Spiritchaser

First off, don't get me wrong, my /fire brute would love a stronger healing flames, and I think compared to /dark, Fire deserves a little help.

however, if it's survivability at issue, and this is a thread about survival powers, remember:

It's /EA NOT FIRE that has lower survivability than an I7 SR scrapper, even including hp, in all the damage environments i've ever logged. That's a brute that is more delicate than the least durable scrapper currently in the field.

Fire isn't even close to this fragile.

Aid self you say? try taking it on a /fire. Any trick an EA can pull to increase durability, a /fire can pull as well.

If end drain powers and toys are a concern, I'll agree that EA does better, for now.

I'm fully expecting to change my mind on that once I can use a PP immob with a buffable burn, but I'll just have to see.

Buff EA first, but sure, buff healing flames too.

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because when you inevitably die - again because you are in no way, shape, or form, a Tanker... ...but also find it slightly annoying to have to constantly watch as the Brute flings himself headfirst into each mob group, facilitating concern from the rest of the team.

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Death for my EM EA on relentless arrives about once a night at level 40, this, even on a team with no other player above 37 (admittedly they are very skilled, sometimes frighteningly so). In almost all cases it is not mad circumstance that does me in, but a direct and discernable deficiency in my skill. Most often a silly mistake that I really do know better than to make. If I screw up, I perish. There is nothing wrong with the system in that. I haven't heard any complaints about dieing too much.

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In either case, now that we bring that up, how exactly would my method of Fury generation, not allow you to have your same level of fun?

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Fun is clearly subjective. You may define your ideal, and I'll define mine. You've suggested a fury generation method that you believe will be more fun for you, and which I agree will be better in PVP. I've suggested that I believe that the current fury generation is more fun for me, and have suggested a fix that cannot help but be superior to the current standard in PVP. That is all.

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Here's a secret, you are playing a sup-par tank with a broken Scrapper damage switch already.


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Given a recent check of my hero stats numbers, I average a fury of around 75-80% it's a little tough to tell exactly. On base numbers alone this is superior to scrapper damage when neither of us are running buildup (most of the time) and slightly inferior when both of us are (some of the time)

Factor in that an EM attack chain has a significantly higher BI than a scrapper chain, and I'm not doing broken scrapper damage. I am doing damage that is superior to what any scrapper can do, and with more hitpoints, and with higher max defences (though admittedly with fewer opportunities to play chess, one can only think so fast while maintaining fury)

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Neither would I. You think changing the Fury bar would break the AT? That's Highly ironic considering that myself and many other players right now think that living with a broken and sub=par Fury bar that we have IS breaking our AT.

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Again, this is a PVP conclusion. I doubt that many brutes would draw such a conclusion about PVE play.

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Looks like castle agrees with us too thankfully. You may thank Brutes everywhere that PvP, for fixing your PvE Fury bar, if that's the way you want to look at it; I'm game. If it hadn't have been for Fury's lackluster performance in PvP, and player's inquisitive and questioning manners, our AT might have been perpetually "in the dark" about how the Fury bar actually isn't working as it was intended to.

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I particularly thank Robotech_Master for addressing this issue with _Castle_



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My take on how to improve the viability on Brutes fury in order to balance things for PvP easily and with slight changes?

Firstly, would be to fix the current errors in the Fury tables as currently all fury generation occurs in 2 point increments at 80% and below, as Castle has indicated. And secondly, would be to decrease the time incrimental decrease to the fury bar. IE, from what testing has shown, Fury decreases by larger numerical increments at higher levels. Change this to enable fury to decrease at a level that is reduced from this value.

Once Fury has reached maximum, allow fury to stay at this value slightly longer, but not excessively. That would probably be the easiest way to change it to where it would something other than ignorable results.

As you can see, I am all for fixing the current system. I also stated that if those fixes still did not yeild the amicable results ,we of the Brute community were looking for, that perhaps new directions or an overhaul of current fury mechanics could be examined.

