So those obsolete ATs

I agree with the "balance" statement, but there already is content such as this.

Task forces.

Specifically, Tasks forces scaled up for 8-man teams, on high difficulty. Or endgame encounters such as the ITF of STF or LRSF. Scrappers and Brutes will still tend to get overwhelmed, or encounter an AV they can't solo (Ghost Widow? Nictus-buffed Rommy? Methods do exist to kill them solo, but it's tricky on a melee AT. At least with the "no temps" rule...)

The same could be said for Softcapped Blasters.

Tankers are a team-orientated AT. They soak the damage so other ATs don't have to. In order to do that, they need to direct that damage onto themselves via aggro control.

It's possible to build Brutes and Scrappers to soak damage to the point that they can weather the majority of standard PVE foes, but all too often they will still lack the aggro control to direct that damage onto themselves and away from their squishier teammates. That's why you see people whining about scrappers soloing or tanking AVs, but not tanking standard mobs for a large team. You can build for AoE aggro control on a Scrapper/Brute, but it will be very sub-par compared to what a Tanker can do (very few ranged autohit taunt effects, for starters) and it is this lack of aggro management, more than any lack of damage mitigation ability which is evident in normal gameplay if/when they attempt to "stand in" for Tankers.

When you have people that can walk away from the keyboard, grab a sandwich, hit the bathroom, and come back to the keyboard with their tank still standing, something in the challenge of surviveability bit is missing.



To a point. I can take my resistance based scrapper out against a much broader range of mob types than a softcapped blater, without worring about cascade failure. At +3/8. Not just for one spawn, but every single spawn, no pausing between spawns. I'm gussing more scrappers/brutes reliably have that ability than blasters do. If I am wrong in that, why don't you see more blasters farming?

This is not a square peg, round hole scenario. There is plenty of overlap in this game. Tankers can be a solo oriented AT. I solo with them just fine, just not as fast as my scrappers or brutes.

Might as well say that scrappers are a team oriented AT, they punch out tons of damage to take out the heavy mobs quickly so that the other AT's dont have to sit there for too long pew pew pewing.

Kind of what I meant when I said take out the aggro magnet aspect, but why say it in 7 words when you can use 150.

I know how tanks work, I have a few of them, I like them, alot. I just very rarely come accross content in the game that can't be solved faster than with a build up, throw spines, burn, spine burst and fireball to the face and be able to sj to the next mob to start all over. I dont need to dust off my tanks, because besides the novelty of it, I have no reason to pull DE monsters accross a map.

Being clear and concise with your previous statement would of helped a lot. You mention a IO'd out Tanker, then in the very next sentence, a Invul Tanker. You left plenty of room for people to believe your IO'd Tanker was also your Invul Tanker. You're not doing yourself any favors by being acting like a jerk either, but I doubt you care anyways when it comes to this particular topic.

This is an interesting way of looking at IOs Psiphon. It makes sense, but you also left off a few other ATs that can get very good mileage out of IOs, like blasters.

One thing that has been a major hope of mine from the time of the games initial release is that thru some means within the game, we can customize our characters and "blur" the lines between AT types. (To some extent this exists)

First I thought Pool powers (First the primary and then the Ancillary pools) would help to blur-the-lines. They did help, but not as much as I had hoped. My Defenders STILL dont have anything resembling a melee attack chain.

Then the IO system came on scene and new hope arose that we could blur the lines a little bit more between ATs and customizing them. I consider the IO system a success but it still fell short of its possibilities. I cannot make my squishies have "real" status protection. I cannot reach any decent levels of resistance over and above what my existing toggles provide, and for the most part +def and +rech are the "cool-kids" on the block.

My newest hope is with the Incarnates system. Knowing very little about it so far, it may be too early to tell how this will "blur-the-AT-lines", but I know better than to expect it to solve all my "hybrid-ization" needs. It will be pretty cool for sure. I just hope after this round of game improvements we can get back into new AT ideas or new ways to blend ATs, like porting some assault sets to Defenders/Corruptors.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I'm not sure we're on quite the same wavelength here.

My point was that although Tanks can be built to deal damage (just as Scrappers can be built to "tank") by design Tankers are not a solo-orientated AT. They don't shine when they're solo, but when they're teamed. Scrappers, by comparison, tend to go the opposite way.

Tankers fulfil a specific role in the old cliche "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG gameplay: Mitigation, Damage, Support.

