How would you nerf tankers?

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

 

Baseline tanker damage is actually 0.95, brute 0.75.

Brute damage is low as it is to accomodate for fury, when you run the numbers though as I do in my post above, brute falls WAY behind tanker currently, so does scrapper for that matter.  AoE damage is king in general gameplay, and scrappers only remain relevent due to having especially good ATOs that brutes 'dont' have.

 

 

The damage scalar is a guideline for assigning damage values, not something which is mechanically calculated in game.

 

And yes, Brutes do fall behind Tankers for dealing area damage. Go read Captain Powerhouse's post--that is intended. Tankers have been adjusted to be the area damage specialists of the melee ATs.

 

As for your calculations, go look in the Brute forum, find my posts. I am pretty sure most people of any time on these forums will point you to me questioning Brute/Tanker balance over the years. Where your calculations miss a step is the presumption of damage saturation for both ATs. It is possible for that to happen, sure, but it requires significant outside buffing for both. One Defender/Corruptor is not likely to pull that off solo. (Well, you could gobble inspirations, but that is rather limiting during a mission.)

 

I think where you majorly lose a step is with:

 

50 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

A purely defensive class should NOT be out-dpsing a balanced/off tank dps focused character let alone a purist like the scrapper.

 

There is no purely defensive AT in the game. All have some sort of offensive capacity. 

[DrunkFlux]

4 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Having played both brutes and tankers throughout the years, both pre- and post-tanker changes, I've never seen my tankers vastly out-damage my brutes. 

It always makes me wonder if this "huge damage disparity" is purely because of the push for a lot of tanker builds to be stuffed to the gills with so many procs that the actual damage numbers barely matter, and it's all about maximizing procs with every swing.

Because I rarely put procs in attacks, unless it's just there for a set bonus (like Mako's Bite, Touch of Death, Bombardment, etc). So my brutes consistently out-damage my tankers by a rather hefty margin, at least once their fury gets rolling (which usually takes a couple seconds in the first spawn of the map).

 

Maybe I'm just "doing it wrong" as it were.

I'm primarily looking at things from an AoE focused perspective, as it depends also on power set use.  Tankers AoE potential out-classed brutes when you used AoE focused sets, or rather if you looked at things from using powersets identical across ATs such as say, fire melee on tanker vs fire melee on brute, fire melee on tanker far out-classed brutes version.  But this also continued with sets such as titan weapons, spines, radiation melee ect.

[DrunkFlux]

39 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

 

The damage scalar is a guideline for assigning damage values, not something which is mechanically calculated in game.

 

And yes, Brutes do fall behind Tankers for dealing area damage. Go read Captain Powerhouse's post--that is intended. Tankers have been adjusted to be the area damage specialists of the melee ATs.

 

As for your calculations, go look in the Brute forum, find my posts. I am pretty sure most people of any time on these forums will point you to me questioning Brute/Tanker balance over the years. Where your calculations miss a step is the presumption of damage saturation for both ATs. It is possible for that to happen, sure, but it requires significant outside buffing for both. One Defender/Corruptor is not likely to pull that off solo. (Well, you could gobble inspirations, but that is rather limiting during a mission.)

 

I think where you majorly lose a step is with:

 

 

There is no purely defensive AT in the game. All have some sort of offensive capacity. 

 

TL:DR ; Min/maxers will always pick tanker over brute because tanker only loses a very small amount of single target in order to do literally everything else that a brute does better.  On raw performance tanker clearly wins its not even a fair matchup.

Even with those technicalities remember that tanker resistance and defense powers out-class brute and scrapper equivilants which, in actuality have always performed on the exact same scales.  The only difference in survivability characteristics that brutes had over scrappers was litterally more HP(and only a mediocre increase at that) and a higher resistance cap(the real difference in survivability).  Because we also have to consider overall roles in teams:

Tankers job primarily has always been a frontliner holding agro.  Granted we don't want the tanker being nothing but a taunt bot but its still more on the survivability focus as its main speciality.
Brutes job was either to focus on being a tank, or an off-tank with DPS focus, OR DPS focus.  It wasn't meant to render the scrapper or tanker useless.
Scrapper is a striker, a DPS class with no regard for agro management, if it takes confront it can off-tank but generally its truely meant to just hit as hard as possible.
Stalkers are also a striker with less AoE than scrappers for even higher single target.

Thing is, with your logic of tanker being better at AoE than other melee archtypes, you run into the problem of potentially making other archtypes obsolete or redundant.  The LAST thing you want in game balance is one or two classes being rendered inferior to another, there should be no clear winner as to what people pick.  Brute was a clear "Avoid me" class, a smerf as me and snarky said.  The real reason BEHIND the increase to target caps for the tanker was to allow it to hold agro better than the brute, it was not really meant to render the brute useless(which it kind of has from a min/maxer perspective).  This also hurts the scrapper which only survives on its ATOs, which brutes do not have the benefit of.

