I am done with Brutes

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

the devs (and certainly some players) are hyper-focused on damage differential at an extreme edge of performance (where several ATs are already narrowly clustered around some impressive times)
...
the claims that Brutes are ruined because Scrappers/Tankers outperform them by 1% per "Ston tests".

FWIW, currently post-i28p2 world the numbers I've seen still suggest that whenever ATOs are considered; clear times for fully IO'ed-out toons on an average mission map (Galaxybrains Mission Simulator at +4x8) have Brutes taking ~30% longer than a Scrapper and Tankers taking ~40% longer.

So from what I can see; the performance difference between ATO'ed Scrappers and ATO'ed Brutes (in terms of damage output) is definitely more just a few percentage points here and there... even if it's true that on a team with multiple nuking Blasters the benefits of bringing any melee toon over another largely evaporates.

I'm not sure it's worth overly focusing on Pylon time; since as Someguy pointed out earlier there are specific setups that WILDLY favour the Scrapper's higher base damage and forced Crits. But suffice to say that Brutes seem to lag behind Scrappers even more (it's not uncommon for a min-maxed Brute to take 50%+ longer to drop a Pylon than an equivalent Scrapper). For Stalkers; their mission simulator times can vary wildly (since most Stalkers suffer from a lack of noteworthy AoEs) but they're much higher up the Pylon charts than a Brute is (and Energy Melee in particular can throw out considerably higher damage output than on an equivalent Scrapper).

However I think it's fair to say that Scrappers and Stalkers are both in a decent place relative to each other balancewise (with Stalkers favouring ST damage and having more consistent crits). So IMO if we take the performance of those two ATs as a "baseline", then Brute damage could do with being buffed by quite a lot (to go from 30% longer mission simulator cleartimes to at most 15%) and Tanker damage could do with being buffed by a little bit (to go from 40% longer mission simulator cleartimes to at most 30%). And personally I'd rather these buffs were brought about via adjustments to the Brute and Tanker ATOs; because if you take the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs away then their damage output plummets but Brute and Tanker damage output remains largely the same. Meaning that the vast majority of the Melee AT performance disparity is almost entirely down to how effective their respective ATO procs/globals are. And Brutes' are provably 💩.
(And yes; naturally another way to go about it would be to severely nerf the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs; but we know what sort of backlash that would result in... 😅 )

[tidge]

Why is there a thought that Brutes should meet or exceed Scrapper performance by this one measure?

[Maelwys]

23 minutes ago, tidge said:

Why is there a thought that Brutes should meet or exceed Scrapper performance by this one measure?

 

Damage Output on an average mission map?

 

I'm not sure about "meeting or exceeding", but surely the fact that Stalkers and Scrappers and Brutes all have Primary Powersets that are focused on Melee Damage output suggests that they should all at least be "roughly within the same ballpark"? 

 

In my view, having Scrappers deal about 10%-15% higher damage than a Brute feels about right considering that Brutes have a higher Survivability ceiling and better Aggro Control. But whenever a Scrapper is consistently dealing >30% higher damage than a Brute, that feels like too much. And since the damage differences become so much less pronounced whenever you take all the ATOs away, personally I blame the ATOs. Pesky ATOs. **shakes fist**

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:22 PM by Maelwys

[tidge]

1 minute ago, Maelwys said:

And since the damage differences become so much less pronounced whenever you take all the ATOs away just reinforces this notion for me, personally I blame the ATOs.

 

There is this chestnut: "The game is not balanced around IOs"

 

We are each repeating things that have been said many times, so I'll repeat this: the type of content where the differences between Scrapper and Brute performances show the above types of differences are not representative of most of the game's content... if anything, those areas are quite narrowly specified. There is so little juice to be squeezed out of this argument that it sounds like simply wanting one more drop of juice than someone else might have.

[Maelwys]

13 minutes ago, tidge said:

the type of content where the differences between Scrapper and Brute performances show the above types of differences are not representative of most of the game's content... if anything, those areas are quite narrowly specified.

 

Nah.

