while practically invincible due to tanker primaries being such beefcake uber chads , thusly any/every discussion of 'hey what brute/scrap/etc should i make?' gets a comment about 'nah bro , brutes/scraps are washed now , make a tank instead and l2p' , if it was not for this scenario we would not be having this convo at all

 

Scrappers are top damage and that is not really anything anyone debates. And while a Scrapper would not be my first choice to tank something like Recluse, it is not like people have not soloed most content, including team content, on a scrapper (though at that level of gear/play, you are talking a tiny fraction of both play and populace). 

[Maelwys]

Comparatively as far as I'm aware across the four Melee ATs it's only Brutes that are hugely out of place (on team content, but not necessarily "only at level 50"). However their inflated performance is coming from different places. Procs (with one notable exception) aren't the be-all and end-all.

 

Tanker performance is inflated primarily due to their larger radius and target caps. They hit more things with each attack and so clear mobs faster. They have a slight edge in the number of Procs they can slot due to finding it easier to meet mitigation thresholds (which their ATOs also substantially help with) but if you removed Procs entirely Tankers would still woodchipper through mooks just fine.

 

Scrapper performance is inflated primarily due to their Critical Hit mechanics and ATO placement. If you took Scrapper and Brute ATOs both away then they'd suddenly become roughly equal in terms of damage output. Procs make Scrappers better, but they don't scale with crits (except -res procs).

 

Stalker performance is inflated due to their Critical Hit mechanics (which relies on a sensible attack chain and merely being on a team) - their "chance for hidden" ATO helps with this a little but does not pull the bulk of the weight. Their autorecharging build up ATO can drastically improve damage; but it becomes much less useful if they're already at the damage cap via Fulcrum Shift etc. Procs make Stalkers better but they don't scale with crits or build up; and Stalkers also tend to need to dedicate a few more enhancement slots and power selections to meet mitigation thresholds.

 

Brute performance is inflated due to Fury and Procs. They have poor base damage but an extremely high damage cap. Because of Fury they respond comparatively poorly to otherwise powerful damage buffs (like Inspirations, Enhancements, Build Up, Forge, Assault Core etc let alone Fulcrum Shift) but they get the full effect out of damage procs and so will tend to Proc bomb their attacks even more than Tankers. Brute ATOs unfortunately are hot garbage and in practice add next to nothing in terms of additional damage output or survivability.

 

So of the four, in my opinion it's Brutes that are currently gaining the most from (non ATO) procs. Scrappers lean into their ATOs the heaviest. Tankers and Stalkers leverage a mixture of their powerful Inherents and ATOs.

 

Honestly, give Brutes decent ATOs and their performance gap with Scrappers and Stalkers would be non existent. But that doesn't solve the problem of each AT needing to carve out a different useful niche so that each of them becomes desirable on teams. (eg Even if a Brute was as damaging as a Scrapper but still didn't benefit as much proportionally from teammate damage buffs then why bring them along, since their higher HP and Resistance caps are mostly irrelevant...)

[Icono04]

4 hours ago, CYPHERPUNK said:

like this entire discussion is a derailment of the OP

Good observation, @CYPHERPUNK, and as the starter of this thread I thank you for noticing 🙂  But we all know that every CoX forum thread invariably ends up getting derailed by a few people pursuing their pet peeves, so I kind of figured something like this would happen. The thread had a good run already - I am at peace with whatever happens to it now 🙂

[Erratic1]

 

14 hours ago, Icono04 said:

Good observation, @CYPHERPUNK, and as the starter of this thread I thank you for noticing 🙂  But we all know that every CoX forum thread invariably ends up getting derailed by a few people pursuing their pet peeves, so I kind of figured something like this would happen. The thread had a good run already - I am at peace with whatever happens to it now 🙂

 

• Not sure a thread which is 5 months old, had its original end 4 months ago, and was laying inactive for over two months until it came active again can be derailed as it was mostly dead.
• Arguably the derail started with the person you are saying had good observation posting the following last Friday:

 

On 2/21/2025 at 6:15 PM, CYPHERPUNK said:

so if im following this thread correctly , Brutes as they current are on HC are basically at the bottom of the pile atm? that's pretty sad to hear

 

why exactly was their dmg cap reduced if this is the case? and how often are ppl running around at the dmg cap neways? it feels like the brutes space was intentionally designed to be a mid-tier performer within the stalker/scrapper/tanker medium , but with the potential to be an outlier if/when they got enough team buffs

 

everything i am seeing is basically telling me that brutes should at the very least be given their higher dmg cap back if nothing else , but more likely their archtype ios could also be improved ; i would say something like maybe instead just make fury give +2.5/3% dmg per fury instead of +2% but that seems counter to the original design , ie instead of raising the floor , have a higher ceiling

 

😁