Regression towards the mean?

I only recently started playing melee toons, after close to 5 1/2 years. Previously I'd only ever gotten one brute and one WS to 50, to abandon them to a languishing retirement.

But I'm beginning to get into them now but I've kind of noticed that there's little advantage to playing a tank or scrapper compared to a brute. That seems to be my own experience and supported anecdotally from various threads and comments on the forums.

I'm sure that's likely to be contentious with some, but it's a good reflection of how I feel, but I'd take this a stage further because it ties in with something else I've been feeling for a while - that there's a shift from "AT individuality" to homogenity... the distinctive flavour of different ATs being either diluted or morphed into something less than it was.

As with my above example, there seems to be less reason to roll anything other than a brute - but I've been "bothered by blasters" for a little while now. I mean, why play a blaster nowdays? The purpose of a blaster is to deliver high damage from range - the Devs concept was a "glass cannon" I believe. But if I want to play a high damage ranged toon, I'd be much better off playing a Dominator, a Corrupor or even more likely, a Soldier of Arachnos or a Kheldian - they can all dish out damage - and any advantage the blaster has in terms of damage is countered by the amount of time spent faceplanted. All other ATs have mitigation to improve their survivability, so if their damage is reduced, they can manage it for longer.

As for Corruptors and Defenders, there's barely any distinction I can see... Maybe a crupper dishes out a bit more damage in exchange for slightly less potent de/buffs but I'm not expert on those ATs so can't comment too far.

With Going Rogue, and moreso with Freedom, I feel that three ATs have effectively been neutered due to obsolescence - and so leaves a smaller pool to draw from. We're potentially in danger of a "one size fits all" AT with a few exotic types around the edges - but that's probably overstating the case.

I'm not sure if there's an easy answer and I'm pretty sure that this isn't something the Devs intended but it would be good to have a bit more distinction between some of the ATs at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I've been seeing the same thing in-game. While each AT has different caps and scales, it's hard to see a real difference between Brute and Scrapper. Blasters need their damage looked at. The whole "You have no defenses so your damage is higher" doesn't really apply anymore. Especially since Brutes and Scrappers tend to outshine us and be more survivable at the same time.

Here is my fix

Scrappers: give them more damage!

Brutes: Do nothing

Tankers: Do nothing

All for say yay
Against say nothing

I think the OP is truly just the perception of the poster. I enjoy Brutes just fine, but I prefer Scrappers by far. The two ATs are not just the same things with different AT modifiers. They play differently. While not by miles, I prefer the way a Scrapper plays.

In terms of the actual attribute modifiers (and the contribution of Fury), the changes to Brutes that came with GR pretty much ensured that, setting aside things like cross-powerset comparisons, Brutes are more durable but do less damage. Yes, their resistance caps are much higher. That really doesn't bother me in the least. Very few of my characters operate significantly often at/above the Scrapper resistance caps outside of cases like having multiple Barriers spammed on me, in which case the massive +defense tends to make me so survival the resistance is moot.

I view the two ATs as peers, not one as functionally superior to the other.

Tanks have a completely different AT role. Some folks simply refuse to accept that. Anyone who thinks a Tanker's vastly higher survival compared to either a Brute or a Scrapper doesn't matter in terms of fulfilling that role simply isn't paying attention. The debate there really comes down to whether people value that role. Some don't. That's fine - they shouldn't play Tankers.

Edit: Blasters are a different thing. They have always had issues, since long before the CoV ATs were introduced. They still have problems, IMO. Forum discussion about it seems to be fairly regular and ongoing.

I first rolled a Blaster. The description was indeed a "glass cannon," and the now-departed lead designer said that the Blaster's main advantage was "ranged damage." Sounded good to me.

Except that the Blaster powers kept forcing me back into Melee range. I started with an Elec/Fire Blaster. I had ONE ranged multiple-target attack. All the others were PBAoE, which meant that I had to run into the middle of the folks I wanted to attack, trigger the attack, wait for the Dramatic Animation to finish and then scurry quickly away. Further complicating this was the nature of Aggro in 2005, my newbiness, the variable quality of PUGs I played with and the different abilities of the villain groups I encountered, none of which I knew very well.

Today, I can evaluate Aggro management by myself and the team pretty accurately, I know who the hard-hitters among the villains are and I am quite adept at running in and out of Melee range. It does not hurt either that I have Procs with Stun, Hold and Knockdown helping now as well when I play a Blaster.

Back in the day, I simply faceplanted. A lot.

