Addressing the Tanker Brute Connundrum.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Ive been doing some live play experimenting just to refresh my memory and I think a lot of people here are not making their point from actual practical game play but from either testing in a bubble or doing pure math theory.

 

Brutes are not out the gate damage to rival a scrapper let alone a stalker. A stalker is basically a melee blaster, I was running citadel this week solo on a variety of stalkers, brutes, and scrappers and used the EB in the 2nd to the last mish as kind of a bench mark.

 

A brute typically struggles in this fight unless they first build up rage against trash, if they go in with low rage they either need reds or will take a notable difference in time to kill the EB. I found that both katana and BS brutes felt very weak against this EB as far as time to kill.

 

My scrapper didnt need to clear trash first nor fret over anything other then engage and kill. Took about 30 seconds to kill the EB.

 

My psi stalker took 12 hits to kill the big ol robot.

 

My SJ stalker killed the big ol robot in 4 hits. AS 2 combo builders, and another AS.

 

Now some of that can be chalked up to the power sets a robot has high psi and lethal res but is squishier to energy and smashing. So the 2 stalkers are on the opposing ends of the spectrum in killing a robot. The brutes both used sword styles so heavy lethal which bots are the bane of, so that was a factor but because I was soloing on min dif there was not a lot of mobs in the boss room and building up fury was a hassle. Its a great thing in long drawn out fights but when speed and tactical elimination of the target is the goal a brute is just a bad choice.

 

The scrapper was dark melee, so energy but in general the real factor that impacted fun between the brute and scrapper was having to manage the fury bar. A scrapper just does what they do oh so well, a brute has a micro management factor that can be a pita. I see this all the time with brutes in groups I run on my ol blaster Berk.  They want to rush in they want aggro they want a chance to build up fury. My blaster cant be bothered to give them that when I need the mobs on me for  drain psyche, and then they are pretty much dead once Ive taken energy from them and nuked and moved on. A scrapper or stalker is far more useful as they can clean up the bosses that are near dead quickly. A tank can actually endure the aggro if they rush ahead while most brutes will face plant if trying to out pace my blaster and they rarely if ever out last him in thick fights.

 

The SJ stalker was the clear winner. 4 hits to take down an EB 2 brutes and a scrapper all had to spend precious seconds killing.

 

Now Ive also soloed this TF several times on my name sake berk a psi ment blaster, the biggest difference being I run it with him set to 6 man for large groups to drain. while the fight for him with the EB took more time it was in part due to having many other mobs engage and was thus having to use more aoe then single target but it was also a much more enjoyable fight then with either of the brutes or the scrapper, or the psi stalker. Only the SJ/ninja stalker felt more fun during that fight and that was because it wasnt a fight but a murder.

 

To sum up a brute is just not that lethal really. They require time to build up their fury, and then have a ticking clock to fret over in between fights. Due to that need they have to often over extend themselves and still tend to feel underwhelming compared to real damage dealers. Brutes are being hyped up by forum myths and tanks are being talked down by the same.

 

If your goal is to survive and hold aggro for the group tank is the ideal. If your goal is to be a nightmare in melee then stalker and scrapper both surpass brute unless your taking a long time to draw out fights to let the brute get their fury on. In any group with heavy aoe brutes tend to be borderline useless to the group.

[Leogunner]

Just now, Bentley Berkeley said:

To sum up a brute is just not that lethal really. They require time to build up their fury, and then have a ticking clock to fret over in between fights. Due to that need they have to often over extend themselves and still tend to feel underwhelming compared to real damage dealers. Brutes are being hyped up by forum myths and tanks are being talked down by the same.

 

If your goal is to survive and hold aggro for the group tank is the ideal. If your goal is to be a nightmare in melee then stalker and scrapper both surpass brute unless your taking a long time to draw out fights to let the brute get their fury on. In any group with heavy aoe brutes tend to be borderline useless to the group.

