I am done with Brutes

[venetiasilver]

To @Maelwys What do you feel about my offerings for their Armor Numbers being improved and the HP buff?

[Erratic1]

17 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

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.

 

Worse levelling experience? In what way? You can slot the ATO whenever you feel like and on a Defensive armor set, you become sufficiently hard to hit plenty quickly.

[Maelwys]

3 minutes ago, tidge said:

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

Easy: they shouldn't.

Compared to Scrappers; Brutes have a slightly higher survivability baseline, a considerably higher survivability ceiling and vastly better aggro control.
Therefore IMO Brutes should always be dishing out less DPS than Scrappers (and Stalkers too; at least for ST damage) regardless of whether they're playing at +4x8 or -1x1.

_{(Which they already do... however whenever you add ATOs the difference in their damage output becomes incredibly more pronounced; so I'd like it very much if the Brute ATOs got rebalanced. And since rebalancing just one AT's ATOs is very unlikely to happen; I'm hoping for a more general ATO balance pass. Since other AT's ATOs could use some love too; particularly Sentinels!)}
 

[venetiasilver]

3 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Worse levelling experience? In what way? You can slot the ATO whenever you feel like and on a Defensive armor set, you become sufficiently hard to hit plenty quickly.

At 50 Fury you're doing Baseline Scrapper Damage then anything above that you're overtaking Scrappers in 90 out of 100 Hits to Lieutenants and Bosses.
Then 95 out of 100 to Minions. 
The ATO proc for Scrappers is most of the time used in T9's for things like Crushing Uppercut, Eagle's Claw, or Headsplitter / Golden Dragonfly.
And even then you have dice roll that sometimes fails.
and the chance of the proc going of is inconsistent at best.
Overall Brutes are still ranked 9/10 on melee damage.
I just think they need more Survivability buffs.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

At 50 Fury you're doing Baseline Scrapper Damage then anything above that you're overtaking Scrappers in 90 out of 100 Hits to Lieutenants and Bosses.
Then 95 out of 100 to Minions. 
The ATO proc for Scrappers is most of the time used in T9's for things like Crushing Uppercut, Eagle's Claw, or Headsplitter / Golden Dragonfly.

 

There are in fact two ATOs, one of which ups Critical Hit Chance passively (and meaningfully) and I am certain that neither of my last two Scrappers have their proc ATO in their T9s. Indeed, you can read the discussion here where discussions of the placement of the proc is definitely not in a T9. And that before we get to the fact that you have your T9 nowadays at level 26, which is 1.1% of the experience requirement towards level 50. Maybe on an offensive set with fast recharging attacks you have incentive to place in a T9, but that is not universal.

 

As for getting the ATOs, 200 merits will get you there at a merit vendor. 200 merits is a pretty easy target to hit.

 

19 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

And even then you have dice roll that sometimes fails.

 

 

Yes, and the Brute misses hits too.

20 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

I just think they need more Survivability buffs.

 

Resistance based ones might. Defense based ones, not really.

[Maelwys]

41 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

To @Maelwys What do you feel about my offerings for their Armor Numbers being improved and the HP buff?

Honestly? I think given Scrappers can already Tank the hardest content in the game; giving Brutes higher baseline survivability probably isn't going to matter very much. Whilst it might aid the levelling process... I'm of the opinion that things are currently already very nearly balanced right (Tanker overcap notwithstanding) before ATOs are factored in.


Therefore (as stated previously) I personally am more of a fan of:

(i) Ensuring that all four of the traditional melee ATs get their damage output adjusted to the point where it's balanced appropriately both excluding and inducing ATOs (and I appreciate that my ballpark pulling-numbers-out-of-my-arse notion of "Scrapper and Stalker DPS roughly equal; Brute DPS about 10-15% behind them; then Tanker DPS about 10%-15 behind the Brutes" might be waaaay out of whack with Developer intention!)

