Addressing the Tanker Brute Connundrum.

[Marine X]

When you create a Tank the character Creator scales show:

Survivability : 10

Damage: 7

 

When you create a Brute the character Creator scales show:

Survivability: 8

Damage: 9

 

If you start there and add the same powers, slots and enhancements to either Archetype, you are just going to Enhance what you had, not compensate for what you don't have to the degree that you negate the impact of those initial numbers.

The Tank is going to be tougher with a better Taunt and the Brute is going to have a lot more damage output.

Tanks were designed for a specific job, that everyone seems to believe can be done better by others including Brutes.

 

Some of it has to do with pacing, some has to do with play style. These 2 Archetypes are usually played very differently.

 

Solo Tanks pretty much have to learn patience as it's going to take a while to take down a Boss but the Toughness of the build gives them Time.

 

Solo Brutes have to work at a fast pace in order to keep their Fury up so they have the Damage output to kill the Boss before he kills them.

 

I think a Brute can do a Good job Tanking, I've seen it, but so can a Warshade, or a Peacebringer, or a Scrapper, or a Mastermind, but just not as good as a Good Tank can. 

 

Just my opinion, but somebody please explain the new math to me, because I am good at Math, and this doesn't add up.

 

[marcussmythe]

When you create a Tank the character Creator scales show:

Survivability : 10

Damage: 7

 

When you create a Brute the character Creator scales show:

Survivability: 8

Damage: 9

 

If you start there and add the same powers, slots and enhancements to either Archetype, you are just going to Enhance what you had, not compensate for what you don't have to the degree that you negate the impact of those initial numbers.

The Tank is going to be tougher with a better Taunt and the Brute is going to have a lot more damage output.

Tanks were designed for a specific job, that everyone seems to believe can be done better by others including Brutes.

 

Some of it has to do with pacing, some has to do with play style. These 2 Archetypes are usually played very differently.

 

Solo Tanks pretty much have to learn patience as it's going to take a while to take down a Boss but the Toughness of the build gives them Time.

 

Solo Brutes have to work at a fast pace in order to keep their Fury up so they have the Damage output to kill the Boss before he kills them.

 

I think a Brute can do a Good job Tanking, I've seen it, but so can a Warshade, or a Peacebringer, or a Scrapper, or a Mastermind, but just not as good as a Good Tank can. 

 

Just my opinion, but somebody please explain the new math to me, because I am good at Math, and this doesn't add up.

 

You can be tough enough.  You can have good enough aggro management.  You can -never- have too much damage - especially because endgame mobs make a mockery of toughness, suggesting a 'kill it fast before its debuffs kill you' strategy.

 

A Tank is very tough.  It has very good aggro management.  It has mediocre damage.

 

A brute is tough enough.  A brute has good enough aggro management.  A brute has really pretty good damage, which is handy because the IDF, Banished, etc. will kill both the tank and the brute rather quickly no matter HOW tough they are - so better to kill them fast.

 

IOs and Incarnates are very good at adding survival.  They are poor at adding damage.  You can buff a Brute (or a Scrapper, or really almost anything) to levels of resilience that meet or exceed what is needed to 'tank'.  No set of IOs or Incarnates will allow a tank to match a Brute or a Scrappers damage out.  This is because IOs and Incarnates are very good at adding toughness, and because effective toughness has a ceiling beyond which there is little added value.

[jack_nomind]

In addition to an increased aggro cap, would you also be asking for an increased target limit for Taunt? Or between Taunt, Gauntlet and auras would those be sufficient to maintain threat on that larger cap?

 

No increased target limit.  Taking advantage of the change would intentionally require players to revise their builds and strategies.

 

/signed for Bruising reducing critter mez protection

I'm not totally sold on the necessity of this, but I'm ready to be convinced. It only has value vs Boss+ mobs, which in most cases are the ones that get focused down anyway. Would there be time for it to become noticeable? I don't know what effect it would have vs AVs due to PToDs.

