IronJelly

What you are all forgetting in this thread is how tanking works in comic books.

The person wanting the aggro has to insult or in some way get the enemy offended by his presence, so that the enemy just doesn't care about the squishy guy nearby.

The solution here is to tie the taunt power, and a few other ones to your battle-cry, and then have lame ones generate less threat.


In a bit more seriousness, I would like to see something a bit more... dynamic. What I have in mind is this (yes, it's speculation and won't ever happen):

Threat can be generated by anything a player does, not by what they look like or their AT, though naturally, tankers would generate more or something. The reason here is that we fight enough enemies that _wouldn't_ care if you're wearing armor while i'm in cloth. I imagine zombies (for example) can't tell the difference. The enemies simply become focused on whatever upset them: a buff, a debuff, damage, someone shouting, whatever. The lower their health, the harder it is to get them to change targets, however, their blind anger doesn't lend them so well to actually hitting their intended target. Basically, if they fire at you, and the tanker gets between you and the attack, the tanker can take the hit. This would probably just be automatic for the most part, and would work on melee any time he's near you.

The result: More variable threat, and more dynamic tanking in a way that doesn't just revolve around numbers. The tank can tank by actively trying to move near attacking enemies to intercept them, and the enemies can target whoever they think is the threat, based on what they've done.


Yeah, never gonna happen.

1) How would you rate Brute primaries?
-Depends on a few things. Do you prefer slow attacks that hit like a train, or fast attacks that hit quickly and continuously for less damage per hit. Since fury seems to be about 1/3rd your attacks, and 2/3rds enemy attacks at you, your fury isn't going to be too much worse either way once you have a good attack chain.

I have at least tried all the brute primaries, and my favorites (pre level 20) are in order:
-Dual Blades (beware though, you need to take most of the attacks from the set due to the combos)
-Stone Melee (slow, end heavy, massive hits are fun)
- Electric Melee (a full chain in 3 moves so i can take my defenses? yes please.)


2) Do you think Brute primaries are slow? Or fast? Or somewhere between? Regarding playability (blasters are fast, controllers are slow).
-Fast. They have to be to keep their fury up. I find that my brutes need more active playing than my blasters, so they feel faster. The blaster, I can just memorize the shot rotation, and change targets once in a while while watching TV. The brute needs my attention, but it's worth giving it, since I tend to be full of SMASH all the time.

3) What are some of your others thoughts about Brutes.
-This is what the melee sets should all be. Tough + damage = badass. It was stated somewhere once that the Villain ATs were designed for (or just better than) the Hero ATs for soloing, but without sacrificing their indivudual usefulness on teams, and nowhere is that more apparant than on a brute. Solo, it's tough to get your fury bar to full. Your health and your defense aren't terrrible (you're no tanker, but you're not squishy), but on a team, played right, you can carry the team due to your fury.

For soloing tough mobs: Stone Melee/Invuln.

For soloing groups: Anything/Fire. Get healing flames 6 slotted asap with recharge and healing, then grab blazing aura, and you'll never die to minions and lutenants.

I'm not sure what brute primaries have AOEs. Fire has Fire Sword Circle, and Super Strength has one. Electric has some cones. I think Dark has an aoe too, but I don't know off the top of my head.

My EM/SR brute is 23, but not bad so far. I've only tanked regular missions, but I and an electric dominator took out an AV the other day.

It's definitely not a set for those who dislike risks. The fact that the 3 auto powers scale your defense higher as your health is lower means that you have to think a bit differently than other brute sets, and have to be comfortable working while at a risk, since filling your health = getting hit more often.

Overall, I'm trying not to think of my brutes as tanks, but I will be at higher levels attempting to hold aggro in the SFs just to see if I can.

I have been liking Electric Armor on my scrapper.

Energize is really nice (though not at a really low level, i think i picked it up at 24).

For the lower levels though, I would go with fire armor. Healing flames is available early, and is among the best self-heals in the game.

MA/Fire scrapper took healing flames and the damage aura and nothing else from fire until her first respec and did just fine. the damage aura is really nice, and the heal, once slotted, is a significant portion of your health available once a minute.

I would however wait for i19 before starting your scrapper. inherent fitness is going to make the lower levels a lot smoother.

CoH is still the best MMO I have played, despite me not having a 50 yet. I think we will see people return a bit more in a few weeks as the novelty of CO dies off. CO is fun, but it feels like a distraction so far, and I do think I'll be back here a lot more soon. I just rolled an Earth/Earth Dom last night, and it is very cool. Using crystal themed powers is a neat change too. Overall, I think I like this.

I do think that some changes could be made to CoH without breaking it, but if nothing changes, I still would come back. I am excited to see what Going Rogue is bringing too.

I have read a few threads saying CoH is dying, and how hard it is to find teams. In game, there does seem to be some chatter about how dead it is. Just the same, I got lucky to find a teammate, and even as a duo, I had a blast. I just want people to know that I am around while not at work if they want to team (I might be in CO, but I'm not against popping back over here), and to not lose hope.

That is all.

what you said:

I'll toss my own $0.02 in here too. A yellow sword (glowing and/or holy), and Willpower on either a scrapper or a tanker (or a brute if you really wanted to be an evil angel), would probably be the most fitting if you don't want an angel of (something causing other powers to be more fitting).

