Problem/Strange Powers

Well, Frozen Aura is 10ft radius and Salt Crystals is 20ft while your standard PBAoE damage aura is 8ft. So take that for what it's worth. It's possible extra control outside normal range and possible long lasting mez if you actually *try* to use it.

As for Stalker Repulse, I won't argue that it's a good power but maybe you just aren't using it right? As a 'mass control' power, it's not bad considering the other stuff available (basically Smoke Flash, caltrops, Oppressive Gloom/Cloak of Fear). When you need room, toggle it and fling stuff away. Should give you enough time to pull of an AS if you want.

For Tanker/Brute stealth, sometimes you *don't* want to aggro that spawn near the one you're fighting. Not because you're not ready but maybe because your team isn't. Maybe a rez is needed and aggroing that extra group will prolong the fight. It helps that Cloak of Darkness/Energy cloak are *not* like Stealth and never suppress until you turn them off. It's like Defender's Shadowfall/Steamy mist, it's aggro control. If you don't want it then you don't have to take it. Also, if you just want to be a Tanker/Brute that just smashes faces without being the designated meat shield then that option is there too.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

If you attack or otherwise affect an enemy target, stealth status will suppress. The moment you enter combat, you are visible at the full range, including to that adjacent group you didn't want to see you. I understand that stealth has a place, but when the stealth powers for brutes and tankers are equally effective as the pool power, why take up the space of one of their potentially class-specific powers with a pool power duplicate? Immobilize protection aside, Dark Armor: Cloak of Darkness and Energy Aura: Energy Cloak are equal in defense and stealth numbers to Concealment: Stealth, and at least the pool power would give them the option of complete Invisibility at a later time if they want it.

Like I said, I'm not saying that everyone on earth hates the idea of a brute or tank being stealthy or a stalker scattering stuff. I'm merely saying that, much like the old version of Blaster Defiance people so hated (which I didn't mind), in a skilled team it is completely unnecessary, and when soloing, there are FAR better options available. It's an imbalance, not a complete negative. Any power is a plus, but when getting a pool power or just plain skipping it for other moves is your better option, the ability is lacking as a Primary Power, and in some cases Secondary.

I know that Repulse is never meant to be a constant toggle like armor, but your assumptions about its usefulness are relying on it hitting everyone successfully on the first pulse. Last I checked, you can't slot accuracy into it, so to toss people away, if even one stays, you aren't getting Hide to un-suppress again anytime soon. The odds of one guy staying around are pretty good, especially if you are set up to a difficulty high enough to need a panic move to help you escape. Try Repel/Repulse/Repulsion Field on reds and purples then tell me its as effective as Smoke Flash. I only tend to pick it up as a PvP move for squishies like my Kin/Dark Blast Defender because in PvE it has very little purpose, which can be accomplished more effectively by other means. As for knockback being unwanted in melee, need I remind you of the across-the-board knockback changed to knockdown/knockup for ALL scrapper/tanker/brute powers except for very specific powers like Claws: Shockwave and Martial Arts: Crane Kick? All melee class knockback moves for the most part were changed so that they ONLY do knockback when the enemy is one or more levels below the caster. The only ones that weren't were a select few directional tosses, not AoE scatters.

Stealth on a tank is annoying at worst and ineffective at best. The tank wants to be seen. To not be seen means that your friends are next on your enemies' list. I'm not saying TANKER, I am saying TANK. Now if you want to design your tank to be a stalker then... ok, more power to you, but the team's tank, regardless of what class you happen to be, is of little use hidden. Even if the tank has stealth and you like it, what happens the moment you affect or are affected by an enemy? It's gone. Now you are left with the defenses of Combat Jumping with the endurance cost of an armor. That's what stealth moves provide roughly. Stealth suppresses. If the tank has stealth but the rest of the team does NOT, the result is that the others are the first priority of enemy attacks until that tank makes himself known deliberately. Also, even though not all brutes are tanks, what person is meant to tank then for villains? They don't have Tankers, and MM pets (although good at soaking up aggro) can't survive it long. Brutes are tanks in the sense that Fire tanks are tanks. They deal tons of damage to get attention and hope to kill everything before their lack of sturdiness is overcome.

