DarkMaster

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The entire point of my "some kind of parity needs to exist" is that, between Brutes and Scrappers, there isn't really any at the top end.

I take Brutes doing just as much damage while being 12.5% harder to kill at the very least, thanks to their higher hit points, with a grain of salt. This is something that many of you who currently see parity are missing. Brutes and Scrappers do the same damage. They shouldn't be. Brutes should be doing less because they're harder to kill even excluding power sets. That's what parity is.

As for the top end game, I'm talking about when you're dancing with the caps. When you're on a good team and/or IO'd to the gills, Brutes will outperform Scrappers. Their scalars are simply higher at 750% +dam (6.375) than a Scrapper's (6.075 assuming 8% overall crit chance; 6.1875 assuming 10% crit) as well as their resistance (250% better mitigation) and hp caps (33% better mitigation) and team contribution (cuz they have punchvoke).

Even assuming that only one of these is possible at any one time (either maximized mitigation or maximized damage) you still have to keep in mind that the Brute is still going to be better simply because s/he is harder to kill thanks to naturally high hit points. If their damages are equal but everything else remains as it is now, that's not parity. That's a discernible advantage for the Brute.

Because of this obvious advantage, it screams to me the need for a change. I don't care however much you scream that Brutes have to put more work into keeping their damage up or whatever, the fact of the matter remains that Brutes are capable of super-Scrapper level damage and super-Scrapper level survivability and even have a native advantage in one of those 2 fields when solo!

The only reason we're not going to see the changes to the AT to see some actual parity is because Castle doesn't want to rock the boat. You've already seen what's happened from his buffing of Dominators. People got angry at him for it. For giving Dominators a global buff in a way that didn't make them overpowered. Limiting the top end of Brutes because it's overperforming both of the similar ATs on blueside (Tankers and Scrappers) would be received just as poorly and quite possibly worse because, even though they've got the same damn sets and the same damn punch voke and they both have access to Taunt, 90% of Brute players insist that they should have parity with Scrappers with the exception that they should ignore their higher caps because for some reason they're pointless to bring into a balance consideration.

Which is all [censored] stupid.

Brutes are too strong as they are now. They've got too much damage for having so much survivability and too much damage potential for having so much survival potential. That's pretty much where it is. You can't change it, the numbers are right [censored] there, but people can (and will) obfuscate it.

I've been willing to stand aside and say "eh, it's redside, I don't really care", but GoRo has me agitated. This is why I never wanted side switching, but, now that we're getting it, we've opened up the "AT power disparity can o' worms" and Castle is unwilling to put forth the effort to address it.

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Honestly man, you're really showing your "bias" here, and it's coming off as alot of crying.


The reasons as to "why" Brutes may be able to reach higher damage levels than Scrappers do not, in any way, un-balance them to Scrappers, simply due to the truth that SO MANY factors are required for that to happen...AND they CANNOT be done solo and DO require a TEAM to achieve, as well as constant monitoring (Fury drops below a certain level and there goes that damage). Per the Dev's, needing "multiple" team-mates to be able to achieve certain performance levels is in not any way "un-balanced."


Grant a Scrapper the same type of "buffs/debuffs" and thier performance level damage wise will be just about as good and they'll be "un-killable" as well...so I don't see what the problem is...other than you are upset (or jealous?) that another melee AT can reach your Scrapper's potential with effort.


I just don't see a problem with a Brute (who uses many IO's and teams) being able to perform at levels comparable to a Scrapper with the same types of buffs. That's fine game balance imho. Teaming should never be nerfed.


I suppose next we should nerf the abilities that a "full" Corruptor team can achieve right? A full, well built, IO'd Corruptor team can achieve things that most AT's can only dream about. Defender teams can too.

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Is 90% fury really a fair assumption? What happens when you turn that down to 75% and 50%... I see this as being the reason Brutes show up higher on the list moreso then a a game imbalance. As a scrapper you're always at full damage... where a brute is only situationally at this level of damage.

edited: Heh.. didn't finish reading the thread... i see this has already come up.

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Exactly.


