By the way, about your brute being so great at tanking... I'm guessing your slotting isn't that much different then other skilled brutes I've teamed with on Poison Bloom, a level 50 mastermind. How do you explain the fact that no matter how good they were, they kept complaining that my pets kept stealing aggro from them? In fact, if your soft capping defense, I'd guess you have less taunt slotting then they did.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
Whovian: The RNG hates you. Deal with it. There has never been a reliable demonstration of super high levels of defense actually decreasing survivability. In fact, defense debuffs, which are the primary method for screwing over defense based characters of any kind, are nearly completely negated (95%) by SR if you've actually got the toggles on. Unless the enemies you're fighting are packing tohit of some kind, defense above 45% is going to do nothing for you. Popping purple insps when you've already got more than 60% is a waste. Something else to remember: softcap defense will not make you immortal. You will still be hit by attacks. Even assuming that you're running against even level minions (re: no increased accuracy so you're actually running against the 5% hit chance), one in every 20 attacks will still connect. If you've got 16 guys attacking you for 300 damage per attack once every 2 seconds (91.2 incoming dam/sec w/ scaling resists) and you're only running with base hp and Health (11.11 hp/sec), you're going to be dead in 16.43 seconds on average. Softcap def doesn't mean that you're unkillable. The Law of Large Numbers. Learn to live with it.
Spazz: MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role. Please learn to actually look at game mechanics and real functionality before you begin citing out of date developer lines. Strangely enough, Whovian got this closest to right because Brutes are meant to be the "tough" AT (as evidenced by the fact that they can be buffed absurdly) but they're not actually meant to be Tanker equivalents. The design mentality for CoV was to give everyone the ability to keep themselves alive and spread aggro out across the entire group rather than placing it all on one character. This is why Brutes have lower survivability and only a single target punch-voke.
Madam_Enigma: Scrappers and Brutes will have the exact same defense, assuming that they've taken and slotted powers in the exact same manner, because they've got the exact same self buff modifier. However, a Brute will always be more survivable than a Scrapper because Brutes have higher base hit points. As long as the two are built the same, the Brute will be slightly more than 12% harder to kill simply because s/he has more hit points, completely disregarding differences in mitigation caps.
I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense. However as I mentioned it makes no difference since it's small, and both can fairly easily hit the magic 45% defense value.
I love that they give us access to the values finally.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
[ QUOTE ]
I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense. However as I mentioned it makes no difference since it's small, and both can fairly easily hit the magic 45% defense value.
I love that they give us access to the values finally.
[/ QUOTE ]
no, they don't
"Brutes are extremely durable, but not really built for tanking."
Why aren't they? When did herding and tanking get erased from game play? That tanks can't herd anymore is a myth. I have more than a few members of my SG which herd and maintain aggro just fine.
My SG mates and I are simply wondering why it is that the higher your def value is, the more likely it seems you are to get hit. When my def is at or near the 45% soft cap I can dodge somewhat against level 50+ enemies. But when I pop some purple inspirations or hit elude, all of a sudden I start getting hit more frequently. I think defense is bugged. And I'm not the only one finding this. After a certain point higher defense seems to be causing problems.
Nothing anyone has said has been able to explain how two different defense based toons could be so easily dropped on a task force when their defenses were so high. And when I got dropped this wasn't a single lucky one shot... I was actually hit by three consecutive attacks that dropped me.
I was rez'ed...got back up, hit my toggles again, ate some purples...my defenses were back up to almost 200%, and bam...it happened again. I was dropped in 2 or 3 hits...didn't evade a darn thing.
The same thing happens during the ITF. I get hit alot, as does my friend's Widow...and before you say there's something wrong with my build...all my defense toggles are slotted up to 59.2% defense bonus to base defense...I have all of the auto defense powers, along with combat jumping and the universal defense piece from steadfast protection. My defenses are at 46.6% AOE defense, 51.3% melee defense and 49.6% ranged. Elude is six slotted and with it activated my stats are pretty close to 130% across the board. But it certainly seems that I am getting hit more than 5% of the time. And in the case of the LRSF finale I was getting hit by 100% of the incoming attacks.
