Bosstone

Personally, I more or less just flip a coin if the sets I want are available on both ATs.

I'm generally not thinking so much about survivability when it comes to scrapper versus brute; for me, it's crits versus Fury. And even then, I like both mechanics equally. There are some times when it's a drag to have to build up damage to make the AOE count, and I rather like being able to do hefty damage from a standing start. Beyond that, though, Fury feels natural, like it's how attack mechanics are supposed to work. Even on my current Scrapper, I'm using Kinetic Melee, so I've still got mini-Fury going regularly.

I don't mind Gun Drone. It's pet damage, which means you don't have to be paying attention to have it effective. I do think the casting time could be lowered by several seconds, but it deals about 840 damage over 90 seconds unbuffed, which does a lot to hinder AV regen.

It's basically like a long-term nuke where the "crash" is the long cast time.

Well, I did up a really quick and simple one here. It only accounts for the variables you mentioned -- Defense, To-Hit Debuffs, and Resistance -- and tells you what percent of damage over time you can expect to hit you. It's very basic; it doesn't account for Regen and it doesn't tell you specifically how much DPS you can expect to take, but it does allow you to see in an abstract sense how Defense and Resistance interact.

It's not a difficult calculation, though. Subtract defense and to-hit debuffs from base to-hit (50% for even-level enemies), then multiply that by 1 minus your resistance. For example, start with 50% to-hit, subtract 10% defense and 5% debuffs, and you know you're going to take 35% of incoming damage. If you have 25% resistance, then switching percents to decimals means you take (1 - .25 =) .75 of what damage does come in. 35 * .75 = 26.25, so you can expect to actually get hurt for 26.25% of incoming damage.

Ideally a Brute doesn't need to be asked to tank. They're already in the middle of the next spawn before the rest of the team is ready to go.

Brutes have some expectation of being survivable. Scrappers, not so much. So if you'd rather just kill stuff on a team without being expected to tank or take hits, go with a Scrapper. Nobody's surprised when the /Fiery Scrapper faceplants.

(I say this with affection, as my current favorite character is a suicidal WP Scrapper and I intend to make a Fiery Scrapper soon.)

I haven't got anything against ginormous racks, myself.

More's the pity.

Continuing the above conversation, I've been working my butt off with 10-12 hour days these past couple weeks. Last night I was particularly beat, but I logged on to City to see what my friends were doing. They were, in fact, starting a Dr. Kahn TF. An hour and change later, I was up 3 Shards, an Incarnate Salvage, some recipes I haven't even looked at yet, and I'd had some fun (it's quite satisfying to take Reichsman and his cronies down with only 6 people).

I realize this is pretty much anathema to your own playstyle, Sam, but I wanted to reinforce anecdotally that it does depend on what you want out of the game.

*shrug* Yeah, I channeled a little GG there. I do acknowledge the other sets are pretty good, and generally speaking better than Devices. What I won't acknowledge is that Devices is nonfunctional. There are reasons to take it that other sets don't have that have already been discussed in the thread.

And Build Up by itself is so very overrated.

Now that's not a bad idea at all.

But you can't control when the end gets taken from you. That makes it a pretty bad idea. I know I've had moments on my Shield and SR characters where I was hurting for end...then before I could throw another attack, the clickie mez kicked in and sucked up that end I needed, because I had forgotten I'd put it on auto. And when it tries to pull end that you don't have 14 times in a row? You're boned.

Devices has very little to offer in a team, but I've yet to be convinced that any other set would work better in a team. I'm sure as hell not getting in the middle of a spawn meant for 8 people on my squishy Blaster, no thank you. LRM Rocket, Rain of Fire, Fireball, Fire Breath, then Blaze and Fire Blast to finish off still-living Bosses. Surveillance if need be. No, Trip Mine doesn't have a place in a fast-paced spawn attack like that, but Fire Sword Circle would fare little better. I'm not getting in that close after pissing off that many enemies.

There's what you want to do in the game, and there's what you need to do to achieve that.