You cannot have a class that has higher baseline survivability AND area damage than another without rendering the other class redundant.  It simply doesn't work, you have a 'very' clear "PICK ME I AM SUPERIOR!" choice.  Even tanker players I talked to knew about this problem.

A major factor in player choice in classes is divided in power vs utility.  All melee classes are power archtypes, blasters are power archtypes to as are sentinels.  Support AT's, CC ect are chosen for UTILITY likewise, be it support or control.  I role that later category into one for simplicity sake.

But how do I measure power?  Simple, survivability * damage output.

how do I measure utility?  Crowd control and buff/debuff effects.

 

Tankers out-strip brutes on both categories completely.  On utility they are kind of meant to; they are meant to hold agro and hold it well, to be the best main frontliner in the party.  Brutes were also meant to be a powerhouse, and they are, but with the huge AoE power tankers have, brutes are just outshined in raw power.  This renders the brute questionable as a choice at best on a min/maxers perspective.  Also understand more players will over time see which class performs better than the other there is always the 'feel', and it depends course on what powersets they pick.  Some of us played the same sets on both classes and the difference quickly became clear as night and day.  Some of us clearly never picked the same sets so its taken longer to notice it.  But many players notice it.

Someone even did a tier list with AoE clearance time as a measurement and found tanker FAR out-performing the brute in the tests, especially with AoE centric sets.  It was far, far more comprehensive than my math here could show at the time.  And tanker wasn't changed or 'nerfed' for a long time between that post and today.

So why pick brute when brute loses both categories?  It loses to scrapper on DPS in both AoE and single target, loses out to tanker in AoE horribly and holds agro less effectively than a tanker.  This left brute in a very, very weak position as an option.  It simply lacks a niche because the tanker far exceeds it on the AoE front, and loses to tanker on survivability and utility.

Again, the choice shouldn't be so clear like it is on what you pick for damage/survivability/utility for melee classes like this.  Its less clear with scrappers vs stalkers and thats actually a GOOD thing, it ensures no one class is dominant over the other as a choice.  If your choice is between scrapper vs brute its ALSO not that clear, one does more damage and cannot hold agro, the other does slightly less but CAN hold agro.

But its very clear for brute vs tanker.  One class only barely beats the other on single target and is far out-stripped on AoE, a min/maxer sees a gain in power with the AoE increase at a cost to ST.  That same class with better AoE has more baseline resistance/defenses and much higher HP.  Again, a min/maxer will put more points in favor of the tanker.  And that same class has better agro holding mechanics.  Again, a min/maxer will see that and draw the conclusion:

"For about 10% single target damage i'm doing almost 60% more AoE damage, have way more HP, have much higher starting resistances and defenses and need way less buffs from allies to hit the maximums than the other choice, this is clearly the better option".  That is the exact line of a thought a min/maxer will take as its the exact thought ALL min/maxers take, we look at things from "what am I sacrificing to gain?", thats what min/max means, minimizing loss to maximize gains.  And tanker just leaves brute in the dust on this.  And in gameplay practice it applies to, especially with how EASY it is to grab the max target cap on a tanker.

Edited 13 hours ago by DrunkFlux

[Erratic1]

24 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

TL:DR ; Min/maxers will always pick tanker over brute because tanker only loses a very small amount of single target in order to do literally everything else that a brute does better.  On raw performance tanker clearly wins its not even a fair matchup.

 

Farmers will. Missions certainly have trash to kill, but at that point Blasters outshine Tankers and Brutes for going nuclear. Bosses however, that is where a Brute will be leaving the Tanker behind, particularly once Tanker procs are reigned in a bit.

 

25 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

Thing is, with your logic of tanker being better at AoE than other melee archtypes, you run into the problem of potentially making other archtypes obsolete or redundant. 

 

It is NOT MY LOGIC. I noted it as the course of the developers. Moreover, I noted Tankers were stated by the developers to be the melee area damage specialists. Again, Blasters trump them instantly and handily.

 

27 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

But its very clear for brute vs tanker.

 

See upthread. All Brute vs Tanker discussions belongs in the Brute subforum.

[DrunkFlux]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Farmers will. Missions certainly have trash to kill, but at that point Blasters outshine Tankers and Brutes for going nuclear. Bosses however, that is where a Brute will be leaving the Tanker behind, particularly once Tanker procs are reigned in a bit.

 

 

It is NOT MY LOGIC. I noted it as the course of the developers. Moreover, I noted Tankers were stated by the developers to be the melee area damage specialists. Again, Blasters trump them instantly and handily.

 

 

See upthread. All Brute vs Tanker discussions belongs in the Brute subforum.