Scrappers don't fit into any of those roles particularly well. They can do great Single Target DPS, but generally on teams you'll be facing multiple foes, and even the most damaging AoE scrapper (Spines/, and either /DA, /Elec, /Shield or /Fire depending on who you ask) tends to get outperformed by an AoE-centric Blaster. And lets not forget that Spines is something of a 'Black Sheep' - the majority of Scrapper primaries have little or no respectable AoE damage output. So yes, there is overlap, but the majority of the Scrapper AT powerset combinations are not particularly "team friendly".

Now granted in CoH roles are more blurred, and taken as a unit, a team can have "enough" AoE to cope with a slew of minions allowing Scrappers to forgoe AoE DPS and just pitch in against the bosses or AVs... but since bosses and AVs are comparitively rare encounters, that type of limited contribution isn't particularly helpful to a team for the vast majority of Pve gameplay.

As a (rather crass) generalisation then, to an average team a Scrapper has no specific niche role - they are just a Blaster that contributes less effective damage but requires less babysitting to avoid a faceplant. A Tanker, on the other hand, has a very specific role - They are often the primary means by which a team mitigates incoming damage, through the combination of their ability to absorb damage and their ability to direct incoming damage onto themselves. Which leads on to my next point.

Again, I'm not sure we're on the same page here.

You said to take out the aggro magnet aspect and just compare raw survivability, but my point is that it is this very aspect that defines a Tanker.

Jonny Butane and yourself are both effectively comparing a Scrapper and a Tanker and saying "Well lets disregard that Tankers can control aggro for an entire team; Scrappers' defenses are nearly as good, and they are better at damage".

My argument is that Tankers are not defined by their possession of good defenses, or their ability to control aggro, but both together.

You might as well compare a Controller and a Mastermind and then say "Well lets disregard that a Mastermind can control their pets; Controllers' pets are nearly as good, and they are are better at [buffing/debuffing/controlling a mob]"... as Masterminds are defined not by them possessing pets, or by their ability to control pets, but both together.

And when you're soloing, even soloing on high difficulty, or running with a team of self-sufficient characters, I don't doubt that this is the case.

I haven't seen you tank, so I don't have grounds to question your own personal ability. I'm speaking here purely on my observations of the capabilities of the average Scrapper or Tanker build, a generic toon where anyone could be the "pilot".

When such a Scrapper is running with a full team in which there are "Glass cannons" or squishy support ATs, particularly against tougher or more resistant foes, in the time it takes them to kill a mob one of their teammates could have pulled aggro and died. They might have the damage and defenses, but lack the aggro control needed to lockdown the mob.

(Apologies for the long post, I'm trying to clarify my viewpoint without being viewed as launching personal attacks on anyone! There's enough of that in this thread already!! )

That was a reciprocation to Bill saying "L2P".
I only act like a jerk to people to act like jerks to me first. Besides this thread, Bill has a history of that with a bunch of people who are too polite to repay him in kind.



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Yes, I picked up on the Crab Mentality from JB. I don't know how else one person could argue with a dozen others and still have no clue how off his reasoning is. I mean it's very possible IRL that the 12 would be wrong and the 1 be right, but this is a case where we all share the same context. We're all forum goers playing the same game with the same exact data available to us. The chance that the slim minority is going to be right is minuscule.

Of course the SAME thing is happening on the Blaster forum right now... one (occasionally two) are doing a tantrum style argument against more than a dozen others. That's just the way it goes. Some people will never understand, even things that are simple and common sense.

This repeated "if Scrappers can do it, Tankers should be able to do it too!" nonsense isn't much of a platform.

You could also walk up to him as a Stalker in Hide and use /em batsmash.

You'll be "fighting" him as much as any Tanker would be "fighting him."

And a Tanker as two options: win or wuss; and even when not fighting an AV Tankers are hampered by their attacks.

You argue statemating to an AV is better than simply not being able to survive it. I counter that by saying there's lots of ways to increase your own survivability in this game and almost always you can layer them, and more are added all the time. Any AV a Scrapper can't solo now, there's a good chance in the future he'll be able to whenever a new temp power(depending on your personal rules) or IO set comes out. There's no real offensive equivalent to capping your Defenses, and there's no Wedding Band or Eye of the Magus for killing things(Geas makes me laugh). Even with the Incarnate system, it's not not particularly geared to increase damage.