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Sorry if you mistook my intent, I have no issue with this, it sounds great. It is the suggestion that fury be changed to a click that concerns me.

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How do you figure? First, Brutes are not tanks, we don't have near the defensive magnitudes of the Tanker AT. Any comparison there is speculatory at best. Second of all, no one said fury needed to be "augmented" to combat blasters, we're simply saying it needs to be "Fixed" so that the Brute AT can actually do what it was "Intended" to do. And why is it that everyone assumes, no one can have more damage than Blasters? Probably cause that's the way the cookie crumbles. Even a Brute at full fury will still be at minimum, comparible to a blaster for ten seconds of Aim and Build up, and since hardly any fight between the two ATs will last longer than that, what is so advantageous about equal levels of damage on both sides? If its comparible, how is any side able to claim advantage? If anything the Blaster will still be better off with his accuracy boosts. How is including the Tanker AT into any argument about damage a stadard of measure? We already have lower base damage than they do! I'm sure tankers wouldn't be upset in this instance. They have the realm of defense on lockdown already, and we wouldn't be challenging them for it, so how will they look at any improvements to Brutes Fury as "Unfair"?

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Ok, perhaps it is not so obvious. If a brute has a fury bar that responds so quickly, that 6 hits from a blapper (plus your self generated fury during that time) is enough to top it off, then those scaling factors, when applied during a spat with a tank could result in full fury, full time. This is not appropriate, and is a strong argument against increasing the scaling of fury to that level. It is in fact a prime argument for damage-factored fury scaling. I submit that it is not a valid concern. I submit that with the hit and run tactics currently employed against brutes, the same level of fury generation will be appropriate against both opponents.

Engaging most opponents with a full fury bar is very effective. If you wish to test this, I’d suggest you camp in the tunnels to the web. The spiderlings will happily attack you in a harmless but fury filling barrage of tiny attacks. You can loiter around at 90%+ fury until some poor (insert almost any AT here) comes along.


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And while we're at it, since when is the game balanced in one on one engagements? Historically speaking, it never has been, nor has that ever been the attempt or premise for balance.

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I had thought the point of this was to improve PVP balance. Was I mistaken?

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This is the part where I say "You must not have been reading very close because I never said, nor alluded to trying to gain any support for this idea," That's all it was, just an idea I had, and felt like sharing. I didn't create a new topic and try to take polls. I didn't say this was my grand design to save the game and the Brute AT. I simply said "hey this was my idea that i had a while back, what do you think?" Any kind of grand scope or scale here has strictly been on the side of any and all opposition.

How that very unassuming idea merited all the cries of "DOOM!" and "OMG you'll break the AT!", and your comment of "hoping you don't succeed"...I'll never know. Succeed in what? I wasn't trying to succeed in anything for Pete's sakes. Some of you folks act like I was trying to bend Statesman's ear or something. Seriously if you want to show me how bad my idea would be, please do in a sensible way citing specifics, and if it makes more sense to me, then yeah thats great. It's only discussion. There is no petition going around with my name on it. Feel free to end said "anti-Deus's Ideas! crusade". Call off your hounds sir, the game is not a-foot. In fact it was never on the field. He was too busy enjoying his espresso and his new copy of "To reign in Hell" to worry about Doom-cryers haranguing him to death on baseless assumptions. It was never intended to be as serious as you guys obviously mistook it to be.


To Everyone:

Feel free to end all discussion about "Deus's Big-bad Fury Ideas", because that is exactly what I plan to do myself.
You can all feel free to belabor the points all you want to, because I'm not going to anymore as this discussion is well beyond where I even wanted it to go. It was a simple idea. That's it. No reason to work yourself up to aneurism levels over it. That's all, enjoy your day(s).

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I think there is something evident in these cries of DOOM. Perhaps your post and this thread have been effective in establishing something:

Most players really do like fury more or less the way it is.

oh by the way

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He was too busy enjoying his espresso and his new copy of "To reign in Hell"

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have you every read "How to be a villian" or a"A villain’s guide to better living" HIGHLY recommended, non cerebral light reading!