Though, holding off for Dual Pistols sounds a hell of a lot more badass for an Angel type character.

Just to throw my two cents in here, I find that accuracy and damage are plenty potent. It depends on the powers I take and what I want to achieve though. Remember that all the enhancements are percentages, and so if I get to where I can use an attack twice in the time it takes you to use it once, unless your one time does twice the damage of one of mine, my damage-per-second count would be higher.

Also, more recharge prevents the chance of using a long recharge power on a mob that dies before it hits and then having to wait to use it again.

Would this mean you could not select enhancement slots? Those are way more important than pool powers. As it stands, I like the idea of decision making, and having people who can have the same AT and powersetm, and still be different. This would end that.

IMO, the incentive for taking the last power in a pool should be that the power is worth taking. If it isn't, maybe it needs to be changed in some way. All of the travel pools suffer this IMO, but certainly the fitness pool doesn't need an added bonus for taking the extra power from it.

+recharge insps would probably be game-breaking, yeah.

what if instead of faster recharge for it's duration, it was an instant maybe 5/10/15% reduction to the time remaining for powers currently recharging when active.

this way, it could be abused a bit, sure, but only until you run out of insp slots. 15% would be enough to get rest back sooner, or your long recharge power a boost, but you would need to use it tactically, since if it is almost recharged, the reduction would be a waste.

I have to ask this:

several of us know the game of which you speak. Are we not actually allowed to speak it's name here?

So, basically the same buffs that you get on leveling up, but in a stays in your insp. bar, one click does all type deal.

I would be all for this provided:
1) there is a limit on how many you can hold
2) can't just be bought. can be dropped or crafted, or bought (probably for lots of inf) at the Black Market
3) comes in only the smallest two sizes. The big ones are a special thing for leveling up, and all of the medium insps would still cause a really nice surge of recovery and power, while not being the nearly get-out-of trouble free card that levling up during a tough fight is.

Otherwise, that sounds pretty good actually.

That makes sense. Enhanced for recharge, I have it up often enough to use it in both situations when I remember. We were just curious when the extra burst of damage is more needed.

Thanks

Just a strange question someone looking over my shoulder while playing asked the other day:

suppose you don't slot build-up, and it has it's default recharge time. This means that it will be available only once in a fight. Should a brute make better use of it...

1) At the beginning of the fight to make up for lack of fury?

2) Mid fight once fury is built up, to do more damage on top of the high fury damage?

A tank will really not be able to compare in damage to a scrapper. That said, I would *Highly* recommend firey aura. It is a damage set, so it's defenses aren't on the top of the chain, but as a tanker, you're already going to have high defenses and high hp. The self heal in that set is fantastic too.

Alternatively, Shield defense has Against All Odds, which will up your damage output a good amount.

As for damage secondary, Super Strength is up there. So is fire melee. Don't expect to out-damage any scrappers or blasters, but those two will help.

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Maybe they should put a trainer and enhancement store in the building - then they would never have to leave.

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This. Provided of course, that broadcasts from inside of it don't leave either.

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Leave the AE building.

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leave. now. this thread was going so well before you showed up with this.

I'll agree with the OP here in that it is frustrating to have people just vanish after a mission, or worse, during it.

However, it is true that lots of people come from games in which, once certain content is done, there isn't a need to remain on the team. I agree, quite rude to leave with no warning, but if they do that, I'll usually just send a tell along thanking them for what help they provided, and keep moving.

I like the axe werebear idea. I like inv more than WP for this concept though. Bears just don't seem like they would have the healing that wp gives. Claws/inv on a brute would be cool too.

I really want chainsaw melee for tankers.

Anyways, the next thing after GR and I16 should be I17, if my super-math powers are right.

...Or a mutant booster. I hope its that.

You can flame me if you want, but I just need to put this here. Nobody wants to hit the sewers in AP anymore. I can't spend two minutes outside in Atlas without being bothered with AE requests. I haven't started a toon in Atlas in a while, but I have to say, I didn't take the complainers seriously until now. While I don't hate AE, or have some self-righteous problem with it, I do think its a bit excessive in its use, since it seems to be to the point where there are no lowbie teams outside of it, and by the time I15 came around, the "new and shiny" status should have been considered worn off.

So I have my own crappy idea: There should be one server with no AE buildings. Just one. Let the people who post here complaining about how AE is ruining the game be directed there. The people that want teams will either find them, or have a server so empty that they realize that the arguments are futile. Either way, one of the largest problems of AE goes away: there won't be people crying about it. Let us go roll our toons somewhere "safe from the AE evil," or whatever the larger complainers currently think of it.

QR

a sacrifice of some sort to summon a really powerful demon would be really cool.

IMO, you should target one of your existing minions, and sacrifice it (and not be able to resummon it until the big guy is gone), as well as taking a significant amount of non bodyguard-shared damage. I like the idea of lowering your overall HP for the time too.

Another idea, what if your special summon is made by violently mashing your current summons into one huge flesh and fire filled conglomeration (think Jabba the Hutt on fire). You sacrifice your pets for this summon, and the more you had, the more faster, healthier, more accurate, and more powerful he is. Kind of like putting all of your eggs into one basket.