Don't forget that the opposition is also arguing caps which is only relevant in teams (for the most part) and Tankers and Brutes share some caps while the latter has a damage cap that puts them within reach of a standard Scrapper.  So that would mean their argument kind of stems off of optimal team scenarios in which case, it counters your point to a degree.  Mind you, I'm not one that agrees with basing such decisions solely on min/max circumstances, but that tends to be how opinions get made, as you described toward the start of your post.

 

I'm still standing by my suggestion though because I think it'd be fun to play.  People have said it'd make using AoEs much easier and thus boring but I'd argue a lot of melee AoEs range from only moderately rewarding to a DPS loss due to their cost, activation times and overall depreciated damage values.  I guess it would hinge on just how baked in the powers effects are to determine just how difficult it'd be to alter Tanker AoE values. 

[oedipus_tex]

RE: the target cap discussion, keep in mind you can fake a higher than 16 target aggro cap with pets or psuedo pets. There is also already a mechanic in place for sharing damage between a pet and an owner.

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, oedipus_tex said:

RE: the target cap discussion, keep in mind you can fake a higher than 16 target aggro cap with pets or psuedo pets. There is also already a mechanic in place for sharing damage between a pet and an owner.

1. The NPCs would attack the Pseudopet instead of the Tank. Or just continue to their second target if the first target cannot be targeted (Like a tanker going intangible, aggro is lost 'til they come back)

 

2. To what end? Being able to tank 2 groups at the same time doesn't actually -get- you anything, since you're still capped on targets for damaging powers. You grab 2 groups with one flailing helplessly at an immortal pseudopet instead of you, and the blasters take twice as long to kill the two groups as they would one because it's still two groups.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

I personally still feel the best way to give Tanks a little something extra is to give them inherents akin to the leadership pool, specifically the damage aura and rush of victory. 2 things modestly useful that if indeed many tanks teamed together would amplify them all while also being useful on teams. And I really only suggest this because too few tankers take leadership a pool that is great to fit in a couple lotg+s and vengeance is awesome from a tank when some fire x 3 goes and grabs way too much aggro and eats dirt over and over.

[oedipus_tex]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

1. The NPCs would attack the Pseudopet instead of the Tank. Or just continue to their second target if the first target cannot be targeted (Like a tanker going intangible, aggro is lost 'til they come back)

 

Yes, they would. Whether this is an issue depends on how the mechanic works. I don't know if CoX has a mechanic that locks a pet directly to the character model. 

 

 

Quote

2. To what end? Being able to tank 2 groups at the same time doesn't actually -get- you anything, since you're still capped on targets for damaging powers. You grab 2 groups with one flailing helplessly at an immortal pseudopet instead of you, and the blasters take twice as long to kill the two groups as they would one because it's still two groups.

 

A team of 8 with no pets can theoretically aggro 8x16=128 enemies, more if some of those enemies summon their own pets. It's easily possible to end up fighting more than 16 enemies at a go. If you observe teams you'll notice they frequently exceed 16 targets at a time.

 

Whether its actually worth implementing the effect is a good question. But it's possible.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

6 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

1. The NPCs would attack the Pseudopet instead of the Tank. Or just continue to their second target if the first target cannot be targeted (Like a tanker going intangible, aggro is lost 'til they come back)

 

2. To what end? Being able to tank 2 groups at the same time doesn't actually -get- you anything, since you're still capped on targets for damaging powers. You grab 2 groups with one flailing helplessly at an immortal pseudopet instead of you, and the blasters take twice as long to kill the two groups as they would one because it's still two groups.

while this is true of pbaoe, with targeted aoe all one has to do is keep switching targets and one can spread out a lot of damage very quickly. I spam psi tornado when on teams, often keeping quite a few mobs bouncing up and down making them easy meat for the team. I blast and tab blast and tab spreading out tornadoes everywhere and keeping the majority of them helpless.

[Galaxy Brain]

@Bentley Berkeley, can you run the same tasks again with a brute, scrapper, stalker and tanker using the same power sets?

[Steampunkette]

8 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

while this is true of pbaoe, with targeted aoe all one has to do is keep switching targets and one can spread out a lot of damage very quickly. I spam psi tornado when on teams, often keeping quite a few mobs bouncing up and down making them easy meat for the team. I blast and tab blast and tab spreading out tornadoes everywhere and keeping the majority of them helpless.