 

Running regular mission maps constitutes an awful lot of the game's content. Maybe not always solo at +4x8, but I certainly find facing the equivalent of an x8 mission map on a team to be the rule rather than the exception. And in those cases the ATO performance disparity will usually apply because ATO Procs/Globals are slottable from very low levels and almost every Lv50 build will be racing to Catalyze them.

 

IMO Pylon times are definitely not representative of most content. But the older Trapdoor times and Current Mission Simulator times are. That's the entire reason the Devs asked us to provide them in the recent Tanker changes Beta thread.

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:38 PM by Maelwys

[tidge]

10 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Nah.

 

Running regular mission maps constitutes an awful lot of the game's content. Maybe not always solo at +4x8, but I certainly find facing the equivalent of an x8 mission map on a team to be the rule rather than the exception. 

 

I am unsure of a way to objectively measure an individual AT's damage-dealing performance on a 8-player team.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

I am unsure of a way to objectively measure an individual AT's damage-dealing performance on a 8-player team.

 

I am also unsure of it.  But I do think that it's notable that Stalkers get +21% crit chances in that circumstance.

 

But also...  Who cares about your performance on an 8-player level 50 team that's not Hard Mode?  Seriously.  What is the content that is mostly gated by performance on such a team rather than by, like, whether you stealth missions or whether people are joking in team chat or whatever?  Maybe LRSF or MLTF?  It just seems like for the most part, 8-person high level teams make non-Hard Mode content very easy.  I don't know, maybe some of the revamped or new enemy groups make that less true?  This is a genuine question, but it seems to me like it's just not that rewarding to optimize whether it you're contributing 12.5% or 15% or 10% of the damage that takes down a spawn in less than 20 seconds.

 

It seems to me that places where people actually care about the performance of ATs are:

 

1.  Hard Mode

2.  Solo at fairly high difficulties

3.  Low level

4.  Maybe small teams at high difficulties, especially below level 50

 

And for whatever it's worth, I think those are very different optimization targets, and it's plausible that an AT that excels in one of those targets will suck in other ones.

 

It seems to me that people get upset over the idea that a Brute might underperform in an 8 person non-hard-mode ITF or Peregrine Island mission team or TinPex, but actually it's going to be very hard to tell whether they over or underperform and also the team will be very successful regardless and also nobody will ever say, "I can't take you, a Brute, I need a Tanker or Scrapper instead."

Edited Wednesday at 06:48 PM by aethereal

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

I am unsure of a way to objectively measure an individual AT's damage-dealing performance on a 8-player team.

 

Pick a mission that has a good variety of targets with a minimal damage resistance spread (like the aforementioned Galaxybrain mission simulator AE map) then set your difficulty slider to +4x8.

 

19 minutes ago, aethereal said:

But also...  Who cares about your performance on an 8-player level 50 team that's not Hard Mode?  Seriously.  

 

That's an argument that gets brought up a lot. And it's a valid one, because CoX is notoriously a very easy and forgiving game. However when taken to its logical conclusion that results in thinking like "why do the melee ATs need to deal any damage at all on a team whenever there are multiple Blasters available to just nuke every single spawn?". Because frankly they don't... yet dealing decent levels of melee damage is obviously still fun for a lot of people, myself included.

 

To reuse yet another chestnut: just because it's possible to play this game on a Tanker who only uses Brawl or a Petless Mastermind... doesn't mean that the three ATs whose main schtick is dealing decent melee damage shouldn't have their respective levels of damage output be at least somewhat sensibly balanced. At least when it comes to not whomping a poor defenseless pylon.

 

⚖️

[Erratic1]

6 hours ago, Ringo said:

Admittedly I don't know what the Hide function does, but in the absence of a Delete function I did my best

 

Also I haven't been around lately but the suggestion that someone would "performatively" edit their post (to accomplish what?) seems foolish

 

The planet has 8 billion people. You can count on someone, somewhere doing anything you can imagine.

[tidge]

6 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Pick a mission that has a good variety of targets with a minimal damage resistance spread (like the aforementioned Galaxybrain mission simulator AE map) then set your difficulty slider to +4x8.

