Because if Brutes had spines no one would ever play a scrapper again. 
j/k. But I figured that each AT has a powerset or two that was just theirs in order to keep them unique. Maybe not?
Scrapper Jack (SJ/WP Brute), Sky Commando (WP/SJ Tanker), Curveball (Rad/DP Defender), and a bunch more.
Too much damage output. A brute with two DoT auras (such as Spine/Elec) would be ludicrously good at farming and leveling. The game would essentially be easy mode, save for tougher fights.
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Brutes do more damage with damage auras than scrappers?
How, when blow for blow scrappers outdamage brutes with every other shared attack post SOs?
Since I don't have an attack chain with my spines scrapper at level 28 I can't imagine that spines would be any good at fury generation. At all.
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I'd agree with this concept.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Too much damage output. A brute with two DoT auras (such as Spine/Elec) would be ludicrously good at farming and leveling. The game would essentially be easy mode, save for tougher fights.
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I think one of the reasons that Scrappers can get away with two damage aura's is that on scrappers the armor attack powers; such as Blazing Aura, Burn, consume, Shield Charge, and Death Shroud; do not benefit from critical strikes.
On brutes those same armor attack powers do benefit from Fury.
I know how quickly my own Spines / Fire can rip through mobs on it's own... Spines / Fire with Fury Boost? And Build Up? And Fiery Embrace? That could get a teensy bit unbalanced...
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Is this really the true reason? 'Cuz then I have seriously underestimated the power Brutes hold!
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Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Too much damage output. A brute with two DoT auras (such as Spine/Elec) would be ludicrously good at farming and leveling. The game would essentially be easy mode, save for tougher fights.
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Weren't Brutes rebalanced to do less damage than Scrappers?
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I'm uploading a video to show this... I'll edit this when the video is on YT: video address should wind up being http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r73FKYpVjvA|
Originally Posted by TheBruteSquad
Brutes do more damage with damage auras than scrappers?
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Video upload is going to take a while... Google is telling me 88 minutes right now.
Okay, video is uploading, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I capped.
I took my Dark / Stone brute into a map set at -1 / x3.
My Mud Pots power is enhanced to do about ~13 points of damage on impact.
You can see in the combat tab, and on the orange numbers floating over the enemies heads, that as fury builds up, solely on the enemies attacking the brute and from Mud Pots, that Mud Pots does more damage.
As fury generation stabilized Mud Pots was clocking in around 28 points of damage generated.
So yes, with Fury, brute auras do more damage than scrapper auras in solo and low team damage buff situations.
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| How, when blow for blow scrappers outdamage brutes with every other shared attack post SOs? |
I believe those calculations included scrappers critical chances.
Given that Brutes can gain and hold medium levels of Fury easily now, this means that blow for blow, even on SO's, Brutes will be doing more casual damage than scrappers. The difference will be in team-situations where Scrappers gain greater benefit from damage buffs compared to brutes.
Scrappers will be clocking in an effective 1000% damage boost at their damage cap with criticals (500%x2). Brutes will only be clocking in 775%: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Damage_Cap#Damage
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| Since I don't have an attack chain with my spines scrapper at level 28 I can't imagine that spines would be any good at fury generation. At all. |
Fury is based on hits and getting hit. Each quill strike counts as a hit.
I don't think there's any more to Brutes not having access to Spines than there was to Brutes not having access to Claws. They used to not get Claws, now they do. They used to not get Mace and Axe, now they do. It's just a matter of the devs can't just Proliferate every single Power Set that can be Proliferated at one time.
Spines may wind up doing a bit too much damage on Brutes, after all, Claws apparently did, because its damage was reduced slightly. But IIRC that wasn't due to a large amount of AoE damage, it was because Claws has an extremely fast attack rate. Quills is a constant AoE attack, but it doesn't generate Fury, and Spines' other attacks have fairly long animation times. So at worst I would expect it to get a slight adjustment like Claws got.
The more likely reason Brutes didn't even get Spines in the first place was that it was ported to Dominators as Thorny Assault. Since it is a pseudo-ranged Power Set to start with, it fits Doms better than "pure" meleers. For that reason, it may be low priority to be ported over to Tankers or Brutes. But I don't see any reason why, given enough time, it would be Proliferated eventually.
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Is this true of Blazing Aura, Lightning Field, and Death Shroud? I don't believe so, and if not, then I see no reason why Quills would be different.|
Originally Posted by je_saist
Quills.
