Added Issue 18 Tanker ability: Bruising

To date, almost all of the dev's 'challenging content' has been like that. The STF, Reichsman's stuns and damage, etc. Now they promise content that's even harder. Forget midground, I suspect Recluse on the STF will be on the lower end of the new stuff.

Regarding softcapping Defense: I suspect any new enemies we'll be facing will heavily debuff Defense to counter that. The irony I see in that is, a lot of times that doesn't bother the softcappers and hurts people with only a medium level of Defence first; the first couple of -Def attacks hit, and then more land and stack causing Defense to cascade down to nothing. Meanwihle someone with high defense may never get hit with the -Def, or not hit often enough to start the cascade past the tipping point. Cimerorans do that. I've watched Invul Tankers without Tough or softcapped Defense get chewed up by them at the wall while a Scrapper who's softcapped but with much less HP and resistance walk away nearly untouched.

Castle may be willing to live with everyone having the same softcap, but he better have something planned to deal with situations like the above.


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And, thus, JB shows he does not understand defense.

Unless an enemy is defeated quickly and is in small, manageable numbers, the softcap is much less powerful unless there is DDR to back it up.

Try softcapping a fire or dark tank, and see how well it stands up in a heavy defense debuffing situation.

Well then... Ignore me.

I was probably getting my history or MMO's mixed up again.

Okay, good to know. Thanks. How much do the Fury changes really affect things for Brutes? I can't really tell well enough if it makes things a little tougher for them offensively, or not (the lowering of Fury degredation along with other adjustments make them sound more consistent, which is probably good for them). Sounds like it some from a thread I'm seeing on the Brute forums, since the people saying they're okay with it, etc., have pretty good judgement from other posts I've seen by them.

I would agree with that. Tanks needed a little something to make them better solo (and bosses were the main thing that slowed down my Tanks when soloing, Bruising helps there), but the issue was more that Brutes had so much offensive capabilities along with high resist/defense caps.

I don't think they gap was as big as some people suggested, but you couldn't ignore the numbers, either. Hopefully this will make things better for Tanks and Brutes together (and Scrappers, too, though they're quite well off).

*added*

Johnny, Castle distinctly said he wished there had been a change to the defense softcap way back in I8 or so, but it didn't happen, so he would have to live with it. The player reaction to a change in the softcap for people now would be enormous, making your disgruntlement on the issue seem as nothing. Castle recognizes this and isn't going to make the change: just make sure things like BotZ didn't make it too easy to get there.

I do hope they get more creative with some encounters, though. I can see AOEs and cones for AVs being one thing that they could do (where a control of the AV's aggro makes a difference... unlike Scirocco's dratted sandstorm twister attack)... some already have these, and having a tank (or brute) control these is a good way to make aggro control needed, without necessarily making the damage overwhelming like Recluse buffed by all his towers.

I always thought this was strange, as well. It's just too easy for everyone to hit softcap Def. More than anything, I think this was the biggest game changer for Tanks.

God you are STILL whining about that.

Here's my unsolicited feelings about these changes:

-Our secondary power sets are treated once more like our primary, HPs are our secondary power set, and our primaries are like power pools.

-Sounds like we are being told that we are not playing correctly with the devs toys. <paraphrase>"Why aren't you guys using your tier 1 attacks?"</paraphrase>



With GR, I will probably never make another tank. Still have over half my character slots filled by tanks, but every other month I delete one or two of them because they just aren't any fun to play anymore.

It's just a shame I've seen and participated in discussions stating that off-tanks are useless, hopefully using Brutes as off-tanks will solve this debate, but when people start to argue in global channels that having an extra tank in STF (With the GW AI bug/flaw as well.) is completely redundant, which I do not believe, personally my tanker can and does farm, and sometimes I'll find a group with a tank and join as my tanker and contribute the damage without being requested to switch to my scrapper or my defender (although my defender is an aggressive build, and I frequently switch from my tanker to defender during Non-TF AV fights because of how insane rad/sonic stacks debuffs is far more effective than simply switching to a AT with more damage than tanker)

I'm not saying off-tanks are a bad idea, in-fact I heavily support the use of them, especially in Mo attempts, but there are still a lot of people who'll deny an off-tank/second-tank a spot in a team because they want a blaster or an extra debuffer (Most teams blueside and co-op TFs seem to have at least two debuffers, but after a certain point if the ratio to damageAT:debuffAT is too far towards debuff the debuffers become redundant, while a group can function fine with only one debuffer and depending on the consistency of high damage without any.)

At the moment I'm "Waiting to see." but in fact I'm tempted to bring my tanker over to redside, because I've personally found that Ice/Ice generates and holds far more aggro than any Brute I've teamed with, without spamming taunt. (2x aggro toggles, EA's taunt, FA's taunt, and Ice Patch with slows for "You're not leaving my taunt radius" effect.)

But I do find that the most likely case is that Stalker and Scrapper places in teams (especially Mo attempts) will dwindle in favour of one Tanker and one Brute due to the fact that brutes will be less likely to faceplant, however, counteracting my own point, it is much easier to pull aggro from Scrappers and Stalkers who go "out of depth" than it is to pull off Brutes, whether the scrappers/stalkers live long enough to warn the tank of the mistake as opposed to a brutes ability to "deal with it." longer, is anyones guess to make.