 

Except this isn't indicative of an individual performing as part of a team, which was what I thought this message referred to:

 

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

. Maybe not always solo at +4x8, but I certainly find facing the equivalent of an x8 mission map on a team to be the rule rather than the exception. 

 

[Maelwys]

1 minute ago, tidge said:

Except this isn't indicative of an individual performing as part of a team, which was what I thought this message referred to:

 

Let me rephrase then, for the sake of clarity:

 

It is my opinion that whenever ATOs are considered Brute (and to a lesser extent Tanker) damage output is sub par, as demonstrated by how quickly identically specced Scrappers, Stalkers, Brutes and Tankers can each currently defeat foes on an average mission map (with the difficulty slider set to x8 in order to not disadvantage Tankers due to their larger target caps and radiuses). Since most content in the game consists of instanced missions this is a good indicator of AT damage output performance, and setting the difficulty slider higher at +4x8 will effectively represent the enemies encountered by both experienced soloists and large teams.

 

Better?

[SomeGuy]

2 hours ago, Maelwys said:

IMO Pylon times are definitely not representative of most content. But the older Trapdoor times and Current Mission Simulator times are. That's the entire reason the Devs asked us to provide them in the recent Tanker changes Beta thread.

 

 

 

As someone that actually really likes to drop pylons, I agree with this big time. Granted, it IS an indicator of what to expect when doing other stuff. I have zero builds made just for dropping pylons, so if I drop a pylon and the AT/combo doesn't do that well in regular missions...I want my time back.

[tidge]

Just now, Maelwys said:

Better?

 

Hmmm... looks like word salad. My statement is:

 

2 hours ago, tidge said:

We are each repeating things that have been said many times, so I'll repeat this: the type of content where the differences between Scrapper and Brute performances show the above types of differences are not representative of most of the game's content... if anything, those areas are quite narrowly specified. There is so little juice to be squeezed out of this argument that it sounds like simply wanting one more drop of juice than someone else might have.

 

That is: A Scrapper or Brute teamed with 7 other players isn't well represented by a solo Scrapper or Brute on an AE simulator set at x8.... most of the games content isn't established as being a solo player at x8 (or +4x8, if you prefer). Some players may spend all their time doing this, but that wouldn't make it a majority of the game's content.

[aethereal]

43 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

That's an argument that gets brought up a lot. And it's a valid one, because CoX is notoriously a very easy and forgiving game. However when taken to its logical conclusion that results in thinking like "why do the melee ATs need to deal any damage at all on a team whenever there are multiple Blasters available to just nuke every single spawn?". Because frankly they don't... yet dealing decent levels of melee damage is obviously still fun for a lot of people, myself included.

 

But if Brutes didn't deal any damage, they would obviously suck at the optimization targets that actually matter: Hard Mode, solo performance, pre-50 performance, small team performance.

 

I mean, I'm not advocating for intentionally trying to make Brutes as unbalanced as possible on a 8-person level 50 team.  I'm just saying, let's handle the optimization targets that matter, and not go down a rabbithole of arguing obsessively whether a PI Radios team would prefer to have a tank that does 12% less damage but was 9% better at handling aggro versus a Brute, and recognize that the actual answer is that they completely don't give a shit.

[ThatGuyCDude]

5 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Inflicting mez has been suggested, but it isn't overly thematic and would only serve to slow down Fury generation.

The deer caught in the headlights.
The frog trapped in a snake's gaze.
That feeling of "Oh man, this guy is going to KILL me!" that paralyzes the bruiser's victim.

Mez is on-point for a terrifying tower of rage.  If it's a passive feature (a class inherent) that's tied to the amount of Fury the Brute currently possesses, then it doesn't matter that it would slow down Fury generation because it triggers more often when additional fury is unnecessary (the bar is close to full).  It's also a slow down, not a cessation, as the Brute's attacks also generate fury; it would give the Fury bar a nice normalized curve that makes the dizzying highs less frequent and more exciting.
The only issue with a Mez is that there are situations where you wouldn't want it to apply.  So you make it a toggle power the Brute gets at Level 1 (like Sentinel's debuff click), and the player can turn it on or off as needed.  It's a buff, but in a lateral category that isn't "survivability" OR "damage"; it's a third leg for the table to stand with.  It's also a nerf, because when control mitigation goes up damage output equivalently goes down.  It's also probably the only approach that wouldn't require mass respecs for any archetype, and the one that would have the least opt-out impact to current Brutes: never use the toggle and they play just like they always did.

