Scrapper vs Brute

Well when you say
The bolded statement is an unmitigated and blatant nerf. So having said that, all the "nerf my brutes and I'll ******* kill you" posts make a lot more sense.

The bolded statement happened with Going Rogue, so this is a moot point. The issue has been resolved.

I personally pointed out your test was flawed, and you did mention nerfing brutes in your original post. Yes, as mentioned a kin on a team isn't rare, but a kin isn't present on every team for every TF/SF run. W/o that said kin or any other +dam on the team, a brute will never see their cap.

Being that you stated you have 2 brutes at 50 you understand that you don't really hit cap all that often. Even with a good kin on your team, you see it more when at the bosses. You don't hit cap with every spawn while mowing maps. Unless of course your entire team waits for the kin or the team sucks and can't even kill even cons w/o FS.

I personally don't play my kin much due to not being able to stand the "SB NAO!!!". But, talking to my wife who played her kin quite often, she laughed and stated "You're lucky if your kin can get off FS before the group wipes the spawn".

Again I'll state we should stop using capped brute numbers to capped scrapper numbers. It doesn't ever mention that scrappers can crit, which adds X amount of damage. That alone makes base test flawed.

That "nerf" was to balance ATs that were now fully able to team with each other on all game content, and was already done so in i18. As others have pointed out, brutes are rarely ever at their rediculously high damage cap anyway, so lowering it a tad woulnd't hurt anyone's play style at all.



And pointing out that my test was flawed was something I was hoping to see so that I could be assured that the devs did what I thought they were trying to to do, which they did. And the nerf was not something like "Hey, let's give them such a low cap, the hit it with 50% fury!" But it was moer of "We should lower it just enough so that scrappers are still outdamaging them under all equal buff amounts."

It was not a game breaking suggestion, and as I have said since the first post, since I miscalculated the crits, there is nothing in my mind telling me that there needs to be a change.




Yes, that is what I had initially thought was the point of the BALANCE of the brute AT, and at the time of posting I thought I saw a mistake. Due to no one else mentioning it, I thought I had to have been missing something, and asked if anyone saw a flaw in what I had done. As you have here, I did miss something, and that was my lack of adding crits into the equation, so I now realize there is no problem with the 2 ATs. I appreciate the responses from people that approached it logically such as yourself, and I thank you for pointing that out to me.

Under equal buff amounts scrappers will always out damage brutes. Only once you pass the scrapper cap will you have brutes start to catch up.

I'm pleased that you admitted your premise was flawed because you failed to take crits into account. There's a very good reason why people get prickly when they see posts like this.

Many people, myself being among them, didn't think the changes in Brutes for I18 were really necessary. They hadn't been necessary when CoH and CoV were in different worlds. They hadn't been necessary with all of the Co-Op missions. It only became an issue when Brutes were a viable Blue Side choice. It was then that some people kept stating that since Brutes, at a theoretical maximum that they could not in any way meet on their own, were "better" than Scrappers in Melee and that they "had" to be reduced in effectiveness.

Some Brute backers, like me, are still sore about this issue.

So, when we see a post asking for a reduction on Brutes for balance purposes, we get a bit cranky. We already know that Brutes, Tankers, and Scrappers have been balanced against each other. It is always those who are unfamiliar with the situation, like you yourself admitted, that keep resurrecting this dead horse.

Don't take it personally. I'm sure you meant well.

Actually it was then that Brutes could out perform Scrappers on their own.

If you figure the formula for damage is (damage mod)*(1+enhancements+fury)*(criticals) then for sets that don't constantly buff their own damage (claws, dual blades, shields), a Brute only needed to maintain a 125% damage buff from Fury to match a Scrapper damage. That used to be very easily done. Now that's a more realistic ceiling for Brute performance. Which is an awesome compromise. If you missed that people thought Brute changes were necessary before, you probably just weren't paying attention.

Now the concern is "fringe" cases which are all too common because of peoples lust for Kinetics is creating a regular situation where Brutes would be better than Scrappers. I personally don't think the disparity that exists now is worth the devs' time. If people want to hand pick the power sets for their speed STF or something, then by all means there should be some advantage in doing so. I doubt Scrappers will be as readily left behind as some other ATs. Those other ATs are the ones that are worth the devs' time. (Peacebringers and Stalkers IMO)

My opinion is Brutes might warrant some tweaking in the next few issues to solidify their role between Scrappers and Tankers, as I believe Stalkers need their role solidified between Blasters and Scrappers on the scale of survivability:damage. However, damage cap scenarios are not cause to cry wolf. I'd rather wait and hope that the devs' datamine the damage output of these 5 ATs and then look at their relationships, why there is disparity, and then adjust.