 

Although I propose it elsewhere, I actually don't love the idea of Tankers having much more direct Control or Support.  Giving them strong direct debuffs or etc starts to erode the value of other team contributors, which shifts the problem we're dealing with (AT redundancy) rather than resolving it.  Making Tankers a "Support support" is much more appealing to me, and having them weaken enemy protections is one way of doing that.

 

]I do like me some AOEs. You risk ticking off players who like their ST attacks tho, especially if AOEs come with higher costs and/or lower damage. Personally I'd like to see a "splash damage" effect (akin to Rad Melee's contamination) applied to more powers in the Tanker secondaries.

 

This is more or less what I mean.  AoE damage and AoE DoTs in particular are a way of further bypassing the current aggro functionality, and they don't have to do a lot of damage to accomplish this.

 

/signed for Tanker attacks having additional effects on Bruised targets, regardless of the source of the Bruising

Can you elaborate on this?

 

Basically, a Tanker team combo system to help combat Tanker redundancy.  If different sources of Bruising stack and Tanker attacks all do, say, 10% more of their secondary effect (e.g., -Def) on a target per stack of Bruising, each additional Tanker on the team makes all the other Tankers a little bit better.

 

What if Gauntlet worked like Fury, but for the team? "Watching you get your teeth kicked in enrages your teammates. The more attacks made against you, the higher your team's damage/to-hit gets as they become more and more determined to dish back what you're taking."

 

That sounds interesting!  But I would worry that it's too narrow in application.  The play that's promoted by that is to have one single Tanker on the team  and to make sure all aggro goes to that one Tanker.  My goal isn't to make Brutes (or Khelds, Veats, or even MMs) less desirable tanks -- it's to make Tankers able to bring things to play beyond just being designated damage sponges.  I think I'd love to see a power like that in a primary, or even an EPP, though.

[Infinitum]

This is purely a min-maxer debate at this point...

 

Tankers being useless is a gross exageration. Or if we're going that way all ATs are useless: with good support you won't need a Tank (Tanker or Brute) for aggro management, with the right buff/debuff combo you won't need scrappers/blasters/stalkers/brute for DPS, with good aggro management you won't need much support etc...

 

I've never seen a team that was in need of a tank complain because a Tanker answered the call instead of a Brute.

 

Those complaining about Brutes being too good are the same who will tell you that your Brute is bad if you haven't capped your S/L res and soft capped your defenses. Only those who see the game through min-maxing consider Tanker as an irrelevant AT.

 

There are the same recurring debates on the builds channel on Discord about Defenders being irrelevant because Corruptors or Controllers can fill the same role while bringing more damage or control. Controllers being bad at control compared to Dominators, Stalkers being poorman scrapper and vice versa etc...

 

Players are happy to squeeze every little bonus they can out of the IO system and then complain that balance is broken.

 

Can Tankers do their job? Yes and they're very good at it.

 

We could appease the min-maxing crowd with some tweaks like adding another -20% res bruise effect to the secondary set's biggest PBAoE/AoE that wouldn't stack with itself or the Tier 1 bruise (because we don't want to turn Tankers into /Sonic defenders). But the same min-maxing crowd would then complain that it's not fair because some sets have larger AoEs than others.

 

We could address the issue at the root, i.e the ridiculous amount of +def and + res bonuses given by the IO sets. But first, this is an impossible amount of work with a high risk of breaking things even further, and second again the min-maxing crowd would be on the warpath to defend their overtuned builds (including Tanker players because their characters would also be affected).

 

Agreed 100% my sg currently has a team 6 tanks 4 are fire tanks and its ridiculous how quick we melt missions.

 

Ive never understood the tanks bring nothing to the table argument because I still see requests for tanks, and even get shaded from time to time because nobody has seen what my brute can do.

 

Which brings me to my second point, I see brutes and tanks as the same AT just with different means to the end.  Brutes are IMO a lot harder to level because they are squishier until you start introducing IO sets to their make up and also dont manage agro as well until you get more aoe reliability. Tanks are stronger out of the box and also maintain and manage agro much better while still outputting decent damage.