Fury is based on hits and getting hit. Each quill strike counts as a hit. |
[edit] No, I know this isn't true. Fury is generated when you make an attack. You do not get multiple applications of Fury if the attack is a DoT, and you generate Fury whether you attack or not. Thus, it is based on activation, not hits. A damage aura would not generate Fury.
It would respond to Fury, whereas as you noted, damage auras do not Critical. But it would do nothing to generate or maintain Fury.
I think it's just a matter of time. After all, we got Claws. All we need now is Spines.
It'll get here. Just dunno when.
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It wouldn't matter either way. Check the video that I posted (well, when it finishes uploading).|
Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Is this true of Blazing Aura, Lightning Field, and Death Shroud? I don't believe so, and if not, then I see no reason why Quills would be different.
[edit] No, I know this isn't true. Fury is generated when you make an attack. You do not get multiple applications of Fury if the attack is a DoT, and you generate Fury whether you attack or not. Thus, it is based on activation, not hits. A damage aura would not generate Fury. It would respond to Fury, whereas as you noted, damage auras do not Critical. But it would do nothing to generate or maintain Fury. |
Fury gain rate is steady with no attacks other than Mud Pots running and the enemies attacking, and Damage Aura count went up, not stayed the same.
Bugger spines for a laugh, where is my broadsword brute? 
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Yes, but that is because the enemies are attacking you. Mud Pots is a taunt aura, thus it is drawing and holding aggro. Mud Pots doesn't even DEAL damage. The Fury that it generates is entirely due to the attacks of the aggroed foe on you. |
Originally Posted by je_saist
Fury gain rate is steady with no attacks other than Mud Pots running and the enemies attacking, and Damage Aura count went up, not stayed the same.
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You stated that Quills would generate Fury directly because it is hitting the targets. This isn't true. It may indirectly generate Fury because the foes hit by the Quills would attack you, but this does NOT build ADDITIONAL Fury. Since it's so easy to build 75% Fury it would manage that just fine, but it would not be able to help generate the 80% and higher Fury other Melee sets might be able to.
This does bring up a question to my mind, though, which is would Quills generate a Taunt aura for Brutes? It does not for Scrappers, but many auras that do not generate Taunt for Scrappers are taunt auras for Brutes. However, Dark Armor, the one Power Set that has multiple aura powers that are capable of generating taunt, only taunts with Death Shroud for Brutes. It is possible that the devs may decide that, as Spines is a melee set and thus not intended to supplement a Brute's aggro holding ability, Quills will not get a taunt aura. In that case the aggro generated would be multiplied only by whatever other taunt auras and other Taunt abilities the Brute has.
I think that if it had a taunt aura it might actually be able to maintain higher Fury, at least on larger teams, but if it does not, then it would really not add much more than a good selection of normal AoE attacks would give you. I mean, it's going to be up there with Electric/Fire and Electric/Shield, but not way more than that.
Damage increases, yes. Fury however does not. I just rolled a claw/elec brute and claw/elec scrapper to check. Using the aura to kill a single minion yielded no appreciable fury gain (since skull minions attack really slowly). Using brawl alone, no aura, to kill a single minion saw rapid fury gain (despite the damage aura 'attacking' every half second to brawls recharge time).
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Well since brutes taunt with their melee sets (punchvoke) it wouldn't make a lot of sense for quills to NOT have a taunt aspect.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
This does bring up a question to my mind, though, which is would Quills generate a Taunt aura for Brutes? It does not for Scrappers, but many auras that do not generate Taunt for Scrappers are taunt auras for Brutes. However, Dark Armor, the one Power Set that has multiple aura powers that are capable of generating taunt, only taunts with Death Shroud for Brutes. It is possible that the devs may decide that, as Spines is a melee set and thus not intended to supplement a Brute's aggro holding ability, Quills will not get a taunt aura. In that case the aggro generated would be multiplied only by whatever other taunt auras and other Taunt abilities the Brute has.
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Weight training: Because you'll never hear someone lament "If only I were weaker, I could have saved them."
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This.|
Originally Posted by Emberly
Bugger spines for a laugh, where is my broadsword brute?
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Although IIRC the idea was nixed long ago, some response about swords not fitting the idea of a "brute." Some parts of the WM set seem kind of similar (whirling mace/sword, crowd control and whatever the arc in BS is called, clobber/headsplitter) so sadly, probably no broadsword brutes.