(ii) Ensuring that all four of the traditional melee ATs have some place on the team. Stalkers (Stealthy Single Target damage dealers that can't Tank at all) and Scrappers (all-round Damage Dealers that can occasionally Tank) are pretty obvious. But Brutes and Tankers are perhaps less so; since they have very similar levels of aggro control and peak survivability. So  it would be nice if they each ad a useful niche to set them apart from each other that doesn't necessarily revolve around how much damage they deal. Like a higher aggro cap for Tankers; or some kind of buff aura (although I appreciate that might be a stretch!)

 

 

27 minutes ago, venetiasilver said:

At 50 Fury you're doing Baseline Scrapper Damage then anything above that you're overtaking Scrappers in 90 out of 100 Hits to Lieutenants and Bosses.
Then 95 out of 100 to Minions. 
The ATO proc for Scrappers is most of the time used in T9's for things like Crushing Uppercut, Eagle's Claw, or Headsplitter / Golden Dragonfly.

Haven't we been over this very same topic at least once before? I'm seriously getting flashbacks... 😳

Even with just SOs and Basic Inherent Critical hits on non-T9 attacks versus non-negligible foes (LTs+), Brutes still typically need to be operating at ~65 Fury to draw level with Scrapper average damage numbers. When you factor in additional damage buffs (like Build Up, Follow Up, AAO, Set Bonuses, Teammate Buffs and/or Alpha Slots) realistically the only time Brutes compare favourably is at very high fury levels (~80+) when the Scrapper is lacking any of their ATOs and isn't fighting enemy ranks above minion.

As a few quick examples:
+ A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha and a /SD secondary (AAO vs 1 Foe) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead of a Brute until 83+ Fury.
+ A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha plus a /Bio Secondary (Offense + Hardened Carapace) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead until 88+ Fury.
+ Even if we just have a Musculature Core Alpha it would only take an additional +17% damage (@80 Fury) for the Scrapper to begin to pull ahead. You can easily hit that passively just via Set Bonuses and a non-activated Assault Hybrid, let alone with stuff like Follow Up or outside buffage from teammates/pets. And that's before ATOs.
 

Edited Thursday at 01:02 AM by Maelwys

[Sancerre]

On 7/23/2025 at 8:34 PM, venetiasilver said:

At 50 Fury you're doing Baseline Scrapper Damage then anything above that you're overtaking Scrappers in 90 out of 100 Hits to Lieutenants and Bosses.
Then 95 out of 100 to Minions. 
The ATO proc for Scrappers is most of the time used in T9's for things like Crushing Uppercut, Eagle's Claw, or Headsplitter / Golden Dragonfly.
And even then you have dice roll that sometimes fails.
and the chance of the proc going of is inconsistent at best.
Overall Brutes are still ranked 9/10 on melee damage.
I just think they need more Survivability buffs.

 

this is not the right way to view the damage scale.  you have BASE damage that gets amplified by the 'enhanced damage' bonus.  fury damage bonus is added in the same bucket of 'enhanced damage'.  Fury makes FURTHER enhanced damage relatively less effective (dilution).  your starting point is fine but then presumes you never use stuff like damage enhancements, build up, get buffs from teammates, or use red inspirations.  brute baseline of fury will typically hover around 90 or 180% enhanced damage so all of the previously mentioned ways to get more enhanced damage are diluted from that 180% enhanced damage baseline... and that is before figuring in critical hits scrappers can leverage.  brutes have a higher enhanced damage cap to 'offset' this but it is kind of rare to hit that (outside of buildup), much less maintain that unless you have a very attentive kinetics next to you and the party allows the kin to press fulcrum shift before blowing shit up (ironic sometimes but an aside).  Notably for brutes, people often recommend NOT running musculature incarnate (instead opting for stuff like vigor) for this reason.

 

regarding critical hits and the ATO itself, you can slot the orange version starting at level 10 and it is half as effective but still strong.  regarding placement of the ATO proc, there are different ways to deal with it but typically there are very specific powers to place it in for -single target- chains in each powerset... which may or may not be the T9 power.  overwhelmingly, it is not the T9 power.  for aoe clear, it may be more effective to place it attacks that cleave because (like FF recharge proc) you only need it to 'proc' on a single critter of however many you hit... but most knowledgeable scrappers wont deviate from the 'established' powers very much (nuance with titan weapons and maybe some others where a cleave power is also a strong single target option).

