Deus_Otiosus

Unfortunately WS are not something I'm well versed enough in to give you a real opinion.


Expect a PM, I have a few ideas.


I'll dig it up then, and see if there is any squeezing that can be done.

Gloom is good, but if the combination is Elm/SD I will go out on a limb and say I think the Scrapper will come out ahead (AAO > Gloom).


Unfortunately you'll have to knock it out yourself, however this thread is pretty ancient you might also try starting a thread on the subject here in the Scrapper forum to see if anyone has worked out Elm ST DPS for Scrapper.

Well...yay!

I'm glad that gave you a new angle to explore for your WS. Cool stuff.



Well, I wouldn't go deleting your Tanker anytime in the near or far future.

Maybe post the current incarnation of the Brute in the Brute forums. I'd hate to see you lose a travel power.

No, because if it were so only one of them could be true.

They are both true, having a taunt aura is both an advantage (for one reason) and a disadvantage (for a different reason). They aren't mutually exclusive.

Perhaps my use of the word was incorrect, hopefully this post clears it up.

It is important, because without understanding your Bots/Traps Raw DPS or a Damage Dealers Raw DPS you don't really know which of them is benefiting more from flooring the enemies resistances & regen. (Its the damage dealer, btw, by a huge margin).

This is what UberGuy was talking about.

The only way I can illustrate this is through my Fire/Rad Corr.

My Fire/Rad Corr can take out a pylon in 4 minutes using his debuffs to reduce the pylons' resistance and regen, and then follows up with the best ST attack chain available to any corrupter. He takes out the pylon faster than any of my top end Brutes or Scrappers do.

Yet, when he finds himself soloing the Lambda Split phase (which he can do) his ability to take out crates and containers is slower than any of them. His speed at taking out the surrounding enemies is also slower. And while he is applying debuffs, the brutes and scrappers are already pounding away with a headstart.


That's because he is now facing a target where -regen is meaningless, which is something the damage dealer doesn't rely on. Raw DPS is now the deciding factor and Scrapper or Brute > Corr for Raw DPS.



Its fine, you didn't address my other points above about the math behind damage dealing, so I'm assuming its a topic your either not willing to discuss or simply see no value in.

Its also why you most likely do not value damage dealers - I guess everyone has their built-in biases.

Its also funny how you mention that Stalkers are not less survivable (due to their tools to avoid aggro I assume) and then simultaneously ignore how the same applies to the Brute/Scrapper dichotomy with or without Taunt effects.

The value of a taunt or taunt aura is not binary, "its good" or "its not good".

The value of keeping enemies glued to you is good, the fact that you are also now taking a larger risk as you take more incoming attacks on a team is also true and is not deniable and is therefore a potential negative.



I disagree, I think a handful of Scrapper and Tankers players were living in some kind of doom scenario in their heads where Brutes would suddenly outclass both of them.

We haven't seen this come to pass however.


They were?

Under what circumstances?
How much Fury?
What critical hit percentage?
IOs or SOs?
If IOs, how much +damage slotting from IOs?
Gloom or no Gloom?
Using Assault?
Using BU?
Using Musculature (which the devs knew would be an option)?
Using persistent damage buffs from primary or secondary?
At the mythical perma-damage cap scenario that not even 24 man leagues has brought about?

I look at the Rikti pylon thread and even pre-incarnates I see Scrappers well at the top.

Many of the best scores come from sets that are simply not as effective on Brutes, Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee, Dark Melee, and anything with Shield Defense to name a few.

There is only one combination for Brutes that tops the charts, and that combination will be potentially be more powerful when it gets ported to Scrappers.

It might be the case that Brutes can achieve parity on sets that both have top end potential as well as not relying on persistent damage bonuses to achieve it (i.e. no Power Siphon or no perma-soul drain), so Katana for example.

Perhaps Brutes even achieve damage parity on just SOs and no incarnate boosts, I don't know personally if this is true or not.


Otherwise my own attempts to see how close a Brute can get by copying a Scrapper build have fallen far short of what the Scrapper versions are capable of. Power combos like DB/Ela (33% in favor of scrapper) DM/SD (about 20% in favor of the Scrapper) for example. This is with equivalent builds, equivalent slotting, all the trimmings.