[ZemX]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

FWIW, currently post-i28p2 world the numbers I've seen still suggest that whenever ATOs are considered; clear times for fully IO'ed-out toons on an average mission map (Galaxybrains Mission Simulator at +4x8) have Brutes taking ~30% longer than a Scrapper and Tankers taking ~40% longer.

 

I'd say I'm immediately skeptical of these numbers because Ston's data, which might be a little old at this point, didn't show anywhere near a 30% difference between Scrappers and Brutes in Trapdoor +4/x8 clear times.  It was more like 2% averaged across all melee powersets.  Do you have a link to this data you're talking about?

[venetiasilver]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

In my view, having Scrappers deal about 10%-15% higher damage than a Brute feels about right considering that Brutes have a higher Survivability ceiling and better Aggro Control. But whenever a Scrapper is consistently dealing >30% higher damage than a Brute, that feels like too much. And since the damage differences become so much less pronounced whenever you take all the ATOs away, personally I blame the ATOs. Pesky ATOs. **shakes fist**

 

In my return to this game I only had a Live account for the first patch of the Invention System that I got to 50 on and lost interest as a 15 year old would.

But I had heard that without the ATO Scrappers had no actual purpose in the game. Just pick Brute.
Math side of things. 
Take just a simple T1 Attack, Thunder Kick.
Brute Wise - Level 50, with 3 Damage IOs for ED Cap.
At 75 Fury you're dealing 122.3 Damage per Thunder Kick.

Scrapper Thunder Kick.
Same 3 IO's 104.6 Damage per Thunder Kick.
Against Minions we add basic 5% Chance to Crit or 10% for Lieutenants and Above. 

So without the ATO involvement 90% of the time you are dealing more Damage on a Brute.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

A Scrapper or Brute teamed with 7 other players isn't well represented by a solo Scrapper or Brute on an AE simulator set at x8.... most of the games content isn't established as being a solo player at x8 (or +4x8, if you prefer). Some players may spend all their time doing this, but that wouldn't make it a majority of the game's content.

Most of the game's content takes place within instanced missions. Contact Missions, Radio Missions, Ouroboros Missions, Task Force Missions.
Very little content (mainly "hunts" and "deliveries"; plus some GM battles and raids) take place outside.

Whenever you're within an instanced mission; you will inevitably end up fighting the same foes whether you're soloing at default difficulty levels or teamed at +4x8. Therefore seeing how quickly you can defeat foes within an average instanced missions solo IS a valid measure of comparative character performance - especially for Archetypes who specialise in dealing damage; regardless of whether or not those characters are likely to join a team or not. Whilst I certainly agree that team composition can provide a lot of variables, especially if you mostly PUG, I firmly believe that establishing your character's baseline performance is useful because it indicates how mechanically effective that character can be either solo or as an addition to any team regardless of what number and combination of teammates they might happen to end up with (whilst they might not get a chance to hit that performance ceiling if a Blaster is nuking every spawn; it's still an indication of what they're capable of - a "performance ceiling yardstick").

And I believe it is better to run that sort of comparative testing solo at +4x8 because:
(i) +4 is the baseline difficulty I've always used for endgame soloing on melee ATs ever since issue 7.
(ii) x8 means that the performance of characters that are weighted more towards damage from large-target-cap AoEs (e.g. Tankers) is not adversely negatively impacted.
(iii) +4x8 results in an identical enemy level and mob density to what is (in my experience at least!) by far and away the most common configuration whilst teaming.

If I can establish how quickly each of my melee characters can complete such a mission then that allows me to rank them based on how mechanically effective each one of them is likely to be. So if a team is looking for a melee damage dealer; I can choose to bring the character that is most mechanically effective for that role.

