I think I may have a way to further differentiate Brutes and Tankers.

[boss]

What if the taunt for each class did something different? For instance, what if brute taunts did damage (that scaled with fury) depending on the offensive powerset it was included in? Like Fiery Aura could make enemies catch fire when taunted. Or, or hear me out... gives an aura of damage around the brute for a few seconds, that would also give the brute or the enemies a visual tell.

 

What if Tanker taunts, instead of doing damage, gave a defensive type buff to the team, but only in an area around the tank? Yes, that might be dangerous to squishier classes, but if the tank is doing it's job it would be easy. It could be stationary buff that doesn't stack, but puts the symbol for the alignment of class under them when it triggers. 

 

I'm pretty sure more creative people out here could come up with something amazing. To me the two staples of teams in this game are the Brute and the Tanker. We should have those two classes set and in a good place before we do anything else. I don't know, these are just thoughts that came across my head.

[tidge]

10 minutes ago, boss said:

I'm pretty sure more creative people out here could come up with something amazing. To me the two staples of teams in this game are the Brute and the Tanker. We should have those two classes set and in a good place before we do anything else. I don't know, these are just thoughts that came across my head.

 

Fundamentally there is the issue that changes to either AT will run afoul of pre-conceived notions about the AT as well as pre-existing characters.

 

Personally: I'd violate pre-conceived notions about Brutes (they do more damage the madder they get) to implement something with a similar effect but different mechanics that make them better for team play (the madder they get the more they debuff nearby enemies). Of course debuffs are a huge balancing act, so it's not like I think my idea is easily workable for folks with expectations on things like farm times, etc.

[LightMaster]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

Fundamentally there is the issue that changes to either AT will run afoul of pre-conceived notions about the AT as well as pre-existing characters.

 

Personally: I'd violate pre-conceived notions about Brutes (they do more damage the madder they get) to implement something with a similar effect but different mechanics that make them better for team play (the madder they get the more they debuff nearby enemies). Of course debuffs are a huge balancing act, so it's not like I think my idea is easily workable for folks with expectations on things like farm times, etc.

Maybe instead of completely reworking Fury, make it so when going over 50 or 70% of Fury, the debuffs a Brute can inflict with Primary power sets adds an additional stack called [(Fury) Debuff] to effectively 1.5x to double the normal debuff value of a Brute, with the debuff value inflicted by Brute slightly lowered to compensate.

 

For Power Sets that has no debuffing effects, those will deal a -Slow debuff when used by only the Brute, so that enemies trying to run away will get slowed down in the process.

[Lancek]

I think Brutes should have gotten the AOE increase instead. 

[Steampunkette]

4 hours ago, tidge said:

 

Fundamentally there is the issue that changes to either AT will run afoul of pre-conceived notions about the AT as well as pre-existing characters.

 

Personally: I'd violate pre-conceived notions about Brutes (they do more damage the madder they get) to implement something with a similar effect but different mechanics that make them better for team play (the madder they get the more they debuff nearby enemies). Of course debuffs are a huge balancing act, so it's not like I think my idea is easily workable for folks with expectations on things like farm times, etc.

I mean... yeeeah that would be a balancing act...

 

But I also kinda like the idea of the Brute rounding up enemies and then 7 other people basically fireballing the brute.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, LightMaster said:

Maybe instead of completely reworking Fury, make it so when going over 50 or 70% of Fury, the debuffs a Brute can inflict with Primary power sets adds an additional stack called [(Fury) Debuff] to effectively 1.5x to double the normal debuff value of a Brute, with the debuff value inflicted by Brute slightly lowered to compensate.

 

42 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

I mean... yeeeah that would be a balancing act...

 

But I also kinda like the idea of the Brute rounding up enemies and then 7 other people basically fireballing the brute.

 

I freely admit my idea lives in never-never land... but the idea behind it (PBAoE debuffs from Fury) was to make Brutes a different kind of Tanker, rather than have Brutes be a different kind of Scrapper. Scrappers and Stalkers seem to coexist in a pleasant way as being similar ATs, and no one has really cared about Scrappers v. Tankers since... forever, but it seems like (super generalization follows) Brutes are either picking fights or getting picked on by both Scrappers and Tankers.... so I like to imagine a different mechanic altogether for Brutes that still makes sense to have the historical primaries/secondaries/HP/Resistance caps.

 

Realistically, I don't think debuffs would be powerful enough to make up for "lost damage" compared to what (existing) Brutes can do. I simply like imagining a different sort of AT where people aren't clamoring that another AT does more damage than a Brute (under whatever circumstances), and I almost snicker thinking about arguments about which AT should be the better debuffer!

 

[Triumphant]

7 hours ago, boss said:

What if the taunt for each class did something different? For instance, what if brute taunts did damage (that scaled with fury) depending on the offensive powerset it was included in? Like Fiery Aura could make enemies catch fire when taunted. Or, or hear me out... gives an aura of damage around the brute for a few seconds, that would also give the brute or the enemies a visual tell.

 

What if Tanker taunts, instead of doing damage, gave a defensive type buff to the team, but only in an area around the tank? Yes, that might be dangerous to squishier classes, but if the tank is doing it's job it would be easy. It could be stationary buff that doesn't stack, but puts the symbol for the alignment of class under them when it triggers. 

 

I'm pretty sure more creative people out here could come up with something amazing. To me the two staples of teams in this game are the Brute and the Tanker. We should have those two classes set and in a good place before we do anything else. I don't know, these are just thoughts that came across my head.

 

While I do think that the two AT's are adequately distinguished from one another, I can't deny that this is a really cool idea.  I would wonder about the game balance aspect of it, though- and what kind of an impact it would have on PVE play.  Though, I suppose you could implement whatever nerfs are necessary to balance it, if it proved to be overpowered.

[Ukase]

To me, the differences between tank and brute are pretty clear. I'm sure I don't understand why there's a need/desire to make them more distinctive.