Why a Brute?

[Erratic1]

11 hours ago, venetiasilver said:

Tankers take forever to clear leveling content

 

Not played a Tanker recently I take it? Because this is massively untrue.

[venetiasilver]

6 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Not played a Tanker recently I take it? Because this is massively untrue.

A little bit here and there, but it still feels slow compared to Brute unless you're bankrolling every boost imaginable (Amplifiers, Serums, Summons, Prestige attacks)
Like taking say a simple Katana / Willpower Combo.

SoTW when you're rolling at 80 Fury (common hover rate)
9.25 Damage per CD on Brute.
vs. 5.43 Damage per CD on Tanker.

Then even after achieving Build Up.
20.3877 Per Sting on Tanker 
23.24 Per Sting on Brute

Then when Build Up is back on cooldown.
11.3265 Damage per Sting on Tanker
vs 16.0956 Damage per Sting on Brute

[Sovera]

Without bankrolling every boost imaginable Tankers are not particularly slow up until facing an AV. In practical gameplay they make up for lower numbers by hitting more enemies. So win some and lose some. Up to level 20 the Brutes are much faster though.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, venetiasilver said:

A little bit here and there, but it still feels slow compared to Brute unless you're bankrolling every boost imaginable (Amplifiers, Serums, Summons, Prestige attacks)
Like taking say a simple Katana / Willpower Combo.

 

30 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Without bankrolling every boost imaginable Tankers are not particularly slow up until facing an AV. In practical gameplay they make up for lower numbers by hitting more enemies. So win some and lose some. Up to level 20 the Brutes are much faster though.

 

And in particular, you can grow the size of enemy spawns by setting team size higher, so there is great density to plow through.

[Gobbledigook]

Depends if we are talking an SO Brute/Tanker leveling up or one with a good build. Solo or in a team with buffs etc etc etc.

[venetiasilver]

11 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

Depends if we are talking an SO Brute/Tanker leveling up or one with a good build. Solo or in a team with buffs etc etc etc.

considering the "meta" is bizarre.

I've done yellow sets before while leveling up like crushing uppercut or the yellow tier resist/defense sets.
it does add some good cushion but you have to be careful of when to apply them. 22 is about the best time for that.
However in the standard purchase enhancements at the vendor, Brutes can still be faster than tankers at the leveling process.

[Sovera]

6 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

And in particular, you can grow the size of enemy spawns by setting team size higher, so there is great density to plow through.

 

I do that on a Brute similar as a Tanker to be fair. Though I also twink my builds while leveling. Either will start at 0x6 for Posi 1 at level 8 and then grow to +1x8 by Yin.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

I do that on a Brute similar as a Tanker to be fair. Though I also twink my builds while leveling. Either will start at 0x6 for Posi 1 at level 8 and then grow to +1x8 by Yin.

 

At any given amount of equal expenditure, the Tanker will be more survivable and be able to load on more (until failure of course).

[Sovera]

49 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

At any given amount of equal expenditure, the Tanker will be more survivable and be able to load on more (until failure of course).

 

Yes. I'm just saying I do the same with both ATs. But I'm twinked out and know when to spring for an inspiration. The Tanker might not need it as often but they both follow the exact same difficulty growth.

[Octogoat]

This is making me want to experiment with tankers. Maybe a shield/broadsword.

[ZemX]

27 minutes ago, Octogoat said:

This is making me want to experiment with tankers. Maybe a shield/broadsword.

 

I would suggest Axe, Fire, or Ice melee to go with that shield.   Axe is amazing.  Pendulum is nicely embiggened by Tanker's inherent so you can swing it at anything and hit nine of their closest friends easily, especially after sucking them all in with Axe Cyclone.  Ice and Fire both give you decent looking sword powers for that sword and board action too, and have better performance than Broadsword.

 

Oddly enough, this thread makes me, a tanker player, want to play Brutes.  I think there's a lot of over-generalizing going on based on the minmax data, so it'd be interesting to see how some of my tanker builds work on Brutes.

[venetiasilver]

3 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

I would suggest Axe, Fire, or Ice melee to go with that shield.   Axe is amazing.  Pendulum is nicely embiggened by Tanker's inherent so you can swing it at anything and hit nine of their closest friends easily, especially after sucking them all in with Axe Cyclone.  Ice and Fire both give you decent looking sword powers for that sword and board action too, and have better performance than Broadsword.