 

Which brings me to my third point.  On any good team either tank or brute damage isn't going to matter as much either way, but survivability will when it goes wrong and the pieces have to be picked up be either tank or brute and usually its easier with a tank honestly.

 

My last point is just have fun, I've never seen anyone get kicked off the team because they were a tank, the 6 coalitions with us ive never seen that from them either.  We all love to min max and then show off the crazy results.  If your experience is boredom or exclusion keep looking, rhere are good people out here like my group that wont exclude anyone and figure out how to have fun.

 

Its scary how much this reminds me of the discussions pre EM nerf, because I had a invul/em tank that was iod out and people on live forums were saying then how much tank damage sucked, and didnt believe what I was saying it was capable of.  So a few followed me to pylon tests and were wowed.  He wad good pre IO but was ultra after IO what made the dmg So good was recharge and ET bursting twice on 1 build up cycle, now you barely get one off the animation feels So slow.  So IOs are there IMO to do things you normally could not because its fun to put effort and time into being more super powered.  I mean why bother having IOs if you cant break outside of what your build was designed for - incarnates too for that matter.  So nerffing brute resistance caps would really suck and eliminate a lot of effort put into 3 characters because people cant learn to find what makes them happy on here.

 

I guess the point is if you are an SO based tank, dont expect to contribute as much on an uber lvl team. Get IOd and show out like they are.

 

I do like the aoe absorption idea for tanks though.

 

Dont nerf my brutes though because you cant find the easy button you are looking for.

[kelly Rocket]

I see people say that Brutes don't manage aggro as well as Tankers, but frankly I can't think of a time I've ever felt like I *needed* more aggro generation than I get just by turning on the taunt aura. Could hold aggro just by turning that on and jumping into a spawn and never even bother to attack, tbh. I usually have Taunt, but it's just for tossing at runners.

 

That's on my Brutes, since I don't play Tankers anymore.

 

So I mean, yeah, Tankers have AoE Gauntlet, but I don't even feel like I *need* the ST Punchvoke on my Brutes, so it seems like a case of "Yeah, they're better at it, but who actually needs to be better?"

[Infinitum]

I see people say that Brutes don't manage aggro as well as Tankers, but frankly I can't think of a time I've ever felt like I *needed* more aggro generation than I get just by turning on the taunt aura. Could hold aggro just by turning that on and jumping into a spawn and never even bother to attack, tbh. I usually have Taunt, but it's just for tossing at runners.

 

That's on my Brutes, since I don't play Tankers anymore.

 

So I mean, yeah, Tankers have AoE Gauntlet, but I don't even feel like I *need* the ST Punchvoke on my Brutes, so it seems like a case of "Yeah, they're better at it, but who actually needs to be better?"

I'm talking lvl 1 to 40ish I see a few stragglers get by me where if I were on a tank there would not be any.

 

Most of the time no damage was done.  Once everyone else starts getting optimized around that same time, it becomes a non issue at that point, but it is noticeable early on.

[Herotu]

On 7/18/2019 at 12:04 PM, Infinitum said:

I'm talking lvl 1 to 40ish I see a few stragglers get by me where if I were on a tank there would not be any.

 

Most of the time no damage was done.  Once everyone else starts getting optimized around that same time, it becomes a non issue at that point, but it is noticeable early on.

I've been levelling up my blaster lately and I OFTEN get Brutes in the tanker role who don't bother with taunt. I die all the time because of this trend. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if every melee player just goes Brute because that's the one archetype to rule them all. AKA: overpowered. 

 

It seems to me that this is just illustrative of a trend where MMORPGs have gone from team/role-oriented affairs to espousing self-sufficient one-class gameplay (where it's said that if you can't survive it's your own fault, not the team's). 

[AkuTenshiiZero]

Y'know I'm just gonna say that, in practice, I have watched Brutes get wrecked when they try to be a Tanker, whereas as a Tanker I am ridiculously tough.  Maybe you don't think the numbers shake out, but when I've got a pile of enemies completely failing to kill me whilst my teammates are not taking any fire, then I don't really care what the numbers say.

