Concerned about Scrappers.

0.8 * 1.25 = 1.0. That part is a break even. The fact that the first attack doesn't benefit from the buff makes it an overall nerf.

The AoE issue isn't relevant to calculate average critical chance, because that's normalized to AoE damage. Or to put it another way, the critical chance is being estimated in the first place to see how it affects damage output in general, and that means what's important is not the crit rate per second, but the crit rate per damage point. Whether five targets are hit by an AoE or by five single target attacks in rapid succession won't affect the critical chance contribution to damage output.

Or if that is not convincing, you can always long-hand a calculation with one boss, three LTs, and six minions and see if whether you use AoEs or not to defeat those targets will be meaningful to the calculations. Considering that whether you analyze each target separately or groups at the same time shouldn't generate different results might be helpful.

The fact that minions die faster than bosses due to AoE damage can affect their relative threat to the player, but that wasn't being discussed in relationship to how the variable critical chance affects damage output.

Some people count Bruising as a full 20% damage increase, even though it's not on the first attack either, nor does it affect AoE damage, and has to be maintained by a special attack chain. So I thought that wouldn't matter to them.

And still, think of all the benefit it would do for the team. Don't you wanna help the team? I mean, who doesn't want to take a damage hit just to help the team, AMIRITE?



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Then its a break even effect at best.


It does help on teams. But tankers did not take a damage hit to get that benefit. Tankers started off with low damage as their archetype specification dictates. Their damage modifier was buffed from around 0.65 to its current 0.8. That's more (+23%) than the Blaster ranged modifier was buffed (or for that matter how much the Scrapper modifier was). And then on top of that they were given a resistance debuff that increases their own damage even further. That has a damage increase benefit, and a team-offensive benefit which is separate from that.

If we take everyone's post-launch damage buffs away, we end up with Scrappers with no intrinsic critical effect and a 1.0 modifier, and Tankers with a 0.65 modifier and no bruising, and the gap between Tankers and Scrappers would actually be slightly larger than it is today.

I was referring more to what we should consider the level at which we are comparing ATs rather than the overall average critical hit rate. My case for considering the 10% base critical hit chance wasn't on an averaged per hit enemy hit basis but rather on a threat neutralization basis. Minions, while affecting the critical hit rate, are much less consequential to the outcome of a battle than their hardened brethren, who will stay alive and keep attacking. The critical per second aspect (or critical per attack used) becomes more important than critical per damage point when factoring in the enemy's damage rate. Though doing so would have to be on a set by set basis where you compare AoE DPS to single target DPS...


So I guess it it isn't about what the average critical hit chance is as much as how relevant the average critical hit chance is to balancing.

Well, you said it'd be an even break. So, Scrappers help the team more, lose nothing themselves.

Even if they do mind it not being on the first attack, for helping the team so much that's a tiny price to pay; "It is wafer thin!"



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Love the question!

In my mind Scrappers are like Batman, Bruce Lee, Iron Fist, Night Wing, or a host of other characters/people who are that good because they train that hard. The fighter that wins is the one who is in better condition than the other. Scrappers represent that conditioning to me.

Brutes are like the Hulk, they get mad they hit harder.

Stalkers are assassins that strike from the darkness and never really need the conditioning for a sustained fight, after all the target is dead. Cassidy Cane Bat Girl is what stalkers are like now. She is awesome in a fight, but she is not Batman or Nightwing.

Tanks really are like Superman, not because the hit hard, but because it doesn't matter how hard you hit them.

Scrappers are those who fight the way they do because of training and dedication. They are the College Wrestle who runs an extra 10 miles a day. They are the martial artist who stays for the extra sparing sessions. They are the energizer bunnies of the ATs. They just keep going and going and going. Spiderman is still going long after the Hulk is breathing hard, Batman has the physical and mental fortitude to never stop.

It also fits with how people say they like to play them. It fits for them over the other melee ATs precisely because the don't need it.

Also, of my 4 kids, 3 are girls. I love the Power Puff girls! To me though, scrappers are more like Kick Buttowski. Also I choose to use characters from Marvel and DC for refrence on purpose. I stepped outside of comics because I know you are not a big comic fan.

Also Ken and Ryu were perfect copies of one another in SF1, in the following versions Ryu had a better Fire Ball, and Ken had the better Dragon Uppercut. Either way it would be hard to argue against the majority of the SF characters being anything other than scrappers. Perhaps Honda and Zangif could be Tanks or Brutes.

Sam, I hope that answered your question. If not I can go on.

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Superman disagrees.




So does Statesman.




FYI, Darrin Wade didn't steal Statesman's powers so he could stand there and act as a distraction while someone else did the real fighting.



