ultrawatt

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison

Again, when my Brute joins a team, his purpose is to kill things. When it comes down to it, my Bots/Traps does a much better job at killing things, especially on a team where he multiplies force. The Brute's secondary purpose is to absorb alphas and hold AV aggro, but the Bots/Traps that just as well.

In my mind, when your primary and secondary purpose are both done better by someone else, you have no purpose.

Originally Posted by MajorTractor

I see what you did there.

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus

Surround yourself with L53-54 Rikti.

Originally Posted by Grae Knight

I think what they mean is any comments they make will just lead you to the many other optimized SS/FA/MU builds on these forums.

Originally Posted by Kenteko

The surprising part is that Apex hasn't been brought up in terms of untyped damage that screws squishies more then it does tanks. If I remember correctly, the blue columns do set damage, but do so quickly, meaning that squishies drop extremely fast while high HP tanks/brutes have a larger margin of error. It's pretty clear from most of the comments in this thread that the problem lies in Keyes, as people are prone to agree that if you stand in nova fist or a blue sword pulse, you pretty much deserve to die short of having a way to counteract it.

Originally Posted by Granite Agent

Just go beat on a pylon for 10 minutes. Or however long it takes you. See scrapper forum for details.

I'd be impressed if brute fire melee was hitting 205dps with that chain, that's for sure.

Originally Posted by Sarrate

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.

Originally Posted by Weables1

you could always look at the 50 million other threads on this subject. Perhaps they got tired of critiquing the same build over and over.

Originally Posted by Deacon_NA

That's an individual playstyle issue, not a Dom issue

Originally Posted by Auroxis

Eh, I'm not sold on that.

Let's say a softcap reduces the damage you take by 90%. You are attacked by 10000 damage, but are hit 90% less often, so it's effectively 1000 damage. Then let's assume the Inv Brute with Cardiac and Shield Wall receives 200 damage, and the Inv Tank receives 100 damage. That's still 200% more.

And if the brute takes Barrier, the tanker can take Rebirth. Spiritual+Rebirth Radial+Tanker HP cap=win.

Originally Posted by Auroxis

That's still twice the survivability at the very least.

Originally Posted by NeverDark

and a very, very, VERY distant 14. Brutes

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Pretty much all the challenge available in this game comes down to two things, very broadly speaking.

• A sequence of steps you need to complete to succeed. Most of the time there can be multiple ways to approach this, but most server communities or server subcommunities settle on a few popular sequences of steps to execute
• A set of powers wielded by foes that players must answer with their own powers

As folks have mentioned, the community has figured out steps that work very well for the iTrials, and a great many people now know at least one variation of these steps. This means that leagues can perform the high-level steps almost by rote. The biggest risk is that people will auto-pilot into incompatible variations and make a mess of the current step.

Powers are an arms race of sort between the devs and the mobs. The IDF and WarWorks represent a continuation of previous "scary" NPC factions we have seen such as Arachnos, Longbow and Vanguard. By themselves, however, even given the boss-heavy spawn patterns in which they appear in iTrials, they really are no match for leagues - especially once people on those leagues start getting level shifts, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Incarnate powers themselves.

The iTrials try to counter some of this with tactical challenges, such as pretty much forcing Leagues to split up in Lambda, and recommending it for maximum merit rewards in BAF. There's also things like the cascading buffs the 9CUs get. But these also fall broadly into the "script" people have learned - everyone knows they should probably to split up for the Lambda collection phase, and most people know they can't leave 9CUs laying around.

The iTrials, and the Praetorean TFs before them. mostly innovate because they mix these two things - the script and the powers race. The major AVs in these contests have, for lack of a better way to describe them, "scripted powers". You can't reliably counter these powers with your own, but you can counter them with consistent reactions. Back away from Nova Fist. Let someone else take aggro with Sequestration. Don't stand in the nanite patch. Don't defeat Bobcat before Neuron's health is below a certain point, or if you do, wait for his buff to wear off.

For the most part, I don't think there's anything the devs can to avoid this way of designing "challenge" for us - and the then inevitable way in which we find it easy once we become familiar with it - other than to require us to greater and greater levels of coordination. As others have mentioned, this game does not support complex multi-team interactions very well. It doesn't have built-in voice comms (which is fine with me) and it doesn't really support any useful text communications binds - people have to make those for themselves. Some leaders are willing to do that, but most people in pugs - which is what the vast majority of iTrials are by necessity - are not.

If the game is going to require complicated team/player coordination to introduce complexity, it needs to support the means to do so more directly - the challenge should exist because of the need for coordination, not because the game actually makes coordination difficult. Barring that, it will likely continue to introduce "scripted" complexity, and we will learn the scripts by heart and things will be much easier until the next, new script comes along.