Dechs Kaison

Yet you would still call your corruptor a support and damage dealer. Why can I not say my Warshade is a Blastanktroller?

(( I would expect no less. Humor's a great way to get people to start reading, but you need more to keep them reading. Don't be like Trigun and get to the serious part 2/3's of the way through. ))

When it comes to inspirations, don't be like me.

I contend that it is not. You can throw a fireball then press fulcrum shift. I can throw Nova Emanation and then taunt, but the animation takes 2 seconds longer. All my warshade's powers are always available to me. Human powers are always instantly available. I don't see how I can explain that any better.

Well, if you tell me you're looking for aggro control, I'm just not going to bring my brute. It's as simple as that.


I'm not going to address everything in your post point by point, but I'll try to cover the gist of it. Again, there's a lot of confusion here and it's all because of my miscommunication. It all started when I poorly worded why I enjoy playing my Tank over playing my Brute.

I don't think the Brute AT don't have a purpose. I know my brute, the way I built him, is not as valuable to a team as my Tank, my Warshade, or my Bots/Traps. All of them are awesome characters capable of awesome things, but when it comes to a team, the others are better than my Brute. That makes the Brute less fun for me when I'm on a team.

I do intend to make a more team friendly version of the Brute as an alternate build. At that point my view of teaming with him will most likely change. I haven't gotten around to it, though, and I have other priorities right now.

I do believe you misinterpreted me here:

The scrapper is better in one area, the tank in another. That doesn't invalidate the Brute. What I said was that my Bots/Traps is better in both areas at the same time. In my mind, that does invalidate his purpose.

Except that I do, because you seem to be disregarding durations. Taunt, control, and pets all have a duration on it.

I stun a group, then taunt the ones I missed, then start firing AoEs. All the while I have my capped resistance, buffed damage, and pets.

Very true. Editing my post.

(( Of course in the good way. Also, the second part is good, too, just not as funny. ))

Well, technically, Photon Seekers are a little more flimsy. But Ninjas are certainly close.

They're both certainly suicidal.

I think the debate can be summed up by a question of extremes. Is the absolute optimal hero team better than the absolute optimal villain team?

We'd have to first agree on the optimal team setups, but I doubt it would matter. When everything is debuffed to the floor, and every teammate is buffed to the caps, nothing matters anymore because brawl one shots Lord Recluse.

So to answer the question, I pose another one. Are we still having fun?

Again, I've misrepresented my own position on the issue. It's more a matter of my own characters that I was talking about, not the ATs as a whole. I don't care what who brings to my team, but I don't enjoy playing my brute on a team as much as I enjoy anything else.

Where my warshade comes into this is that he is all the roles, not just "damage and aggro," like my brute. That and he's just too bloody fun all the time. Keep in mind that my Warshade is "the MFing Warhsade." I'm not half a blaster when I'm in Nova, I'm not half a Tanker when I'm in dwarf, I'm not capable of doing one role at a time. I don't play it like that at all.

I am all forms at all times. I am a character with a ranged AoE attack chain, three damage dealing pets, capped resistance and damage, the capability of locking down an entire spawn in control and pulling aggro off my teammates.

This was my mistake. I intended my original statement to be read as a personal preference. When i21 comes out, I'll get a time manipulation character to come in here and reword it before this spirals out of control.

But then I'd continue that to say a Blaster can control aggro "well enough" with the right player behind it.

Look, I'm the last guy in this game to get picky about what's on my team. I truly meant my original statement as personal preference when choosing my characters. I feel my brute has no place on a team. My tank only occasionally has purpose on a team. Those things make them not enjoyable in those situations.

I've run high level TFs with five tanks, a MoITF with a level 36 regen scrapper, an STF with a petless mastermind. My fifth rule is: Any build, any budget, no exclusions. And I stick to it. A rule with no exception lasts eternally.

No it's not. You might be thinking of PBs. A warshade cycles a grand total of one AoE attack regularly that has a chance for KB: Dark (or Nova) Detonation. Nova Emanation does not have KB. Dwarf Mire has no KB. Gravitic Emanation is not an AoE attack, it is a control.

Still untrue. Shadow (or Nova) Blast are the only single target attacks with KB, and it is a very low chance.

Support, as a purpose, is handled very well by my warshade. -recharge is a valuable debuff because of its rarity, and one of the only ways to further mitigate incoming damage when defense is already capped on a team. I also have leadership powers to activate, including vengeance. I can further add defense through Grant Invisibility if it's needed.

So being able to permanently stun 10 targets reliably, reposition enemies on demand, hold bosses and immobilize AVs is "not all that great" control?

Fix'd.

I understand where you're coming from now, and I think I see the root of the problem. I believe that you either need aggro control or you don't. If you do, get a tank. If you don't, get someone better at dealing damage than a melee AT is or another force multiplier.

There's technically a third scenario, which is that you only need aggro control for a portion of the task. In this case, a scrapper or brute is better to have because for everywhere that aggro control is not needed, the scrapper or brute contributes more damage than the tank, so long as that scrapper or brute can actually hold the aggro when it's needed. I haven't been ignoring it, I just don't think it should exist. If you don't need a Tank for most of your task, just eat purples for the AV and be happy.

Again, when my Brute joins a team, his purpose is to kill things. When it comes down to it, my Bots/Traps does a much better job at killing things, especially on a team where he multiplies force. The Brute's secondary purpose is to absorb alphas and hold AV aggro, but the Bots/Traps that just as well.

In my mind, when your primary and secondary purpose are both done better by someone else, you have no purpose.

All of them.

You may want to remove what you say after that question. You don't want people to think you're too ignorant or being intentionally inflamatory.

(( Done and done. ))

Bots are certainly not immune to bad AI decisions. I have seen my protector bot choose to be in melee even though he has no melee attacks.

It's not so much that you've misunderstood. I've simply failed to communicate properly.

Let me just go through this case by case. I'll admit right now that my perspective is biased due to the characters I play.

I enjoy playing my Tank on a team when the team needs someone to control aggro. He has been built to reliably survive anything the game can throw at him, as well as maintain solid aggro control, and even deal with over the aggro cap situations. When the team does not need someone to hold aggro, I feel my purpose is lost, and I stop enjoying him knowing that the team would be better off if I were playing just about anything else.

I enjoy playing my Brute solo. He's built to survive well enough and rip my enemies to pieces. This means I did not take the Taunt power, nor can I reliably survive anything the game can throw at him. I don't enjoy playing him on a team because he is always at his best playing like a soloist. If the team needs aggro control, he can generally handle the task, but I know the Tank would have more tools to do the job better. If the team doesn't need aggro control, then again, they would be better served by a different character of mine which brings other things in addition to damage (and likely even more damage).

I enjoy playing my Bots/Traps (remember, I count this as an AT all its own) almost all the time. Damage in spades, team buffs, debuffs, limited aggro control, and personal survivability. Solos whatever it pleases and multiplies the force of a team. The only time I don't enjoy him is when his own aggro control abilities do not prove enough.

I enjoy playing my MFing Warshade. No caveats.

Deus, this should explain things better for you, too.

Not true at all. There are several benefits to playing a brute over a scrapper. They have greater survival due simply to higher HP, but also have higher resistance caps. Their damage auras include a taunt attribute to keep things from running. Holding aggro is not a requisite to maintain the amount of fury required to surpass scrapper damage scale.

Should be all you need, right here. Build advice at the bottom.

Your avatar is far too apropos.

That was the whole idea.