 

ive mode the joke about scrapper casino plenty and it is fairly frustrating TBH, even with the purple proc.  the great debate around scrappers vs stalkers is almost entirely centered around 2 things, 1 of which being if you want to play the scrapper casino or have the more 'controlled/consistent' crit activation of stalker... the other being the taunt aura.

 

also there are 2 ATOs -- the other one is just a global increase to crit chance across all powers.

 

i do agree with brute resilience buffs (addressed in small nuanced ways), but it doesnt fix the problem that people are complaining about in this thread because even blaster resilience is 'solved' to become a god when you bring in party buffs.  without addressing the critter to-hit soft cap (or inversely player defense soft cap), the resistance and HP caps being higher on tanker/brute basically doesnt matter for 99.9% of critters you run into.

[Sancerre]

On 7/21/2025 at 7:42 PM, Maelwys said:

 

I am not, and it isn't.

 

I am looking for a way to ensure that a Brute, a Tanker, a Scrapper and a Stalker can each provide something beneficial to the team that is sufficiently different that each of those ATs ends up filling a separate worthwhile niche and being attractive as a team member (albeit perhaps more attractive for specific content or team compositions).

 

Brutes' current placing of being "slightly more survivable and dealing significantly less damage than a Scrapper" is unfortunately simply not a worthwhile niche. They therefore are not currently chosen for what the AT can mechanically bring to the team, but because of other factors (such as being friends with the person playing them, or there are no Tankers/Scrappers available, or the difficulty level of the content is so trivial that team composition simply doesn't matter).

With the recent Tanker AoE damage nerfs, Brutes lot has improved slightly, but in most content they will still mechanically pale in performance compared to a Scrapper with a Taunt Aura (and Confront, for facing AVs) and for 4* content a Tanker's larger buff caps and MaxHP pool will win out - because the melee AT's native defensive powerset buffs are irrelevant since with alternating Barrier spam your toggles might as well be switched off.

 

There is certainly a valid argument that teams nowadays steamroll through missions so quickly that the differences in Melee AT offensive and defensive performance become largely irrelevant. And if all you need is someone to take the Alpha and occasionally taunt AVs then you might as well just bring a /Devices Blaster or Illusion/ Controller or Arsenal/ Dominator or whatever. But I do firmly believe that getting each of the melee ATs to a point where they can each be seen as attractive to a team in different ways would be a good design goal. And the fact that a well built and intelligently piloted Scrapper can survive most content in the game is IMO not a bug... because the same applies for a well built and intelligently piloted Blaster (and often an unintelligently piloted and/or soundly inebriated one!!) especially when teammate buffs are applied - heck, even back before IOs and crashless nukes and sustains a single Empath plus a Blaster could tackle most things in the game... 

 

 

 

you can say you did not push 'force multiplier' but you literally did.  and i chose the exact phrase you used like 10 times -- 'force multiplier'.  your post is still there, you can re-read it if you forgot what you typed.  are we just trying to argue in bad faith here?  i feel like i agree with you in a lot of ways other than you adamantly wanting to be disagreeable.  i am fine with you not liking my hot take to make tanker/brute resilience more relatively meaningful but you follow-up by agreeing with me that tanker/brute resilience levels ultimately dont matter.... you just appear to believe that is a good thing!

 

On 7/21/2025 at 8:08 PM, Maelwys said:

 

Also, just to address these ones:

 

(i) Brutes currently win at Passive (AFK) farming. But for Active Farming (where you are present behind the wheel to combine inspirations and press buttons) speedwise they are not even in the top three... unless you're intentionally limiting yourself to the traditional four melee ATs only (and even there Scrappers still beat them into the ground) because survivability simply isn't a major issue when you can customise your enemy type and trigger inspirations and click buttons.