However (and much more importantly!) this sort of testing has also been firmly established as a means of providing the CoX Developers with usable data on the comparative performance of each of the melee ATs; which they can then utilize in balance passes. As Player-1 pointed out to you personally in the recent Tanker Inherent feedback thread.

 

51 minutes ago, aethereal said:

the optimization targets that actually matter: Hard Mode, solo performance, pre-50 performance, small team performance.

+ Hard mode, as Betty has pointed out earlier, is almost so different from the rest of CoX content that you might as well be playing an entirely different game. All of the ATs that I ever bring on Hardmode content have a separate build that is designed exclusively for that content. In order to build for that on a melee AT you need to focus almost entirely on high single target damage output; have a decent taunt; and ideally be very quick on the ball with your unsuppressed movement (especially teleportation for many fights). It's virtually impossible to have a build that is simultaneously optimised for regular content and Hard Mode Content - especially if you're assuming Barrier Spam.

+ Solo Performance is definitely represented by the above testing.

+ Pre-50 Performance can be too; you just need to set the character's level on Beta and turn off EXP gain.

+ Small Team performance can be ballparked; but not extensively tested unless you know in advance exactly what the team composition is going to be. For example: is a Kin coming? If so, assume you'll be constantly at the damage cap. Bubbler? Won't need as much focus on survivability. etc. Combining powers like multiple leadership buffs; or chaining Fold Space > Nuke or AoE Immobilise > Rain/Debuff patch just smoothes things out and hurries things along... but in most cases you'll still want to keep stuff clumped whilst hitting them hard; and that's what the above testing is good at modelling.

Larger team performance is where it gets very tricky to model (as there are so many variables) but is also where the most leeway lies... and power creep being what it is; chances are that any one of your teammates could solo the map, given sufficient time.

So is this sort of thing necessary? Of course not. It doesn't matter if you're just there to have fun and do whatever.
But I think it does matter if you're trying to balance melee damage across multiple melee ATs; which I still thing is a worthwhile goal for the CoH Powers team.

Which brings me back to my earlier point about "niches" - trying to balance the raw damage output of the four melee ATs when each of them is ATO'ed up is definitely not the only thing worth focusing on here. it's just one thing that is rather glaringly (to me at least) imbalanced at present.

Also, personally I very much enjoy poking at builds and eeking performance out of unlikely "underdogs" - and that's a big part of why I still kept playing Brutes after i26p4.
So if they decided to cut Brute damage by a full 50% but increase their aggro cap and make them buff teammates; I'd probably still play them.
 

[tidge]

13 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

And I believe it is better to run that sort of comparative testing solo at +4x8 because:
(i) +4 is the baseline difficulty I've always used for endgame soloing on melee ATs ever since issue 7.
(ii) x8 means that the performance of characters that are weighted more towards damage from large-target-cap AoEs (e.g. Tankers) is not adversely negatively impacted.
(iii) +4x8 results in an identical enemy level and mob density to what is (in my experience at least!) by far and away the most common configuration whilst teaming.

If I can establish how quickly each of my melee characters can complete such a mission then that allows me to rank them based on how mechanically effective each one of them is likely to be. So if a team is looking for a melee damage dealer; I can choose to bring the character that is most mechanically effective for that role.

However (and much more importantly!) this sort of testing has also been firmly established as a means of providing the CoX Developers with usable data on the comparative performance of each of the melee ATs; which they can then utilize in balance passes. As Player-1 pointed out to you personally in the recent Tanker Inherent feedback thread.

 

As pointed out many times: Fractions of damage performance literally don't matter on team content, plus that being able to solo 50 +4x8 doesn't look anything like a PUG group at level 25. Proposing nerfing Scrapper ATOs because in some 50 +4x8 a Scrapper "tests better" sounds like it is coming from the Harrison Bergeron School of Enforced Mediocrity. Comparison of solo performance at +50 +4x8 might mean something after your testing includes the same content for other ATs and see how close average Controller (or VEAT, or whatever) times look like before we get hyper critical about Scrappers (with ATOs) outperforming Brutes.

 

Focusing on Scrappers/Brutes/Tankers strikes me as being skewed by intense tunnel vision.

