Sarrate

You have good taste; that's a great stout.

I pretty much agree with this 100%, especially the highlighted section. Of course, this also means I have a very hard time getting into sets without significant resistance... especially since extra defense keeps getting easier to obtain.

I know you hate the power with a passion, but consistent use of a well slotted Taunt will swamp other sets inherent threat generation. Besides, Tankers essentially need it to hold aggro off Brutes and Invuln/Shield Scrappers anyways, the stronger auras really doesn't mean much when push comes to shove.

Really, the biggest rough spot is early leveling because:
a) taunt durations scale with level, so they're fairly short compared to lvl50
b) lack of slots, so Taunt's duration/recharge won't be as long/fast as it is at lvl50 (esp when factoring in IOs)

Yep. While a strong build helps, knowledge (enemy abilities, debuffs, etc) and good play (not standing in bad things, monitoring combat attributes, etc) makes a big difference.

I can't help but wonder if your view on Brutes would be dramatically different if you did take Taunt. I suspect it would. Mathematically**, I can't see any reason why a Tanker could produce more threat than a similarly slotted Brute. They have the same threat mod, the same taunt durations (Taunt, auras, and single target Gauntlet), and deal more damage. If the Brute and Tanker are fighting for aggro on the same target, then Bruising would boost the Brute's damage/threat generation more-so than it would the Tanker.

The only wild-card is how strong the effect of Gauntlet's AoE would be, but I think it gets lost in the noise - especially since its radius is non-standard and can be borderline ridiculous in some cases. (Scorch has a radius of *4*. Quick Strike and Jab have a radius of *3*.)


** I say mathematically because I haven't built a Brute to tank as of yet. I only have one lvl50 Brute, and while I'm alright at designing builds, I really don't enjoy the process of actually assembling them.

And their resistance is even across the board.

Touche.

To be fair, Ice Armor does have some really nice features. For example, Energy Absorption is a great power. The slow resistance is second to none. For all my gripes, I really like Hibernate. It's unique and has a lot off potential applications. It can be used to recover health or end. Hibernate can be used to let debuffs (such as def debuffs) fall off. It can also be used to soak heavy damage while invulnerable (and in conjunction with Taunt, keep tanking as well).

The combination of long nophase timer (done mainly for PvP reasons, iirc) in conjunction with no inherent res sours it for me.

I have an Ice/SS Tanker who stalled in the mid-40s. (Yes, that's pre-heavy IO investment and pre-Incarnate.)

The reason she stalled was because the one thing I think Tankers should be good at - surviving burst damage, she wasn't. I think it's the antithesis of tanking to get unlucky the with RNG and be plastered. That may work for Scrappers or (possibly) Brutes, but that doesn't fly with Tankers - especially when the times you want them most are the times burst damage tend to be heaviest. Hibernate is a good panic button if the burst doesn't kill you, but it's also limited to once every two minutes due to the nophase period. (It really rankles me that Scrappers have access to it and the nophase timer is the same on all ATs.)

Chilling Embrace is a great power, no doubt, but against AVs the -rech is heavily resisted, and the dmg debuff is effected by enemy resistance and the purple patch (and AVs tend to be up-level), so not as strong when you'll likely need it most.

The other thing that really did Ice in for me is the fact that defense is cheap. There are sets with little to no inherent defense that are being softcapped (Regen, Elec, etc) while Ice cannot do the same with resistance.


I want to like Ice Armor (like many sets), but it has some severe deficencies that I find hard to overlook (from a performance standpoint). As for whether I'd play EA or Ice, they both tend to has the same issue.

Brutes deal more damage at 6.5% Fury (without counting Bruising for the Tank) and at ~27.3% with.

Iirc, it's because the Radial T4s have a 10m recharge instead of a 15m recharge. The damage pets have the same uptime for both, but it's for people who wanted to be able to summon them more frequently. (I very well could be misremembering.)

Know what happens when creating encounters that "follow all the rules"? The LRSF and STF. Try to remember them for what they were at the time, not what they are now after IOs, Incarnates, etc.