 

Oddly enough, this thread makes me, a tanker player, want to play Brutes.  I think there's a lot of over-generalizing going on based on the minmax data, so it'd be interesting to see how some of my tanker builds work on Brutes.

Broad Sword Slander!

[Erratic1]

5 hours ago, Octogoat said:

This is making me want to experiment with tankers. Maybe a shield/broadsword.

 

I would go Battle Axe over Broadsword. The ability to drag foes with you using Axe Cyclone and cluster them together is amazing and having just used one area attack, you can follow up with both Pendulum and Cleave.

 

You will want to plan for the lack of an armor set endurance recovery option ahead of time.

[Grimm2]

9 hours ago, ZemX said:

Oddly enough, this thread makes me, a tanker player, want to play Brutes.  I think there's a lot of over-generalizing going on based on the minmax data, so it'd be interesting to see how some of my tanker builds work on Brutes.

 

This warms my heart. I've always enjoyed Brutes over the years, and though the Tanker changes absolutely made them much more powerful and enjoyable to play, some of my favorite toons are Brutes.

 

I very much recommend sets that can take advantage of the big HP cap and resist cap...Invuln will eat up every s/l bonus you give it, and Stone is my favorite. 

[Story Archer]

On 10/20/2024 at 8:08 AM, venetiasilver said:

A little bit here and there, but it still feels slow compared to Brute unless you're bankrolling every boost imaginable (Amplifiers, Serums, Summons, Prestige attacks)
Like taking say a simple Katana / Willpower Combo.

SoTW when you're rolling at 80 Fury (common hover rate)
9.25 Damage per CD on Brute.
vs. 5.43 Damage per CD on Tanker.

Then even after achieving Build Up.
20.3877 Per Sting on Tanker 
23.24 Per Sting on Brute

Then when Build Up is back on cooldown.
11.3265 Damage per Sting on Tanker
vs 16.0956 Damage per Sting on Brute

 

I can't speak for all Tankers, but my Rad/SS Tanker moonwalks through content without any of those things... it'll be interesting to see if my Claws/Rad Brute does the same, but it seems like you're talking about single-target only here.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Story Archer said:

 

I can't speak for all Tankers, but my Rad/SS Tanker moonwalks through content without any of those things... it'll be interesting to see if my Claws/Rad Brute does the same, but it seems like you're talking about single-target only here.

Even on Katana, Flashing Steel and The Lotus Drops and Golden Dragonfly all benefit drastically from Gauntlet.
(Back on Live my old Kat/Regen Scrapper would have given their right arm to be able to reliably land Golden Dragonfly on multiple targets...)

[Story Archer]

5 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Even on Katana, Flashing Steel and The Lotus Drops and Golden Dragonfly all benefit drastically from Gauntlet.
(Back on Live my old Kat/Regen Scrapper would have given their right arm to be able to reliably land Golden Dragonfly on multiple targets...)

Oh, my first 50 was a Katana/Willpower Scrapper, so I know well what they can do. As great as it is for levelling up, I do feel that Willpower is one of the weaker defensive sets vs. higher-level content, fwiw. It just seemed to me that in your comment you were specifically comparing ST damage.

[Maelwys]

20 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

Oh, my first 50 was a Katana/Willpower Scrapper, so I know well what they can do. As great as it is for levelling up, I do feel that Willpower is one of the weaker defensive sets vs. higher-level content, fwiw. It just seemed to me that in your comment you were specifically comparing ST damage.

The post you quoted was by VenetiaSilver (not me! 🙂)

I agree with your point that Tankers don't need extra buffage to shine. My followup was just pointing out that even the "Katana" powerset contains multiple useful AoE attacks; and so in practice even a WP/Katana Tanker should still have some advantages over a Katana/WP Brute. (In my experience it's a rare toon that doesn't take an AoE or two?!?)

To restate my stance: honestly Brutes currently seem to be the "middle of the road" melee AT (more survivable than a Scrapper/Stalker but worse at Single Target damage; and less survivable than a Tanker but better at Single Target damage). And that might be fine from a design standpoint, but it's bad from an efficiency and desirability standpoint. Especially once you factor in Inventions and Incarnates and acknowledge that Stalkers/Scrappers can be made more than survivable enough to go toe-to-toe with just about any single target in the game (and Tanks are miles better at AoE damage....)

[Story Archer]

11 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

The post you quoted was by VenetiaSilver (not me! 🙂)

I agree with your point that Tankers don't need extra buffage to shine. My followup was just pointing out that even the "Katana" powerset contains multiple useful AoE attacks; and so in practice even a WP/Katana Tanker should still have some advantages over a Katana/WP Brute. (In my experience it's a rare toon that doesn't take an AoE or two?!?)