As for Cloak of Fear, it's a very useful power. Slot 3 end reducers, an acc, and 2 acc debuffs and you have a nice armor that can sometimes even afflict bosses. One oversight I have found with it though is Dark Armor: Death Shroud. Since damage breaks fear for one attack, the constant pulse of damage will keep them attacking you anyway. I think they need to fix that somehow, but I can't think of a way without making all other fear powers overpowered. Another time that Cloak of Fear trumps Oppressive Gloom is against bosses. As I mentioned earlier, Cloak of Fear can overlap on a boss, but Oppressive Gloom can't usually. Not only that, but Oppressive Gloom eats away at your hitpoints for every enemy it ATTEMPTS to afflict, even if they are immune. Large spawns of stun resistant enemies and bosses, like Nemesis Jaegers and Warhulks will drain away your health. That armor hurts your HP a little bit in the hope that it will prevent enough damage by stunning things that you'll win out in the end, but if they are all immune, you will melt away HP like there's no tomorrow.

Also, continual balancing of a game is called maintenance in the world of software engineering. Not working as intended is a good example of something requiring maintenance.

Heh. This is true. That and I loved having people complain about "That $(*#&$ Stalker!" ... well, long ago, in PVP - with my En/En brute.

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I'm pretty sure all stealth powers suppress. My controller with steamy mist can attest to this. My Dark Armor scrapper can attest to this. The nice thing about steamy mist is that if someone else on the team, like a blaster, wants to drop some aggro, after ten seconds of safety from attacks while not attacking and standing in steamy mist, he is stealthed again. If you attack during that time it suppresses again, so it gives people a fallback point without making them panic and run out of the room away from potential heals. It also provides a wealth of resistances, status protection, and minor defense. Cloak of Darkness and Energy Cloak provide that of Concealment: Stealth, with a tiny bit smaller end cost and no speed debuff (albeit also minor). If it weren't for the immobilize protection and +perception in Cloak of Darkness, I wouldn't see too much reason to get it over the pool equivalent. Energy Cloak is even more lacking, making stealth seem the better option (can pick up Invisibility later, since anyone getting Energy Cloak didn't want to be seen anyway).

I mean, I do understand possibly wanting one, but when the pool equivalents are the same but with follow up powers like Invis and Phase Shift being added to your potential choice list, I don't see much reason for a Primary/Secondary power set stealth move in a tank.

LOL, ok, I give you that. Stealth and +Perception are great PvP effects for tanks and brutes, but are somewhat minimal in purpose in PvE. Not that you'll never use them, but I don't get flood insurance when I live in the mountains, and I don't get avalanche insurance when I live on the beach. In PvP there is no such thing as a bad insurance policy. Any edge is an edge in that situation. Even a tank doesn't really get to "tank" in PvP; he just is doing what everyone else is doing in PvP, which is to kill before dying.

Taking a tank into PvP is always fun when he's invisible, lol, messes people up big-time. I just have yet to see it do what everyone loves it for in PvE. True it can hold off the alpha strike until you are very close, but is half a second head-start really worth a full power selection when you have options like other tanks have? Shield Charge, now THAT'S a head-start, lol. Chilling Embrace? That move comes so early and is so incredibly awesome. But stealth? It comes late and the benefits are just... meh. When a pool power can fully replace your move, it's defeated its purpose.

Stealth suppresses. End of story. Play the tank, take the lead, land the first strike and you are first on the hit list of all enemies that matter. Why is that so hard to accept? Is direct line of sight the only way tanks can tank? A real, actual Tanker has Taunt, a Taunt aura and Gauntlet, to say nothing of the ability to be proactive and do his job. Something is shooting at your friends? PUNCH IT! That's all it takes. Stealth or no stealth.