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No more rushing ahead of teammates to get to the next mob group, now we might die a lot less.

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I could not disagree more

You are of course entitled to your vision of what fury should be, but to me the very draw of playing a brute is the need for a relentless, high risk dirge of mayhem.

Throw some basic engagement geometry into the high speed mix, and you have a challenge, throw in target selection, secondary effect application, aggro control and end management, all into a fury speed engagement and you have the potential for some serious artistry. I'm not interested in playing a tank with a scrapper damage switch, I rather prefer things the way they are.

I will grant you that in PVP, Brutes can be at a significant disadvantage. I'll happily concede that your concept will be more effective in PVP than what we now have, but to me, the price is simply not worth paying. The bulk of my playing, and indeed the bulk of all play time in this game is spent in PVE. You can quickly check the populations of zones any time you’re on to establish this.

I would never agree to breaking a wonderful PVE AT for the sake of PVP.

I'm also not in any way convinced that fury needs to be fundamentally changed in order to function in PVP. A simple modification to the amount of fury generated by attacking a player, or being attacked by a player can do very nearly as well.

The obvious argument to this would be that a fury generation rate balanced to combat blasters would necessarily be too high (unfairly so) when measured against tanks. This doesn’t need to be the case. Even as it stands, a skilled melee toon will continuously hit and run against brutes, kiting them all over the map if need be. Such a tactic puts fury generation into the same realm as a ten second blapper drive by. That is, nearly useless with current generation rates, but potentially fair with increased rates.

By all means appeal to the powers that be for a change, but I, for one, seriously hope that you do not succeed.

actually, in a strange way, that's good. It means we probably get to keep those numbers for I7

and those numbers will still be prety solid.

Though I won't be dropping fitness for leadership anytime soon

I agree you're both right on both counts, I"M NOT ADVOCATING DROPPING OVERLOAD lol!

However, right now, I use overload as a way of life, I punch it prety much as soon as it's charged.

I use hasten on auto, not to speed up my attacks, but to shorten the overload cycle.

If the numbers were not reduced, If you really could have 88% mitigation plus passives, plus tough, I don't forsee the need for overload on a regular basis,

Instead I see it as a situational power for AVs, for toggle droppers, and for rampant insanity.

All this said, I'd still keep hasten if I could figure out a way to keep it in there. Dropping the fitness pool might be worth it, but I do like swift...

Oh well, this is prety speculative. We'll get the numbers we get. I just really hope they tell us what they are if they change them...

Ok, just a quick reality check here, but unless I'm out to lunch, these numbers have to be temporary. They have to fall for I7.

Here's why It looks like they'd have to:

Kinetic: 12.75
Cloak: 7.5
CJ: 2.5
Weave: 3.25
Manoeuvers: (not totally sure): 2.5% ??? even if it's lower, I think you still get something odd)

That woud total 28.5 without slots.

Add in some SOs and you get over 44%

With the new I 7 def system, that really would be around 88% damage mitigation...

Even with just CJ and Weave you still get nearly 41% def, that's almost 82% mitigation.

And with Drain, and CP, you'd have the end to pay for all those toggles...

Yes this devotes a lot of slots to defence, quite a lot, but it's not over the top, and you could still make a very destructive toon this way.

As long as you have ET, TF, barrage, EP and brawl you can have fun. You'll have room for lots more than that.

Ok, you probably can't fit in hasten to speed up overload, but WOULD YOU NEED IT?

wow, thanks much, that's great info to have,

and...

YOIKS that's a wicked power. It's arugably the best shield in the set.

I've never skipped it, but I can't imagine skipping it now.

This explains why I feel soooo much squishier when I lower that shield to grab more aggro...

I'm hoping to eventually try them all. Here are the one's I've kept so far...

EM/EA (40) great soloability, stealth, one shot out of nowhere kills, ghosting, OVERLOAD. This guy is hands down my favourite toon, but there's no content left, and I'm not too interested in infamy farming. If I could grab a good group for some of those SFs I missed...