 

Tankers are awesome.

[Galaxy Brain]

15 minutes ago, AkuTenshiiZero said:

Y'know I'm just gonna say that, in practice, I have watched Brutes get wrecked when they try to be a Tanker, whereas as a Tanker I am ridiculously tough.  Maybe you don't think the numbers shake out, but when I've got a pile of enemies completely failing to kill me whilst my teammates are not taking any fire, then I don't really care what the numbers say.

 

Tankers are awesome.

What level? 🙂

[Some Random User]

On 7/13/2019 at 3:40 AM, Profit said:

although we have been told with the code it is impossible to do but I think still deserves a seat at the idea table, is to increase the tanker aggro cap to allow them to hold the attention of more mobs than they do currently.

Please address the following possible solution. My understanding is that the way the game handles certain things is to spawn invisible no-clip objects or mobs and then apply an effect relating to them. When there is an overflow of how much Aggro is needed, can't we have Gauntlet spawn an invisible no-clip mob superimposed onto the Tanker with the same Protection, Defenses, and Resistances? There is currently code that refers some of the damage a Mastermind's pet would take to the Mastermind, we could have 100% of the damage taken by the invisible mob referred to the Tanker. Question: Is this possible?

[Infinitum]

6 hours ago, Herotu said:

I've been levelling up my blaster lately and I OFTEN get Brutes in the tanker role who don't bother with taunt. I die all the time because of this trend. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if every melee player just goes Brute because that's the one archetype to rule them all. AKA: overpowered. 

 

It seems to me that this is just illustrative of a trend where MMORPGs have gone from team/role-oriented affairs to espousing self-sufficient one-class gameplay (where it's said that if you can't survive it's your own fault, not the team's). 

Cool thing about free will is you can choose the team you play on, and when to leave it.

 

I'm not goint to pretend to draw insight from what where when why or how that was happening to you, but its not the norm. 

 

Brutes arent the goto melee choice right now, and definitely aren't overpowered, unless you spend an awful lot of inf on them, but by that measure anything can be overpowered. 

 

Some are more defensive and some offensive, some in between.  If you pick one of the sets to play tank on it takes you a heck of a lot longer for the durability to come to fruition than on a tank and more expensive also.  That's the price you pay and you have to be ok with that going into it otherwise you may be tempted to abandon ship around lol 35 when nothing seems to be going right.

 

Then around lvl 40 it starts to click and come together.  At lvl 47 enhancements make you as strong as you need to be.

 

I see brutes that don't know what they are doing get wrecked too.

[Leogunner]

11 hours ago, Herotu said:

I've been levelling up my blaster lately and I OFTEN get Brutes in the tanker role who don't bother with taunt. I die all the time because of this trend. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if every melee player just goes Brute because that's the one archetype to rule them all. AKA: overpowered. 

 

It seems to me that this is just illustrative of a trend where MMORPGs have gone from team/role-oriented affairs to espousing self-sufficient one-class gameplay (where it's said that if you can't survive it's your own fault, not the team's). 

I've been in this situation with my Blasters too.  You have to be more aware of what mobs do than such melees.  If you're drawing attention from the wrong mobs then merely don't do that.  You can get by just 1-shot sniping everything if the circumstances are that bad.  Or you can just do like I do and target through the Brute and just destroy everything tries to attack...basically serial kill-steal until they get the picture that they don't need to focus on d33Pz but rather to get the attention of lots of things.

[Galaxy Brain]

13 hours ago, Infinitum said:

Cool thing about free will is you can choose the team you play on, and when to leave it.

 

I'm not goint to pretend to draw insight from what where when why or how that was happening to you, but its not the norm. 

 

Brutes arent the goto melee choice right now, and definitely aren't overpowered, unless you spend an awful lot of inf on them, but by that measure anything can be overpowered. 