You say that as though the stealth on any AT does anything else. Unless you want to argue that stealth as an overall mechanic is useless (everything you affect sees you and you cannot hide from it), then simply avoid trying to claim stealth on a Tank is any more or less useful than stealth on a Blaster or stealth on a Scrapper. Stealth's only uses, Hide notwithstanding (as that's not merely stealth) is to avoid trouble until you are ready to cause trouble. If you have a team who can't keep their pants on and rush ahead of the tank all the time, that's their problem.

Utter nonsense. Brutes are no more tanks than Scrappers. Masterminds are, when played right, more sturdy than Brutes. Even though many Mastermind players forget this, a Mastermind has a secondary, which is very heavy support. A Forcefields Mastermind can give enough defence to his henchmen to put a SR Brute to shame, and if he stacks that on top of Robotics, he can soft-cap his henchmen. A Henchman killed is easily resummoned and reupgraded. Henchmen also have a rather high threat rating and tend to catch the attention of NPCs a lot.

Or, you know, NO-ONE could tank. This nonsense about needing a tank, healer and damage dealer plain and simply isn't needed in City of Heroes, and ESPECIALLY in City of Villains. All of the CoV ATs are made to be self-sufficient to a large extent. They can all deal damage, they can all take care of themselves, they can all contribute. Trying to reduce one to "tank" only serves to neuter that AT's other capacities. Brutes deal damage. A LOT of damage. Trying to sell them as tanks is a bad move.

You're wrong on both accounts. First of all, Fear only breaks once every five seconds. More importantly, though, no, Cloak of Fear does not stack itself on bosses. It does not stack with itself at all. Check City of Data and you'll see each of the effects has "Effect does not stack from same caster" appended. Even if you can get two ticks to overlap with each other (which may be doable) you'll only have the second simply override the first.

If things are immune, turn the toggle off. The damage per enemy is laughable. 6.26 points total, capping at 10 targets for a little over 60 points of damage at level 50. Something as simple as a single Jaeger will hit you for upwards of 100 on a single attack, and being surrounded by 10 would cost you far, far, FAR more in attacks than the toggle will ever cost you to run. And unlike Cloak of Fear, attacking your enemies does not break the effect. Furthermore, unlike Cloak of Fear, which has some of the game's WORST accuracy (0.67 base, which you cannot get to decent levels at all), Oppressive Gloom has standard 1.0 accuracy, which means that even with a single enhancement, you're going to hit just about everything every time, and only fail to affect the exceedingly few things that are resistant to it. And if you're anything aside from Dark Melee, you have a better chance of being able to stack-stun bosses with it. Super Strength, Stone Melee, Energy Melee, War Mace and Martial Arts each have access to an in-set stun, whereas only Dark Melee has access to an in-set Fear. And even THAT has such a duration-to-recharge ratio that you can out and out stack it with itself.

Cloak of Fear does less, costs more, is all but incompatible with Oppressive Gloom, and has only one, single benefit over it - enemies don't wander. Which doesn't really matter all that much in the long run.

This is complete nonsense. If they didn't intend to balance powers as they are balanced now, they wouldn't have balanced them like this. It's like filing a lottery ticket, not getting the right numbers and calling it a bug. Or like one day realising that you don't like half the songs in your playlist any more and calling that a bug. Things change. Problems come to light. Opinions shift. It's hypocritical to use hindsight to use completely intentional, working-as-intended decisions at the time "bugs." This isn't maintenance, it's continual development. Unless you want to suggest that the game could have been made perfect but wasn't, and all the development since April 2004 has been fixing mistakes made in development, this is nothing but nonsense.

You can feel free to share your opinions and point out problems with powers as you see them. Just as I'm free to disagree with your opinion on the matter. I would advise you, however, to stop just shy of passing your opinion off as fact.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No, they don't. Especially not Steamy Mist/Shadow Fall. I can attest to this because I've sat and soloed x3 and x4 villain spawns on my Claws/EA brute and attacked a foe from a group while in direct view of their allies without them noticing. Using mez (like Focus' knockdown) or defeating a foe will more often than not alert the rest of the spawn. An entire spawn's aggro is linked so alerting one usually alerts the others but separate spawns do not have linked aggro. I cannot count how many times the team stealth powers aid in separating spawn hate.