I also started rolling some Controllers. They can either stay at range and beat up on the bad guys pretty effectively, or they go into Melee range with controlling auras running, like Choking Cloud or Arctic Air, and even without someone taking the aggro, they can pummel the baddies close up and live to tell about it.

I think the majority of my Controllers play at range and deal more damage than my Blasters overall, and even moreso when they get access to the Power Pools and can add a multi-target blast like Fireball, which does double damage on targets contained a second earlier by my AoE Immob power, etc. In Melee, they are FAR easier than Blasters.

I like the challenges of playing Blasters, and have rolled others and still play them. The Devs certainly gave us the "glass" part, but Controllers are certainly more of a "cannon" more often than most Blasters.

I personally feel the way to set Tankers apart is to make them better force multipliers. I would have approached the situation by having their APPs contain ally buffs (completely missing in any archetypes APPs), and allow them to become mild force multipliers. Powers like:

- Deflection Shield (from Force Field)
- Thermal Shield
- Cold Shield
- Fortitude
- Sonic Barrier
- Temporal Selection
- Resurrect
- Clear Mind
- Transference
- Forge
- Frostwork

The powers would be modified to be less powerful than their Defender counterparts. But the main idea would be to take Tankers off the same scale as Brutes. Not by making them more survivable, but making them more able to assist the team. If that change ever happened I would be all over Tankers and not care about their lower damage, because I would feel they live up to their support role. Just being somewhat more survivable IMO doesn't set them far enough apart from Brutes.

If they don't want to go back and change all the existing APPs, just creating one "Healing Mastery" one that lets Tankers function like a "Paladin" would interest me: Fortitude, Clear Mind, Heal Other, Absorb Pain, Resurrect. But Thermal, Cold Domination, and a Time/Force Field combo also offer similar opportunities.

The important thing to remember is what the archetypes look like from 1-50, as opposed to at 50 and beyond.
-Before Dominators get Perma-Domination
-Before Brutes have the slots available for End Mod so that they can run toggles and continuously attack without running out of Endurance
-Before a Scrapper has the slots available to make his/her secondary shine.
-etc.

IMO, the lower levels are where the distinctions become apparent. A blaster's role is damage, and it will do great damage starting at level 1. A tanker can "tank" starting at level 1. Sure, both those ATs will get better at doing what they do as they level up, but they are still very good at what they do right off the bat.

With an archetype like (say for example) a scrapper, that is expected to be both resilient and damaging, it is hard to achieve both early on due to the design of how we pick and slot our powers. By the early twenties, we have had over half of our power choices and less than half of our slots. For a blaster, those slots are most likely going towards damage, and a wise tanker will devote most of those slots to their primary (they are going to have the aggro, they should be able to survive it). But for an archetype like a Scrapper, its hard to choose which road to take. Do you do more damage but are less tough, hoping you kill your enemy before they kill you? Or do you slot up your defenses and just acknowledge that it will take a bit longer for you to defeat the bad guys? The archetypes with a more specific role have a much easier decision in that situation.

By level 50, with proper IO set slotting and Incarnate powers, pretty much any archetype can be turned into the proverbial "tankmage," mainly because all of the above affects each archetype equally. A Controller's Judgement attack will do just as much damage as a Blaster's, and a Dominator's Destiny power will buff people just as well as a Defender's equivalent. That being the case, it is only natural that homogenization become apparent.

Frankly, I dislike the situation, but at this point I honestly think they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they do nothing, then it is like everyone has been saying: Tankers will lose their specialty somewhere in the mid-30s and Brutes continue to be popular, Blasters will lose their specialty around the same time once Defenders and Corruptors get (and can maintain) their more powerful buffs/debuffs. If they actually do something, like upping Blaster's damage numbers for example, then they succeed in distancing blasters as the "damage kings" but they end up with an archetype that (once they have IOs and Incarnate powers) is vastly more devastating.

Of course, that begs the question of whether or not that is the point of the Incarnate system in the first place: to make any character capable of great damage/defensive buffs/debuffs/etc. But that is off-topic.

TL;DR
I agree that there are definitely archetypes are becoming less significant, however, I do not think that there are any changes to be made that would not imbalance either the early game or the late game.

IMO, once Going Rogue went live and all ATs could be on any side, Defenders and Tankers became obsolete, with the exceptions of Empathy and Force Field Defenders. Brutes, Scrappers, and yes, even Blasters, have their place in the game. Defenders and Tankers, again with the exceptions of Empathy and Force Field, not so much.