 

Some are more defensive and some offensive, some in between.  If you pick one of the sets to play tank on it takes you a heck of a lot longer for the durability to come to fruition than on a tank and more expensive also.  That's the price you pay and you have to be ok with that going into it otherwise you may be tempted to abandon ship around lol 35 when nothing seems to be going right.

 

Then around lvl 40 it starts to click and come together.  At lvl 47 enhancements make you as strong as you need to be.

 

I see brutes that don't know what they are doing get wrecked too.

However, is a brute does know what they're doing and they have a tanky set that they kit out / a resist set that gets comparable numbers,  this is where the comparison comes in.

[Justisaur]

One way you could increase the tank agro cap without changing the global is give them a psuedo pet that takes agro and transfers damage to them.

[KelvinKole]

I think if anything is done it should be done outside of damage and survivability metrics. Trying to balance either of those things between the two archetypes doesn't really help eliminate the overlap. Id rather see something new a valuable added to tankers and keep brutes value as a formidable dps tank. Adding a stacking regen and/or recovery debuff to gauntlet or bruising, for example. Or perhaps enemies affected by gauntlet deal reduced damage to everyone except the tank. Whatever it is, it needs to add unique value for tankers where a comparison to brutes becomes more difficult to make. 

[Steampunkette]

How about we just make the Bruising completely unresistable?

 

That one change would increase their value to a team MASSIVELY since they would be the only characters in the game that could apply a 20% (nonstacking, even between multiple tankers) Resistance Debuff on AVs even in Incarnate Trials.

 

And in any encounter with multiple AVs you're gonna want multiple Tankers to spread that debuff around for more team damage.

[Leogunner]

20 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

How about we just make the Bruising completely unresistable?

 

That one change would increase their value to a team MASSIVELY since they would be the only characters in the game that could apply a 20% (nonstacking, even between multiple tankers) Resistance Debuff on AVs even in Incarnate Trials.

 

And in any encounter with multiple AVs you're gonna want multiple Tankers to spread that debuff around for more team damage.

Do you think players would invite a Tanker just for that?  Like they would specifically reserve a spot for a Tanker so they can get another measly extra damage?  And do you think a Tanker will finally feel like their inferiority complex is unfounded because they can do something unique yet imperceptible to anyone but themselves?  I mean, my Stalkers can apply an unresisted -ToHit...but nobody cares or likely even realizes it.

[jack_nomind]

1 hour ago, Leogunner said:

Do you think players would invite a Tanker just for that?  Like they would specifically reserve a spot for a Tanker so they can get another measly extra damage?  And do you think a Tanker will finally feel like their inferiority complex is unfounded because they can do something unique yet imperceptible to anyone but themselves?  I mean, my Stalkers can apply an unresisted -ToHit...but nobody cares or likely even realizes it.

With Steampunkette's suggestion, an all-Tanker team would not need to kill any towers to down Recluse in the MLTF.  It's pretty far from imperceptible.

 

I don't like single-approach resolutions because I think the Tanker AT needs an identity more than a shtick, but as far as creating a desire for the AT that would absolutely do it.

[Leogunner]

9 minutes ago, jack_nomind said:

With Steampunkette's suggestion, an all-Tanker team would not need to kill any towers to down Recluse in the MLTF.  It's pretty far from imperceptible.

 

I don't like single-approach resolutions because I think the Tanker AT needs an identity more than a shtick, but as far as creating a desire for the AT that would absolutely do it.

That's a very niche circumstance too.

 

I'm of the opinion that teams actually don't care so an appeal to "that could really add to the team" argument as empty because any warm body will add to a team.  It's only when you push a min/max situation and bend perception do you get this idea that a player doesn't add to a team.  It just becomes a "I want them to add more" argument but if it isn't something that makes the *player* want to *play* a Tanker for their very approach to combat, then it's merely mincing numbers to appeal to individuals' inferiority complex.  So what if a Brute or Scrapper can do your job, do you want to play a Tanker or not?  No?  Then don't!

[jack_nomind]

30 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

That's a very niche circumstance too.