If they changed those two powers to suppress on a Tanker then that's unfortunate but I know for a fact they don't on a Brute.

You missed my point. I am saying stealth does that in ALL cases, like you are. There are others saying that's not true, despite my first-hand experience with it. They are claiming first-hand experience that says otherwise. I said stealth suppresses end of story, in all cases. The reason I said stealth was useless for the tank is that at no point during the fight does the tank want his stealth to unsuppress. What tank would turn on PFF knowing full well his team would be next on the menu? He WANTS his stealth to suppress in order to do his job and keep his team from dying, but if that's what he wants, then why have that the primary purpose of a power for him? If he doesn't even want the +stealth effect, why not leave it out and put something better into his +minor defense toggle? The stealth effect is at worst annoying (causing you to not maintain aggro long enough to herd or not letting enemies see you, who will instead see your team) and at worst ineffective (suppressing the moment you affect an enemy or are affected by one, which happens 24/7 in a tank's world).

It's for this reason that I don't care if a teammate casts Grant Invisibility on my tank, so long as they grant it on EVERYONE else so that we all get the benefits, but if I'm charging in and someone who isn't stealthed is too close, they won't get hit before mine suppresses. Again, that's more an issue of the teammate's intelligence (i.e. waiting for the tank to have aggro before charging in), not so much an issue of invis being a problem. It just opens the doors for that problem.

I'm a programmer, lol. Continual upgrading, fixing, and re-balancing is a part of the MAINTENANCE of a piece of software. I'm looking at it right here in one of my old textbooks. Maintenance is the updating of existing software to keep up with demand and functionality. When you download a Windows Update, it's a maintenance issue, even if they are changing something that was "originally intended" when Windows came out.

Yeah, you turn it off, and turn on Cloak of Fear. You merely showed the numbers to justify why I said Cloak of Fear has situational benefits over Oppressive Gloom.

You call 60 damage every second laughable? How much damage does a Dark Blast: Gloom do per second? I doubt it's 60 each tick, maybe with a fulcrum shift. You're saying that having that melting away your hitpoints (EVERY SECOND, mind you), in addition to the damage the enemies deal because they weren't stunned in the first place, isn't a problem? Have you fought warlocks in World of Warcraft? DoT is not to be ignored. It's essentially a HP Regen debuff. How many Dark Armor scrappers have 60 HP regen per second? Let me know when you find one and I'll call completely negating your regen and hurting you on top of it while not providing the desired stun effect is laughable.

Again, as I said I turn it off when there is a hard hitting boss or other stun resistant enemies because it has LESS use than Cloak of Fear in that instance. I didn't say that it would kill you, but that it will be WORSE for you. I was merely defending Cloak of Fear, not bashing Oppressive Gloom. I have and use both where they are applicable.

I stand corrected. I meant to say that it stacks nicely in the sense that teammates can throw even the weakest fear up and it will afflict bosses as well. Even the pool fear powers will overlap. The other nice thing about a fear aura is the fact that it will affect other players in PvP very reliably because not many armor sets provide protection to it. A stun aura doesn't quite accomplish that.

Checking CoD, Cloak of Darkness/Energy Cloak have only 1 value for their defense that does not suppress. They both have 2 values for stealth, +389 stealth that suppresses when you click a glowie or attack and +35 stealth that only suppresses when you click a glowie. Same for Steamy Mist and Shadow Fall. They all have a measure of stealth that will not suppress unless you click a glowie. It makes sense now that I think about it cause I've tried to stealth a mission and though "Hah, my stealth doesn't suppress!" and met with a volley of attacks.

I'm not sure about Greater Invisibility, as it has 2 stealth values (+60 and +667) neither of wish has a tag to suppress...

Stealth has no affect on aggro other than not obtaining aggro through normal line-of-sight. Having stealth doesn't make you lose aggro or weakens the affect of taunts so I fail to see your issue with the power.