Spread the damage as much as you want. If an enemy has 8 magnitudes of health and you do 3 magnitudes of health with your AoE you're still gonna need to hit that one person 3 times to kill him. Hitting him twice, then some other dude twice, then him again, then the other dude, again, means it took you twice as long to take him down.

 

Hitting him three times doesn't help, either, 'cause you've still got the other 16 of him to hit, too.

 

You can spread it around, but if a total 5,000 damage is needed to kill 2 groups, spreading the 150 you're doing to multiple targets doesn't matter: You've still gotta put out 5,000 total.

[Steampunkette]

40 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

Yes, they would. Whether this is an issue depends on how the mechanic works. I don't know if CoX has a mechanic that locks a pet directly to the character model. 

 

A team of 8 with no pets can theoretically aggro 8x16=128 enemies, more if some of those enemies summon their own pets. It's easily possible to end up fighting more than 16 enemies at a go. If you observe teams you'll notice they frequently exceed 16 targets at a time.

 

Whether its actually worth implementing the effect is a good question. But it's possible.

Pets, Pseudo or Otherwise, are entities in the world. You wouldn't be able to attach them to the PC. Generally speaking a pseudopet is spawned either on the location you're standing or with a ground targeted AoE. 

 

... and it just occurred to me this would be ridiculous not only in implementation being at best semi-effective... but also comically bad. 😄

 

So for the sake of argument let's say it is a Pseudopet that is somehow stapled onto the Tanker's spine. Just straight up riveted in can't escape. You taunt. Your pet taunts in a PBAoE Pulse or whatever. Due to proximity, it's always going to be trying to steal your aggro every time it pulses. The NPC AI is going to have a field day trying to figure out who to hit when every tenth of a second there's a priority swap between the two of you if you're wearing a Taunt Toggle aside from the pet.

 

Ultimately, I don't think it'd work. At best you'd be WoW Style "Totem Tanking" with maybe a damage-split between you and the pet if it could be rigged. 

[Leogunner]

Just now, oedipus_tex said:

RE: the target cap discussion, keep in mind you can fake a higher than 16 target aggro cap with pets or psuedo pets. There is also already a mechanic in place for sharing damage between a pet and an owner.

I'm sure it wouldn't look weird for mobs to be swinging and shooting at empty air but still somehow transferring the damage to the Tanker.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

4 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Spread the damage as much as you want. If an enemy has 8 magnitudes of health and you do 3 magnitudes of health with your AoE you're still gonna need to hit that one person 3 times to kill him. Hitting him twice, then some other dude twice, then him again, then the other dude, again, means it took you twice as long to take him down.

 

Hitting him three times doesn't help, either, 'cause you've still got the other 16 of him to hit, too.

 

You can spread it around, but if a total 5,000 damage is needed to kill 2 groups, spreading the 150 you're doing to multiple targets doesn't matter: You've still gotta put out 5,000 total.

You talk numbers a lot, which have little real application in practical game play situations. I also specifically referenced grouping in the above scenerio. I was simply pointing out that in large groups, in large rooms where aggro tends to catch numerous groups one can with tactical use of abilities manage more then 16 foes at once. This is part of why I often out tank even tanks on ol berk. I can keep quite a few foes looking my way, and most of them doing little more then bouncing up and down or attacking each other while using pbaoe and cone aoes to rapidly shred them and thats without factoring judgement. Since a lot of this debate focuses on capped play if one factors in everyone having a T4 judgement it basically makes the very concept of tanking moot as 8 people can cycle judgements between the groups rapidly.

 

really this whole argument is all over the place. Is it just about brute vs tank? Is it just about melee AT in general? Is it about leveling play or cap play or both? What about exemplar play as many who cap then play all content not just lvl 50+ content.

 

Im not arguing theory I am bringing in game practical applications of various builds to the discussion. And those actual play experiences tells me tanks are fine, brutes are more hype then substance, Scrappers are still the bad ass middle ground of melee dmg and survival, and stalkers have no peer in the killing single target arena.