I really do think that [u]we need some damage figures for the 50% and 75% Fury marks[u], because honestly, even solo, unless you're DM, being able to maintain a "constant" 90% fury is going to be VERY tough, I don't care what you're smokin, it's not easy at all. Granted, DM and DB both do pretty well at maintaining a high fury level, but even they "can" and "DO" fall well below 90% during missions, and ALL other primaries, definately do.


People really blow things outta proportions sometimes when they hate something, and no, Brutes cannot just sit at 90% Fury throughout an entire mission, ESPECIALLY if teamed. They can spike to that during a spawn fight, but it doesn't start out there.


I've been an extremely avid Brute player since CoV was launched, and if I had to give Brute's an "average" fury bar for a general mission, I'd place it at 65-75% solo (if you can keep moving), and 30-50% teamed. As an "average." Sure, they can see "dips" and "spikes" to that, but that'd be my experienced "guess" on it while taking all primaries into consideration.

ChaosString:
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Oh, I reach 90% all the time during missions, and exceed it during some types of encounters

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You don't "exceed" 90% Fury, I think at best Fury caps out at 95% (I actually believe it's 90%) due to either a "bug" or design. So you're not going to "exceed" 90% Fury hardly ever, IF ever for that matter.

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Because the chances of Brutes being able to "keep" their Patron Power Pool attack Gloom is very very slim imho. They'll most likely have to respec into Ancillary Power Pools upon faction switch and pick up Dark Blast, which will drop their damage averages substantially enough to say: Blueside: Scrappers > Brutes in damage.

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How the heck do you think that would work? Epic power pools are AT based. While Brutes could easily get Scrapper APPs, other ATs will not find it as easy. They might make something entirely new, but I highly doubt it.

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I think it's VERY possible. Rogue isn't some "small" expansion, it's quite large. If the dev's wanted to "keep things real" and as close to making sense as possible, then keeping your villain "Patron Powers" when you switched to Heroside just wouldn't make sense at all. If you're a Hero, you shouldn't be serving a VILLAIN patron.


Anythings possible at this point, sure, however I could easily see the Dev's having Villains (and Heroes) respec their lvl 40+ Epic powers and replacing them with new faction based powers, even if they are entirely new "pools" for each AT.

WP, ELA, and EA have been my favorite so far, simply because they have the ability to deal with SM's massive thirst for endurance, and they don't need a ton-o-IO end bonuses to do it.

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Yeah. Y'all crunched numbers, and I skimmed it. I haven't cared much about the comparison in the past because I prefer blue side and don't PvP. But when Brutes come blue side, I'm going to care, and so should the devs.

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When Brutes come "blueside" in Rogue, chances are you will NOT see the damage disparity that you see right now when they're villain side.


Why?


Because the chances of Brutes being able to "keep" their Patron Power Pool attack Gloom is very very slim imho. They'll most likely have to respec into Ancillary Power Pools upon faction switch and pick up Dark Blast, which will drop their damage averages substantially enough to say: Blueside: Scrappers > Brutes in damage.


As far as CoV goes though, Brutes are there to be the "Scrapper" of the redside, so I don't have a problem at all with them having higher damage averages. Furthermore, Scrappers really do benifit alot more from +dmg buffs, and Scrapper damage starts right out the gate, there's no "building up" needed, like it is with Brutes. In my opinion, that is kinda the "balance" to their damage output. Sure, with particular sets and/or tons of IO's, you can reduce the amount of time it takes most Brutes to recover between spawns, but the dev's have always stated that they would never balance this game around IO useage; so that's an acceptable poison. Also, don't forget Scrapper crits allow us to 1-shot things from time-to-time which helps our killing pace on teams.

Nice work BillZ, I know you've been workin on this lil project for awhile now.


Ya know, I'm honestly a bit surprised to find that "Brutes" are, for the most part, on top of the list ahead of Scrappers in damage. With all the hype given to Scrappers and all in damage. However, does this chart include critical chances and fury generation? I'm just wondering.

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It's just you. Against properly-equipped players it's still "lolfly."

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Fly can be "teh fuN" though lol

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Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.

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Quintuple the PvP value of Power Sink (base drain of 10) and triple the %chance of -recovery (currently 30%) to player targets.

