I am done with Brutes

[tidge]

24 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Your gloss that I proposed "nerfing the Scrapper ATOs so that Scrappers don't outperform Brutes" is a misreading, however -- what I proposed was that the power budget of Scrappers be redistributed from the ATO2 into the ATO1 and the base inherent, primarily for reasons of intra-Scrapper-set balance.  Lower the ceiling on the very best Scrapper builds (which are extremely high DPS) in service of increasing the floor on most Scrapper builds.

 

I gotcha... I don't think that we shouldn't be trying to 'balance' performance (of primaries/secondaries within an AT, or between different ATs) based on an ATO. Especially not with tests like Ston did. I don't really think Ston could have approached things differently (except possibly to get rid of all incarnates) but it necessarily made his results a lot more narrow than the hype around them.

[Thraxen]

I swear if they nerf scrappers im gonna demand a refund. 

[Erratic1]

40 minutes ago, Thraxen said:

I swear if they nerf scrappers im gonna demand a refund. 

 

Heaven help us if the game goes the Shadowbane route where each class that got nerfed spawned a chorus for the next class to get nerfed, and around and around it went.

[Thraxen]

6 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Heaven help us if the game goes the Shadowbane route where each class that got nerfed spawned a chorus for the next class to get nerfed, and around and around it went.

 I was, of course, just kidding. Can’t get a refund for a free game. 

[Crysis]

On 7/10/2025 at 6:06 AM, tricon said:

Well maybe theHC devs should take a balancing pass for the underperforming ATO sets. Brutes would be on the list but so are others like the Fiery Orb for Dominators is still something that I consider insulting.

 

No need to nerf Scappers/Stalkers ATO sets but the others should be brought up to the same lvl.

 

While I agree no need to nerf Scrap/Stalker ATO’s, experience teaches us it’s generally easier to tone something existing down than to create something totally new.  Thus, nerfs likely to those ATO’s to bring them “in line” with all others.  

 

Playing a bunch of Stalkers and Scrappers, however, at least when it comes to +DEF builds, Stalkers “Crit on Demand” ATO’s are obscenely powerful, making many +DEF builds a no brainer to take Stalker vs. Scrapper.  I’ve a DB/Energy Aura and Elec/Shield Stalker that can in most content outperform almost identically slotted scrappers because of the ATO differences.  Neither are lacking in damage, but with +DEF (minus massive -DEF debuffs) superior DPS makes up for lack of durability.  Killing stuff faster than they can land hits on you has always been the motivating mechanic for this game.

 

I’ve been waiting for years now for Procs to get globally nerfed.  Seems to me they create more imbalance than they should.  Maybe just damage procs.  I’m not advocating it, as I’ve entire AT’s I likely won’t ever play again if procs got nerfed, but they allow for some imbalance issues all by themselves.

[aethereal]

14 hours ago, tidge said:

 

I gotcha... I don't think that we shouldn't be trying to 'balance' performance (of primaries/secondaries within an AT, or between different ATs) based on an ATO. Especially not with tests like Ston did. I don't really think Ston could have approached things differently (except possibly to get rid of all incarnates) but it necessarily made his results a lot more narrow than the hype around them.

 

I don't want to get too sidetracked into this -- there seems like there's absolutely no appetite from the dev team to do anything with the ATOs, including even just "make the claimed PPM accurate on the Scrapper ATO," which is wild to me.  But just to be clear:

 

In a well-optimized build for a level 50 scrapper, the ATO2 is worth at least as much as the base inherent + the ATO1 combined.  Probably more.  Like, if you dropped the base rate of criticals to zero, and removed the effect of the ATO1, (but kept the ATO2 as it is, so increasing crit rate by 50 percentage points) you'd remove less than half of the criticals that Scrappers would get.  That being the case, I think it's really impossible to address Scrapper balance without going through the ATO2.  The entire class hinges on it.  Which is exactly what I think is nuts -- I think it'd be way more healthy to have a higher base rate of criticals and the ATO2 is a noticeable improvement on top of that to reward good builds, not have it be so incredibly dominant.

[Wavicle]

4 hours ago, Crysis said:

 

While I agree no need to nerf Scrap/Stalker ATO’s, experience teaches us it’s generally easier to tone something existing down than to create something totally new.  Thus, nerfs likely to those ATO’s to bring them “in line” with all others.  

 

Playing a bunch of Stalkers and Scrappers, however, at least when it comes to +DEF builds, Stalkers “Crit on Demand” ATO’s are obscenely powerful, making many +DEF builds a no brainer to take Stalker vs. Scrapper.  I’ve a DB/Energy Aura and Elec/Shield Stalker that can in most content outperform almost identically slotted scrappers because of the ATO differences.  Neither are lacking in damage, but with +DEF (minus massive -DEF debuffs) superior DPS makes up for lack of durability.  Killing stuff faster than they can land hits on you has always been the motivating mechanic for this game.

 

I’ve been waiting for years now for Procs to get globally nerfed.  Seems to me they create more imbalance than they should.  Maybe just damage procs.  I’m not advocating it, as I’ve entire AT’s I likely won’t ever play again if procs got nerfed, but they allow for some imbalance issues all by themselves.

With recent changes to the way placate works, I don’t think it’s that important whether you have defense or damage resistance on a stalker anymore. They do just fine either way.