To restate my stance: honestly Brutes currently seem to be the "middle of the road" melee AT (more survivable than a Scrapper/Stalker but worse at Single Target damage; and less survivable than a Tanker but better at Single Target damage). And that might be fine from a design standpoint, but it's bad from an efficiency and desirability standpoint. Especially once you factor in Inventions and Incarnates and acknowledge that Stalkers/Scrappers can be made more than survivable enough to go toe-to-toe with just about any single target in the game (and Tanks are miles better at AoE damage....)

 

Thanks for the clarification. Your stance is kind of the reason why I made the OP in the first place. I find my Scrappers to be extremely survivable late-game, everything I'd need them to be as long as I'm not trying to specifically Tank. I feel like the damage difference between the Scrapper and the Brute is generally much more noticeable than the survivability difference (although, it bears repeating that I have much less experience with Brutes). I also feel like the single-target damage difference between the Brute and the Tanker is nowhere near as noticeable as the difference between their survivability and AoE damage. Hence the question 'why a Brute'? I've been trying to figure that out myself by experimenting with which powersets might benefit the most from a Brute's unique niche but it seems to be a fairly short list.

 

I had a discussion with a friend recently who proposed an interesting 'fix' for Brutes, which would be instead of (or in addition to) a Brute's generic boost to damage increasing with their Fury, granting them an escalating critical chance that starts off basically nonexistent and also increases with their Fury so that, in the rare instances that they are fully maxed out, they're critting at just as high or higher a rate than Scrappers. Honestly, that feels really thematically appropriate to me and would help them out a lot with sustained damage vs. tough single targets without unbalancing them the rest of the time.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

To restate my stance: honestly Brutes currently seem to be the "middle of the road" melee AT (more survivable than a Scrapper/Stalker but worse at Single Target damage; and less survivable than a Tanker but better at Single Target damage). And that might be fine from a design standpoint, but it's bad from an efficiency and desirability standpoint. Especially once you factor in Inventions and Incarnates and acknowledge that Stalkers/Scrappers can be made more than survivable enough to go toe-to-toe with just about any single target in the game (and Tanks are miles better at AoE damage....)

 

41 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

Thanks for the clarification. Your stance is kind of the reason why I made the OP in the first place. I find my Scrappers to be extremely survivable late-game, everything I'd need them to be as long as I'm not trying to specifically Tank. I feel like the damage difference between the Scrapper and the Brute is generally much more noticeable than the survivability difference (although, it bears repeating that I have much less experience with Brutes).

 

The primary advantage Brutes have over Scrappers is more hit points and a higher resistance cap. That last bit does not mean much until IOs come into play and the first is possibly not that meaningful if the Brute is using a defense set as opposed to a range based one as it is hard to cap defenses and then push past 75% on resistances. Add on top that unlike with Tankers vs Brutes in terms of survival, Brutes get the same value out of their armor sets as Scrappers do.

 

So yes, your impression of the survivability advantage of Brutes to Scrappers is correct.

[Maelwys]

Also worth pointing out that whilst Stalkers and Scrappers have a substantially lower Resistance cap than Brutes, they do get access to a few different tools (such as Shadow Meld) which can let them situationally "turtle up" more easily than Brutes whilst still maintaining a *lot* of build wiggle room.

As an example: I have a built-for-damage-output EnergyMelee/RadArmor Scrapper - aside from a 6th SCS IO in Barrage; all of their slotting is focused on damage procs and +Global Recharge rather than on providing any additional mitigation.
They constantly sit at the 75% S/L Resistance hardcap and they aren't hugely far off cap to many of the other types (easy enough for RadArmor, so nothing to get overly excited about!) plus ~13.5% Defence to Melee/Ranged/AoE (again, pretty poor... although at least it stacks with the ~8.5 -ToHit from Beta Decay). However they can choose to temporarily Softcap all their Defenses by popping Shadow Meld (duration of 15s; recharge + animation time less than 30s so 50% uptime).
As a result, even with their ordinarily-sub-par mitigation they can still wade into any huge +4/x8 spawn of critters + pop Whirling Hands > Ground Zero > Radiation Therapy > Whirling Hands and come out smelling like roses. All without touching incarnates.
 