Problem solved; they can't kill you if they never have endurance.

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That could definately work.


The balance being that they would "still" have to get into melee with you to drain you and that some sets have decent amounts of end drain protection so they wouldn't be affected very badly by the end drain. So with that change, ELA Brutes woud still have a couple "achilles heels" that people could work around.


I'd back that change 110% FOR SURE.


Also, maybe boost Lightning Field's end drain to a base of about -5 end per "tic" and I think we'd be set.

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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.

There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.

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All this shows is how neutered resistance based mellee armors are and how over-buffed defense sets are relative to resistance sets. Elusivity and DR are the culprits here.

Electric Armor is probably the worst secondary in the entire game for PvP. It lacks layered mitigation having no heal, no regen, and no defense. Most importantly, every single set gets resistance to all in both their toggles and in weave, so the benefits of actually HAVING psi resistance, which was once a boon in PvP, is now given to every other set in the game. On top of this, the only form of mez protection is now a "miss," meaning that resistance is being over-penalized relative to defense with the new mez system. (Fire, DA, and ELA would ideally recieve higher mez resistance values than defense sets.)

ELA's shortcomings are exacerbated in PvP and this anecdote has no bearing.

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Also, if he had been a well built SS/ELA, the story might have been alot different...as SS can pretty much hit through an SR outside of Elude anytime it wants. Even inside Elude, if built very well, an SS can land hits pretty consistantly.


Besides that, I don't think it's that Defense sets "OP" or anything (not at all) because my Defense toons get crrrreamed plenty in zones/duels. It's more that +res sets have been junked thanks to the new pvp system. My ELA Brute has only a "few" points more +res to most damage types than my Fire Armor Brute...and my Fire Armor Brute has a heal that's available every 12 seconds...


Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.

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DM/ELA is a g-d against Rikti. You can get 1.5xRage with a good Soul Drain, and it's easy to agro cap with ELA against them.

My RWZ "challenge" is 2 EBs and 4 bosses at +4, with accompanying fodder. It's that good.

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This.


My Dm/ELA Brute eats Ritki for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...and a small snack too mid afternoon...and every once in while when he gets hungry late at night for a 4th meal...screw Taco Bell...I eats Ritki...

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It's also true that if brutes were to only consentrate on defending and evading, he can withstand more and live longer to stall for time because his secondary was designed for that.

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I'm not taking anything out of context, here's what he said...and I quote:

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they do well vs a few heroes at a time. By that I mean they don't get killed right away and can kill a cpl of heroes even though it's 1v3-5.

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What you say, and what he says, are entirely different things. What you say is "true" since on a Brute if you focus on "just staying alive" you can do so relatively well even if the odds aren't in your favor. Not for long, but well. What HE says is that not only can a Brute stay alive, but he can ALSO pull off a COUPLE of kills. So what you two speak of is completely different really.

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BTW that quote up there is mine not Jersey's.

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I realize that, I quoted you because you were talking about a 1 vs. 1 scenario (it's easy enough to realize that by your wording.) Again, what HE is talking about is a 1 vs. 5 scenario, where what you described, would not work. That's why you were quoted.


Besides, all of this discussion with him is entirely irrelevant, as he has never even played the AT, or even BUILD for that matter, in question. So he's talking from a second person point of view, which is only as good as the eye of the beholder. Which in his case, he thinks that SS/FA is somehow a demi-god of some sorts.


Which is definately not the case by any stretch. It's a good AT and build for sure, but it's not as good as he described.

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Meh...ur Brute must really need some work. Also, I didn't specify what the 3-5 heroes ATs were. I have seen a mixed group of 3-5 heroes get held off by a good SS/Fire and some killed ie a few blasters, cpl of defenders/trollers. If your Brute is getting murdered and "just able to "survive a hero onslaught so long", then I'd take a look at your build and tactics.

Like I said, look at the ppl's comments in this thread and then look at your original deal. When a person's thoughts are different from 90% of the others posted, that usually points towards the minority as being incorrect or off for 1 reason or another.

Take it easy.

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And their advice and views are based on a 1 vs. 1 scenario where: yes, your tactic will work half the time. Where I took a stance was against your claim of an SS/FA Brute being able to take on 5 Heroes at once, making it sound as if it happend on a pretty regular basis, which is not the case at all.