Forgive me on the second part though clearly the devs are thinking they made a mistake now, alas, farming is not the majority of this game but only done in a very small section.  Again though, brutes do not out-shine the tanker in single target enough to be worth playing.  Farming is only about 1% of the content, granted content people play constantly 'again' your talking about a game designed around team gameplay with classes making very clear trade-offs for there strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps I'll take it to the brute subforum if its discussed there, as I said though i was only stating WHY a nerf has to happen :/.  No one may like it but brutes were always balanced against the other melee classes its a rare case where a class is a major outlier :/.  Tankers are just out-classing the brute severely :/.  But I wouldn't shut down conversation here on 'that'; because then people may shut down the conversation in the brute subforum and the discussion is dropped entirely.

[WumpusRat]

1 hour ago, DrunkFlux said:

I'm primarily looking at things from an AoE focused perspective, as it depends also on power set use.  Tankers AoE potential out-classed brutes when you used AoE focused sets, or rather if you looked at things from using powersets identical across ATs such as say, fire melee on tanker vs fire melee on brute, fire melee on tanker far out-classed brutes version.  But this also continued with sets such as titan weapons, spines, radiation melee ect.

Okay, that makes more sense then.

So fighting huge crowds, the tanker does more damage.

Fighting single spawns at a time or low numbers of high-value targets, the brute does more damage.

And when you say "fire melee on tankers far out-classes brutes", there's an unspoken "when fighting tons of trash mobs", because the brute version has far superior single-target damage.

I guess it seems fairly reasonable to me. 

[Erratic1]

53 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

Perhaps I'll take it to the brute subforum if its discussed there, as I said though i was only stating WHY a nerf has to happen :/. 

 

It's kind of of a joke statement as that is historically where the stuff has occurred. 😁

[Erratic1]

24 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Okay, that makes more sense then.

So fighting huge crowds, the tanker does more damage.

Fighting single spawns at a time or low numbers of high-value targets, the brute does more damage.

And when you say "fire melee on tankers far out-classes brutes", there's an unspoken "when fighting tons of trash mobs", because the brute version has far superior single-target damage.

I guess it seems fairly reasonable to me. 

 

Well, that is the beauty of area damage. You just have to make sure the sum of the damage being dealt exceeds the single-target damage value to be pulling ahead. Brutes may deal better single-target damage, but there is a value at which it is more effective to deal area damage (so long as you'll survive things pounding on you longer while you do so). Staying within an single AT for calculation, I typically calculate that breakeven point (on melee's anyway) as hitting three targets with an AoE. 

 

Consider the below screenshot of me testing my most recent Tanker's target build on the test server:

 

 

I did not think to screenshot things earlier in the fight when more things were alive, but notice the Recharge Time Bonus is 167.5%. That is on top of what is slotted in the power. My AoE attacks are up at under a third of their base recharge time. My big single-target attack hits for 440, but the big AoE hits for 213. Say the Brute would hit for 600. I only have to hit three targets to be at parity on my Tanker. And sure, I cannot chain my big AoE, but then the Brute's big attack cannot be chained either. As my Tanker is slotted, Spinning Strike is up every 4.7 seconds (if I maintain 167.5% recharge that is) whereas Crushing Uppercut is up 7.17s. So not only do I outdo the big attack so long as I am hitting 3 targets, but I can do it more often.

 

This is what, at least in part, @DrunkFlux is getting at.

 

 

[WumpusRat]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Well, that is the beauty of area damage. You just have to make sure the sum of the damage being dealt exceeds the single-target damage value to be pulling ahead. Brutes may deal better single-target damage, but there is a value at which it is more effective to deal area damage (so long as you'll survive things pounding on you longer while you do so). Staying within an single AT for calculation, I typically calculate that breakeven point (on melee's anyway) as hitting three targets with an AoE. 

 

Consider the below screenshot of me testing my most recent Tanker's target build on the test server:

 

 

I did not think to screenshot things earlier in the fight when more things were alive, but notice the Recharge Time Bonus is 167.5%. That is on top of what is slotted in the power. My AoE attacks are up at under a third of their base recharge time. My big single-target attack hits for 440, but the big AoE hits for 213. Say the Brute would hit for 600. I only have to hit three targets to be at parity on my Tanker. And sure, I cannot chain my big AoE, but then the Brute's big attack cannot be chained either. As my Tanker is slotted, Spinning Strike is up every 4.7 seconds (if I maintain 167.5% recharge that is) whereas Crushing Uppercut is up 7.17s. So not only do I outdo the big attack so long as I am hitting 3 targets, but I can do it more often.

 

This is what, at least in part, @DrunkFlux is getting at.