 

(ii) Stalkers have two major advantages over Scrappers when it comes to survivability. Firstly, Hide - this not only allows them to get off a heavy opening hit without immediate retaliation, but it increases their Defense by a non negligible amount making it easier to reach the softcap. Secondly, Placate - since the rework in i27pg3 this has very much become worth taking for both offensive and defensive purposes.

Now personally I think that Scrapper's higher base HP and HP cap probably make up for at least some of that. And you're correct in that those powers come with an opportunity cost since Stalkers lose access to some other abilities. But to my mind the biggest performance difference between Stalkers and Scrappers comes from the availability of Taunt Auras in the latter.

 

really depends how you are talking about 'active farming' and whether or not that includes teammates... even if your own afk/follow multi-boxed 'teammates.  granted i am personally ignorant of any controller/mastermind/dominator farming builds, i have not personally experienced anything better than brutes at solo farming +4/x8... tankers being a comfortable second place after the nerfs (whereas before you could argue tankers being better perhaps).  it is really hard to beat out the persistent damage auras and taunt (punchvoke) is a huge deal.  scrapper taunt aura just doesnt cut it and they have a difficult time surviving endless farm style without amplifiers and/or inspiration lottery.  perhaps i am just not enlightened here on ranged ATs that excel at solo farming x4/+8 here.

 

stalker hide provides a 1.88% defense to all in combat.  i guess you consider this 'non negligible'?  if that is where you want to die on your hill, so be it.  im not sure where you might find a defense power that provides a smaller benefit, but that is 'non negligible' to you, sure.  stealth is time consuming mechanic that is fun/interesting in maybe the first 20 levels and when playing solo but you definitely are not winning any time attacks if you are waiting 8 seconds between every pack to re-stealth... nor is any team running door missions or TFs going to care to wait for your ass hanging in the back for stealth.  placate is very good yes, in its own nuanced ways.  i think most folks prefer the taunt aura on scrappers (which you brought up) for speed clearing.  i was very happy with the placate change when it happened but scrappers still typically outperform stalkers in every metric on average... outliers with specific powerset combinations, which you should acknowledge as outliers like you do with brute stone armor.  despite all that, i still feel like stalkers are in a fine place because they are close enough to scrappers and the outlier combinations that they do shine on are quite good... even if they could use a small polishing on actually ensuring they are the king of single target melee DPS (scrappers are) instead of single target melee burst damage (ok stalkers you win here).

[Sancerre]

On 7/21/2025 at 8:07 PM, Erratic1 said:

 

If you cannot back up your claim by giving names and pointing to posts, then just say you were making things up.

 

what is even the point of this post?  YOU felt the need to quote that specific line as though you were targeted.  nobody else did what you did.  do you have something to say about it beyond petty squabbles?  you didnt even declare a position here with this post.  just want to remain an argumentative enigma, always shape-shifting to win whatever argument you create on the spot.

[Maelwys]

5 hours ago, Sancerre said:

 

On 7/22/2025 at 12:42 AM, Maelwys said:

 

On 7/21/2025 at 11:31 PM, Sancerre said:

 

On 7/21/2025 at 4:53 PM, Maelwys said:

I think it's fair to say that each of the four Melee ATs should be capable of soloing at a reasonable pace; and each of them also ought to be a valuable addition to a team.
However YOU DO NOT NEED TO DEAL THE MOST DAMAGE OR BE THE MOST SURVIVABLE IN ORDER TO BE A VALUABLE ADDITION TO A TEAM.
Defenders are a prime example of this. They do not personally deal the most damage or take the most hits - but they act as a force multiplier; allowing the team as a whole to deal far more damage and/or withstand far more hits.

IMO each of the four melee ATs should simply have something unique which makes them a potentially desirable recruit for someone putting a team together.

CoX is currently lacking a melee AT that acts as a force multiplier (other than very specific VEATs with double leadership auras...) so from what I can tell there is a bit of a gap in the market there (although I'm sure it's not the only one!) which is why I said this:

  
"I do however think (and have suggested previously) that in order to give Brutes a decent niche it might be a good idea to have their ATOs grant a noteworthy beneficial effect which extends (at least in part) as an AoE to nearby allies... 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."