It sounds like you don't even have an SS/FA Brute of your own, which means that you're also making comments from the "second person" view angle of it. It's very easy to "see" someone in a zone do something amazing once or twice and then contribute that to the AT being awesome. What you may not have seen was the buffers in the background granting him stacked shields and/or double Painbringers, the inspires he "may" have been running in conjuction with his purpled out build, or Accolades such as Demonic. All of these factors are VERY important to consider, and as I stated before, yes, when the cards are pointing in your favor, an SS/FA Brute can pull off some amazing things. But it's NOT a common occurence.


That was my quarrel. I wanted to make sure the OP was clear on that, and not confused.

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Im with ya on that one. I have 3 Energy Melee toons at 50 that I dont play anymore cause the set isnt fun to me. I dont mind the animation being longer than it used to be but how long they made it was bad

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In all honesty...I would have rather taken a damage "cut" in ET and had it keep the same animation (dropped the recharge time and -hp to compensate for the damage cut) than to have it in it's current form....


I mean....Seismic Smash is a blazing fast animation...and it still gets to keep it's massive damage + mag4 hold...why couldn't ET?


Anyways, I'd like to see ET be more like this:


[u]Energy Transfer: (at lvl 50)[u]

<ul type="square">[*]Cast Time: 1 Second[*]Recharge Time: 15 Seconds[*]Endurance Cost: 10.192 &lt;---same as now[*]Accuracy: 1.2 &lt;---same as now[*]Effects to Target: 9.53 second stun (mag 3) (60% chance) &lt;---same as now[*]Effects to Self: -HP Removed (or reduced to 5% total HP)[*]Damage to Target: 31.7 Smashing and 63.39 Energy, Total = 95.09 Damage. This puts it on par with Stone Melee: Heavy Mallet damage. Smashing portion = 1/3, Energy portion = 2/3's total damage.[/list]I think if these changes were made, EM would be a set people could enjoy again. Sure, you're still not doing the damage of the "old" ET, but the set would definately have a decent "flow" to it again, unlike now. I don't think ET should have a massive "Negative HP" factor though if it's damage is reduced, it just wouldn't make sense to after these changes since it wouldn't be as hard hitting of an attack anymore.

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This:
"Taunt + KOB + Hurl + Healing Flames and repeat. U will eventually win unless he's a /MM blaster if he runs or phases let him.. he'll be back and he'll eventually slip up."

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Again, sure, if you're fighting a "solo" Hero squishy, that may work with enough repeats, but that's not the scenario you were pointing out now is it? If you were doing this in YOUR scenario, you're having to face 3-5 heroes at once, and your little trick isn't going to work as well as you claim.


This isn't an old Japanese "Kung-Fu" movie where there are 50 guys surrounding the solo Hero yet only "one goes in to fight him at a time" while the others do the "crazy dance" around them lmao! Nope, in most cases you get hit by "everyone" on the team all at the same time and at once, until you are dead. If 5 Heroes are attacking you, 5 heroes are "attacking you" and not just rushing in "one at a time" to tickel you to death.


If you have, on very random and lucky as balls occassion, gotten off a couple kills with this method and in this fasion against 5 heroes, great work, however "luck" is the only factor that played to your victory, and I'm sure it's not something that is happening on a regular basis for you. Say, maybe 1 out of 50 encounters of the same setup? Sure, but that doesn't mean you can even begin to make claims that you can "take on" and kill heroes in a 1 vs. 5 setting, since it's something that happens so few times that it really shouldn't be counted as the performance level of an AT. You can state that on rare occassions you've been able to pull off a kill or two in this scenario, but you can't claim it as your AT's performance, because it's not.


I gave the poster a warning about what he'd generally face in a pvp zone while on a Brute when facing ranged Hero AT's. I think MY advice perfectly fits here. What you gave him was hopes and dreams that may actually never bere fruit...and piss him off later when he can't understand why you said he should be able to stand up to 5 heroes at once and still get kills but can't...


great work...