 

I loathe slugging it out and hence dont care much for tanks or brutes all that much. I use my brutes mostly for when I am in the mood for street sweeping because that is actually what they in part had been designed for. much of the lay out of rogue isles when it comes to mob placement in the zones was made with brutes solo street sweeping in mind. This was explained by devs on several threads early on after cov's re;ease. As all vil AT were designed to be more solo centric and to just go murder things in the open as they knew many wouldnt want to run the red side story arcs unless interested in arachnos and the other red side lore as city of sidekicks was already a well known negative nick name for the game. So villians got designed to avoid that feeling by avoiding story content outright.

 

Now we share all AT on both sides, so the best way to view it is hero AT are more about teaming, vil AT more about soloing. Hell the sheer lack of red side players also made the VEATs so rare that even though they can be great adds to teams, so few existed on live prior to going rogue that they didnt even get factored into the debates because to do so would be akin to arguing horse breeds race times and then talking about unicorns teleporting.

 

 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

4 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

@Bentley Berkeley, can you run the same tasks again with a brute, scrapper, stalker and tanker using the same power sets?

It will take me a while Ill need to decide on a power set combo that is shared by them all, maybe dark melee/bio as I have started a scrapper one of those which will help speed up the idea. Also nto as active in game of late but will check in on this thread once I have some feed back.

 

However while I used differing power sets in my above post, I dont think the power sets themselves are the major factor to the point I was making which is in how one plays each of the AT. stalkers and scrappers are much quicker and easier to engage mobs with brutes only thrive in slow drawn out fights and even with max fury bars dont in my experience out perform on AVs. I duoed a syn a while back witha  friend he was a psi melee brute I was a psi melee stalker and my brute buddy really only got to cut loose in the last mish after we killed the king and went around killing all the bosses for fun. I later soloed syn on the same stalker and honestly could not say i noticed a meaningful difference in the time it took to kill the king.

 

Hell I frankly want to say if its a question of damage both brutes and tanks are so paltry next to stalkers and scrappers it makes me almost see my brutes as wastes of energy and resources to max out.

 

 

[William Valence]

7 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

RE: the target cap discussion, keep in mind you can fake a higher than 16 target aggro cap with pets or psuedo pets. There is also already a mechanic in place for sharing damage between a pet and an owner.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread as a similar side thought. There are struggles to this though, the primary being that you have to have a way to avoid taking double damage from AoE attacks.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

It will take me a while Ill need to decide on a power set combo that is shared by them all, maybe dark melee/bio as I have started a scrapper one of those which will help speed up the idea. Also nto as active in game of late but will check in on this thread once I have some feed back.

 

However while I used differing power sets in my above post, I dont think the power sets themselves are the major factor to the point I was making which is in how one plays each of the AT. stalkers and scrappers are much quicker and easier to engage mobs with brutes only thrive in slow drawn out fights and even with max fury bars dont in my experience out perform on AVs. I duoed a syn a while back witha  friend he was a psi melee brute I was a psi melee stalker and my brute buddy really only got to cut loose in the last mish after we killed the king and went around killing all the bosses for fun. I later soloed syn on the same stalker and honestly could not say i noticed a meaningful difference in the time it took to kill the king.

 

Hell I frankly want to say if its a question of damage both brutes and tanks are so paltry next to stalkers and scrappers it makes me almost see my brutes as wastes of energy and resources to max out.

 

 

The reason I ask though is I feel that would be the best comparison if all powers are equal. You mentioned yourself that the StJ stalker was a way, way different experience than the Psi Melee stalker which was different than the Katana Brute... which was different from the scrapper, and so on.

 

Your points are definitely valid of course! But I think giving a fair test with as few variables outside of "AT differences" could be worthwhile.

[oedipus_tex]

23 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Pets, Pseudo or Otherwise, are entities in the world. You wouldn't be able to attach them to the PC. Generally speaking a pseudopet is spawned either on the location you're standing or with a ground targeted AoE. 

