The Blue Melees' a Diary

[venetiasilver]

For a few hours, I've been playing some standard CoH.
For the intended effect of feeling out the gameplay loop of Scrapper and Tankers.
Solo Mostly everything.

The Powersets to keep it clear.
Scrapper: Broad Sword / Invulnerability
Tanker: Invulnerability / Broad Sword

Level 1-5 Experience.
They feel relatively similar during the first Origin Arc missions; exception being the spike in kill speed for the scrapper, but the Tanker is observed to be not as bad as I thought it would be; solid kill speed 
"I have been informed by Paragon Police, I'm not killing these mobs... I am arresting them"
(Darn this hero thing is hard)
Smaller notes looking at the early game experience, I would say both are good to pilot; Broad Sword as a baseline is very principled to be good.
Transition to 6-10.
Scrapper Damage starts around here to deviate away from its Tanker Brother, its small but you can clear minions in 1 less attack, overall nice.
Tanker HP climbing you begin to feel it, against Grognor he didn't even budge my HP below less than its first quarter; and I still had Dull Pain as a backup.

Overall Scrapper Girl and Tanker Girl are interesting to play as. 
Extra Notes: Tanker AoE Arc for Slice just feels dirty, It works like all Melee's should. Scrapper came close to death on the first mob pack in the Hollows.
Also the crits are nice when you get them.

[JJDrakken]

All Tanker got buffed couple years back.  Increased Threat, all it's Cones, AoE, PBAOE's sized increased, etc..    Scrappers are fine, their mechanics are to RNG random for me though. For crits to be reliable.   While a Stalkers crit is more controlled and reliable. 

 

Also your judging Broadsword based on 10 levels? Those last Disembowel & Headsplitter hit hard.

[Without_Pause]

Level 1-20 are fairly streamlined with all ATs for damage, sans Brutes. Fury is practically cheat mode 1-20. Separation happens post level 20. More so once ATOs come into play if that's allowed compared to a SO comparison. Tankers will gain the mitigation to boost the x# side of the difficulty setting as where the Scrapper can boost the +# side. The real difference when it comes to BS is how more likely it is resisted. A Scrapper can get around this easier than a Tanker can. Various bosses at +4 will be painfully slow on a Tanker on average. At least certainly with similar slotting compared to the Scrapper. There are various factors in this. Case in point, what Alpha and Hybrid are taken if that is also part of the testing.

 

The quirks for me are that depending upon what armors are used, a Scrapper can get rather close to the mitigation of a Tanker, see Scrappers doing ITF at +4x8. Maps, even at x8, often do not have mobs with the size of 16 in them. This means a Tanker needs to spend time herding mobs to get there, or their target cap advantage goes wasted. 

 

What really gets wonky is set 'x' for a Scrapper versus 'y' for Tanker and talking to yourself about game balance when a Tanker is on pace or out pacing a Scrapper with the obvious added mitigation. I'm old enough to accept game balance was never the point really in any game. It was making sure builds were fun enough to play to begin with.

[venetiasilver]

4 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Level 1-20 are fairly streamlined with all ATs for damage, sans Brutes. Fury is practically cheat mode 1-20. Separation happens post level 20. More so once ATOs come into play if that's allowed compared to a SO comparison. Tankers will gain the mitigation to boost the x# side of the difficulty setting as where the Scrapper can boost the +# side. The real difference when it comes to BS is how more likely it is resisted. A Scrapper can get around this easier than a Tanker can. Various bosses at +4 will be painfully slow on a Tanker on average. At least certainly with similar slotting compared to the Scrapper. There are various factors in this. Case in point, what Alpha and Hybrid are taken if that is also part of the testing.

 

The quirks for me are that depending upon what armors are used, a Scrapper can get rather close to the mitigation of a Tanker, see Scrappers doing ITF at +4x8. Maps, even at x8, often do not have mobs with the size of 16 in them. This means a Tanker needs to spend time herding mobs to get there, or their target cap advantage goes wasted. 

 

What really gets wonky is set 'x' for a Scrapper versus 'y' for Tanker and talking to yourself about game balance when a Tanker is on pace or out pacing a Scrapper with the obvious added mitigation. I'm old enough to accept game balance was never the point really in any game. It was making sure builds were fun enough to play to begin with.

Yeah something I explored was the damage scale, at level 10 Scrapper Damage and Tanker Damage deviate by a few points. Then by 20 it hits double digit difference.
Take the simple attack Hack
With two SO's of Damage (+66%)
Tanker damage out of it is 73 vs Scrapper's 87.
Then toss one simple Enrage. 91 from Tanker / 108 from Scrapper

Excepting the critical chance. Scrapper has 6.25 cycles of Hack to kill an Even Level Boss (Given all attacks hit)
Tanker has 7.4 cycles to do the same.
1 Attack Difference in effect.