And contributing to the topic of Bruise, Bruise will actually assist the Brute in your team because when max-Fury'd that -Res is going to cause a greater constant damage upon upkeep (for example in really basic numbers, a tanker hitting 100 +20 from bruise opposed to a Brute hitting 200 +40 from bruise, the Brute will actually benefit from being teamed with a Tanker.) I'm sure Brutes that want to tank will argue that having a Tanker with them is going be of benefit to them (Even if they request that the Tanker becomes the off-tank.)

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Tankers didn't lose anything dude. Why are you complaining about a free buff? It's not like they said 'you'll get this nifty new toy but you'll lose 30% of X'.

Complaining about a free buff with no counter balance is like complaining about free icecream. go cry in a corner while secretly still eating your free ice cream because honestly, nobody cares.

Johnny understands defense just fine. You however appear to have missed his point.

They can't debuff you if they can't hit you in the first place.

And while you are right that Defense does a lot better when it has Defense Debuff Resistance to back it up, everything Johnny said in his post is correct. I've seen it with my own eyes too.

You are correct that Defense works better when it is backed up by DDR, but Johnny is also correct. Characters with mid-range or low Defense get their Defense quickly striped away from them by Debuffers. Characters who are soft-capped don't get hit with those debuff attacks nearly as often. And when they do it happens infrequently enough that they are usually able to do something about it.

Which is, after all, the point behind being at the soft-cap in the first place.

They can always hit you.

A group of ten minions would, on average, hit once every two volleys. If they're using machine guns with a 7.5% defense debuff, you are going to cascade quickly.

Or, try asking someone like Dechs how long his softcapped defense lasts on the ITF.

The softcap is great, make no mistake, but it is nowhere near as powerful as JB is making it out to be.

For the record, I have a level 50 AR/EM blaster who is softcapped to ranged attacks.

I am... confuzzled to say the least by this. Our secondary sets are being treated like our primary? What do you mean? Not even sure what you mean by HPs, since that has always been an advantage that Tanks have.

With Bruising, the devs are acknowledging that we have to take that first attack, and that it is potentially a bad thing that many Tankers neglect that attack at later levels (I do not usually, but I know some do: in fact, I'm reworking my main Tanker's build to slot his first tier attack better than it is now). They're now buffing a power that we have to give, helping out our ability to solo, and also allowing us to give more to a team.

In short, Tanks received a few buffs with this issue, and that means you are deleting yours? That is the most confusing thing about all of this. You list off a lot of benefits, and then take them in a negative direction!

? Where are there healbots in this game? Are you talking about geniuses that spam their healing aura and think they're helping the team? Empathy/Pain Domination is the closest thing we have to a healing set, but that's hardly what it is about, and that's only one tier of powers that a character will have access to.

I won't even get into your "mention" of Tanks, either, as that's even worse.

For the whole defense debuffing thing, I honestly wonder if melee ATs, or at least Tanks and Brutes, should get some inherent defense debuff resistance. There are a lot of such debuffs in the game, and they're the mostly like to need that defense in a situation with a lot of defense debuffs. I would also guess we're going to see more of such debuffs as well.

If we can't adjust the defense softcap, that would be one way to address the equal benefits a Blaster receives from being at the same levels of defense as my Tank, Scrapper, etc.

Just throwing it out there. I know defense caps are only so great from experience. My experience with SR and Ninjitsu, as well as soloing Blasters, has shown me how hit or miss defense can be (ha, ha). I'm still annoyed at how many purples my Blaster had to keep eating when he soloed the EB version of Silver Mantis. However, I still have to acknowledge defense is very nice.

Been deleting them long before I heard about these buffs. Just tired of meatshielding. Just doesn't seem very comic booky to me.

Why you ask that I think our secondary is treated like a primary? Well, we have gauntlet, based on using our secondary, no other inherent power is based on using an AT's secondary powersets. Now we get a second inherent that again is based on 1 power in our secondary.

Don't get me wrong, they are OK buffs. I'd be more excited about these buffs if we ever actually got an official statement from Castle or Posi that it was indeed a mistake to make a defensive primary AT in the beginning of development, and all these band-aids are trying to rectify the situation. Until that official statement is made I assume that having a defensive primary ought to mean something. In actual game play (well 95% or more of it) it's a crutch at best.

Just a side point: I remember seeing a buff to DDR as part of some Incarnate abilities. No saying at this point what the trade off for that is, however.


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I could as a Mind Controller control perhaps maybe 66 npcs at once at a rough guess. Out of them 17 will want me dead afterwards and the entire rest would ignore me unless one of those 17 died. That's what I thought ya was kind of referring to.

Defenders inherent after i18 will be based (mostly) of their secondary, just like Tanker's.

Huh? Will there be a change to the new Vigilance with I18? Because it's already based on their secondary, doing more damage solo and up to two teammates.

You can pre-use a purple inspiration in situations like that; I have a dominator who's softcapped to Smashing/Lethal, and I can take out an entire spawn of wall cimerorans just using brawl and boxing if I've used an inspiration. The defense debuff usually wears off before the next one hits you.

You're right though, you can still get really unlucky; once in a while I just die suddenly without any warning.

I would LOVE to see that demo record! No control powers, just his defense, brawl and boxing vs the wall of cimerorans!!! That would certainly be epic!!!

I don't think that means what ... ehhh, you've heard it before.