Brute tanks?

[Marshal_General]

I have read that at end game, brutes can tank just as well as tankers while doing way more damage. I decided to take an end game tank build and made it is a brute with the same powers, slots, and sets except for the ATOs.

 

The results were about 10% less defense across the board and 10 to 20% less resists.

 

So where is this mythical brute tank? 

[Myrmidon]

 

In case some of you would like to weigh in.

[HelenCarnate]

Brutes can be made to tank as good as tanks but they do not start that way.  With just SOs a tank will be a lot more durable and the tank will always have better aggro control.  However with the abundance of defense and resist available to everyone now in IO sets and Incarnates, you can make some very durable brutes. 

 

You cannot simply copy and paste a tank build to a brute build and think it will play the same.  The brute will have to focus more on adding defense so their sets may be quite different.  The brute may need to take maneuvers while the tank can skip it and still have soft capped defenses for example.  Once you get to the point where the brute can handle +4x8 content solo, it does not really matter that the tank is more durable (mostly).  If the brute can keep attention on them with plenty of AoE attacks and mostly keep the rest of the group from getting hit, all while staying alive and not needing a ton of healing, then they are just as effective as a tank but they kill stuff faster.  Tanks however have a much easier time being durable to a wider range of attacks and have to put much less effort into keeping aggro.

[DSorrow]

My Brute has capped S/L/E/F/C Resistance, so same as a capped Tanker. Even with a copy pasted build a Tanker would still have more NE and Psi Resistance, more HP and more Defense. Then again, I wouldn't just copy paste the build to a Tank as several of the +Res set bonuses I have would go to waste when I could swap them for even more survivability through additional Defense.

 

In an end game build, with an end game team in end game content the survivability gap between a Brute and a Tanker is often pretty meaningless. If you don't have many buffs in your team and the enemies kill a Brute, most likely they'll kill a Tank too. If you have a lot of buffs, they won't kill either. 

[Hyperstrike]

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be ultra-maxed out on stats to tank.
It takes slightly better reaction time and situational awareness as you're kinda dancing a razor's edge.
But it's not even CLOSE to impossible.

[Hjarki]

2 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

I have read that at end game, brutes can tank just as well as tankers while doing way more damage. I decided to take an end game tank build and made it is a brute with the same powers, slots, and sets except for the ATOs.

 

The results were about 10% less defense across the board and 10 to 20% less resists.

 

So where is this mythical brute tank? 

In a league setting, there are so many buffs/debuffs that the only real distinction is that both Tankers and Brutes have a 90% resist cap while everyone else has less.

 

In a solo setting, Fury tends to be a tremendous advantage while the Tanker's advantages aren't really apparent.

 

In a team setting, Tankers tend to be superior for a few reasons:

• The -20% resist debuff is far more significant than the Brute's damage advantage.
• Tankers gain greater benefit from Inspirations and other forms of damage buffing.
• Tankers have a more comprehensive set of defenses.

That being said, neither Tankers nor Brutes are particularly necessary for endgame teams in most cases because everyone else on the team also has soft-capped defenses and pertinent resists hard-capped (at a lower level).

[Haijinx]

The tank will perform much better when exemplared from a survival standpoint.  My level 50 SR tank for example is softcapped to all positions during the Synapse taskforce.  

 

The tanker gauntlet taunt being AoE is also nicer for aggro control.

 

But for most situations the Brute does the job just fine.  

 

Throw in some support and its probably almost all situations.  

 

[Marshal_General]

10 hours ago, Hjarki said:

In a league setting, there are so many buffs/debuffs that the only real distinction is that both Tankers and Brutes have a 90% resist cap while everyone else has less.

 

In a solo setting, Fury tends to be a tremendous advantage while the Tanker's advantages aren't really apparent.

 

In a team setting, Tankers tend to be superior for a few reasons:

• The -20% resist debuff is far more significant than the Brute's damage advantage.
• Tankers gain greater benefit from Inspirations and other forms of damage buffing.
• Tankers have a more comprehensive set of defenses.