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I don't necessarily disagree with your interpretations, but this is getting into dangerous territory a little bit. You're starting to define ATs by the characters they can depict, rather than the approach to combat they represent, and there's no way to do this without being too specific. You define Scrappers, for instance, as people who train hard. The thing is that out of all my Scrappers, maybe one or two even have the capacity or need for training. A lot of them are either robots that depend on parts that can't be "trained," a lot are aliens who draw on energies not at all related to their physical condition, a lot are magical who draw powers from metaphysical sources aside from their bodies and a lot are genetically engineered to give them abnormal super powers.

When I define the characters an AT can represent, I try to figure out how a character of a particular AT would approach a fight. Historically, I've defined the Scrapper vs. Brute dynamic as: The Scrapper is someone who is instantly dangerous and tough only after that while a Brute is someone who is primarily hard to kill AND THEN dangerous as a result of this. A Scrapper is thus someone most of a fight pushing to hurt his enemies while a Brute is someone who would spend most of a fight absorbing or dodging and advancing on enemies through their own fire. Whether we're talking about a highly-trained human (which I don't do as a rule) or a robot or a ninja or a wizard, it has less to do with who the character is and more how said character fights, as derived from the abilities that enable this fighting style and serve to encourage it.

To me, a Scrapper is someone whose primary goal is dealing damage and his secondary goal is paying more attention to his primary goal. As such, he isn't in it for the punch-trading competition so much as he is in it to push at the enemy aggressively and take the fight to them. This doesn't really reflect staying power to me, and especially does not reflect a victory by attrition, so much as it reflects punching power and overall well-roundedness. In other words, the Scrapper can take care of himself, in all ways, but he can't be lazy and just fall back on his powers, needing instead to put pressure on the enemy. Again, to me this means a lot of damage and more than a little survivability.

I'm not discounting your interpretation of your own characters, but I would really suggest you give ATs a wider berth of what they might mean, not least because none of my Brutes derive their strength from anger or frustration.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Dude, you just can't seem to get it. You think we are all against what you are saying about tanks, but we aren't really. The mechanic that Brutes use for furry was taken right off the tanker boards. I don't have an issue with tanks doing more damage than they do now, but even you have to admit that having a character with more HPs, Higher DR cap, AND higher damage than any other character would be broken. Tankers need a buff, no arguing that. The last buff they got didn't do enough to put them even with or above brutes. Again man, it is not what you are saying, but how you say it. You want what I have been accused of wanting for scrappers (which I have made clear was not true) you want them to be the best AT. If that is not what you want, than I and most of the other posters are really reading something wrong.

Wade stole Statesman's power because he was an incarnate, the strongest incarnate.


Sam, that is how the devs have described the scrapper ATs in the past. It also fits with the games description of scrappers the best as I read it.

Being the comic book fan that I am, you're right Johnny! Superman and Statesman as dipicted in comics and in game itself for Statesman, they do lots of damage.

Here's the thing...they're not really Tankers in the sense of Player Characters. They're above that. And if what they were, were allowed in the game, why would most people roll anything else?

Hmmm...do I roll the Spider-Man or the Superman? Survive anything and take out anything! Yeah, like most players wouldn't choose that.

Though I am curious...I notice people say "So and So AT can be made to be as tough as Tankers"

Now while solo this isn't true. Even at softcapped defenses, the Tanker will be tougher than their counterparts due to higher resists and higher base health.

So only in a team situation will a Brute surpass a Tanker on the same team as the Brute in that the brute can be at 90% Resists and do more damage (again on the right team).

But, I'm still for dropping Brutes down to 85% Max Resists. Though I'm also for raising Scrapper max resist to 80%, and also making it so the squishie ATs get better returns from Tough/Weave than the Melee ATs

I'd keep Stalker max resists at 75% to go with being the squishier Melee AT.

But that is the very definition of Fury. I am curious as how you define fury if it is not anger or frustration. As you said, not a challenge, just really curious.

I believe you should do the discrete calculations. I don't think I'm going to logic this one out of this issue.

I've known many who consider their Brute AT character to basically be a Scrapper, except Fury is a game mechanic.

So they'll have the Spider-Man type hero/villian, but use the Brute AT because they like the Brute ATs game mechanics better.

While I was never one for adding taunt auras to existing Scrapper secondaries after they were added to ported versions for Brutes, due to legacy issues (there are just players out there who don't want the aggro aura), I don't discount it's usefulness at all.

I have a character I want to roll as a scrapper but wish I had an aggro aura so enemies actually stay around. It's a useful mechanic.

So basically...I wouldn't let game/AT mechanics dictate the type of character concept a person is rolling.