Other enemies and situations are problematic as well...a single layer of nemesis vengeance let's anyone hit me through my toggles. Bane Spider Scouts and Executioners have little trouble hitting me, as do rikti drones, Nemesis snipers, Malta Gunslingers...and heaven help me if there are DE quartzes about.
I've had my SR scrapper for 3 or 4 years now, and I don't remember Defenses being this ineffective. I'm certainly getting hit more on my SR scrapper than I was a year ago...and my brute despite dumping hundreds of millions into sets gets hit far more often than I think he should. This can't just be bad luck.
If the best I can hope for is that 1/20 hits from enemies will get through at full damage...then what's the point. I might as well be playing my Invul Tank who gets 90% resist to 100% of the attacks, plus 45% defense in a herd. SR is significanly less useful than invuln at this point.
[ QUOTE ]
I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's really funny because I just checked City of Data, which rips the info straight from the game even to the point of outputting everything as the game sees it, and their values are exactly the same. I even then logged into the game and checked and, guess what, they're exactly the same. The only differences between the sets are that Evasion got a Taunt effect added to it for Brutes and that Evasion and Quickness are switched in the power order.
You really need to learn to get your information correct.
Post deleted by Moderator 08
again redside heroes are harder to deal with. nearly the entire freedom phalanx has a large amount of tohit buffs. tohit buffs directly negate your defense. doing the lrsf with an /sr is a crapshoot imo. /sd can do it a little better because they have resists as well as resists on their tier 9 so it all stacks better if there is a sonic/thermal corruptor or three.
dont herd on your /sr brute. take it one spawn at a time.
[ QUOTE ]
MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
Been working on a EM/SR brute myself and I gotta say. DONT HERD with /SR. Its seriously not made for tanking granted some do tank with the set. You can't expect to dodge everything in the game, that's just crazy. lol
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.
[/ QUOTE ]
prove it
since all brute attacks have the following line in them (even the aoe's):
400% taunt on target
the modifier you speak of matters little. my pets dont pull aggro off a brute who is actively attacking and using aoe's.
[ QUOTE ]
"Brutes are extremely durable, but not really built for tanking."
Why aren't they? When did herding and tanking get erased from game play? That tanks can't herd anymore is a myth. I have more than a few members of my SG which herd and maintain aggro just fine.
My SG mates and I are simply wondering why it is that the higher your def value is, the more likely it seems you are to get hit. When my def is at or near the 45% soft cap I can dodge somewhat against level 50+ enemies. But when I pop some purple inspirations or hit elude, all of a sudden I start getting hit more frequently. I think defense is bugged. And I'm not the only one finding this. After a certain point higher defense seems to be causing problems.
Nothing anyone has said has been able to explain how two different defense based toons could be so easily dropped on a task force when their defenses were so high. And when I got dropped this wasn't a single lucky one shot... I was actually hit by three consecutive attacks that dropped me.
I was rez'ed...got back up, hit my toggles again, ate some purples...my defenses were back up to almost 200%, and bam...it happened again. I was dropped in 2 or 3 hits...didn't evade a darn thing.
The same thing happens during the ITF. I get hit alot, as does my friend's Widow...and before you say there's something wrong with my build...all my defense toggles are slotted up to 59.2% defense bonus to base defense...I have all of the auto defense powers, along with combat jumping and the universal defense piece from steadfast protection. My defenses are at 46.6% AOE defense, 51.3% melee defense and 49.6% ranged. Elude is six slotted and with it activated my stats are pretty close to 130% across the board. But it certainly seems that I am getting hit more than 5% of the time. And in the case of the LRSF finale I was getting hit by 100% of the incoming attacks.