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Originally Posted by je_saist
It wouldn't matter either way. Check the video that I posted (well, when it finishes uploading).
Fury gain rate is steady with no attacks other than Mud Pots running and the enemies attacking, and Damage Aura count went up, not stayed the same. |
As mentioned before, that's entirely due to the fury gained by the mobs attacking you.
As for the math for critical vs noncritical, if you're just looking for final damage numbers you need to figure out how the AT modifiers differ. Your "1000% vs 775%" example is meaningless for many reasons, not the least of which is because it disregards this entirely - a Brute at 100% damage doesn't deal the same damage as a Scrapper at 100% damage, and normalized it would actually be 1125% vs 581.25%. That's still only useful when using damage scalars to account for things, and assuming a guaranteed critical on a Scrapper.
For a specific example of how damage auras really do compare, using Death Shroud the base damage of each tick does the following:
Scrapper: 12.51 damage
Brute: 8.34 damage
Let's add some +damage to the equation, and say that both have it slotted at 95% for damage:
Scrapper: 12.51 * (1.0 + 0.95) = 24.395
Brute: 8.34 * (1.0 + 0.95) = 16.263
Because Death Shroud doesn't critical, that's about as far as the Scrapper is going to get without more damage buffs.
A Brute hasn't even started building Fury yet, though. Once we get up to around 40% Fury:
Scrapper: 24.395 (no change)
Brute: 8.34 * (1.0 + 0.95 + 0.80) = 22.935
And at 65% Fury:
Scrapper: 24.395 (no change)
Brute: 8.34 * (1.0 + 0.95 + 1.3) = 27.105
A Scrapper can certainly do more damage, though: see what happens when you keep the 65% Fury and apply identical +80% damage buffs:
Scrapper: 12.51 * (1.0 + 0.95 + 0.80) = 34.403
Brute: 8.34 * (1.0 + 0.95 + 0.80 + 1.3) = 33.777
As you can see, it's not as cut-and-dry as saying "Brutes do more damage with auras", although when considering only internal buffs that's most likely the case over time. But as you can see from the applied damage buff numbers just above, the Scrapper will do more damage during a Build Up cycle - even if they didn't have a higher +damage value.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Mud Pots doesn't even DEAL damage. The Fury that it generates is entirely due to the attacks of the aggroed foe on you.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
I think that if it had a taunt aura it might actually be able to maintain higher Fury, at least on larger teams, but if it does not, then it would really not add much more than a good selection of normal AoE attacks would give you.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
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Originally Posted by Brillig
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My guess is that Brutes don't have Spines because of the interaction between Spines and Stone Armor.
I remember reading Castle mentioning that the spines set essentially has several different secondary effects: slows/-recharge, toxic DoT, immobilize, etc. I get the feeling that the set would probably be "normalized" (looked at very carefully) before it gets ported to another AT.
Its because spines has -recharge which would affect fury generation negatively. Its also why Brutes don't have Ice Melee/Ice Armor. But the mechanics to Fury have changed quite a bit since CoV release. I'd love that they take another look at these sets.
Again I'll say, Can I has my Spines/Ice Armor Br00t nao????
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Nope. Claws don't interact well with Stone Armor so they're available, we just can't pick them with Stone Armor.
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Originally Posted by Nicro
My guess is that Brutes don't have Spines because of the interaction between Spines and Stone Armor.
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DB and Claws doesn't work with Shield either.
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Originally Posted by Exxar
Nope. Claws don't interact well with Stone Armor so they're available, we just can't pick them with Stone Armor.
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Everyone says Spines and Regen would be too strong on Brutes but... I don't buy it. I think the reason it hasn't been done yet is it's a low priority or they just want to keep some stuff unique to particular ATs.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Mud Pots doesn't even DEAL damage.
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???
Mud Pots: PBAoE, Minor DoT(Fire), Foe Immobilize, -SPD
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Not a complain, just wondering. I seldom play redside, but I figure I should play more with some redside ATs. I've had a concept for a spines scrapper floating around in the back of my mind for a while, and since the character is basically a monster, it occurred to me that a Brute version might be a fitting AT and a nice change of pace.
You can tell I'm less familiar with redside ATs, because I didn't even realize Spines doesn't exist for Brutes. Oh well, it's definitely a spines-only concept.
Is there any known reason for this? Perhaps that the -recharge debuff secondary effect in the spine venom would slow Fury generation (which as I understand it was a big factor in not porting Ice to Brutes)?
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