Sarrate

Think about what you're saying here, for just a moment...

You're saying a Brute (who has less survivability than a Tanker) should not be allowing the Tanker (who has the best survivability) to get into the mob first (ie: take the alpha strike when the mobs are the most dangerous).

Further, you're saying that a Tanker should never Taunt off a Brute - but if a Brute takes the alpha strike, they'll have up to 17 mobs attacking them. Unless the spawn is 34 mobs or more, the Brute will have more aggro than the Tanker (since he shouldn't Taunt off the Brute).

This boils down to the Tanker wasting their survivability so the Brute can fuel Fury and only using their aggro generation to keep squishies safe (a job Brutes can't lower themselves to).


I'm being a bit melodramatic above (and I can understand why a Brute wants to do those things), but there is a big problem there. One of my biggest pet peeves with Brutes (and Scrapper with taunt auras) is threat generation. They have the same threat mod, taunt mod (ie: duration), taunt mags (largely irrelevant), and single target Gauntlet while dealing more damage (damage is a large component of threat calculations). If a Brute wants aggro (ie: uses Taunt), there is not a damn thing a Tanker can do about it.

I'm not saying Tankers should just sneeze and hold aggro. I don't care if they have to work for it. But being 100% incapable of holding it is completely borked.

I prefer Cold over FF. The shields are the same strength, but Cold also brings some sick debuffs to the table as well. (Cold is my all around favorite set to be teamed with.)

Keep in mind that WP doesn't tout strong def resistance, so cascading def failure can be problematic - even if you're softcapped. Cold provides a nice buffer to prevent that from happening. The one place I don't have a preference of Cold vs Sonic is the ITF. I'm practically immortal against Cims with 90% s/l res.

Ahah, I misunderstood then. Sorry 'bout that.

Gristlebone, sorry I respond earlier, but this works for me.

You confuse me sometimes, New Dawn. I don't think the tactic you're describing is a very useful tool to base the strength of a set. After all, you wouldn't even be using Dark Armor (or any Tanker primary) at that point... just one power from a Tanker secondary and one pool power.

The devs did away with the unresistible nonsense in PvP back in I13. Scrapper crits are resistible, Defender debuffs are resistible, etc.

Hmm, I've never tanked Hamidon before - one of the few foes that has eluded me. I have ~3160hp and ~700% regen and ~90 hp/sec with 1 target and a well slotted Taunt, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Outside of the LGTF, I don't have any experience with the "real" Hamidon, so any information (strategy, number of EoEs to bring, how long you're expecting it to take, etc) would be helpful.


Btw, you said 5pm, what timezone? EST?

Actually, at one point, enemies with defense could cause all kinds of problems for multi-typed attacks. You see, right now the game uses your highest defense against a given attack. So, if your opponent had 30% melee, 20% neg energy and 10% neg smashing defense, Shadow Punch would be computed against the 30% melee def. That didn't always be the case.

I forgot exactly when it was changed, but it used to be that those defenses stacked. So instead of going against 30% melee def, it would've been computed against 60% def (30 + 20 + 10). For comparison, a pure smashing attack would only be pitted against 40% def (30 + 10).

Again, I forgot when that was changed, but it was a loong time ago.


... not saying that people trusting their feeling and not statistics hasn't been a problem, mind you.

Just to be clear, this particular proc can stack 5 times, but procs stacking is not a universal IO feature. Achilles' Hell, for example, does not stack at all.

He's referring to Positron's blog post about buffing / nerfing. As you went on to state, he was grossly misinterpreting what either Positron said, or how forum goers presented Positron's viewpoint.

It'd be really nice if we could add in extra line breaks to separate data a bit more. In the heat of combat, trying to find a particular attribute in the middle of the window can be a bit annoying. So instead of looking like this:

It could look something like this:


(I bring it up because monitoring more than 10 would make finding data in the middle worse.)

That's one way to think about. On the other hand, you don't need to run full bore all the time, either. If you're aware that you can outstrip your recovery (and don't want to use insps, etc), then you don't need to open up all the way. If you want/need that some extra oomf, it's nice to have in reserve.

Not to mention that some powers have greater DPE than others. Incinerate, for example, is the highest DPE attack you have access to. Maximizing its usage vs other attacks would save you endurance (as long as you're not wasting the dot with followup attacks, of course).

If you're not adverse to getting into the mechanics, I'd suggest reading ParagonWiki's article on Threat. Damage alone won't be besting your threat generation. Damage and taunt effects (like Shield / Against All Odds) will.

-edit-
Additional reading:
ParagonWiki article on Taunt (Status Effect)
Castle's initial post explaining threat (You should be able to read more of his posts from that thread, too.)

Pretty much this. A Shield Scrapper is one of the highest threat generating combinations in CoH.

By the way, similar to Shield Scrappers, Brutes generate more threat than Tankers, too.

This is true, however, holding aggro off a Shield Scrapper is much easier than taking it from them. If the Tanker gets into the group first and is spamming Taunt and attacks they can hold aggro. If the Tanker gets into the group second and plays exactly the same, it's much harder for him to establish aggro since he first has to double what the Scrapper has already accumulated.

---

Situations like this are one reason I consider Taunt mandatory these days for holding aggro. Threat generation can be pretty easy (vs Blasters, Defenders, Dominators, etc) or hard (Shield/Invuln Scrappers, Brutes) unless you have in depth understanding of threat mechanics - which isn't explained anywhere in game. The contrast between these situations is very jarring for people. - as evidence the OP thinking the mechanic was broken. It's why I don't think Brutes or Scrappers should have access to taunt effects that are near Tanker potency. If anything, Brute/Scrappers should be ~70% or less the duration of Tankers.

(Tanker damage mod is ~71.11% of a Scrapper, 67.72% with 5% crit chance, 64.64% with a 10% crit chance. Compared to a Brute with 75% Fury, Tanker damage is 60.29% of theirs.)

Yeah, "back in the day" Impale had an 80ft range. I forgot when it was changed, but I'd guess in the I6-I9 time frame, if not further back.

She may win every argument, but that doesn't mean she's right.


Congrats you two! (Man, I could have sworn I posted that already..)

The reason I brought it up was to make sure it was clear that the damage buff (even if mathematically equivalent to Corruptor damage with just SOs) still isn't the same. When I wrote it, it was mostly for things like Aim.

Of course, I completely forgot the fact Corruptor's damage buff mod was even lower than Defenders. So despite having the base damage advantage, they have a lower buff, which blunts the majority of my point. :P

Also, people over the years have suggested raising their damage mod, which would have had boosted performance universally, instead of in a narrow window like current Vigilance.


But yeah, I agree, they chose an interesting stopping point for Defenders.