The Brutes advantage is 12% HP all of the time, and a situational/powerset dependent resistance advantage. Its a practically non-existent advantage for Defense sets.

And its an advantage for other sets in a way that makes the overall advantage minimal (for example, having 90% resistance to Fire damage when Fire damage is rarely encountered).

Invuln, WP and Ela do make out well overall, and are, IMO, in the sweetspot for Brute mitigation performance.



Build it, test it, prove it.

Big claims are fun to make, please show us your no temp/no insp Stalker results on a pylon. This should be no problem, since you assert they do not have less survivability than a Scrapper.

You can even do it for free on the beta server.

Getting a number of tools that are of generally lower value in the typical game play scenario does not suddenly give them parity.

I agree with everything that you said, my use of the term leech wasn't meant to be negative in connotation, so I should have chosen a better word.

In addition to all of your points, a damage dealer does exactly that. It is the one thing they are focused on, unlike buffers/debuffers that often need to reapply debuffs/buffs, etc.

There is a tipping point where raw dps becomes very valuable, it just appears that you seem biased against it or do not value it.

I also have a very hard time believing that your Bots/Traps brings the same level of value to the Lambda split phase as any well built Brute or Scrapper would do.


For someone who has a lengthy write up on the value of the softcap and all of the numbers behind it, as well as a numbers based breakdown on the survivability of your bots/traps in this thread, I find the phrase "I know it's plenty" without any math or actual testing behind it to be funny to come from the same person.


It would be as if someone was posting adamantly about how good their survivability is "because I don't die alot" without actually knowing their defense numbers and having never once opened their combat info window to check.


This is something that came up in a thread on WS as well Dechs, you seem quite willing to extoll the virtues of certain builds but then when it comes time to actually show what the real DPS capabilities of said combo are, you simply brush it off or refuse to bring real numbers to the table to back up your opinion.


How can you know how good something is at dealing damage if you've never bothered to check?

I would think that someone who seems to enjoy the math in the game so much would actually be interested in this.

I think the part you are missing is that a damage dealer AT functions like a leech in any scenario where they are teamed with a buffer/debuffer.

The Bots/Traps can do amazing things on its own, of that we all know.

However, RAW DPS gets magnified by those debuffs you're bringing to the table - and the top end damage dealers most likely have much greater RAW DPS than your Bots/Traps does.

The simplest way to test this is to do two runs against a pylon, one with your -res and -regen applied to the Pylon and one without.

At that point you will have your raw dps contribution and you can then compare it to top end damage dealers to see just how far ahead they may (or perhaps may not) be with the mindset that whatever -res and -regen you bring to the table, they get to leech off of and magnify their already incredible DPS.

I want my keyboard to sound like I have 20 seconds to type the Gettysburg Address from start to finish with a gun pointed at my head if I fail.

This game is a lot slower than that.

Time requires a lot of active use, so my first choice would be a set that does not incur redraw.

Time has an AoE slow patch, not too unlike Tar patch, so a primary with a Rain type of power will be able to go to town without enemies fleeing.

Outside of endurance concerns my first choice would be (and will be) Fire Blast.

Fair enough.

I have only 10 "all around" T3 (about 5 of them) or T4 (the other 5) incarnate characters at this point but only 4 of them have alternate Destiny powers.

Those would be my main characters I suppose, and I find each of them can make good use of 1 or 2 Destinies depending on the TF/Trial they are about to do.

For example, on my Corrs I swap out of Clarion for Rebirth for KIR, simply because Rebirth is the better support choice for that particular trial.

My view point is that Destiny is the game changer, it is the one Incarnate power that helps your entire league and stacking specific Destiny powers against specific encounters is huge. I even think that is part of the design decision for the Devs as we have seen that KIR favors reibrth and I think there will be more of this to come.



I just size up whatever TF/Trial I'm about to do and decide which one is the most useful for myself & my team/league before starting.



As above, I plan ahead well before whatever I'm starting.

The tanker AT only has 1 more tool to control aggro by default.

The other tool, Taunt, you skipped it on your Brute and denied yourself a valuable tool for teaming (and debuffing some pesky ranged enemies).