That being said, neither Tankers nor Brutes are particularly necessary for endgame teams in most cases because everyone else on the team also has soft-capped defenses and pertinent resists hard-capped (at a lower level).

It makes me wonder what is needed at end game. Tanks of any flavor not needed, Healers not needed. Controllers say they are not needed. Whats left? An 8 man team of Elct/Shield scrappers?

[Werner]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

It makes me wonder what is needed at end game. Tanks of any flavor not needed, Healers not needed. Controllers say they are not needed. Whats left? An 8 man team of Elct/Shield scrappers?

LOL, yeah. But Scrappers aren't needed either. I doubt any archetype is needed. Put together a random team and have some fun. 🙂

[Hyperstrike]

8 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

It makes me wonder what is needed at end game. Tanks of any flavor not needed, Healers not needed. Controllers say they are not needed. Whats left? An 8 man team of Elct/Shield scrappers?

Technically the game doesn't "need" any particular AT.

That's the beauty of it.  You can do pretty much EVERYTHING in the game without requiring a given AT.

[DSorrow]

8 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

It makes me wonder what is needed at end game. Tanks of any flavor not needed, Healers not needed. Controllers say they are not needed. Whats left? An 8 man team of Elct/Shield scrappers?

If I had to formulate an optimal 8 man team for end game, it would mostly be Corruptors and Defenders. Basically you just want a metric ton of buffs/debuffs combined with AoE damage. Damage saturation happens quite quickly, though, as it only takes so many attacks to decimate a mob of enemies, so you only really need a couple of damage dealers given an abundance of buffs. So, an "optimal" 8 man team with some practical consideration: 4-6 ATs with support sets with the rest being anything that can do decent damage. In other words, just combine pretty much anything.

 

This is one of the reasons why I like this game. If you don't have an abundance of buffs to make everyone tanks, get an actual tank to take the beating. If you don't have healing, get buffs and debuffs to avoid taking damage in the first place. If you have few damage dealers, just get buffs/debuffs to multiply the damage. If you don't really have that many buffs, several damage dealers and a tank works too.

[Crysis]

The best tanker set I ever played was a TW/Elec Brute.  Had to use Taunt to hold AV aggro many times, whereas a tanker could just hold it, but the superlative damage output was too much of an advantage to ignore.

[Rylas]

23 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

You cannot simply copy and paste a tank build to a brute build and think it will play the same.  

Exactly this. Tanks already start with higher def/res numbers and you just used the same exact bonuses for both builds. Of course the tanker would still have higher numbers.

 

Now try this; make a build that puts the brute at the same def/res totals. And then tell us how they stack up on damage. 

[Infinitum]

18 hours ago, Werner said:

LOL, yeah. But Scrappers aren't needed either. I doubt any archetype is needed. Put together a random team and have some fun. 🙂

This right here.  This is where it's at.

[Profit]

So much bad information in this thread.

[Profit]

On 8/14/2019 at 8:00 AM, HelenCarnate said:

 the tank will always have better aggro control.

This is simply not true. Brutes and tanks both get the auto-hit Taunt power in their powersets. Brutes and Tanks also both get an automatic single target 400 mag taunt effect placed on enemies from just hitting them. Brutes also enjoy the same taunt aura that Tanks have and a higher threat level than tanks due to the orange numbers generated by fury.

[Profit]

On 8/14/2019 at 8:11 AM, DSorrow said:

 If you don't have many buffs in your team and the enemies kill a Brute, most likely they'll kill a Tank too.

Also not true due to the tank having a much higher HP cap which translates into a higher regen base. The extra little bit of resist a tank enjoys over even an IO'd brute makes a world of difference that you do not notice when things are being obliterated in mere seconds.