Other enemies and situations are problematic as well...a single layer of nemesis vengeance let's anyone hit me through my toggles. Bane Spider Scouts and Executioners have little trouble hitting me, as do rikti drones, Nemesis snipers, Malta Gunslingers...and heaven help me if there are DE quartzes about.
I've had my SR scrapper for 3 or 4 years now, and I don't remember Defenses being this ineffective. I'm certainly getting hit more on my SR scrapper than I was a year ago...and my brute despite dumping hundreds of millions into sets gets hit far more often than I think he should. This can't just be bad luck.
If the best I can hope for is that 1/20 hits from enemies will get through at full damage...then what's the point. I might as well be playing my Invul Tank who gets 90% resist to 100% of the attacks, plus 45% defense in a herd. SR is significanly less useful than invuln at this point.
[/ QUOTE ]
That would be back in issue five. It started with the Global Defense Nerf, continued with Enhancement Diversification, and was finally killed with the aggro cap which I think was introduced in issue six or seven.
The global defense nerf pretty much halved all defensive powers. That's both resistance and defense based. This was done because fire tanks and invulnable tanks were able to not only survive, but defeat entire maps of +8 enemies.
Enhancement Diversification was in issue six I believe, and was to bring the top end builds closer in line with average builds. This way the devs would have an easier time balancing new content. It also paved the way for the invention system.
The aggro cap was instituted to finally kill herding. I can't remember the exact number, but I think no one can have more then 18 or so enemies aggroed on them at one time. So if your herding anything over the aggro cap either deaggros and goes back to where it started, or goes after your team mates.
In short, trying to herd simply endangers yourself and your team. And remember, the larger the sample of incoming attacks, the larger the number of attacks 5% becomes. 5% of one hundred is 5. 5% of 500 is 50 I believe. So if you somehow get 500 attacks coming at you in a very short period of time, you will die.
50 attacks hitting you over the course of several missions is very survivable. 50 attacks hitting you in one or two battles though? Not so much.
You are not unstoppable. No one is. SR gets close though.
Try the following next time you run the TF: do NOT herd. Instead take each group of enemies as they come. Herding will just get you and your team killed. By not herding you'll find that you get hit far less often. The larger the battle, the more likely defense will fail you. an eight man team's worth of enemies for a single spawn is dangerous, but doable. I usually end up hitting elude in such situations. Fighting 3 or more such groups is a great way to get killed.
SR is less useful then invuln when dealing with that many foes? Why? If SR's defenses are failing due to too many attackers at once, Invuln's defenses will fail equally. And with that many attackers the invuln will most likely die too.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's really funny because I just checked City of Data, which rips the info straight from the game even to the point of outputting everything as the game sees it, and their values are exactly the same. I even then logged into the game and checked and, guess what, they're exactly the same. The only differences between the sets are that Evasion got a Taunt effect added to it for Brutes and that Evasion and Quickness are switched in the power order.
You really need to learn to get your information correct.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh? Not sure what's going on then since I went into character creation and first opened up Scrapper, selected SR, and added the values for the melee passive and toggle together. I then did the same for a brute's SR and it came up 0.16 higher.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
[ QUOTE ]
SR is less useful then invuln when dealing with that many foes? Why? If SR's defenses are failing due to too many attackers at once, Invuln's defenses will fail equally. And with that many attackers the invuln will most likely die too.
[/ QUOTE ]
no, please follow umbrals advice about learning the game.
invuln still has good smashing/lethal resists which is most of what you find in the ITF. invuln has 50% defense debuff resistance and stone has bout 60%, but defense alone isnt what makes granite insanely powerful. it's the high regen and high resist. granite brutes are the only brutes who can reach the smashing/lethal resist caps without outside buffs.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.
[/ QUOTE ]
prove it
since all brute attacks have the following line in them (even the aoe's):
400% taunt on target
the modifier you speak of matters little. my pets dont pull aggro off a brute who is actively attacking and using aoe's.
[/ QUOTE ]
Indeed, and that's a very important factor to consider when looking at how aggro works in this game.