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This is complete tripe. But not surprising that you think that.

Let's make an superhero MMO where the players can't remake their own version of one of the most iconic superhero scrappers, or brutes. Don't go into marketing. Ever.

Not totally correct. There are SEVERAL IO sets that increase your damage. From past discussions I KNOW that Angry Citizen and old stalker player used them to boost his stalker's damage so that it simulated a damage mod increase on his stalker.

And once again why in god's green earth do you think that soloing AVs is the balance point. NO WAY IN HELL IS IT.

As eloquently pointed out by ClawsandEffect, sets that can solo AVs are RARE!

You don't like that tankers will have to give up some of their survivability to get the damage buffs you want, we know.

Tough.

Agreed.

I think it is unfortunate that the only challenge for tankers in this game is end game content jacked up to max and the necessity to be able to pull mobs off a toon that wasn't paying attention to what they were doing.

I challenge my scrapper everytime I play, and I dont need +4 lvl AV encounters or have to wait for 7 people to do it.

Wait what? What about Claws, Elec, and Fire? All are very good options for an aoe centric scrapper facing multiple foes. Sure, 4 out of 10 is still a minority, but it aint 1 out of 10.

I am more concerned with the seemingly limited contribution my tank makes in the majority of Pve gameplay. I havent felt the NEED to pull out a tank from my roster in a long, long time because I get enough surviveability from my scrapper along with the bonus of bucketloads of damage.

Primary means? Is that before or after the defenders buff/debuff, the controllers and doms lock them down and buff/debuff or pew pew pew, the corrs pew pew pew and buff/debuff and the MM's buff/debuff. I feel safer already. Sorry for the snark. Really, I am glad your game experience is such that you feel you are making a big contribution with your tanker. I used to feel that way too.

JB is asking for more damage, he wants to be able to one shot AV's with his tanker.

I disagree. I dont think tankers need any more damage whatsoever, they already do lots of damage.

I would like Tankers extra surviveability to actually matter.

I don't disagree with this.

Buh!? Share build and strat please.

That is non-sense. Fully IOd tankers may be able to say that. Most tankers can find challenge on lower settings just fine. It is even possible to use IOs to pump up your damage and ignore adding even more mitigation. It is funny that people complain about scrappers having enough survivability, but then instead of adding damage to their tankers they add more mitigation instead.

I thought you wanted to be THE hero, not the distraction?

Once again, you are saying that tanks should not only have the highest survivability, but they should deal more damage than anything else too.

In comic books that can work, because who wins and loses is determined solely by the writer.

This is not a comic book. Who wins and loses in the game is determined by a set of rules and programs.

Making it so one AT survives better AND deals more damage than anything else is not fair to players of the other 13 ATs. It really is THAT simple, and you keep trotting out weak argument after weak argument, consistently using comic books as an example, when comic books do not apply to a balanced video game in the slightest.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Unless it's a Scrapper. Because when you can get enough survivability to fight whatever you want, more than that isn't really needed or better.

I don't see a balanced video game around here.



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Most scrappers will die to things most tankers can survive. Shouldn't you be happy now? You can play Hero Brutes, isn't that what you always wanted?

To be fair, an actual balanced computer game is rare.

See my replies a couple pages back to Leo_G and Another_Fan.



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Look everyone: Butane's once again, as usual, ignoring every single case presented to him where scrappers and brutes Don't have the survivability necessary to stay upright to accomplish a task because those facts interfere with his argument that all tanks should be untouchable, Hamidon soloing gods!

We're all shocked at this, I'm sure.

Are you saying you don't like Brutes either? Brutes seem perfectly matched to your desires. Plenty of survivability, plenty of damage. I think you ought to enjoy them and just be content that tankers are designed to have modest damage.

I understand where you are coming from. The specialist ATs, defenders, blasters, and tankers, do stand out in the current game. However, I think the game has room for those types of ATs and it seems people still play them (that may change over time, as this thread is discussing).

It is my honest opinion that when you are given the option to have what you want or at least something that is much closer to what you want, you should embrace it and enjoy. I guess you can still gripe a bit about the specialists, but they seem to be an interesting piece of the game, for variety's sake.

Of course, you have hours invested into older characters, so I get where just make a Brute is a bit casually flippant. But you mention you farm, so you could probably get one PLd by in game associates, if you prefer that.