[EDIT] PS: Stealth also has 2 values for its stealth buff but both are marked to suppress upon attacking or clicking a glowie. So for completeness sake, you were right and I was wrong that the armor stealths suppress but you were wrong that they provide no stealth benefit after your first action.

/nitpick

Stealth *can't* fully replace the move. It doesn't provide immobilization protection or +perception. In order to do that, you need to pick *four* powers - Stealth (or a temp stealth,) Combat Jumping, a prereq in leadership, then Tactics. (Alternately, an IO for perception - don't know the #s to compare, though. The Stealth IO isnt' comparable, IIRC.)

Now, for me, I prefer Leaping on my tanks in general, so I have CJ - which eliminates one consideration for the toggle for me. The stealth can come in handy, perhaps - but I can pick up the patrol power from a PVP zone, if I want, as well. The +Perception, honestly, is part of what has me looking at it when I do. That *is* useful to me. (Ghosts, KoA, Night widows, etc.) It doesn't make it a "Pick up ASAP" power for me, no - but it is useful.

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What, you don't take Jump Kick? (Speaking of strange powers. )

Hey, I'm a huge fan of unconventional teaming. My Earth/Storm/Ice controller can replace a tanker and keep the team alive just fine. I don't believe EVERY team NEEDS a tank. That's ridiculous. What I have been discussing is TANKS, not necessarily TANKERS. There is a difference in terminology there. A tank has the job of taking the aggro, and a tanker is a durable hero archetype with average damage. Not the same thing.

In the event that your team IS following a tank-n-spank tactic, the Brute is one of the classes that can fulfill the role of Tank. The other villain class that can is only able if it is designed to. Forcefield MMs can shield up their pets and let the pets soak up aggro, and that works as a tank too. Making those pets invisible might make their job harder though, which supports my point. My Robots/Dark Miasma Mastermind actually uses Presence: Provoke to taunt enemies while his pets remain on defensive, and he AoE heals any damage that is spread out across them, and he tanks better than most brutes, using debuffs instead of armor and pet HP as part of his own HP pool (via defensive stance). My Shadowfall DOES suppress (to all the naysayers out there who say it doesn't), and my MM tanks great. In his case though, his stealth power is still providing TONS of benefits beyond mere stealth. It gives him more defense than Energy Cloak or Cloak of Darkness, it provides scrapper-level resistance to neg. energy, energy and psionic, and it offers fear protection. This benefit applies to everyone around me, and it gives people nearby the option of ceasing attacks in order to re-stealth and drop aggro. Now if Energy Cloak was a group AoE stealth toggle and did more than give minor defense, I could maybe understand it on a tank.

Try having your non-robotic pets tank for you on aggressive stance if you have a set other than Forcefields. Especially thugs, dang those things die so fast. For example, Thugs/Poison, or Thugs/Pain Dom. You are saying that since a few builds of MMs can tank, MMs are tanks. That's like saying that since some builds of defenders can heal, defenders are healers. When it comes down to it though, if you DO want to use the tank-n-spank tactic with villains, you are MORE LIKELY to have a brute tank than a MM tank. With the number of buff sets (Thermal, Cold Dom, FF, and Sonic Res shield buffs) villains began with access to (I know proliferation gave them to heroes now too, but still), even a brute can reach the stats of a tank or better. Throw in some minimal heals to help out maybe and you have a tank. Not all MMs can claim that status. I wouldn't call my thugs tanks if someone threw fire shields on them and popped out some Warmth moves every few seconds. Brutes can at least manage that. Heck, I have a Willpower scrapper who can tank without being built for it; you can't tell me a Willpower brute (having more damage and HP, but the same armor buff numbers) couldn't at least do that.

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Hehe, true, it doesn't "fully" replace Cloak of Darkness, but Stealth does replace Energy Cloak with the minor speed debuff that you can barely notice, especially if you got Swift anyway. Not to mention I COMPLETELY forgot you can get those patrol stealth moves from PvP zones, lol, and used conservatively they can last quite a while.