Altering the dynamic in this manner would allow for different team compositions whilst maintaining similar levels of performance.

you are looking for ways to push (effective) brute damage higher through party amplification -- the more fundamental problem here is that scrapper resilience levels are already sufficient when team buffs are applied. 

I am not, and it isn't.

 

I am looking for a way to ensure that a Brute, a Tanker, a Scrapper and a Stalker can each provide something beneficial to the team that is sufficiently different that each of those ATs ends up filling a separate worthwhile niche and being attractive as a team member (albeit perhaps more attractive for specific content or team compositions).

 

Brutes' current placing of being "slightly more survivable and dealing significantly less damage than a Scrapper" is unfortunately simply not a worthwhile niche. They therefore are not currently chosen for what the AT can mechanically bring to the team, but because of other factors (such as being friends with the person playing them, or there are no Tankers/Scrappers available, or the difficulty level of the content is so trivial that team composition simply doesn't matter).

 

you can say you did not push 'force multiplier' but you literally did.  and i chose the exact phrase you used like 10 times -- 'force multiplier'.  your post is still there, you can re-read it if you forgot what you typed.  are we just trying to argue in bad faith here?  i feel like i agree with you in a lot of ways other than you adamantly wanting to be disagreeable.  i am fine with you not liking my hot take to make tanker/brute resilience more relatively meaningful but you follow-up by agreeing with me that tanker/brute resilience levels ultimately dont matter.... you just appear to believe that is a good thing!

Expand the quotes above, then read it from start to finish; taking particular note of the yellow highlighted bits.

I am not advocating for Brutes to arbitrarily simply deal more damage.
In fact I have said multiple times in this thread that IMO Brute damage is currently perfectly fine and balanced whenever ATOs are not being factored in.

However when ATOs are being factored in, Scrappers and Stalkers rocket ahead. They are no longer in the same ballpark as Brutes in terms of ST damage (as can be seen very clearly in the various Pylon Time leadership board threads) and my own attempts to put a number on just how much slower Brutes are at completing more common content - an "average regular mission" (GalaxyBrain's AE Mission Simulator at +4x8; which the Devs have recently been using as a performance yardstick to measure comparable Tanker performance) shows an IO'ed+ATO'ed Scrapper being a good 30% faster than an equivalent Brute.

As far as I can tell the performance disparity here is 100% due to ATO balance; not pre-ATO damage damage output nor Brute resilience/survivability.

I am therefore advocating not for boosting Brute damage itself; but for changing the effect of their ATOs. Both in order to make the ATOs give Brutes an increase in damage that is equivalently proportional to the boost that Scrapper and Stalker ATOs give those ATs; and also to give Brutes something new and unique to help them bring value to a team.

If you read through some of my later exchanges with Tidge; you can see me restating this position time and time again:

On 7/23/2025 at 6:17 PM, 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**

You'll notice that I only actually used the phrase "force multiplier" twice - once in relation to Defenders and another in relation to melee ATs (of which currently only VEATs qualify). The reference to Defenders was carefully chosen because it sets up my intent: Defenders are attractive to teams because they provide buffs and debuffs - which increase the effectiveness of their teammates.

I do not wish to make Brutes individually more powerful. Instead I wish that Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers and Tankers would each be considered attractive and useful to a team - and since IMO there is a gap in the market for a melee buff AT; at least one of those four ATs (likely Brutes and/or Tankers) could become more attractive via applying useful (but limited) allied buffs or enemy debuffs. And because the Brute ATOs are utter goatdung; I think there's an opportunity there to kill two birds with one stone.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Now that I've (quite literally!) drawn a line underneath all that... I'll try to briefly address your other two points.

Firstup - Brute "Active farming":

I have Brutes that I farm on. They are currently the most efficient AT for "passive" AFK farming because just like Tankers Brutes can meet the survivability requirements (90% Resist, 45% Defense, 35+ HP/Sec passive regeneration) however Tanker AoE damage output has been nerfed to the point where Brutes hitting 10 targets with an attack now deals more overall damage than Tankers hitting 16 targets with that same attack.