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I dont really see what the problem is. My widow isnt the invincible demigod that he was before the changes but im still a force to be reconned with in the zones. I eat scrappers for lunch and tankers and brute for breakfast, Blasters fall before my might, and even the mighty blast-fender must keep looking over its shoulder.

Widows are like PBs in that in PVP you must be built with atleast a LITTLE pvp in mind. Slot some HP, some regen, and some extra position defence, and KEEP MOVING.

Dont try to brawl it out, hit and run, and for the love of god use PROCS!

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My widow is built purely and entirely with pvp in MIND. In fact, I've spent almost 2 Billion on him IO'ing him for pvp...and my results simply place me at an "average" rating in pvp against "less-well-built" and more cheaply made toons.


That's sad.


And no, Widows cannot even TOUCH PB's in the form of PvP survivability, which is quite the change...

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Currently the Dom damage mods outside of Domination are 0.75 melee/0.65 ranged. Castle's proposed mods are 1.05 melee/0.95 ranged.


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Wow. So I guess doms will be able to just kill anything they want at will? Because that sounds like a pretty huge buff.

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Eh, no more-so than Blasters. Remember Blaster "controls" are darn near as powerful as Dominator "controls" with the new pvp rules...so yea...the Dominator is sorta becoming the CoV Blaster, which I'm fine with personally (especially in pve) as Vills have needed a "good" ranged damage AT for awhile now (Corrs sorta fit the bill there if they get ALL their debuffs/buffs laid down and an enemy below 50% HP...but that's alot of work to ramp up your damage).

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Air Superiority is basically a useless filler attack. Of course if you don't want Hasten I would suggest going SJ.


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Uhm...what planet are you living on? Air Sup is one of the BEST power pool attacks you can get in pve. Both in utility and damage.

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in the arena, i force them into elude early on, spend 3 minutes running, come back and destroy them for the next 3 minutes.


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This is true, unless the SR Scrapper is built correctly and running a 70 second or less Elude

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70 seconds is way more than you'll need provided you land your attacks.

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Provided he doesn't use Inspires and/or pop Demonic or even Phase. Maybe.

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The cheap and dirty solution of course would just be to auto-unlock all the patron pools when you hit 40 blueside. In other words, just pretend they are APPs. Not a solution that respects "concept" but then again neither is allowing people to switch back and forth multiple times, yet apparently that's going to be allowed nonetheless.

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You are correct, no character in any story has ever changed sides more than one time.

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lol, your comment oozes with sarcasm haha

Your problem, is your slotting.


A general rule of thumb is that slotting your shields (especially in "defense" based powers) is not important until at least your mid to late teens. Before that, it is PARAMOUNT that you get your attacks slotted up correctly so that you can actually dish out damage and defeat your enemy. The mitigation that adding a meager "Training" Enhancement or even "Dual Origin" is barely noticeable in actual gameplay. In fact, if you monitor your "+defense" attributes when adding the TO, the before and after stats are barely noticeable....like a 1% increase in overall effectiveness per TO...not something I'd waste time on in the lower levels at all.


So, slot and use attacks, because a: Dead Enemy = 100% damage mitigation.


Slotting your attacks to hit more accurately, recharge faster, and reducing their end costs is the most important thing for a Brute. Don't slot damage early, it's not needed until SO's to be blatantly honest. You fury bar and being able to continuously attack due to not burning endurance too quickly will get you ALOT more mileage than a 2-4 pt. damage increase from slotting a TO or DO damage enhancement in your attacks. I recommend either 2acc/2end/2rech or 3acc/2end/1rech as you level up. If endurance woes are still too great, it never hurts to 3 slot end rdx and forego a recharge rdx.


Anyways, hope that helps. Btw, Defense sets never get that good until after SO's, so you need to really bere down and tough it out until lvl 22 to see what comes of the toon. Good luck.

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Pretty much what Aett said. There's far too many factors involved such as team size vs solo, ATs used and slotting to give any other answer to this vague question.

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All that aside and factored in, usually Heroes


But that all will definately be changing soon with the new CoH:GR expansion, so at this point, that whole debate is definately up in the air.

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in the arena, i force them into elude early on, spend 3 minutes running, come back and destroy them for the next 3 minutes.