 

... and it just occurred to me this would be ridiculous not only in implementation being at best semi-effective... but also comically bad. 😄

 

So for the sake of argument let's say it is a Pseudopet that is somehow stapled onto the Tanker's spine. Just straight up riveted in can't escape. You taunt. Your pet taunts in a PBAoE Pulse or whatever. Due to proximity, it's always going to be trying to steal your aggro every time it pulses. The NPC AI is going to have a field day trying to figure out who to hit when every tenth of a second there's a priority swap between the two of you if you're wearing a Taunt Toggle aside from the pet.

 

Ultimately, I don't think it'd work. At best you'd be WoW Style "Totem Tanking" with maybe a damage-split between you and the pet if it could be rigged. 

 

 

Without actually seeing it in action I have no idea.

 

I have seen games where pets lock to the player's position and travel with them. Torchlight 2 is one example. In that game it is used to create powers where an orb or other kind of pet fires projectiles at enemies. Whether CoX can create pets with those characteristics I do not know. I haven't seen any in the game that I can think of, but that may not mean it's not possible. 

 

As far as how enemy AI would react, without actually seeing it, its hard to say. Enemies already deal with multiple Tankers and Brutes competing for aggro. They also deal with Mastermind pets and Illusion armies and other things with no negative impact I can see.

 

A valid concern would be that secondary effects of powers that hit a pet don't transfer to the player.

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

I'm sure it wouldn't look weird for mobs to be swinging and shooting at empty air but still somehow transferring the damage to the Tanker.

 

 

 

Obviously and that is why it wouldn't look like that.

 

 

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

Without actually seeing it in action I have no idea.

 

I have seen games where pets lock to the player's position and travel with them. Torchlight 2 is one example. In that game it is used to create powers where an orb or other kind of pet fires projectiles at enemies. Whether CoX can create pets with those characteristics I do not know. I haven't seen any in the game that I can think of, but that may not mean it's not possible. 

 

As far as how enemy AI would react, without actually seeing it, its hard to say. Enemies already deal with multiple Tankers and Brutes competing for aggro. They also deal with Mastermind pets and Illusion armies and other things with no negative impact I can see.

 

A valid concern would be that secondary effects of powers that hit a pet don't transfer to the player.

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously and that is why it wouldn't look like that.

 

 

Torchlight 2 has that capability. City of Heroes almost certainly does not. There's about a decade between the two.

 

You've gotta keep in mind that Cryptic didn't have the technical prowess to create an engine from scratch: They bought one. An -old- one. Old -when they bought it- old. Old before they started working on CoH which took, like, 3 years? 

[oedipus_tex]

36 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

Torchlight 2 has that capability. City of Heroes almost certainly does not. There's about a decade between the two.

 

You've gotta keep in mind that Cryptic didn't have the technical prowess to create an engine from scratch: They bought one. An -old- one. Old -when they bought it- old. Old before they started working on CoH which took, like, 3 years? 

 

 

City of Heroes has a ragdoll engine that is quite good and pathing that is surprisingly intelligent. Locking a creature to another creature's location isn't an advanced technique. I'm pretty sure it was occasionally used in early Nintendo games. It's possible for various reasons the CoX engine doesn't support it directly, mainly having to do with how creatures/objects are created in 3d world engines, but I don't think that has anything to do with the age of engine itself. 

 

Now a possibly valid concern is what happens if the player-owner gets hit by knock back and whether its possible for the pet to continue to follow in that situation.

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Steampunkette]

Just now, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

City of Heroes has a ragdoll engine that is quite good and pathing that is surprisingly intelligent. Locking a creature to another creature's location isn't an advanced technique. I'm pretty sure it was occasionally used in early Nintendo games. It's possible for various reasons the CoX engine doesn't support it directly, mainly having to do with how creatures/objects are created in 3d world engines, but I don't think that has anything to do with the age of engine itself. 

 

MAYBE they could create a pseudopet with doubled player input (You tell your character move forward 20 feet, it also moves forward 20 feet by sharing the W key input). But. Any kind of latency could cause desync and we're right back to "Attacking Nothing" territory. And if you get held and press W you don't move, but if the Pseudopet wasn't -also- held... off it goes. Back to the air-whiff.