EM/Fire (35) My first brute, average solo, average in a team, Learned the ropes playing her, she's probably stalled at 35 untill they do something about the final powers in /Fire, which may be forever. Might freshen her up with a respec and try something new if there's a free one in I7.

SS/Dark (30) Great fun with rage, hate the all smashing damage against resistant opponents but you can't have everything. Rage+COF is fun in PVP so far, If I respec him for PVE at 38 I'll trade COF for OG. I think COF has as much place in pve as OG has in PVP (some but not lots). Can't stand the graphics of some of the auras, but as long as I stick with the basics, the rage glow still lets me see my costume well enough. Easily the best looking /Dark I've ever made.

Dark/Energy, (22) Not a bad set, And I liked him for a while, but he's been eclipsed by my ther brutes. He was supposed to be my designated AV killer, but he just never really got rolling. Partly this is because of performance, partly because with Warburg rockets EM/EA handles AVs exceptionally well, and partly because Energy Cloak didn't work well with his costume, I could change that, but feel no great need to do so... I see the giant axe looming as Elec brutes draw near...

EM/Inv (20 and rising fast) kind of a concept build and my current favourite. I'm building her up as a quasi-regen for the hell of it. I'll use Aid self for psi/ele/en plus dull pain of course. With Dull Pain Up, I should give my /Dark a run for his money when it comes to Psi survival. I'll also max slotting in health purly for concept, and I plan to throw in 2 SO endredux everywhere to compensate for the lack of quick-recovery. We'll see how it works. Accuracy or Damage is going to have to suffer, there just isn't room for everything I want. I'm currently experiencing deep psychological torment as to whether I should plan on a respec for barrage, which I love the look of, or stick with AS, which I love the performance of. Oh the choices...

Many Many deleated or lower level alts below 20... Dark/Fire, SS/EA, SS/Fire, Dark/Dark...

Still havn't rolled a single stoner.

All in good time.

Thanks much!

shouldn't be a problem with any computer available since the mid 90's

This problem strikes me as something solved more easily by iteration than analytically.

Model a set of defenses, resists, regeneration.

Set a series of damage types and magnitudes occurring at fixed intervals, with fixed to-hits. For argument's sake, even 10 actors would be reasonably easy to arrange.

run it through a loop 1000 times

Output a text file of the lifespans.

Yes this is brute force, but it could be relatively flexible.

For starters, just one damage type, one resistance type and one fixed regen rate could all be done in an excel macro.

If I get really possessed, I'll take a stab at it this weekend,

If you have any suggestions or pointers please, please throw them out here before then.

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For the defense case, I have to be hit 10 (or more) out of 20 times. The chance of that happening is around 1 in 100, which is an astounding 10,000 times more likely than the resistance case.

So, if you the question you are asking is "what is the average damage taken?" 25% defense is the same as 50% resistance. However, if the question you ask is "how likely am I to die?" then 25% defense is no where near as good as 50% resistance.

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There is also a flip side to all of this.

Yes, the def set is more likely to perish in normal combat, but it's also more likely to survive in harsh circumstances.

Let's say I get carried away, and charge into a room and aggro two large spawns (no, not me I'd NEVER DO THAT). I turn and run like hell, but everyone gets their one shot off. For argument's sake let's say there are 20 minions (I know, there would be LTs and bosses, but that's going to make the math far too complicated for me) so:

Let's assume that I can only survive if I take 20% of the damage or less. Same sets as above, 25 def, 50 res, no accbuffs, nothing weird.

For the resistance set, I'd need to be hit 8 times or less. The odds of being hit 8 times or less out of 20 with a 50 50 chance of each hit landing are about 25%.

For the defence set, I'd need to be hit 4 times or less. This sounds prety unlikely, but with a .25 chance of each hit landing, the odds are acutally not too bad at all.