[Profit]

On 8/14/2019 at 9:34 AM, Hjarki said:

That being said, neither Tankers nor Brutes are particularly necessary for endgame teams in most cases because everyone else on the team also has soft-capped defenses and pertinent resists hard-capped (at a lower level).

This is very accurate.

[Profit]

On 8/14/2019 at 4:47 PM, Haijinx said:

The tanker gauntlet taunt being AoE is also nicer for aggro control.

Gauntlet sucks for aggro control. How gauntlet works, the tanker makes an attack on an enemy, which generates the aforementioned 400% taunt mag if it hits, then a second to-hit check (for gauntlet) is made, and if that second to-hit check is successful a (some number that escapes me at the moment) taunt mag is added to the target and to 4 other enemies around him within range. You get better and more reliable aggro control from the Taunt power and your aura, which as mentioned previously brutes also share.

[Profit]

12 hours ago, Crysis said:

The best tanker set I ever played was a TW/Elec Brute.  Had to use Taunt to hold AV aggro many times, whereas a tanker could just hold it, but the superlative damage output was too much of an advantage to ignore.

I would say this brute wasted a power on taunt because the power taunt disrupts the momentum of fury and titan weapons. His aura, pbaoe/cones, and single target attacks should have been more than enough to maintain aggro control for the team just by generating the higher orange numbers.

[Profit]

2 hours ago, Infinitum said:

This right here.  This is where it's at.

This is also accurate, at high end incarnate level IO game play no specific AT is needed. And the best team will always be 8 frads.

[Haijinx]

An AOE taunt effect on every attack is better than a single target taunt effect on every attack.  I am not sure how that equates to "bad information"

 

"Better" being relative.  

 

How much that matters is of course debatable.  

 

Or nicer i guess i used - more in the sense of slightly better.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Haijinx
Clarity of terms

[HelenCarnate]

27 minutes ago, Profit said:

This is simply not true. Brutes and tanks both get the auto-hit Taunt power in their powersets. Brutes and Tanks also both get an automatic single target 400 mag taunt effect placed on enemies from just hitting them. Brutes also enjoy the same taunt aura that Tanks have and a higher threat level than tanks due to the orange numbers generated by fury.

Tank version is AoE.  Brute version is only the target they are hitting.  So unless the Brute is in melee range of everything where their taunt aura will hit or have constant AoE damage to everything, the Tanker will have an easier time keeping aggro.

[Profit]

5 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

Tank version is AoE. 

Untrue, the AOE version you are referencing is gauntlet which is different from the additional single target effect both tanks and brutes enjoy.

 

Edited to add, the single target version that both tanks and brutes enjoy does apply to hits from aoe powers effecting every mob hit by the aoe. This is an automatic taunt application.

 

Edited to also add, this single target version is why you can slot taunt enhancements in brute and tank powers. Gauntlet has nothing to do with that.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Profit

[DSorrow]

8 hours ago, Profit said:

Also not true due to the tank having a much higher HP cap which translates into a higher regen base. The extra little bit of resist a tank enjoys over even an IO'd brute makes a world of difference that you do not notice when things are being obliterated in mere seconds.

That might be true for content that isn't end-game. In end-game content with end-game builds Tanks and well built Brutes have the same Res / Def*, and the situations where ~500 HP or slightly higher regen makes the difference are rare. Most of the time your tank (Brute or Tanker) goes down because of overwhelming debuffs and in that scenario 500 HP is one or two attacks.

 

This may or may not be why I think all Tanker primaries should have a variety of debuff resistances to make them noticeably tougher than Brutes in the end game.

 

* Consider my TW/Elec with capped S/L/E/F/C Res. A Tanker literally can't have better res against those categories so the only cases where they might have an edge is NE/Psi damage, which I can also easily cap with Eye of the Magus, Melee Hybrid or insps. Sure, a similarly built Tank might have soft capped S/L Def instead of the ~35% I have, but without DDR even that makes no difference after an alpha strike.