As for Dark Armor, I have never made one who didn't have Leaping, so I always had CJ too. I didn't really need DA: CoD until perception is involved, at which point it was the only purpose besides something like 2.5% or 3% defense... for the end cost, that's pretty lame considering most defense auto powers offer at least 8%.

Yeah, unless you have Robotics/Forcefields, your pets shouldn't be let loose on aggressive and expected to tank that well, lol. My tank personally uses Defensive stance and the pool power Provoke to taunt, so he gets all aggro. He spreads the damage to his pets, then uses Twilight Grasp to heal it up. AoEs are still a major issue for any MM tank. Brutes luckily don't have to deal with that, which is why I say they are "more often" the better tank choice if you feel your team needs a tank.

You're giving me a lot to nit-pick...and I have a horrible habit to nit-pick.

Shadow Fall doesn't give fear 'protection', it offers fear 'resistance' which lowers the duration of fear type mezzes on teammates.

Also, re-hiding does *NOT* drop aggro. As long as a foe remains aggressive toward you (or even just a teammate), they will still retain or gain aggro on you. This is related to 'Spawns have linked aggro'. I've played many stalkers and one issue you run into is, if you don't jump into the fight fast enough after your team, the enemy will start attacking you *even through hide*.

And I'll change my previous statement to: The stealth of Cloak of Darkness/Energy Cloak/Steamy Mist/Shadowfall/etc only *Partially* suppresses.

Defense does not suppress when stealth suppresses. The two stealth values you were looking at were the PvP range (the larger number, you can be seen from farther away by players than by NPCs) and the PvE range (the 35 is the distance NPCs can see you, which is smaller, providing better protection against computer characters than against other players).

I've checked the numbers on this. Any character of mine that has a stealth power ALWAYS has that stat being monitored in the Combat Stats window of the game, which I keep under my health/end/xp bars. The moment I attack from inside Steamy Mist, my stealth in BOTH numbers drops to zero. Same for every other stealth power I've used. They fully suppress when you affect an enemy (damage/debuff on enemies, not heals/buffs on teammates) or when an enemy affects you (damage/mez/debuff from enemies, but not heals/buffs from teammates). Some debuffs do NOT break stealth though, in the case of Shield Defense: AAO and Willpower: RttC. They always hit, and therefore they made them not affect stealth, otherwise stalkers would be unable to assassinate users of those powers.

Very true.

... have I mentioned hating Demolitionists. >.<

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Err... Do you have any idea how many MORE things are resistant to Fear than are resistant to Stun? Anything robotic is, typically. Also, what I said was Cloak of Fear stacks with Touch of Fear, e.i. Dark Armour works well with Dark Melee. Oppressive Gloom stacks with Cobra Strike, Fault, Lightning Clap, Hand Clap, Stun/Total Focus and Clobber, e.i. Dark Armour works well with Martial Arts, Stone Melee, Electrical Melee, Super Strength, Energy Melee and War Mace. It works with more things via Oppressive Gloom than via Cloak of Fear. Oppressive Gloom's situational benefits outweigh those of Cloak of Fear's. Even if you count extremely minor enemy scatter (which, from experience, I wouldn't) that's still not enough to make up for the cost, unreliability and lack of primary mesh.

Actually, that's per tick, not per second. The power ticks once every two seconds, so that's more like 30 DPS of self-damage. And as for your actual question, well... Dark Regeneration heals 401.586 points of damage, call it 400, per target affected, capping at 10 targets. That's a full heal off three enemies. A Scrapper at level 50 has 1338.6 hit points, call it 1300, which means that off the 10 enemies draining you, each use will be full health. Dark Regeneration recharges in 30 seconds, which brigs us to about 43 points of regeneration per second of use. Natural regeneration is full health in 240 seconds, which means you regenerate another 5-6 points per second anyway. Together, they more than outpace the self-damage from Oppressive Gloom just from doing nothing.