 

It also wouldn't help the Taunt issue. If you and it are fighting over the stuff that's near you, stuff that's further away will get un-taunted and we're back to 16 total characters taunted, just with you trading between yourself and your pseudopet because you occupy the same spot.

 

I don't believe it's mechanically possible. I think it would fail at it's design goal.

[oedipus_tex]

19 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

MAYBE they could create a pseudopet with doubled player input (You tell your character move forward 20 feet, it also moves forward 20 feet by sharing the W key input). But. Any kind of latency could cause desync and we're right back to "Attacking Nothing" territory. And if you get held and press W you don't move, but if the Pseudopet wasn't -also- held... off it goes. Back to the air-whiff.

 

It also wouldn't help the Taunt issue. If you and it are fighting over the stuff that's near you, stuff that's further away will get un-taunted and we're back to 16 total characters taunted, just with you trading between yourself and your pseudopet because you occupy the same spot.

 

I don't believe it's mechanically possible. I think it would fail at it's design goal.

 

The way this is handled in most engines is the origin location for the pet is locked to the owner object. This is the way particle effect systems already work in CoX. It's the reason why when a Force Field character moves she doesn't leave her bubble behind. 

 

'Creatures' may be their own special kind of object in the CoX system. Regardless, it either works or it does not work and the only way to know is try it, so if I ever get a server working I will try it and see. No sense crossing off ideas on theories about what may not work.

[Steampunkette]

4 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

The way this is handled in most engines is the origin location for the pet is locked to the owner object. This is the way particle effect systems already work in CoX. It's the reason why when a Force Field character moves she doesn't leave her bubble behind. 

 

'Creatures' may be their own special kind of object in the CoX system. Regardless, it either works or it does not work and the only way to know is try it, so if I ever get a server working I will try it and see. No sense crossing off ideas on theories about what may not work.

Or we could... y'know...

 

... ask. The Devs I mean. If this is something that's possible. But...

 

It still wouldn't help the overlapping Taunt issue. And I don't think there -is- a way to fix that. After a few seconds you'd be right back to 16 total NPCs taunted by you and your pet both trading off who they are even if it -could- work. Which just means it's another Taunt Aura and nothing more.

 

Though the Force Bubble/Fire Effects/Sonic Bubbles/Etc are not pseudopets tied to the character. They're Auras tacked onto the character model. That's how they're able to assume the same size as the target, rather than small characters having a big character's Fire Aura not lining up with their hands/heads/etc.

[oedipus_tex]

19 hours ago, William Valence said:

I mentioned this earlier in the thread as a similar side thought. There are struggles to this though, the primary being that you have to have a way to avoid taking double damage from AoE attacks.

 

That's a valid observation. Also the fact secondary effects like -Recharge that hit the psuedo pet wouldn't affect the owner unless there is some 'transference' mechanic somewhere I dont know about. There are probably some other issues that arise with elevators, etc.

 

 

[MunkiLord]

What about simply giving Tanks most/all the ranged attack sets, similar to Sentinels. Sure they'd do less damage Sentinels, but they'd still be Tanks with all the res, HP, and aggro management. That would put them in a unique position. Not sure how well that would work, or if anyone wants this, just throwing it out there. 

[ZeeHero]

On 8/2/2019 at 8:33 PM, ryuplaneswalker said:

Brutes are not Overpowered in a Post ATO world.

 

The problem with tanks in a post IO world is that IO's themselves were terribly balanced (not in comparison to SOs, IO set bonuses compared to other IO set bonuses) In all reality there are only two ways to IO. "Recharge" and "Survival" and tanks don't benefit greatly from getting "perma" dull plain, they can't really boost their damage massively through IOing because most damage bonuses off IOs are not very good, and are hampered by Tankers low damage modifier. 

I agree mostly that brutes can be ok as is, but tankers themselves need help becuase brutes are UNDENIABLY OP compared to tankers. compared to say, scrappers with damage for instance they are clearly not.

[ZeeHero]

Tankers and brutes have been in the same category since they were both a thing. they do the same job in endgame and brutes do it better when a single AV is concerned.