 

[Maelwys]

  

21 minutes ago, tidge said:

As pointed out many times: Fractions of damage performance literally don't matter on team content,

It does when that fraction is 30% or 40%.
 

21 minutes ago, tidge said:

Proposing nerfing Scrapper ATOs because in some 50 +4x8 a Scrapper "tests better" sounds like it is coming from the Harrison Bergeron School of Enforced Mediocrity.
Comparison of solo performance at +50 +4x8 might mean something after your testing includes the same content for other ATs and see how close average Controller (or VEAT, or whatever) times look like before we get hyper critical about Scrappers (with ATOs) outperforming Brutes.

 

I'm not proposing nerfing Scrapper ATOs. I'm proposing BUFFING THE BRUTE ONES.
(And the Sentinel ones as well; because their ATOs are both utter pigswill too).

Stalker ATOs and Scrapper ATOs both provide those ATs with a major buff to damage (although properly leveraging the Scrapper ones for optimal performance requires employing primary school level math skills). Brute ATOs do not. The reason that I am not talking about Controllers and Dominators here is that all three of the aforementioned ATs are supposedly primarily melee damage dealers; as denoted by their primary powerset options and the fact that all three dish out very similar amounts of damage before ATOs are in play. However the disparity in the performance of their ATOs is glaring, and that is a major source of my annoyance.

Whilst Tankers share the same offensive powersets as Brutes/Scrappers/Stalkers; their offensive powerset is their secondary, not their primary... and their traditional role and inherent and the benefits granted from their ATOs also lean into mitigation and aggro control instead of primarily dealing damage. Therefore we can't reasonably expect a Tanker to deal an equal or greater level of damage compared to a Brute (let alone a Scrapper or Stalker) and their ATOs already do a decent job at enhancing their survivability anyway.


And I'm also proposing that it would be a good idea if whenever the dust settles; Stalkers and Scrappers and Brutes and Tankers could each have some kind of  "niche" that makes them a mechanically attractive addition to a team. Because prior to i28p2 Brutes were effectively pointless - Scrappers did more Single Target damage, Tankers did better AoE damage; both had sufficient levels of aggro control to fulfil the same requirements for the same role as a Brute would occupy on a team. Currently Tanker AoE damage has dropped below that of a Brute; so they are losing popularity; and I would very much rather that we didn't get into a constant merry go round of "who's the useless melee AT going to be after THIS patch?" 

 
  

21 minutes ago, tidge said:

Focusing on Scrappers/Brutes/Tankers strikes me as being skewed by intense tunnel vision.

 

You're in the Brute subforum posting in a 12-page deep thread containing cyclical arguments about Melee Damage AT balance... 🤷‍♂️
 

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, ZemX said:

I'd say I'm immediately skeptical of these numbers because Ston's data, which might be a little old at this point, didn't show anywhere near a 30% difference between Scrappers and Brutes in Trapdoor +4/x8 clear times.  It was more like 2% averaged across all melee powersets.  Do you have a link to this data you're talking about?

IIRC Ston's testing was (as mentioned earlier) more than a little bit biased. He was supposedly trying to establish a baseline of each melee powerset but his ST attack chains leant heavily into Cross Punch and Epic Snipes, and didn't quite make the best use of Scrapper ATO2. His Trapdoor testing typically leant into what we would now consider to be non-optimal Epic Sets (a good example is taking the Soul Mastery Pool for Dark Obliteration instead of Mu for both Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning) and the Scrapper times are inflated due to runners (Willpower's Taunt Aura is pathetic). His builds were also based on "old" pre-recharge-time-nerf epic snipes and obviously his testing took place prior to the recent i28p2 Tanker Changes.

All of which meant that whilst there is a lot of hard work and potentially useful data there; it needs to be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to applying it to real builds.



