What is the advantage of a scrapper over a brute?

I suspect as folks get more slots open and slotted, you'll see less tankers needed/useful.

But right now, it's pretty common to see 4+ on each trial. This stuff is TOUGH. Thank god for the tanks!

I've been Tanking some of these and leading too, without dying once on my Scrapper.

That brings up an interesting point.

I think the dynamic range for the various AT's should be slightly expanded.

For example, let's look at the four melee AT's. Tanks, brutes, scrappers, and stalkers.

They should rank in order of toughness, from highest to lowest, and in terms of damage output, from lowest to highest. In reality, they are waaay too close together, as this entire thread relates.

So, I think that Tankers should have their resistance caps raised by three percent. IE, Tankers can cap at 93 percent. Brutes at 90, scrappers and stalkers at 75 percent.

Leave Brutes alone.

Raise the Scrapper damage cap by, say, 100 percent.

Raise the Stalkers damage cap 100 percent AND increase their base melee damage scalar to 1.2.

So, widen the range so that tankers can be 'uniquely tough' and stalkers can be 'uniquely deadly.' Brutes are just fine as-is (and are frequently referred to as inducing obsolescence in other AT's). Scrappers can now firmly out-damage Brutes in the same teaming situations where Brutes now firmly out-durable scrappers. All balanced, all clearly distinguished.

Do similar things for the other AT's.

I think we need this sort of a distinguisher, especially as the Incarnate abilities are 'flat'. A Tanker judgement does the exact same damage as a Blaster judgement.

How does that make sense? Give me back my uniqueness!

It doesn't, because you seem to have no real idea how much damage scrappers are already capable of at their damage cap.

You also forgot about blasters, unless you want to give them the ability to simply vaporize stuff on sight.

Hmmm...I'd more likely go with...

Tankers leave as is.

Brutes lower cap to 85%

Scrappers raise cap to 80%

Stalkers raise damage to Scrapper levels, but through the powers themselves. Not damage modifier, so they can have way better END usage. the 100% Damage to equal Scrappers is also good.

(heh)

I assure you, I'm quite familiar with scrapper damage at the cap. Kins are some of mah bestest buddies.

Also, I did not forget about blasters, I did not include them in the example. That would be why I included the words 'for example' in my post. (Not to mention that 'do similar things' line.)

I excluded them because this is not a blaster board.

However, since you brought it up, how would YOU address blaster/dominator/corrupter/defender damage?

For that matter, do ranged damage dealers have an issue with similar damage dealt? Defenders just got a huge solo/small team damage boost, is that causing issues with defenders stepping on other AT's ranged toes? (I seriously doubt it.) Does a corrupter put out almost as much as a blaster, or even more due to 'better' secondaries?


Also, since the Dev's seem utterly determined to cram a debuff onto everything in the game, would this issue be better served via that route?

Going back to my original example, (see me ignore blasters some more) would it be better to include a -res debuff in all of a scrappers attacks, instead of raising their damage cap? This would also make scrappers more team-friendly just like Tankers, which may of may not be desirable.

Ehn, just some thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em!

That's a bit similar in result to what I was proposing, and might even be simpler. However, I don't want to advocate nerfs on any AT unless absolutely required, and frankly, it's not here.

Why should Brutes get nerfed because tankers are not sufficiently more durable to make them worth it? Tankers just got a hefty damage buff, let's address their core functionality as a differentiator as well. 3 percent may not sound like a lot, but it would cut the damage a capped Tanker takes by a whopping 30 percent.

It would also make resist capping a Tanker a MUCH more desirable goal, and would reduce (somewhat) the utter dominance of +Def compared to +res as a damage mitigator. The Devs have been giving the resist sets a lot of love lately, why not take it to the logical conclusion?

(Honestly, as I recall the old 'immortality line' discussions from ages ago, even 95 to 96 percent resistance would not be out of line with the strength of capped defense. But I may be recalling incorrectly.)

In the immortality line sense for a Tanker, capped defense is equivalent to capped resistance. Increasing the resistance cap changes that balance. That's not necessarily bad, since normally defense is king, but it's something to keep in mind.

Some values were changed when Claws went over to Brutes. If I remember correctly, Bill Z Bubba (when he was still playing) said that it was even superior to the Scrapper/Stalker version.

Hmmmm....


As I recall the discussion..... Man, this was YEARS ago now....


I seem to remember people discounting capped resistance vs soft-capped defense, because the defense also mitigated 90 percent of the debuffs that were incoming.

Resistance does not, and you have to simply endure.

