Tankers vs Brutes

Just because your tank has low damage doesn't mean mine do. I have an Invul/Axe that can put out some damage. He may not be able to put out scrapper numbers, but he does enough to be acceptable.

Sometimes I see the argument made that when GR hits, no one will want tanks in a commonplace PUG. I kind of doubt that. If anything, people will probably like tankers just because it's an advertisement of the player's mentality.

Tanker Icon near name = Most likely going to be thinking mostly about controlling aggro.
Brute Icon near name = Most likely going to be thinking mostly about punching mailboxes and destroying cars with lightning.
Scrapper Icon near name = Either thinking about CRITICAL messages or spreadsheets, depending.

I've seen some tanks that produce acceptable amounts of damage and some brutes that don't manage to do anything of value. At least with a tank, a bad player has a random chance of accidentally contributing. To me, the fact that we'll have a choice between tankers, scrappers, and brutes at all times just means that I have a bigger pool of PUG people to choose from that can fill a similar role.

Offtrack: I also look forward to having a pool of defenders, controllers, and corruptors to buff my brute to asinine levels.

The thing I'm looking the most forward to in GR is having real Tanks redside. No more do we have to argue about whether the Brute or the MasterMind is the Tank and takes alpha! Now we can just make that turncoat hero do it.

Serves them right, dirty heroes.

Yes, yes, it's all so black and white. I prefer surrounding myself, when I choose to team, with individuals that have higher than double digit IQs so that I don't have to babysit them.

I "protect" the team by killing enemies. Debuffing health is the best debuff after all.

all my brutes have to have taunt all im saying is the brute is the closest thing we have on redside to a tank not a mm an fyi on some missions no tank can save a team wipe so if it does happen its good to be last man standing every one knows a aggro magnet should keep team alive justr like we all know you shouldnt lie cheat or steal but in reality S%#T happens

Interesting thread. From a powergaming perspective, there's almost no reason to want a Tanker over a Brute, because the team will usually be buffed to the gills (meaning aggro control isn't important) and a Brute will be able to put out much more damage than a Tanker. I won't turn down a Tanker if someone wants to bring one, but if they ask me if I'd rather have their Tanker or their Brute I'll ask for the Brute. The average PuG probably has more use for aggro management, in which case the Tanker might be preferable - but again, once you get higher in level and the squishies are better able to keep themselves alive, the importance of aggro management is diminished.

I think the major difference is the journey to 50. Where tanks are generally mor survivable and do less damage.

As macskull said, as a min max situation though, once you put the necessary effort in your brute, you will never need aything else to take out maps spawned for 8 at +any level.

As others have said, the need for the calssical tanker/healer role in templay is vastly negligible in CoX. You never 'need' a tanker, just like you never 'need' a healer, granted the team know what its doing. I've tanked the LRSF on my SR brute, people have tanked it on blasters. So I would strongly suggest you pick whatever playstyle you enjoy the most, rather than being bent on tanking, odds are you will rarely get to tank anything while the others melt/blast/smash the enemies to peices before you can even dish out a full attack chain.

PS: because I like to stay with a toon until he is pushed to the max, I have to say I never could finish a tanker since my other builds were more fun to play to me (scrappers/brutes) I solo a lot though.