And if Scrapper Crits well its just simple math that's one less attack needed.
But still Tankers are no slouch to the damage rating.

[Octogoat]

Tankers also have increased AOE radius and gauntlet. Until ATOs the damage difference isn't too bad but once scrapper gets ATOs it's a different story.

[Without_Pause]

It's all sorts of obvious for those who have done similar test, but if one is doing content for the sake of it, a Tanker is simply overkill in mitigation and target cap size. I ran a Tanker and Brute through Gold side up to Level 10, and leveling was significantly different. More so when both builds use a damage aura. While I don't really count a death at Level 4 during an ambush, the Tanker almost fell again until a level up kicked in. The Brute has been on cruise control. I have genuine questions if the Tanker could have stayed upright on some of the situations the Brute cruised through as I did different contacts on the second run. Enhancements haven't really factored into this due to how low of a level the characters are. I at best put in the Res: +3% Def IO for any of the armor slots. I used uncommons for the attacks. I got some Res IOs coming in at 12. At this point, I already axed the Tanker and will continue on with the Brute, as again, it is simply the better AT for the given task. Soloing the Tanker was a bit on the boring side and I ran them through first which made soloing the Brute second all the more noticeable. Again, there are sets which are problematic in terms of under or overperforming, but that ship has sailed. 

[Octogoat]

35 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

It's all sorts of obvious for those who have done similar test, but if one is doing content for the sake of it, a Tanker is simply overkill in mitigation and target cap size. I ran a Tanker and Brute through Gold side up to Level 10, and leveling was significantly different. More so when both builds use a damage aura. While I don't really count a death at Level 4 during an ambush, the Tanker almost fell again until a level up kicked in. The Brute has been on cruise control. I have genuine questions if the Tanker could have stayed upright on some of the situations the Brute cruised through as I did different contacts on the second run. Enhancements haven't really factored into this due to how low of a level the characters are. I at best put in the Res: +3% Def IO for any of the armor slots. I used uncommons for the attacks. I got some Res IOs coming in at 12. At this point, I already axed the Tanker and will continue on with the Brute, as again, it is simply the better AT for the given task. Soloing the Tanker was a bit on the boring side and I ran them through first which made soloing the Brute second all the more noticeable. Again, there are sets which are problematic in terms of under or overperforming, but that ship has sailed. 

 

I've often thought about taking a broadsword or katana brute gold side but never really did it. Is it fun?

[Without_Pause]

6 minutes ago, Octogoat said:

 

I've often thought about taking a broadsword or katana brute gold side but never really did it. Is it fun?

So far my pick of armor is Elec since it best covers dealing with incoming damage. Gold side has enough ToHit buffs to deal with so Def based armors can have issues, and can get variable amounts of time to get going. The damage aura is just going to make things all the easier in terms of damage output. I would lean Kat since it is the faster set and thus easier to build Fury with. I've soloed Gold side/Wards in parts. I like it for its difficulty and just being different. This is my first real attempt at going through the initial Gold side content since Live. I'll do the Ward arcs once I hit 20. 

[venetiasilver]

1 hour ago, Octogoat said:

 

I've often thought about taking a broadsword or katana brute gold side but never really did it. Is it fun?

Gold Side is honestly really refreshing when you've done the hollows a lot.
If you're going to do a Broadsword run in it, I'd say do a Scrapper for a bit more of that "Tense" gameplay feel.
Fire Armor would be funny, like "Infernal's Little Sister" And Healing Flames is as good as Reconstruction (faster even).

[Without_Pause]

4 hours ago, venetiasilver said:

Gold Side is honestly really refreshing when you've done the hollows a lot.
If you're going to do a Broadsword run in it, I'd say do a Scrapper for a bit more of that "Tense" gameplay feel.
Fire Armor would be funny, like "Infernal's Little Sister" And Healing Flames is as good as Reconstruction (faster even).

Money would need to be involved for me to run a /fire Scrapper. 😄

[venetiasilver]

3 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

Money would need to be involved for me to run a /fire Scrapper. 😄

Strictly speaking its better than Regen.

[Without_Pause]

15 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

Strictly speaking its better than Regen.

A bar so low it can't be tripped over. 😄I'm not saying FA is the second worst armor. It's definitely in the second worst tier. Add in a Res set on a Scrapper, and yeah.