Granted, since then they've added some DDR here and there, but I'm not sure enough to make 90 percent resist equal 45 (90 percent misses) defense.

Thus why I'd shoot for 93, to try and make resistance an equal partner. Well, a more equal partner..... I dunno, maybe 95 would work better? But even 92 would serve as a potent differentiator between tanks and brutes.

It'd be nice if the Dev's would add some additional status resist/DDR to some click powers or lesser valued toggles inherents.

I think it depends on your playstyle and secondary. If you can maintain high fury without stopping then the brute is better. For the slow, cautious, and poor end management players a scrapper is probably best.

In GR Beta, they were actually going to lower the resist cap of Brutes to 85% at one point.
And personally, I don't see it really as a nerf, unless your playing a brute who's constantly being being shielded, as there is no secondary that will allow you to obtain a 85% Resist rating, except for Fire and Electric, andthat's only for their respective name sake resists.

Inwhich, it's really not that big of a deal.

That said, depending ont he damage differences, I'd be for the slight improvement in Brutes defense numbers, so while still less than Tanker numbers, the BRutes would have better defense numbers, but the damage seems to comparable to really go that route.

Ironically, it would've hit the weaker sets (Elec, Fire, pre FE buff mind you) hardest while leaving the stronger sets (Invuln, etc) unscathed. I also don't agree that a 50% increase in damage admittance is "not a big deal." I always found my (non-IOed) Elec Brute squishy. I still don't know how Scrappers put up with just 75% energy res.

It is a nerf, especially now considering the incarnate powers (barrier T4) - is it time for the round up of more Brute nerf calls from the Scrapper sub-forum again?

So yeah, I'd like to keep my res caps where they are on a Brute now that I can finally make use of them.

And Brutes will still not have as many HP, as much regen, as high starting base DEF, as high starting base RES, as high as a Cap as a Tanker nor as strong status protection.




Scrappers out-damage Brutes, Brutes out-survive Scrappers.

This is where it should be.

Heh...wasn't a call for a nerf. OMG! Are you like a strict plays only Brutes player?

no!!!!!
That would kill my S/L res cap Stoner....

Very recently for the first time I looked at Stone Armor on Mids'. Yuck was my response. I think the reason I've never considered Stone Armor or its proliferation is because of the costume killing Granite Armor toggle.

Well that's not really the reason I stopped playing the poor thing. Heck, Granite looks a lot better than most things I come up with

If you ever want/need help with character concepts or outfits, you can always ask the community!

I'm not a strict Brutes only player, I have a handful of Scrappers and ... one L32 tanker.

I also play a handful of Corrs, and a couple of VEATs.

It just seems like a lot of people don't actually know what their Scrappers or Tankers are capable of.


Like this.

Tankers ARE sufficiently more durable. They're insanely durable.

I prefer the higher damage of Brutes and Scrappers, but anyone who is not able to realize that neither of Brutes nor Scrappers are even in the same league as a Tanker in durability is confused.

I realize it.

This is truth as far as the game is designed. I think tankers rely on that, and get used to it. Where as scrappers know they have to work for what they get. In the end that time playing harder makes them better players in a lot of cases.

Resistance is already mostly an equal partner. At equal proportional strength, Resistance basically always has the same relative performance under all conditions outside of unresistable resistance debuffs, while defense is sometimes equally strong at mitigation but with the advantage of also deflecting secondary effects (which is sometimes a very strong advantage), and sometimes massively weaker at mitigation (any time you experience higher tohit, tohit buffs, autohitting attacks, or defense debuffs that punch through DDR - which is most of them outside of SR scrappers).

What everyone doesn't say about defense is that the strategy for maximizing defense performance is a two step process, not a one step process. The first step is to get soft-capped defense. The second, unspoken step is to avoid everything that would tear through soft-capped defenses, or run away from them as fast as you can.

It is the second step more than the first that makes defense look really really good.

In the days before DDR, the argument that defense was better than resistance and suggested resistance needed strengthening was bordering on ludicrous. For every situation you'd see high performance, there was a different one where you'd see bad performance. At one point, it was actually easier to list all the places defense would look good than all the places it would look bad.


Pre-I7, the best that defense could do was an effective 94.7% damage mitigation: that was taking something with 95% tohit or better (which the game would reduce to 95% tohit) and reducing it all the way down to 5% (the floor). 5/95 = 5.26% admittance, 94.74% effective mitigation.

But that was an academic point, because that defensive mitigation level was not stable: defense debuffs and higher tohit could rapidly crumble that protection which was impossible for resistance due to the mechanics of resistable resistance debuffs.