Edited October 22 by Maelwys

[ZemX]

On 10/22/2024 at 10:40 AM, Story Archer said:

I had a discussion with a friend recently who proposed an interesting 'fix' for Brutes

 

Need to prove there's a problem before you fix it.  All anybody has done in this thread is mostly quote Ston's test data which is, it needs to be repeatedly stated because people just LOVE to ignore it.... a test about clearing a map solo at +4/x8 with IOs, Incarnates, and proc-monstered builds all mixed in.

 

Not only is this game NOT balanced for solo performance.  It is not balanced for any of that other stuff either.  Ston's data is, in other words, completely useless for balancing.  That wasn't the point of it.  The point was comparing the powersets for each AT relative to one another when you minmax and showing how that does solo.  If you're making statements as general as "Tankers outdamage Brutes" based on his data... you're wrong.  Simple as that.   His data does not prove this statement in the general case.   Only in the case outlined by the conditions of his test.  How much of the Brute's performance is degraded by being less tough than the Tanker?  Was he spending more time repairing damage?  Eating oranges instead of reds?  If damage output was the point, why not run at -1/x8?  Because it wasn't the point.  But if you want to make damage output the point... then test for it.  And NOTHING else.

 

Even if you do just look at his data, you cannot just say "Tankers outdamage Brutes" by any great amount even in Ston's test conditions.   The average clear times are literally just 8 seconds different out of 5 minutes 18 seconds for the Brutes.   There's more variation powerset to powerset than there is between the ATs.  If you balanced powersets vs. one another first, the difference between Brutes and Tankers in this data could shift dramatically.

 

Which is entirely why you can't just mix all the variables together and draw conclusions about what to fix.  You'll likely just be breaking something else if you do that.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

 

(...) How much of the Brute's performance is degraded by being less tough than the Tanker?  Was he spending more time repairing damage?  Eating oranges instead of reds?  If damage output was the point, why not run at -1/x8?  Because it wasn't the point.  But if you want to make damage output the point... then test for it.  And NOTHING else. (...)

 

Not a complete tangent but I do remember commenting that people were doing the Trapdoor with the typical fireball complement, but then being honest (which is appreciated in all fairness) that they were eating yellows to combat the blindness from Arachnos, but I, who took Focused Accuracy to naturally not be blinded, was not eating reds to make up for my lack of fireballs.

 

Either we were testing the builds or we were testing playing the mission which at that point inspirations were allowed, but in the name of fairness not damaging inspirations?

 

 

I don't give much importance to the results from others since the Trapdoor's objective was testing builds which I did. I tested my builds. My best was a Fire/Rad Brute at 4:42. Out of ten tests eight were Brutes and two Tankers, and my Fire/MA Tanker, my baby, was solid at 6 minutes which made it 8th place. The first seven were all Brutes.

 

The only thing worse was a Rad/Stone Brute at 6:13 and a Fire/Rad Tanker without Atom Smasher at 6:57.

 

Edited October 24 by Sovera

[Erratic1]

24 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Need to prove there's a problem before you fix it.  All anybody has done in this thread is mostly quote Ston's test data which is, it needs to be repeatedly stated because people just LOVE to ignore it.... a test about clearing a map solo at +4/x8 with IOs, Incarnates, and proc-monstered builds all mixed in.

 

But a very few Brute builds, buffed to the gills in a team setting, was a problem requiring nerfing all Brutes, eh?

 

You are engaging in tactic of disassembly--arguing no specific point proves an end conclusion as distraction from the assembly of points meaning something.

 

I asked above what specifically would constitute proof of one of your fellow naysayers and got nothing specific in return. I leave you the question.

[Gobbledigook]

Well we know a Brute will take a Pylon/hard target down faster than a Tanker.

The Trapdoor test shows Tankers are good trash clears but so are Brutes and many other AT's. The test does not represent normal everyday play.

 

A Brute will solo just fine and is actually one of the better AT's for doing this. The Tanker is very good solo also and so are many other AT's. Soloing is a choice as teams are readily available.

 

The Brute in a team will benefit from buffs very well with their increased caps, pushing them well beyond Scrapper levels and into Tanker area.

 

I have both Tanker and Brutes with the same powersets and good builds. They clear trash equally but the Brute will take down a Boss faster. That is my proof in actual gameplay and not tailored missions.

 

That being said the Brute could definitely do with better ATO procs and maybe some slight tweaking. It is never going to be an easy place between 2 other AT's but no one forces you to play the Brute.

 

Providing some ideas for the Brute and less moaning may be more beneficial.

 

 

Edited October 24 by Gobbledigook