Damage

[PyroBeetle]

Greetings,

 

I played Live from Beta through Sunset, and I have played on Homecoming since April of 2019. Just saying by way of background. I have mained many different toons over the course of that time, and many of them have been tankers, however I have recently gone back to Brutes, when I can build one to be reasonably comparable on the survivability scale to a Tank. The damage tradeoff gap is...noticible...between the two now. I have been playing around with the new Sonic Melee set, and have to say much preferred the experience on a Brute compared to the Tanker. Similarly, on the live servers, I messed around with a Elec/Rad Tank only to rebuild him as a Rad/Elec Brute. I was still able to cap or come within a portion of a percent to SLEFCP with N at 54 and T at 38. My build is not a farmer or designed to farm and has 100 percent resistance to Endurance, Recovery, Recharge, Slow, and with Ageless Radial stands at 90% resistance to to hit and perception. I was able to incorporate at least one damage proc in all of my attacks and just melt mobs of all types. Functionally, the Ageless doesn't really affect the build beyond debuff resistance, so can substitute T4 Barrier for group play. I do not rely on it for endurance. I have 3 Power Transfer Procs and other goodies plus permanent Energize for regeneration to stack with the resists, so dont really see the health bar or end bar move much if at all.

 

So the question is this, given the comparable survivability, why wouldn't I go for the superior damage of the Brute?

 

I am away from my primary CPU right now, so cannot post the build, but can do so when I get home, if anybody is interested.

[Grimm2]

This is the age-old discussion, isn't it? The Tank buffs left Tanker single target damage less than Brutes', but their AoE superior. And people said, "Why Brute?" Now the gap between Tank and Brute damage favors Brutes,  though Tanker damage is still better than pre -buff. And people ask, "Why Tanker?"

 

It's certainly easier to build for that kind of survivability on a Tanker, and Tankers should always have the edge there. Gauntlet and AoE target caps provide better aggro control than Brute punchvoke. Maybe that means more if you take on the higher difficulties currently on Test? 

 

Brutes are still a hybrid. Choosing Brute sacrifices Scrapper damage for Tank-ish survivability, and you usually sacrifice proc damage or build flexibility to actually achieve that survivability if you really shoot for it.

 

Character concept matters; if they're supposed to be the toughest, Tanker might be the way.

 

I have a Spine/Stone/Energy Brute I love. I should make its Tanker mirror and report back in.

Edited yesterday at 08:29 PM by Grimm2
Grammar

[PyroBeetle]

1 hour ago, Grimm2 said:

Brutes are still a hybrid. Choosing Brute sacrifices Scrapper damage for Tank-ish survivability, and you usually sacrifice proc damage or build flexibility to actually achieve that survivability if you really shoot for it.

 

Character concept matters; if they're supposed to be the toughest, Tanker might be the way.

 

I have a Spine/Stone/Energy Brute I love. I should make it's Tanker mirror and report back in.

I would love to see this...and you are correct, the build is tight, and I couldn't make it do everything I wanted without making a couple of sacrifices. And it may also be that the sets I used are outliers, as achieving the same survivability with the tank build did free up a couple of slots that I had to place just so. It also might not work as well with a tighter fast animating attack chain, as I did have to sacrifice a little bit of top end recharge, which my ST attack chain doesn't care about, to achieve the same goals. But since the Tanker changes I cannot really feel but that on a same or similar build, the Brute just dogwalks the Tanker when it comes to damage.

[SomeGuy]

I did this comparison a while ago, Brutes definitely do better ST damage then Tankers...but...

 

Average for the ELE/TW tanker finally:

 

Tanker       ELA/TW              3:47 (Degen/Gloom)

Brute for comparison:

Brute        TW/ElA                2:54 (Degen/Gloom)

 

*This below is an generalized test. What was posted above was the two ATs wacking on a Pylon.*

 

Just ran an interesting data collection with my ELA/TW tanker and TW/ELE brute.

 

Set at +4/x8. Just killed Council Empire in a repeatable mission where they mainly do  SL damage. Timed them both to get to 5 bars of XP. Most groups had about two bosses. 

 

Brute is SL Res hard capped and SL defense soft capped. Tanker is SL Res hard capped and around 35% SL defense.

 

Brute: 7:14

Tanker: 6:53

 

These times are way to close to account for RNG (and neither build is proc heavy anyways) since I did NOT do multiple runs for an average.

 

These are brainless to kill mobs. No debuffs or very strong attacks. The tanker would easily excel anywhere else.

 

This post:

 

 

Make what you will of this data.

 

 

Edited 20 hours ago by SomeGuy