willpower brute vs. tanker

Is this topic from 2006 ?

Nowadays you can switch sides and play every AT on each of the two sides, so complaining about villains having it worse because such AT is supposedly worse than such AT is just stupid.

My two highest characters are an Elec/Invuln Brute and a Stone/Stone Tanker. Even aside from the powerset differences, they feel very different in terms of pacing and priorities.

In fact, I was struggling a lot with my Tanker when I was trying to play him solo like my Brute. I was treating him as another Brute with slightly less damage and slightly more defense, rushing from spawn to spawn trying to take them down as quickly as possible, and the playstyle wasn't working. Even with Stamina and End reductions up the wazoo, I kept running out of Endurance way too quickly, and even with Bruising, he didn't feel like he was doing much damage.

Finally, I had an epiphany - even without Granite, I'm soft-capped to S/L/En/N/Psi (with the appropriate toggles on), Rooted is keeping my HP up, and Mud Pots is damaging everyone around me even if I do nothing. I can just stand there and let attacks bounce off of me while I catch my second wind, and finish off enemies at leisure. Heck, I don't even need to worry about the Minions at all most of the time, I can just deal with the Lts. and Bosses and mission objectives and kill Minions only if I really want to (for drops, for example). It's almost like using Stealth, except instead of the enemies ignoring me, I ignore them.

Meanwhile, my Brute can just rush from spawn to spawn, tearing through them like paper while taking a little damage here and there, but usually not enough to worry him in the long run. He's a pure attacker, taking down everyone in his path to get through the mission. And when he does get in trouble, Unstoppable and/or Dull Pain come into play, giving him more reason to rush before they wear off (and, in the case of Unstoppable, before the crash hits).

Of course, their team strategies are a little different, especially the Tanker's, where I don't so much ignore enemies as just hold them in place for others to whittle down, but the same idea still applies - I am defensive, not offensive. I am a rock, I am an island.

I don't know if the differences would feel that severe if I had a Stone/Stone Brute. (After all, I know that Stone is much better at ST while the Elec is better at AoE) I'm planning to try it someday, to see how it plays. I suspect, though, I'd still be playing him more like my other Brute than my Tanker. There's a reason that they're called "Primary" and "Secondary" power sets, after all.

Brutes and Tank mirror each other, and yet are very different than each other.

Tanks are built to be hit with everything but the kitchen sink (Or psionics, depending on your power set) shrug it off and keep going but the damage the do isn't very impressive.

Brutes, meanwhile, are like the love child of a Tank and Scrapper. They can't take the insane damage a Tank can, but they are still very sturdy and can tank for teams when needed. The damage they do might start out comparable to a Tanks, but once they build up some fury they will out damage them all the time. Brutes can even outdamage Scrappers, given the proper conditions.

Scrappers and Stalkers are also alike but different. Both deal massive amounts of damage and can do crits, but Scrappers can survive much more than Stalkers and Stalkers have to give up an attack a Scraper could get for Hide, often dropping an AoE ability. In addition a Scrapper deals massive damage ALL the time while a Stalker hits for insane damage first, and good damage after that. The Scrapper loves a dragged out fight while the Stalker wants to end it in one blow.

They were never equal, and aren't supposed to be.

Tanks have higher base resistance and defense numbers than anything else in the game to make up for the fact that every other melee AT will outdamage them by a pretty wide margin.

Basing any argument about balancing ATs throughout the entire game on their PvP performance is doomed to fail.

If everything were equalized, you would have ONE choice of character to play, and that would make an MMO suck royally, since MMOs are all about having different choices in what you play.