I hate playing under level 32. I really do. The first 21 levels are a slog with TOs and DOs and few slots in general, and even once you get to SOs and decently-powered IOs you still don't have all your powers. I understand that you need those levels to learn the basics of the character, and Praetoria has certainly made it less painful, but I still don't like it. But I know how badass so many sets can be in the upper levels and I dearly want to play many set combinations at level 50. To get there, I need to slog through the lower levels.

In a similar vein, people who were (and maybe still are) focused on merits have an eventual goal in mind. They have a specific build they want to have fun with, but to get there they have to earn their merits first, and they want to do that as quickly as possible to get it over with.

The buffs need to have a noticeably short duration. This provides incentive for not only bringing the buffer along, but also to keep them alive. So hour-long buffs really aren't going to happen, both for that reason and for what BurningChick just said.

So, okay, we need to keep the buffer along and keep them alive. Why not make the clickies toggles? I don't think the game has yet had a way to have the same power toggle on seven people at once; typically that's done through PBAOEs. But the benefit of the shield buffs is that you don't need to stay close to the buffer, just so long as the shields are still up.

Okay, so let's go whole hog. Let's make a toggle that, when turned on, auto-buffs every ally on the map. Simplify the process. So what should be the endurance cost? Well, let's look at FF as an example. Deflection Shield is 7.8 end for a 4 minute buff. For a similarly balanced power, we're looking at 0.0325/s times 7 (for 7 teammates) for 0.2275/s (and no, you can't adjust it if you have fewer people on the team). That's actually in line with other toggle powers.

The problem is that the endurance cost may be in line with other toggles, but the power certainly isn't. We're talking something that covers the entire team on the entire map, regardless of line of sight, on a fire-and-forget toggle. That's powerful, and we don't have any toggle currently like that; all toggles that affect the team are only effective within a limited radius.

So what do we do? The power has to work this way for it to be a toggle yet retain the same functionality as the current clickies, so changing the implementation is out. (Changing the functionality is not really in the cards, I think; PBAOEs forcing the team to stick near the buffer are tedious for the team as a whole, not just the buffer.) That leaves us two options: either increase the end cost substantially, or else reduce the effectiveness of the power substantially. Neither is very attractive, I should think.

You see the problem with game design and balance. Change the balance one way, something else needs to give.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a small compromise: be able to increase the duration through enhancements. Schedule A or B, either one, which would allow the buffer to increase it to 6-8 minutes at the expense of endurance or potency or slots for other powers. But that would entail adding a new kind of enhancement, which has its own balance issues. But I don't think you can flat-out change the clickie to 6 or 8 minutes. I suppose it's possible without changing the team dynamic too drastically, but that requires more intel than I have available.

Bowling has points. You can most certainly bowl competitively and work to reach higher and higher scores. You can also choose to play without caring about the points. (But who hasn't cheered on getting a strike?)

The same goes for baseball. The same goes for any sport, any video game. Some folks find their fun in playing socially without minding the score, some find their fun in increasing their score. Why is one better than the other?

Just for fun:

I'm of the opinion that every melee toon should have at least one ranged attack. It may not be part of your usual chain, but there will be times you'll be glad to have it. If you're an IO set bonus sort of person, it also helps with slotting choices, since you're not then limited to melee or PBAOE sets. Some melee sets have to dip into epic pools for ranged attacks, but Focused Burst is good because it boosts Power Siphon.

Honestly, I don't really care one way or the other. I'll use the powers in whatever way they're designed to work.

The difference between this situation and the mez detoggling, however, is that you have a choice about whether you play a set with shields. There are only a few powersets with shields or 4-minute buffs, and they don't cover the whole of a particular role. If you want to be a buffer/debuffer without bothering with shields or SB or CM, you have options.

Conversely, you really don't have a choice about getting mezzed. Far too many sets have defensive toggles and far too many enemy groups have mezzers; you can't really say in that instance "just don't play a set with toggles/fight those enemies". It also presented a severe survivability risk; you weren't just taken out of action, you were instantly made anywhere from slightly to incredibly more vulnerable, depending on which toggles we're talking about. Mez pretty much meant death, not just a temporary inconvenience as it was intended to be.

I guess that's what it boils down to, really. Were the sets intended to contain this level of rote recasting as a tradeoff for the potency of the buffs, or is it just a side effect of implementation? The intent really does make a significant difference.