The odds of being hit 4 or fewer times out of 20 with a 25% chance of each hit landing are 41%.

You could easily argue that the cost of potentially falling on your face when all should be well, is far greater than the compensation of sometimes surviving a daft mistake.

I completely agree,

I also found while working this out that the circumstances where you do get better survivability out of a def set are relatively few and far between. I had to choose my conditions rather carefully to make this work.

but that compensation IS there.

Actually I was considering the odds of different numbers of successes out of a given number of trils, like the odds of having, say 8 out of 20 minions miss you in an alpha strike.

and I'm far too indolent to do it, but this works prety well:

binomial calculator

I'm not sure but you might find your Markov analysis here...

statistical calculators

Edit: Oh and I forgot to admit, I've never actually heard of a Markov chain before, or if I have, it was over a decade ago and I'm blocking.

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For the defense case, I have to be hit 10 (or more) out of 20 times. The chance of that happening is around 1 in 100, which is an astounding 10,000 times more likely than the resistance case.

So, if you the question you are asking is "what is the average damage taken?" 25% defense is the same as 50% resistance. However, if the question you ask is "how likely am I to die?" then 25% defense is no where near as good as 50% resistance.

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You're going to drag us all through binomial theory aren't you.

truly thou art evil!

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I'm not convinced that the average to hit really is 50. I think it's probably higher,

I think because of that 1 def probably = 1.6-1.7 res or something similar

I think that even so, the def values for EA might start to look very good after I7...

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you're right. right now, the tohit for minions is 50, Lieuts is about 60, Bosses about 66.

however the defense change puts them all at 50tohit and instead gives them acc bonuses.

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Even with minions, and not regarding LTs or bosses, I think weapon sets and to hit bonuses are fairly prevalent. Consider if every drawn weapon set has +5%, and that's just to start.

I think the average minion to hit is a fair way from 50 if this is considered. I'm going to guess the average is at least 55, probably more.

That said, this obviously depends on what you're fighting.

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Many things have accuracy bonuses, but so long as they are accuracy bonuses and not to-hit bonuses, it doesn't affect the balance between defense and resistance.

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Fair enough, I stand corrected.

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I'm not convinced that the average to hit really is 50. I think it's probably higher,

I think because of that 1 def probably = 1.6-1.7 res or something similar

I think that even so, the def values for EA might start to look very good after I7...

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you're right. right now, the tohit for minions is 50, Lieuts is about 60, Bosses about 66.

however the defense change puts them all at 50tohit and instead gives them acc bonuses.

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Even with minions, and not regarding LTs or bosses, I think weapon sets and to hit bonuses are fairly prevalent. Consider if every drawn weapon set has +5%, and that's just to start.

I think the average minion to hit is a fair way from 50 if this is considered. I'm going to guess the average is at least 55, probably more.

That said, this obviously depends on what you're fighting.

I'm not convinced that the average to hit really is 50. I think it's probably higher,

I think because of that 1 def probably = 1.6-1.7 res or something similar

I think that even so, the def values for EA might start to look very good after I7...

Isn't that plus unright?
I thought one def = 2 res

a passive power with 7.5 res would be a passive power with 3.75 def

Or am I intruding on your duckspeak?

Incidentally, if the passives were def, I'd double plus consider grabbing them.

This is why I did a control test as well. There's no need to worry about accuracy data for the opponent that way. I'd reccommend that others do the same.

I think in general it's better to do the control, since we probably don't know how reliable or up to date any such data is going to be.

For the record, I can state that as of last night, the accuracy bonus for a council flamethrower was about 10% or so.

Thanks, I hadn't looked at that.

Those numbers look good, even with a modest amount of +acc floating around,

So a relevant question might be, what are the real to hit chances of most typical mobs?

50 is probably too low. Is 55 a good baseline? 60?

If every drawn weapon is +5, and some sets get even more...

Remember, this is just flame. I don't have any SL numbers, which are the most important.