Anything a Defender can do, a Corruptor can do almost as well and output a significant amount more damage. Anything a Tanker can do, a Brute can do almost as well and output a significant amount more damage. There's nothing in the game that a Defender can do that a Corruptor can't, and nothing in the game that a Tanker can do that a Brute can't. And the Corruptor and Brute would output a lot more damage while doing it.

Thinking about this and reading responses, I'm feeling (it's an emotional response so take it any way you choose) along these lines:

There are now essentially two kinds of toon: Ranged or Damage.

The following ATs are mostly obsolete: Tanks, Defenders & Blasters - there's plenty of other toons that do their job as well if not better.

You probably won't lose anything by playing an obsolete toon, because it's hard to quantify the "fun factor" but if you care about numbers then you will probably have to choose carefully whatever you decide to play!

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

For anyone saying Tankers are obsolete, I ask that you consider Gauntlet (their inherent). I can count on one hand the number of Brutes I have met that could hold aggro like Tankers, and all of them were actively using Taunt. Most Tankers I know skip that power altogether because their attacks automatically taunt anyone in their vicinity. For those that don't have an "aggro aura" (Against All Odds, Chilling Embrace, Rise to the Challenge, etc.), they need only launch a PBAoE attack within the mob in order to keep most of their teammates safe. The typical Brute, for all it's orange numbers, cannot do that.

The Corruptors vs. Defenders argument is a bit more plausible in my opinion. Corruptors lose nor gain nothing between solo and teamed situations. Defenders lose damage when teamed, but gain the ability to activate abilities at a lower endurance cost provided their teammates' health bars are failing. These days, endurance management is trivially easy compared to what it once was, so that part of Vigilance is much less meaningful now. While I've seen Defenders do some amazing things for their teammates' stats, I find the Corruptor's buff/debuff numbers to be close enough to the defenders, making the difference in damage (while teamed) much harder to justify.

Blasters are the outlier, in my opinion. They are supposed to be the highest damage dealers, and their ability to attack from range is supposed to be their mitigation. I see no problem with increasing their ranged damage output (not overall damage output, mind you). When using attacks with, say, a range of 30+ feet, they get a damage bonus. It won't step on the Scrapper's or Stalker's toes for melee damage, it will make their presence quite more noticeable than currently, and is consistent with the definition of the archetype.

Personally, I have always found very dubious the declarations of "obsolete" that stems from the opinion that, since XYZ is not the most numerically optimal way to achieve success, it is therefore obsolete.

It bugs me how often folks who hold such opinions have them because they set forth an extremely strict definition of "success", usually measured in hard metrics like DPS, XP or Inf per time or time-to-completion for a fixed set of content. I have no problem with people caring about those things more than anything else, but it doesn't help that folks with this view are often (though not always) dismissive of any other definition of "success". (It's one thing to say only certain measures of success matter to you, but another to say others are wrong for holding different ones.)

I personally value taking something I find interesting to play and making it the best I can. It matters much less to me if something else I played was "better". If all I cared about was XP/hour, absolute DPS, mag/second, or similar things, I would only play like 1-3 powersets, ever, and would discard them whenever something better came along. There are things I don't play, but best metric/time is not the primary way I prioritize them. (Note that this doesn't mean I don't ever think some powersets or even ATs have issues, but that only sometimes overlaps with the declarations of "obsolete".)

So long as anyone holds views like mine, I doubt any currently existing AT or powerset will ever be "obsolete" in the sense of having no players.

I've always hated the "us vs. them" debates that you get in MMOs. In other games and in the past, where it might have taken you a year or more to reach the top echelons of your chosen class, then there was maybe some validity to being dismayed to find that your class did not excel at something it was meant to excel at, or wasn't valued because another class did that thing better. But in CoH, you can not only play EVERY AT to 50 if you want, but there really isn't an AT out there that's not worth playing. (Though my MA stalker comes close, and I'm none too fond of my peacebringer or my DP/Devices blaster).

There's no reason to play a scrapper instead of a brute? My Electric Melee/Shield scrapper would like to have a word with you. ^_^ That's still my best tank mage. If I want to destroy stuff, that's the toon to do it. But my favorite toon for months now has been my super strength/invulnerable brute, basically a tank that actually does damage.

I have about 12 scrappers at level 50, and 4 brutes, with two more at 48 and 44. They all play different. Brutes are very powerful but not obviously superior to scrappers or (for the most part) tanks.