But going by Brute, I think saying a SS/INV Brute is Superman, and that Fury represents him using more of his strength as the fight goes on. Starts out holding back, notusing his full strength as he's pulling his punches to start, and as the fight goes on it becomes obvious that the enemy can take it, so the punches get harder and harder untill...BOOM!

Works for me, makes me think of Superman fighting Darkseid at the end of JLA season one I think it was.

I think I will still stick by my suggested buff for scrappers in a growing end total increase. I still feel like it would have the least impact on game balance, and give scrappers something uniquely theirs.

People don't act like it.


Too many people are ignorant of that fact and too many deny it for me to stop reminding everyone. I'll 'let it go' when proper reparations are made for it.


Unless they're a Brute. Then the devs think that it's fine for years.


The only indication they may get one has been non-committal and hollow words heard third-hand. And if it's not raising the aggro cap, threat or something else token that doesn't fix the real problems, I'll be very surprised.

Given the devs' track record with Tankers, throwing "devastating hand to hand combatants" out the window, making them aggro monkeys, stealing Fury for Brutes...heck, killing the most famous Tanker like a punk...why exactly should I give them any good faith?


I'm civil and respectful to those who are civil and respectful to me, both at present and in the past.




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To repeat: Tankers did not pay anything for Bruising. Reducing Scrapper damage modifiers and replacing it with a resistance debuff has to be justified. I only said the change would be an even swap given your stated assumptions about it. By mine, it would be a nerf with no justification.

Attempting to portray it as an equivalent situation doesn't make it one. We can talk about certain differences as being "trades" from a mathematical perspective for simplification purposes, but from a game design perspective Tankers trade nothing for Bruising. Bruising is itself a free damage buff that has no justification for its existence except to make Tankers that want more damage than the archetype can quantitatively justify happier. Its only problematic for people who believe their own personal concepts for how things should work supersede game balance requirements.

If you're going to use Superman as the prototypical Tanker, then I'm going to use the Silver Surfer as the prototypical blaster. Then you can have brute level damage on your tankers, and I'll have tanker level defenses on my blasters and you can punch anything you want as hard as you want.

I'm perfectly willing to let the devs decide if that is a rational course of action or not.

To be to be fair to Johnny, and because you always give good answers, where do Brutes fit in the balance scheme of things. They do seem to stomp all over Tanks (and scrappers) to a degree.

I would rather see the Tank brought up than the Brute nerfed, but the situation does seem to be a bit unbalanced.

What I really hope comes from this thread is that the Devs see that we the players see some problems within the melee ATs. The brutes OP, the Tanks need of a buff, and the Scrapper's lack of uniqueness. Really stalkers are perfect to me at this point. Scrappers are not broken, just something unique would be nice.

Its too easy to build fury. The end.

Maybe you need to look at it another way.

Spider-Man gets up, fights four muggers armed with handguns and gets his "Inf" for the day.

How is that any different than Thor waking up, fighting 4 giant robots and getting his "Inf" for the day?

It's not. It only becomes a problem when you force Thor to fight four muggers armed with handguns and they wreck him. Because the reverse, Spidey taking down four giant robots, just makes him look awesome.


First, most of the content in the game does NOT require Tanker-level toughness.

Second, if a Brute can jump into mobs of +4X8, and win out, what does it matter if the Tanker is tougher?

In a world with Barrier and Rebirth, this is a reality. My Brute face planted ZERO times in all of the DA arcs. He didn't need to match my Tanker's numbers to do that and did better damage than my Tanker the whole time.

So I ask: If they've balanced Tanker damage against survivability, including forcing low damage caps on Tankers, how is giving Brutes and Scrappers a level shift or temp powers that improve survivability (making them that much tougher against ALL content in the game), but still keeping their damage relative to Tankers just as high, fair to Tankers?
I don't think it is.

It boils down to a simple fact:

There are diminishing benefits to being tougher. Once you can survive whatever they throw at you, when you are above the "immortality line", being tougher than that isn't really an asset.

The more powerful everyone becomes, the more Brutes and Scrappers climb above that line for a larger and larger percentage of the content. Having their damage stay superior to Tankers even when none of them are really going to faceplant just isn't fair. Those times that none of them are going to face plant are only becoming more and more frequent, but the damage gap is staying the game.




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No, but they did trade damage to help the team more, apparently.


It would help Scrappers to be more beneficial to teams, they'd nearly break even (wafer thin!) and give them something unique. Call it 'Wounding'.

To make it truly unique, I'd be fully willing to let Tankers give up Bruising in trade for a straight 20% damage increase. Since you and I seem to be the only ones who can tell its not the same, nobody else should mind.



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