I had it calculated somewhere at some point that an average spawn of five even con minions are going to deal about 200-220 DPS on your just between them. I would consider 30 more to be largely meaningless, especially considering that 30 DPS you're self-inflicting means, by and large, that you are taking exactly ZERO damage from these five minions. Yeah, if they're Jaegers, maybe that won't work, but ourside the very few corner cases of stun-resistant minions, you are expending almost nothing while buying yourself almost complete mitigation. In a set with 7 toggles, that means a lot.

Yes, and you don't use Cobra Strike on Night Widows, the Anathema, Zeust Titans, etc, but that doesn't make it worse than Touch of Fear against... Zeus Titans, the Anathema, Mech Men, etc. Each power has its uses. Quoting an extreme corner case and citing the difference in utility, while perfectly true, is also perfectly meaningless. It's like saying you turn off Super Jump when you fight, therefore it must be worse than Combat Jumping. No, it's just useful in different situations. And, again, I can count the situations where Oppressive Gloom is unusable on the fingers of one hand. I don't consider taking a whole other power and 6-slotting it just for those extremely rare situations where Oppressive Gloom isn't working to be worth it.

I'm aware of your choice of terminology, but again, you're shooting for only part of the whole. Stealth powers very much do have their uses for Brutes, and even Tankers, because Brutes, and even Tankers do more than just tank, and they sometimes even solo, surprisingly. If you want to fill a specific subset role of your choosing, then that's fine, but finding a power inappropriate for that one specific role doesn't really justify the argument that this power is generally bad. It's not useful for that one role you have in mind, but then that one role isn't all you can do with the AT. And I'm not even talking about aberrations like Offenders and petless Masterminds. A Brute can indeed choose to tank, for which a stealth power may or may not be appropriate. A Brute may also choose to deal damage, for which a stealth power is perfectly useful.

Been there, done that. I've tried a Thugs/Dark Mastermind, and he's capable of debuffing his enemies into the toilet before they can even think about touching his thugs. I've taken a Mercs/Traps to 50. He can both buff his henchmen considerably and debuff the enemies into bunny rabbits. I've tried a Nercomancy/Dark Mastermind, and he's not only good at debuffing, but has enough damage output to put a Scrapper to shame. Friend of mine played a Bots/Poison Mastermind and kept complaining nothing could kill him as he soloed AVs. I've literally and figuratively fallen asleep at the keybaord and, outside of the few specific enemies who hurt Masterminds pretty bad, never had a problem surviving, or indeed filling in for much of the rest of the team.

I'm saying Masterminds are tanks because every single combo can tank. Some do it on auto-pilot, others have to try, but they can all manage it if the Mastermind has his game on.

That's also something that comes straight out of the mouths of the developers - Masterminds were intended to be the Tanker counterpart of City of Villains. They've been careful not to claim that's what they ended up being, but they've never denied that's what they were envisioned and originally designed as.

--

As far as stealth suppression goes, there is a simple rule as far as I can tell - stealth powers in melee defence sets never suppress, all other stealth powers suppress. Except Hide, which also suppresses, despite being in a melee defence set. Stealth powers which suppress lose half to 2/3 of their defence and lose all of their stealth radius. Stealth powers that do not suppress lose nothing.

A difference needs to be made between your stealth suppressing, and enemies being able to see you. Stealth, as a mechanic, reduces enemy sight radius, so you can get closer to enemies before they spot you. After an enemy has aggroed on you, however, stealth is irrelevant, because they don't need to see you to know where you are and attack you. It seems as though Cloak of Darkness/Energy Cloak suppress, because enemies aggroed on you will see you through them, but enemies NOT aggroed on will not. This allows you to fight in greater proximity to unaggroed spawns in safety, and as such allows you greater mobility. Cloaking Device, on the other hand, kills your stealth as soon as it suppresses, so not only will the spawn you attacked aggro on you, but so will neighbouring spawns which can now see you from farther away.

In either case, it doesn't matter much to a tank. Enemies who have already registered the tank's presence will ignore stealth anyway. All a tank needs to do is act and announce his presence, and enemies will shift focus to him. Either way, for a tank to truly be in control, he has to have taunt effects on the enemies, and once you have those, stealth radius is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.