Brutes have a 4.0 aggro modifier. MM's have only a 2.0, but their pets work at just slightly higher (I want to say 4.5). The issue with that is until MUCH later in the game's life, the current devs didn't understand full how aggro was calculated. Taunt wasn't a static effect, it was a magnitude of threat level compounded by damage, threat mods, and distance. In issue 7 proper, the factors that made up the "threat equation" were largely unknown. Distance wasn't even thought of as being a part of it.
Now look at how that equation works with how the AT's are designed. An MM in BG mode can soak up a LOT of damage via their pets. Between buffs and debuffs, they can individually mitigate more incoming damage than a brute can with few exceptions. Give their disposable pets a higher threat mod than Brutes and they should take the aggro, right? At the time, that's how the devs felt, but the reality of the situation played out much differently due to the unknown factors.
Saying that "the idea was abandoned in early design of CoV" is very mis-informed.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
[ QUOTE ]
Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV
[/ QUOTE ]
I know the quote you're referring to and you're misinterpreting it. The specific intention of that dev's line was to point out that, back when they were first developing the game, the early design intent had been to make MMs the "Tankers". The problem was that, in CoV beta, players naturally diverted to using Brutes as the "Tankers" (which, at that time had no punchvoke and only the taunt auras that Scrappers had) rather than MMs. The design intent didn't stick any longer than it's first encounter with players, which is why Brutes were given the additional aggro control tools MMs never got the same degree of survivability.
[ QUOTE ]
combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes
[/ QUOTE ]
Once again it's an artifact of the time period in which they were supposed to do so. The only reason it still exists now is that the MM pets are supposed to be able to grab aggro off of the MM without much effort. If the MM and the pet are both dealing damage to the same target, the dev design choice was to have the pet be the default target, even if the MM was the first to fire. Brutes don't need a high threat modifier because they're operating with Taunt on all of their attacks which does more than the MM pet threat modifier anyway and their going to be dealing more damage from a single source so they'll be getting aggro anyway.
[ QUOTE ]
AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.
[/ QUOTE ]
MMs do not have a higher mitigation threshold. At cap, the only differences between the two is that Brutes have a higher resistance cap (90% compared to 75%) and MMs have a greater theoretical pool of hit points from bodyguard (which was only added after release to decrease MM squishiness, further illustrating the lack of Tanking intent). Since Brutes are taking 2/5ths of the damage that an MM would, at peak, in order to achieve a greater level of mitigation, an MM would need to have 250% of the max hit points of a Brute (re: 8031.75). Considering that, even with all 6 henchmen on bodyguard would only reduce incoming damage by 75% (2 shares to MM, 1 for each hench), meaning that an MM at his/her hp cap would only require 6425.6 damage to kill, which is more than 1500 short of actually generating equivalent peak.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
SR is less useful then invuln when dealing with that many foes? Why? If SR's defenses are failing due to too many attackers at once, Invuln's defenses will fail equally. And with that many attackers the invuln will most likely die too.
[/ QUOTE ]
no, please follow umbrals advice about learning the game.
invuln still has good smashing/lethal resists which is most of what you find in the ITF. invuln has 50% defense debuff resistance and stone has bout 60%, but defense alone isnt what makes granite insanely powerful. it's the high regen and high resist. granite brutes are the only brutes who can reach the smashing/lethal resist caps without outside buffs.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have been learning the game, for four years now. Since the various defense nerfs I find I can usually survive as long, sometimes longer then invuln in most situations simply on the strength of not being hit often. If things are hitting often enough to debuff SR's defense to the point of non-existence then someone with invulnerability will also be taking a pounding. It may take a little longer, but they too will go down. Actually, invuln is more prone to cascading defense failure so it would likely go down either first, or at about the same time as the SR.
Although if as he claims he'd been at the defense hard cap, I'm not sure how those romans managed to chip away his defense that much to kill him repeatedly.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
You didn't take into effect any of the MM's mitigation powers from their secondary in that equation at all, did you?