Greater survival is often irrelevant if you already have a Tanker or Brute there.

Greater survival is also put at risk more often simply by having those taunt auras without the Tanker's level of mitigation.

Higher resistance caps are a benefit, but outside of secondaries that specialize (Invuln, Ela, FA), Brutes don't usually fare much better than Scrappers even with buffs from team mates (Exotics for WP, SD, All of SR's Resistances, EA, etc).



On SOs? Maybe.

For IO builds, there are several scrapper primaries and builds that brutes can not even come close to if they were capable of the old 90% Fury.

DB, KM, DM, anything with a shield for example. X/SD Builds for example see Scrappers easily ahead of Brutes by 15-30% DPS, with no equivalent gain in survivability for the Brute (12% extra HP).

Even Claws running the absolute top chain works out for the Scrapper.


This is your bias against the Brute AT really.

Which is pretty bizarre considering you are a take all comers, any build ok type of player.

You basically feel that Brutes are worthless for holding aggro, when the truth is that a dedicated Brute focused on eating aggro will outstrip the Tanker's ability to generate threat every single time.

It's also a silly position to hold since Brutes have been holding aggro in various degrees, including the old "top end" content like the LRSF.


That's a let down for me as a group leader, because when I'm looking for aggro control I look for Brutes or Tankers without discriminating.


So then by your definition Brutes have no purpose, since Tankers have better mitigation and gauntlet, and Scrappers deal better damage in many circumstances.

That's an artificial limitation you're placing on the AT due to what I imagine is a preference for a "specialist".


It's fine if you prefer playing a specialist but ultimately that is a self imposed artificial limitation.

A Brute is not a specialist like a Tanker, they are a Hybrid.

Selecting only one aspect of their capabilities limits the full potential of the AT.

The effectiveness of the Brute AT as a hybrid can be summed up with the idea of "enough".

A well built and well played Brute has "enough" mitigation, "enough" damage dealing capability and "enough" threat generation potential to cover all three areas very well.

As an aside, Tankers in general may have better overall AoE threat generation regardless of primary due to Gauntlet's AoE effect, but the lack of AoE Gauntlet can be minimized on a Brute with at least 1 solid AoE attack - in addition, against a single hard target (assuming equivalent powersets & taunt) the Brute will generate greater threat against that ST than the Tanker will.




And lastly, if you are not building and playing your Brute to hold as much (or enough, as it were) aggro as possible - then you would most likely be better off with a Scrapper.

Surround yourself with L53-54 Rikti.

My thought process is that you don't need to choose.

I know its stating the obvious, but you can have multiple Incarnate powers for a single slot.

When no one has an answer for you it means they most likely haven't worked it out themselves, that's your cue to boot excel and give it a shot.

Selfish Solo Reasons:

1. Lore pets juiced up on +damage bonuses can get even more ridiculous than they already are.
2. They also (the boss pet mostly) get a little extra survivability from the regen.

No argument there, but its still less than the gap of 70% vs 90%.

Even on SOs with Cardiac T4, the Brute can get to 77% closing the gap some.

At the extreme end a Brute could also slot the 3% Shield Wall for a Solid 80% closing the gap a bit more.

However, the Tanker still wins by a large margin on exotics.



I edited it a bit for a bit of finer detail.

An AoE focused brute can easily generate a ton of threat, while a ST focused Brute without taunt will be very limited to whatever can fit in their aura or they attack with their ST attacks.


I think being compared at the damage caps skews things, its not a very common occurrence.

On top IO builds, using the power combinations or powersets with persistent +damage bonuses, I think Scrappers are out damaging Brutes by at least 15-25% or more. My own testing with DB/Ela for example gave me a result of 260 DPS, where Microcosm scored 345 DPS, the builds are identical. That's an advantage of about 33% in the Scrapper's favor.

I generally choose a secondary that will allow me to mitigate damage in some fashion.

I think I could be swayed to go with ranged defense on secondaries that don't provide this or have it in strong enough doses to compensate.

It was also done with 5% critical hits and with no top end build slotting factored in.

Both of which showed poorer numbers from scrappers than they are actually capable of on many powersets (not all).

Yes.

Brute DB can not touch the Scrapper's performance.