I really wish I had sufficient free time to do more comparative testing of various Powerset combinations. There are some numbers in the latter half of the Tanker Feedback Thread from when multiple people started to run the Mission Simulator at +4x8; but it's far from definitive. I've only personally fully tested (and subsequently retested again after the patch hit Live) a small selection of my own Scrapper, Brute and Tanker builds by shuffling them across multiple different AT variants. Below are a couple of examples (times listed are an average of 3 runs for each toon):

EnergyMelee/RadArmor (originally built as a ST-focused Scrapper)
SCRAPPER: 5:14
BRUTE: 6:45 [+28.98%]
TANKER: 7:32 [+43.95%]
 

Staff/BioArmor (originally built as an all-rounder Tanker)
SCRAPPER: 4:38
BRUTE: 5:54 [+27.34%]
TANKER: 6:40 [+43.88%]

I have a few others; but most of my toons that start out as Brutes are designed to exploit a more-powerful-than-usual interaction between Fury and a specific ability such as Stone Armor's Brimstone Armor or Fiery Aura's Burn. So they throw the average off a bit (e.g. my RadM/Stone Brute only takes ~20% longer than its Scrapper variant!)
 

Edited Wednesday at 11:55 PM by Maelwys

[tidge]

23 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

  You're in the Brute subforum posting in a 12-page deep thread containing cyclical arguments about Melee Damage AT balance... 🤷‍♂️

 

Perhaps I am waiting to see a cogent argument why Brutes should outperform Scrappers in terms of +4x8 DPS, by whatever measure.

[venetiasilver]

3 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

Perhaps I am waiting to see a cogent argument why Brutes should outperform Scrappers in terms of +4x8 DPS, by whatever measure.

Brutes at 50% fury operate at Scrapper Base Damage with an extra 130 HP.
The Critical ATO does swing a lot in Scrapper Favor however Scrappers suffer a worse leveling experience in general and are rewarded for it by doing solid hits across the board and then when you crit proc it feels great.

I don't think Brutes should be given more offense. Just an easier time for their Armor Sets.
For resist armors and defenses it should be an increase of 16% for the numbers. 
Sample: Temp Invuln for Tankers is 30% S/L Resist, for Scrappers it is 22.5% cut it half way between for 26.25.
And just subtract between divide by half and give to Brutes.
I'm sure that will make Brutes happier and it'll give more leniency to procs when you don't have to push as hard for safety numbers.
And I'd argue an HP buff too would be nice. 
From Base of 1499.3 to 1603.3 for Level 50.

[Maelwys]

1 minute ago, tidge said:

Perhaps I am waiting to see a cogent argument why Brutes should outperform Scrappers in terms of +4x8 DPS, by whatever measure.

Well you'll be waiting for quite some time if you're expecting me to attempt to volunteer one 🙂



 

  

On 7/10/2025 at 2:58 PM, Maelwys said:

The idea here being for Brutes to remain a bit behind Scrappers in damage output, and a bit behind Tankers in survivability.

  

On 7/20/2025 at 8:40 AM, Maelwys said:

My gut feeling is that Tanker performance should be a smidge better (roughly where Brutes currently are) and Brutes should be a lot better (still beaten by a Scrapper, but only by 10-15% tops!)

  

On 7/19/2025 at 8:37 PM, Maelwys said:

let Tankers be lower-damage aggro magnets (just increase their aggro limit!), and Stalkers and Scrappers be the high-damage damage dealers (stealthy Single-Target and non stealthy All-Purpose), and Brutes can be the middle-men who aren't quite the best at anything but can still hold their own whilst buffing their teammates' damage and survivability a bit.

  

On 7/22/2025 at 8:33 AM, Maelwys said:

buffing the Brute ones (alongside rebalancing ATOs for other ATs!!) would work as long as they can be made to almost deal as much damage as Scrappers/Stalkers and survive almost as much punishment as a Tanker.

  

8 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Brutes would then need their damage output raised up to the point where there's only about a 10-15% difference rather than a 30% one

  

7 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Brute damage could do with being buffed by quite a lot (to go from 30% longer mission simulator cleartimes to at most 15%) 

  

6 hours ago, Maelwys said:

In my view, having Scrappers deal about 10%-15% higher damage than a Brute feels about right considering that Brutes have a higher Survivability ceiling and better Aggro Control. 

 

☮️ ⬆️ ✌️

 

[tidge]

Um... how about "Why should Brutes should have performance equal to Scrappers in terms of +4x8 DPS, by whatever measure?"