In order for the content to be challenging to players with IOs, Incarnate abilities, level shifts, and multiple teams (and all those fun force multipliers) the encounters would have to be even more extreme than in the STF/LRSF. That would make it harder for teams that don't min/max than if there is "cheating" (which makes things harder for min/maxers since they just power through / ignore mechanics).


[edit: Don't get me wrong, I liked the STF, even at the time - I'm just trying to demonstrate what would happen in terms of damage/tohit getting ridiculous.]

You're making a critical misinterpretation of taunt's mechanics. The threat multiplication is not a binary on/off x1000, it's a x1000 per second of the longest remaining taunt. Yes, Gauntlet and aggro auras pulse a 13.5s (on average, reduced by the purple patch, etc), or a 13,500x multiplier. On the flip side, Taunt places a 41,000x multiplier, or if it's well slotted, ~81,000x. That is a huge difference in magnitude. And when you're dealing with other ATs with taunt auras (specifically Brutes and Invuln/Shield Scrappers), you'll want/need that extra taunt duration.

Remember, the taunt duration on auras isn't different on Scrappers or Brutes, but they deal more damage, leading to higher threat generation. (If the Brute has Taunt, which is also the same duration as it is for Tankers, then Game Over, Brute wins.)

Ice has one thing that make its auras more potent than most: a plethora of debuffs. Debuffs act as threat multipliers, damage and resistance one in particular, because they effect 8 stats at once (each damage type), which CE has on top of recharge debuffs and movement slows. Still, I would never count on that and give up my strongest threat generating tool. I've played Tauntless tanks (Ice, in fact) before, but after losing aggro and having no recourse to get it back, I picked it up.


[edit: On an unrelated note, it has a range debuff that helps cluster mobs.]

I also has a pretty nasty end drain, too. Yeah, -recovery and -end. That power is the devil.

Same deal with on the survivability side with:
* Invuln (more hp, and they can have perma 85%+ s/l res, Unstoppable, note the def resistance is identical for all 3 ATs, Tankers included)
* Electric Armor (90% energy, Power Surge, stronger heal/regen)
* Fiery Aura (90% fire, stronger heal)
* WP (It looks like WP Brutes can hit ~81% s/l before IOs/Incarnate abilities with SoW up)
* Stone Armor (but Scrappers don't have access to that)
(Not mentioning that Fury buffs damage auras, while they cannot crit.)


As I've said before, I think caps are becoming more important than they have been in the past. I think Brutes' 90% res cap is going to raise issues again down the line.


[edit: Of course, Brutes don't get access to Shadow Meld or Hibernate (which I still don't understand why Scrappers got).]

My guess is the buff is set to "not stack from same user." When this happens, the game removes the first buff before reapplying it again - causing it to momentarily drop.

Remember when the devs tried to make CM and similar powers not self stack? They ended up reverting that because reapplying CM could cause squishies to toggle drop. Same thing.

My above calculations are with DOs. With SOs, all you'd need is toggles, passives, CJ, and Steadfast.

(toggle + passive + CJ + weave) * (1 + 3 DOs) = Def
(18.53 + 7.5 + 2.5 5) * (1 + (0.1*3)) = 43.589

To me, it seems like SR Tanks will be the "Golden Fox" of primaries. Starts out very strong, but hits a plateau early. Also, if "Real Numbers" is to be trusted, SR's passive resists have the same value as Brutes/Scrappers.

[edit: Using Schedule A values for defense is pro.]

Don't forget Scrappers would also get Lightning Field, and Energize would heal for more (it's a function of base hp) and regen more (a function of maxhp).
[edit: Brutes with Elec Armor take it to a completely different level: even more hp, 90% energy res, and Power Surge would be 2.5x as potent due to their higher res cap.]

That's how I view it, too. I have a Stalker I want to like, but I can't help look at her and think she'd be better off as a different AT.. which is very annoying.

And AAO would lose its be converted from a scaling damage buff to a 'small', always on damage buff.

(That's how they described Entropic Aura for Stalkers, afterall.)