It's a concrete example, since the general principle of unresisted -Resist debuffs didn't seem to connect with you.  If neither the general nor the concrete value makes sense, I'd recommend starting from the beginning on the subject.

 

I don't find your inferiority complex theory a particularly compelling response to the topic.

[Leogunner]

33 minutes ago, jack_nomind said:

It's a concrete example, since the general principle of unresisted -Resist debuffs didn't seem to connect with you.  If neither the general nor the concrete value makes sense, I'd recommend starting from the beginning on the subject.

 

I don't find your inferiority complex theory a particularly compelling response to the topic.

I find your assumption that I didn't make the connection rather confrontational.  Do you want to get into that type of discussion?  Because I'm all for it.

 

AVs aren't common.  AVs with mechanics to shut down debuffs is also not a circumstance to base a role around either.

 

And whether an argument is compelling to you I frankly don't care.  If it's not true, then consider circumstances where it might be.  If it's never true, state why.  Don't throw limp retorts to try and make believe you're the civil rational poster here.

[LaconicLemur]

My crazy, stupid idea below.  But hear me out!

 

First off, I agree with the idea that tankers and brutes need to be differentiated better.  And I really like the structure the OP used to put forward the argument. After having read 4 pages of the replies, no new suggestions seem any better.  There is a lot of talk about giving tanks -res abilities.  But then doesn't that take away from the support-themed AT's? 

 

I know this might sound stupid but: why not keep both (and all) AT's as-is?  Instead, create a new Task Force / Trial setting that has a required team size of 5 (for example).  Add in difficulties similar to those in the TF options, but built-in.  Balance mission debuffs and spawn sizes so that Tanks are useful, and balanced for IO's, not SO's.  Add the -res buffs to tank in that setting only, or whatever else that could be possible that's either team or AT specific.   Give very good bonus rewards for completion. 

 

From reading the OP, it seems the main challenge is post-50, there's more content that is friendlier to brutes.  So instead of adjusting the tank AT, why not adjust and add more content?  Not only can it make tanks relevant again, but I can imagine it challenging other AT's as well.  And personally, I would like to see something like that instead of the speed x TF's that get dull after a while.

[Demon Shell]

The simplest solution I thought of a couple of years ago (and maybe it's already been mentioned), was to add -regen to a tanker's attacks. Stacking per ability, but not per use so you can't just auto one ability and afk. It would create the same gameplay feedback in a team that Tankers already have when solo. Little to no risk, but reduce reward-over-time because fights take longer. You'll never reach the end of a TF/SF or start fighting a GM and have to walk away. As long as you've built yourself to survive, with few exceptions (namely enemies that can self heal), you will win. I don't know how much that would matter this point with that -regen temp power now available to everyone.

 

The other idea I had was for every % over the resist cap you go on your highest resist, that gets turned into a damage or recharge buff. For a defense tank, gaining a resist buff significantly increases your survival. For a resist tank, gaining a resist buff would invariably mean boosting your performance in other ways. This would also turn the old crashing T9s (except Elude, which should probably be changed regardless) into potential performance boosters. It would be a considerable buff to Fire Aura (the proto-brute), Ice Armor (which has never been terribly popular), and Stone Armor (which Brute typically hits resist cap on, to say nothing of what Tankers reach). But, even if this was a good idea, I don't know how it would be coded. It may not be possible.

 

[Moka]

I personally think tankers should not have an aggro cap at all, and keep everything else the same. That or double the aggro cap for tankers, if you're going to have one. Tankers are meant to TANK. Brutes are meant to take and deal damage equally.

 

Edit: Maybe give tanks a domination bar that increases their damage by a locked percentage, and also their aggro.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Moka

[Galaxy Brain]

I think Leo has a point with the "what makes players play a tanker?" question.  The game as is has a bunch of alternatives, such as control / stacking buffs / just raw enough damage to circumvent the classic tank role in a team. Brutes and even Scrappers can handle themselves in a crowd esp when they start building out in the later levels, so it feels like tankers dont really serve as big a niche as other ATs...