 

Yeah, there are a lot of things going on in the "top end" builds for things that I'm not aware of and likely don't do. That's why I added "maybe I'm just doing it wrong" in my first post, because I tend to build more for set bonuses and theme rather than trying to maximize damage output. For instance, I don't have a single character with the +recharge proc in any of my attacks, rarely use hasten, and don't tend to have procs in my attacks in general (except on my trollers, then I'll toss a few procs into their aoe stun/sleep powers just to try and bring their clear times up above "glacial"). 🙂

 

Those three things alone probably skew my numbers really far below what would be considered "optimal". I just base my thoughts on what I play, and since I tend to play my tankers and brutes built in similar ways, I can definitely see my brutes clearing stuff faster once they get rolling. And the thing is, since balance is MEANT to be done around purely SO'd builds, comparing fully tricked-out and kitted builds with purple IO sets, unique procs, unique bonuses, isn't really proving that the archetype is superior/inferior, it's proving that the IO sets make a MASSIVE difference, and skew balance all over the place.

 

So much of it likely just stems from different build strategies. 

Edited 9 hours ago by WumpusRat

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

Yeah, there are a lot of things going on in the "top end" builds for things that I'm not aware of and likely don't do. That's why I added "maybe I'm just doing it wrong" in my first post, because I tend to build more for set bonuses and theme rather than trying to maximize damage output. For instance, I don't have a single character with the +recharge proc in any of my attacks, rarely use hasten, and don't tend to have procs in my attacks in general (except on my trollers, then I'll toss a few procs into their aoe stun/sleep powers just to try and bring their clear times up above "glacial"). 🙂

 

This is my first only one who has been built with extensive use of +Recharge procs. It really started as more of a knockdown thing, but that is one step away from +Recharge.

 

About the only thing I avoid doing is relying on damage procs. Beyond that, there are boundaries--I am unwilling to bend theme/concept beyond a certain point but find I can often accommodate various options I had not initially considered. That is why I have characters without the traditional travel powers. Not like Black Canary flies, teleports, super speeds, or super leaps. 

[R jobbus]

I guess I'll just throw my thoughts in this topic. To preface this, I'm someone who focuses on making tankers for challenges. recently I've been making characters that can complete +4x8 ITFs with the 'enemies buffed' challenge selected, and also tank the 4 AV fight on stage four without cheesing rommy or separating him from the nictus, solo. the whole thing as a solo challenge.

 

I've tested shield defense/war mace, sd/ba, sd/fm, and bio/MA on the beta server recently, doing +4x8 enemies buffed ITF spawns. 

 

I don't think it's that enormous of a nerf but it does make things more annoying. Things live when they shouldn't. but the builds are still good and still destroys things reliably. 

 

My main problem with this nerf is a few things:

 

- I know they are testing these changes through numbers and hard testing, sure, but I just feel like in practice, they are unnecessary, when it comes to live play within the server. Aside from proc Aoe changes which most people can probably agree with, the rest of it I feel like is pretty unwarranted. 

 

For as long as I can remember, whenever I join a higher level group (45-50) group as a tanker, my damage  is utterly irrelevant and also so is me being there in the first place. 90% of the time, joining +4x8 PI radios or +4x8 ITFs (2 of the most common higher level activities that people ask for groups for) what ends up happening as a tanker is, everything is immediately melted and evaporated before I can even get my third damage ability off. They don't need my damage at all, they don't really even need a tank in the first place.

 

City of heroes is an inherently broken game, compared to other mmos, and that is what makes it fun. Trying to 'balance' or nerf tankers when t4 barrier cycling exists to me is silly. In city of heroes, it takes a very generous combination of 3-4 units to make tankers utterly unnecessary and obsolete for most end game content. So why nerf tankers. In practice, it makes no sense, and it just feels a bit heavy handed to people who enjoy playing the class. And it's not even their damage that's even in question here: a tankers entire presence is just not even needed if you just buff and barrier with a few decent end game units.

 

-As other people may have pointed out, this also makes the lesser performing tanker secondaries even more garbage now. Is there any reason at all to pick broadsword over battle axe and katana? it's aoe is going to suck even more now. SAme with em, who's single target is great but now it's aoe is going to struggle to kill even the weakest of minions at certain points. What was a genuine liability for solo challenges using em is now just a 'why even bother' unless you genuinely are just doing single av fight challenges or something. Same with numerous other not as great tanker secondaries.  

 

-If the aoe formula still exists over certain caps where it's possible for a targeted boss to take less damage than minions if the aoe happens to hit the minions first, if that is still in place then that's bad and feels very rng heavy. But they may have updated that and changed it since then, I don't know. I read a few comments saying they updated things.

 

tldr: it's not a necessary nerf and I wish they wouldn't do it. I really feel like the game would be better if they focused on buffing things instead of nerfing them.