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This is true, unless the SR Scrapper is built correctly and running a 70 second or less Elude

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What if the MA missions counted for this?

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/broadcast Morality farm LFM! PST!

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LOL, I wouldn't put it past them, and yes, I could see that broadcast happening if it did end up working that way. However, I wouldn't place any bets on it. That may make it "too easy" for us to change our morality's in their eyes. Heck, we already farm AE missions for all they're worth as it is


But yes, it's a possibility.

Just get yourself into a 70 second Elude and nothing else matters lol

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I believe the most likely "barrier" to switching is going to be content, not penalties..

Based on the survey last fall, I actually expect people with a sufficiently grey/neutral rating to be able to switch back and forth with some degree of ease. Maybe not just walk up to the portal and click it ease, but certainly not dramatic undoing of your character.

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Again, lol, this.


Uberguy has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The dev's aren't going to want to "extremely penalize" paying customers for even considering swapping factions. This would not only severely discourage anyone from ever buying their new expansion in the first place, but place more problems on themselves down the road through complaints and lack of profit.


The Morality Compass, which was discussed a very long while back, is the most likely scenario with side-switching. As discussed in the intros for CoH:GR, Heroes and Villains will be able to explore the "grey lines" between "good and evil." Combine that with the Morality Compass, and we can assume that we will not simply wake-up one morning and declare ourselves a "new faction" without having FIRST built up enough either "good" or "bad" points (to put it simply) to declare it. We can even assume that by this statement in the press release:

"Clearly marked missions, in addition to behaviors and decisions made by the player, will move a hero's or villain's moral compass, which could eventually change the hero's or villain's alignment"

Basically, we'll most likely be forced to run a hefty number of "clearly marked missions" in order to gain enough "Morality Points" for us to side switch. The exact number of missions and deeds that we must do are what we don't know. I'm betting that we're looking at a pretty decent amount of time investment required to be able to swap sides though. I'm SURE the dev's don't want people being able to swap sides on an hourly or "at whim" basis.


It might not be several "days" worth of mission hours, but most likely it will be more than just a "couple" quick missions. My guess would be about [u]2-3 Strike Forces worth in time investment[u] for comparison, since it is clearly stated as with enough missions you could "eventually" change your alliance. Eventually in the MMO world can mean a decent amount of time investment in many cases.


I do doubt, however, that you will lose your badges, money, levels, enhancements, etc. There's a chance that we may lose stored "loot" such as salvage/recipes, but even that may not happen as that in and of itself would be quite a severe penalty for any player.


[u]As far as Ancillary and Patron Pools are concerned, my bet is one of two[u]:

A.) We'll either simply "keep" our Ancillary or Patron Pools normally, as it was a time investment the dev's didn't care to apply right now.

B.) Or we will simply be allowed to respec into the new faction's Ancillary or Patron Pools upon side swap. This will either be handled as a "free respec" such as Villains gain when they complete their Patron Arc for the first time (meaning that each time you switch factions, you'll gain a "free faction respec"), or you will simply attain a chance to "respec" your lvl 40+ Ancillary/Patron powers upon side switch, in order to just choose new ones (heroes "may" have to run villain patron arcs).


The Dev's might even make it a "mission" which you'll have to complete in order to recieve your new factions Ancillary or Patron Pools, make it sort of a "Prove yourself to your NEW faction and gain access to a new Ancillary/Patron Pool!" type thing. However, I'm truely betting that upon faction switch, you WILL be granted a free-respec, in similar fashion to how the Villains are currently granted a free-respec upon completion of their Patron Arcs. Afterall, you will be putting in PLENTY of time (more than a regular respec missions worth) to make it a justifiable reward.


Also, I think that our "faction builds" will come into play with the recent ability they granted us to have "2" builds. [u]I don't think, however, that we will be given a total of 4 changeable builds.[u] I think that they dev's granted us the recent ability to have "2 builds" with CoH:GR in mind, and with full intent and preparation for faction swapping. Now, you can have a "Hero build" and a "Villain build" if you swap. It's that simple.


Anyways, those are my "predictions" on the table. Just a head's up, my logic is pretty sound on this