Now go back and do the math again, this time, account for the fact that Resistance isn't the only form of mitigation, thus brutes aren't necessarily taking 2/5ths of the damage of MM's. And in the case of pure resistance vs resistance would be an exception to the number of damage mitigation choices in comparison to one another, and not the rule.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
[ QUOTE ]
Now go back and do the math again, this time, account for the fact that Resistance isn't the only form of mitigation, thus brutes aren't necessarily taking 2/5ths of the damage of MM's. And in the case of pure resistance vs resistance would be an exception to the number of damage mitigation choices in comparison to one another, and not the rule.
[/ QUOTE ]
Considering that we're talking peak, which means that absolutely everything is at the cap. Defense, Resistance, Hit Points, everything. Debuffs are going to benefit everyone on the team, so it's a moot point. The only difference between the two at peak is hit points and resistance. Since Brutes have the higher resistance cap and twice the max hit points, neither of which the MM is capable of making up for, they fall behind.
[ QUOTE ]
You didn't take into effect any of the MM's mitigation powers from their secondary in that equation at all, did you?
Now go back and do the math again, this time, account for the fact that Resistance isn't the only form of mitigation, thus brutes aren't necessarily taking 2/5ths of the damage of MM's. And in the case of pure resistance vs resistance would be an exception to the number of damage mitigation choices in comparison to one another, and not the rule.
[/ QUOTE ]
I know that when I was testing bodyguard earlier an EB hit me for 30 damage after damage was spread out. This of course was after I debuffed damage with weaken and envenom (can never remember which is the damage debuff), plus I had noxious gas affecting him. I was more concerned about the spike damage the sucker did to pets directly then him hitting me.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
Except those are defensive mitigating factors themselves and should be taken into account. A large part of an MM's mitigation threshold comes from not just his defense/resistance/HP cap, but his ability to replenish those of his Pets and Himself while diminishing his opponent's ability to do damage. Would you compare Invuln to Fire Armor without Healing Flames/Dull Pain?
That's to say nothing of offensive mitigation, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
[ QUOTE ]
Would you compare Invuln to Fire Armor without Healing Flames/Dull Pain?
[/ QUOTE ]
No, but the reason those have to be incorporated is because that's a power set to power set comparison within the same AT. When you're comparing peak damage tolerance, you don't have to factor in values like that because they come in from the rest of the team. We're not comparing a Brute and a MM in a vacuum. Quite the contrary, we're comparing Brutes and MMs in the realm of optimized performance wherein everything is capped. That would be like saying that Controllers are more survivable than Tankers because of their mez effects and debuff, even though the presence of mez effects on the team with the Tanker will affect them both identically. If anything, the situational comparison for a MM is even more rare than the one made for the Brute because it requires more +hp and the MM has less native defense and resistance to build off of. The fact of the matter is that peak performance evaluations can operate largely ignorant of power set because the entire point of them is to identify ingrained AT performance values. The Brute has a higher ingrained peak survivability (and damage) value whereas the Mastermind has higher peak support capability.
aka, MM's have a higher mitigation threshold that was intended to be used as the Tanking AT of CoV, but is not utilized as such in the reality of the game due to player preference and mechanical factors.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
[ QUOTE ]
"Brutes are extremely durable, but not really built for tanking."
Why aren't they?
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the best I can hope for is that 1/20 hits from enemies will get through at full damage...then what's the point. I might as well be playing my Invul Tank who gets 90% resist to 100% of the attacks, plus 45% defense in a herd. SR is significanly less useful than invuln at this point.
[/ QUOTE ]
ITT we take a long [censored] time to realize obvious things.
@Dysc, on virtue:
Virtue blues: Overnight (DP/MM), Kid Ridiculous (FC/rad), Panorama (Ill/time)
Virtue reds: Block Party (SS/SD), Goldcrush (earth/fire), Deadwire (claws/elec), Snowcrush (ice/kin)
Works for me. You think the kid would mind an extra dry and dirty double martini?