Well, no data on the other shields yet, and I'll be running EC tonight against another council flamer, as long as things go well. I'll probably stop for a few days after that, I do want to try the pocket D quests while I can.

Just to summarize, Yes, I think we're going to find that even after I7, ACC bonuses are going to be as much of a problem as they are now.

Certainly in the above test, they are a huge problem.

First off lets use the exact numbers I got,

With Shield
Shots 2845
hits 1026

Without shield
Shots 2668
hits 1649


Those are test accuracies of 36 and 61.8 respectively ( I'll use what I'm guessing the true numbers are next)

This would imply a def of 25.8. The power shield was socketed with 3SOs, 2 at +1, 1 at even. The enhancement page indicated a bonus of 56.3.

This would indicate a base defence of 16.5,

I'm going to take a guess and say the true numbers might actually be 35% and 60%, for a def of 25. Why? I just like round numbers, and I think these are within a reasonable statistical margin.

This guess would indicate a base def of 15.99, lets say 16. I'd even caution that a value as low as 15 can't be ruled out by this data, the tests were just too short. BUT

EDIT see end for correct numbers

What I first wrote was:
Either 15 or 16.5, these numbers sound EXCELLENT if nothing else is considered. Yet even with 3 SOs, this results in a damage reduction of only 28% against an even con minion. Bosses will only be worse.


We don't know exactly how I7 will work, but from what little has been surmised, I'm not sure that I7 will compensate for this weakness.

EDIT, however:

forgot to calculate something important here.

The actual damage reduction would't be 28%, it would be much higher. It would be 1- .36/.618.

Very silly of me. Sigh

this gives about 42% damage reduction which is actually reasonable.

ok, I ran the no shield test last night.

Same council vertex cor leonis fire (well, same type of minion, something unfortunate happened to the last one)

2668 shots
1649 hits with no shield

Thats a wicked 61.8% accuracy from an even con minion, although I'm sure that with a reltively small sample (under 3000 shots) it could easily be 60% I may actually have time to figure out the probablility of that, on the weekend, but no promises. I havn't done stats in 12 years.

perhaps the apparant def of 14 that I saw in my first test is closer to 25.

Certainly the fully socketed value is much higher than the minimal value I measured last night, but does that really help?

Just about everyone has a drawn weapon, most of these have an additional accuracy bonus. A def of 30 may translate into something closer to 20-25 in a game where every mob has a 5-10% bonus.

Add this to a modification for +2s

That's some seriously soft protection.

Actually I made a point of murdering the other mobs for fear of some flakey patrol thing happening, however, I only did the one floor I was on.

That said, I don't really like these numbers. They just seem wrong, but here goes:

I searched for the text
FX OneShot 1729 WEAPONFX/GUNFIRE_FLAMETHROWER_MEDIUM.FX 0

with wildcards after OneShot, for that number, highlighted, copied, and wordcounted. I came up with 2845 shots fired.

I then looked for the dot ticks.

Each and every hit had exactly messages. No variation in the 20 random samples I checked,

These wereall inticated by:
floatdmg 1 13 ""

I counted these with wordcount and got exactly 8208 dot tics.

divide by 8 and we get exactly 1026 hits (if it hadn't divided evenly by 8, I would have been concerned).

This is with my shield on, and that shield has 2 +1 SOs and 1 even SO, that should add about 56.3% more than base according to my enhancement sheet

And with that, he's getting about 36% hits.

No wonder this feels like the squishiest brute I've ever played.

Now, all this said, I can't get a def number from this untill I've done a test with no shield, to figure out his base acc, but consider:


EA shields may be very poor

or

The numbers are not too bad, but there are so many acc bonuses in the game that the reality is far worse than those numbers suggest.

Great, thanks. I'll work with that. Those DOTs make the file rather large...

Just as I ran out the door this morning, I noticed the telltale red letters in my chat box that informed me of impending server maintenance, so my second test (with no shield) may be somewhat too short. If so, I'll need to re run that tonight. sigh.

Still, I'm sure I'll have plenty to do with that one file.