TheBruteSquad

The aim of buffing Tankers defensively is to separate them from the other melee ATs. Raising the damage, which I'm fine with, doesn't do this.

Now that Freedom allows you to start on either side with any AT the best thing to do to widen the field is the most extreme:

Put those Stalker fixes in and delete Brutes and Scrappers as ATs.

That way you have an undisputed single target/less durable DPS class and an lower damage, aoe threat generating, high durability tank class.

Just like every other MMO on the planet.

Since that's not going to happen other avenues could be explored, though Tanker is my second favorite AT and Bruising was icing on the already delicious cake in my opinion.

That's a problem with the game, not the Tanker.

What I'd like to see? A -Damage penalty on targets under the effect of Taunt or Gauntlet. That way you're preventing damage to the team regardless of what else is going on. It's unique, it's thematic, and it's desirable at all levels of play (except a few cheaty incarnate trial powers than ignore resistance). It would even bolster up the resistance based sets.

While I agree with stronger taunt effects on Tankers (see my earlier post in this very thread), this is a faulty example of why it needs to be done.

Being a Tanker doesn't automatically make you run to the far side of an AV to put its back to the team. That's a player thing, not an AT thing. A Tanker could just as easily decide to stay team side. In fact most I've played with do.

Plus the team could move behind the AV as easily as the brute or tanker could. If your hypothetical team wiped because the brute stole aggro they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Also if the Tanker is using Taunt and the Brute isn't the brute won't steal aggro. He just won't. In my experience, anyways. Even on a BAF a Taunt will get Siege or Nightstar to turn to me the instant I hit taunt, no matter what that SS/Fire brute was doing to them. I've never seen it not in dozens of runs - it's how I stop people with two rings who refuse to hop away from getting the team sequestered. Once again if the Brute was using taunt and turning the AV towards the team that's a player problem.

Issue 22.

That is exactly what it means. Kinetics buffs are indeed already imbalanced... but they're imbalanced around the fact that other buff/debuffs sets are equally imbalanced and desirable. Allowing any kind of mixing and matching leads *exactly* to the grab one or two powers of a set to eliminate the need for the rest of the set mentality I described earlier.

Even with your arbitrary rules, which seem to mostly say "You can mix attack sets, that's it", you will still run into the "Rage for EVERYONE" of my earlier post. Even with your max value. It's not about stacking Rage and Build up for ultimate damage - it's about making rage accessible to sets that aren't balanced around its presence, like superstrength is. If you want to see what happens when Rage is allowed off its leash you have to look no further than the Brute forums and the multitude of SS/Fire threads. What makes the combo tick is Rage beefing up Burn, and Fiery Embrace beefing up Footstomp.

And they both use entirely different mechanics to do so, so your max value wouldn't matter UNLESS it was set lower than the buff from either.

That's the real trick about this kind of thing. It's really not about stacking like bonuses. Force Field Generator + Ice Domination's shields = nice. Force Field Generator + Empathy's healing = nobody ever plays a Defender empath again.

The more exclusions you have to make for the sake of balance the less desirable the end product becomes. Not (just) because of the way it clamps down on min/max power but simply for a truth of game design:

Players REALLY hate being told what they can and can't take.

I still know people who are angry, yes angry, that Katana and Claws didn't get one handed animations so they can be paired with Shield Defense. They hate seeing primaries or secondaries greyed out on the character generation screen. Hate it.

This would be worse.

I hope you're right. There's a lot of problems with CoX that could be resolved with a new game engine.

(Then again they'd probably just use the MMO engine that's being used currently in pretty much every new game. That would suck.)

Given how badly every other sequel has tanked I'm pretty confident in my assessment. Maybe if Guild Wars 2 does exceptionally well they'll take the plunge.

Either way if the rule is to ignore people who pay 15 bucks per month to post on forums neither of us are to be believed so we just won't know until it's announced.

There's not. They registered the domain to prevent someone from claim jumping it, but they know historically sequel MMOs (EQ2, FF14) do terribly so there's been no real effort put forward. Knowing there's only one kick at the can is a big part of why they're putting a push on updating this old clunker.

Nah. That would be annoying in pvp, where moving around a corner is a great way to counter being AS'd. Not that AS hurts too badly in modern pvp, mind you, but it's still a hit best avoided.

Why? Both Pokemon and MTG have been licences to print money for their respective companies. Seems like something marketing would desperately like to tap into. Will they with this? I'm doubtful, but I hope they do as it will theoretically mean better things for the game.

Like all thing paragon market related I'm content to vote with what I like and what I don't with my wallet... so the more things they put up, the more chances they have to get me to say 'Oh, I like that.' and grab it.

If the super packs tank then they won't focus on them. If they sell well they will and complaints about the system and marketing's perception of the player base will be unjustified. (Or at least irrelevant from a business perspective.)

My own dark armor brute (my first character) is dark/dark/soul. Cardiac helps, but I was 50 long before IOs, let alone Incarnate abilities, and I've always made due. Blues are you friend, as are reasonable sized spawns. x8 is cool for showing off, but the damage aura only hits 10 so I prefer x4 and x5 sized spawns.