However for Active Farming all you need is to deal high AoE damage. That's it.

There are no hard survivability requirements for active farming because it's perfectly possible to survive merely via chugging inspirations like candy (one of the more common setups is to consume purples and greens, and combine the rest into reds) especially given that custom AE maps with custom enemy groups are easy to make - you can choose exactly how densely packed the spawns are, you don't need to have any kind of mez effect inflicted on you; and you can give yourself multiple friendly Archvillain level NPC buffbots (and their power selection is not even limited to the default powersets in the mission creator - you can customise each NPC's power list individually). Therefore Blasters and Dominators can be magnificent at it (Plant Dom was recently nerfed; but there are runners up) and Corruptors (especially those with significant AoE -movement speed and rain powers) are decent too. Scrappers that have a Taunt aura will obviously be slightly better off than those without it; but any Scrapper can still simply leap into the middle of 20-30 densely packed foes on an Asteroid map. Many VEAT builds are good there (essentially anything except a Crabbermind; although they can be made to work too with a little extra effort). There are some Kheldian builds that are very good at AoE spam; but I personally detest the Changeling exploit.
Brutes are still decent... but IMO they're a bit bland and "pedestrian" by comparison to the other higher-risk, higher-reward AT builds and they're certainly not the quickest to clear an AE map solo; which is what AE active farming is all about - Homecoming allows each player to pilot three simultaneous accounts as long as the shard isn't under heavy load; so take two AFK farmers (both Brutes nowadays - and Rad/Stone is by far the most efficient) and one active farmer (as mentioned, lots of ATs work!) and rake in the drops + inf (see here for some discussion about average ballpark inf/hour).

_{Disclaimer: I've "active farmed" on every AT except for Defenders (not because it's impossible; but because it's never been efficient enough to be viable). I'm also a min/maxer who models and measures and repeatedly tweaks each build I make to ensure that it's as efficient as possible for its intended purpose(s). As as result; I've been an active participant in the farming megathread (and chances are if you open up any thread over the last 2-3 years asking about "Farming" you'll see at least one comment from me there!) and most weeks I'll get multiple unsolicited requests for farming builds in my forum inbox.}




Secondly - Stalker "Hide":

You're correct that Hide only provides 1.875% Defense during combat.

However that's exactly the same value as Stealth, Combat Jumping and Hover; so it's hardly an unusually low value. And that's only its base (unslotted) effect... so more commonly it'll be providing a hair under 3% - that's about the same as the Steadfast protection and Gladiator Armor Uniques; which IMO are definitely "non negligible" . As an example: with just a single additional enhancement slot (e.g. 2x 50+5 Def IOs) Hide will give +2.94% Def before Alpha Slots; and it also provides a very efficient spot for a LotG +7.5 Rech IO - potentially freeing up another power selection.

Whenever they're up against large packs of enemies and the Stalker can't hit and run; Scrappers will undoubtedly have an edge in terms of survivability (due to their larger base and maximum HP values). But one-on-one (or even one-on-five!) Placate works just fine.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with you that Stalkers and Scrappers are both in a pretty good place right now. Both are high damage melee ATs... but Stalkers are Stealthy Single Target experts with additional survivability options; whereas Scrappers are equally good at ST and AoE with a bit of aggro control via Confront + Taunt Auras.

IMO Tankers are almost well balanced too... however the devs have stated a desire to make Tankers the "AoE specialist" melee AT; and at present compared to Brutes they are not dealing as much AoE damage to foes nor do they have notably better aggro control.
Unfortunately Brutes seem to lack a real niche (whilst at present they're better at AoE "tanking" than Tankers; prior to the last patch Brutes had almost no mechanical attractiveness to a team at all and the Devs could easily "rebalance" Tanks again. So IMO Brutes need their own niche; instead of always fighting over the same one as a Tanker!) and whenever ATOs are considered they demonstrably underperform. So I'd really like to see those deficiencies addressed.
 

Edited 7 hours ago by Maelwys