Concerned about Scrappers.

I'm aware of the story, but the truth is that tanks neither received nor should have received Fury. As they did not, the ability could not have been stolen. We all know Statesman had a mad case of Mary Sue with himself, and was only willing to give Fury to tanks because he has the same obsession with them that Johnny does.

This much I can almost see. The problem is introducing something unique that will not affect balance. Or, at the very least, take something away first.

First off, I have grown to trust the current powers team. Synapse is by far my favorite dev. If he says he is going to look at it, I would expect something good to come from it. I like him as a dev, and from the interactions I have had with him in game and in PMs he seems like a great person. I know after so long it is hard to have faith, but they did buff regen, and they removed the fear component from burn. They are doing their best to earn our faith.

I would say Wolverine is a brute, or was in the early days. Captain America is a good example of a scrapper if you need one, or spider man. I assumed you wanted to stay in marvel.

No no no, when you're talking to Johnny, every superhero who was any good is classified as a Tank and is a good example of what a tank "should have been designed as."

Remember, Johnny wants Tanks to keep all their survivability and get damage to equal brutes.

My suggestion of allowing them inherent Superior conditioning, where their max end increases by X every Y level. Would have little to no impact on game balance. That I can see any way. I would say 5 points of end every 10 levels for a max of 25 bonus end. So the level 50 scrapper w/o accolades or IOs would have 125 total end.

Shoot, what do scrappers have left to take away. Everything they had has been copied to all the other melee ATs.

Yeah, but Brutes didn't have claws at the start. Considering how insanely popular Clawsbub is, and especially was when they were creating the ATs, I'd lean hard towards saying he was who they had in mind. Especially since in the old character creator (maybe even still in the current one) selecting the Scrapper AT even made a SNIKT/SLICE-ey kind of sound.


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Very true. I think MoG of the time was their craptastic way of trying to get his berserk rage going... it failed as many things did back then.

We are in the here and now, and what I have seen over the past year has given me new hope for this game.

Note that I left out a lot of aspects of the threat equation in my above post. Not all taunt auras, even ones with the same duration, are equal. Debuffs are actually threat multipliers in and of themselves. This is why AAO is superior to Invincibility, even though their durations are identical.

Fun fact: Damage and resistance debuffs are actually 8 debuffs each, one for each damage type. This is why AAO is one of the best taunt auras in the game.

(No, Bruising doesn't count since the mob applies the debuff to itself.)

Another possibility occured to me that wouldn't involve messing with taunt durations: increasing the Tanker threat mod from 4 to 6 or 7 (50-75% threat increase). Of course, that still leads us down the path of threat inflation...

Good with numbers I am. Not so much with words. Not sure what you mean with the second half.

Anyway, once the trials die down I think I'll analyze the minion damage rate for various mobs and see if I can pick up a pattern.



EDIT: since I'm not a fan of double posting, I might as well put down my anecdotes.

I... have never made a scrapper. Or a brute. No, I've made just about every other AT with melee, though (Stalker, Tank, Bane, Night Widow. Non-exclusive melee is PB, Dom, Blaster). Amongst all of those, the ones that felt like they were underpreforming were the stalker and the tank. The stalker prior to ATOs and focus was the toon of my greatest effort, and not because it was great at doing things but because I wanted it to be great at doing things. It seemed like no matter what I did, it just wasn't enough. My damage was high but not high enough, my survivability felt like I was basically a squishy who was crazy enough to get in range, and my overall team contribution felt lacking at best. I must've rebuilt and tweaked that set a dozen times just to get it to work. Suddenly the ATOs come out and I am ridiculously scary. Even before assassin focus, I could've sworn I had high enough DPS to solo nightstar on a mini-BAF trial. Focus comes out, and then enemies next to me drop left and right. The stalker finally felt... complete.

The Tanker is the other "underperformer". I turned my difficulty up to +2/x4 at one point, because the tanker could take that aggro just fine. After two missions, I turned it back down to +2/x1 because it felt like I was wasting my time more than anything else. Though he could take it, the tanker would just spend forever fighting one group of enemies just to go to the next and spend forever fighting that group, even though I had taken every AoE available in the Battleaxe set. By the middle of the second mission I took one look at his survivability and went "...yeah I get it", and promptly lost interest. This was before bruising, so this may have changed with time, but one of the reasons why I almost never solo with my tank is because it feels like a grind more than it feels like combat.

What made me feel the ineptitude were the Bane and the Night Widow, both built primarily for melee combat. Now, I am not sure how the VEATs were supposed to factor in to the grand scale of balancing, but those two seemed like they had it all. Stealthy AND hard to kill AND good damage AND AoEs AND team support? No wonder they quickly become my favorite toons to play on. Doing so many things and doing them well, after playing them I took a look back at my old melee ATs and just felt that something was mising.

Stalkers have undoubtedly been fixed. I no longer have a yearning for more while playing them. I have that sense of accomplishment that comes from blowing a hole in my enemy's chest. I can talk about scrappers because, well, scrapper simplicity makes them quite straightforward to understand and use. As far as brutes go, this is where I am actually skeptical at how well they really do damage wise. I know that a lot of brutes to through the "squishy phase", but I also wonder other things, like if fury is dependent on your team being bad enough that they can't kill the enemies fast enough for you to build it, or if a brute really is as durable as a tank in most situations, or if AoE mezz negatively affects your damage output as much as I think it would, or if a brute only has that distinctive damage output bonus while fighting large groups of enemies. This, I guess, will have to wait after I'm done with my current projects.

BTW there's a huge hole in your chest.

Darkblade is Claws/Invulnerability, Decoy is Invulnerability/Super Strength.

So, you're saying my Shield Defense/Kinetic Melee tanker probably didn't need to go Nerve Radial to get the taunt enhancement?

I've always imagined Captain America as a tank and Peter Parker's Spider-man as an Archetype not currently in game. Now, if they ever introduce an archetype with a one set (primary or secondary) that is ranged controls and melee attacks, and one defense set (along the lines of Ninjitsu) then that's what Spider-man is.

No, all they need for that is to expand on the Epic Pools and and make them available earlier than the late 30's. Web Grenade is good to go. Martial Arts with the alternate animations plus Jump Kick and Super Reflexes. Golden

Then all that's left is a swinging travel power.



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I didn't blow it off. I ignored it because Tanks never had Fury to begin with. It is literally impossible for something to be stolen from someone that they never possessed. That's like me looking out in my driveway and complaining that someone stole my Bentley.

Excuse me? Exactly how could you have seen me gloat about something I have never done? I am interested to see where you're pulling the information from that ClawsandEffect has been gloating about all the pylons he's soloed with Scrappers and Brutes. Making stuff up doesn't help your case much at all, because anyone in this thread who is at all familiar with my posting history should know that I've never gloated about soloing a pylon with anything. I've soloed a few AVs with one of my scrappers (which Tankers can do too by the way), and I've soloed a couple GMs, but that was with a Defender and not especially relevant here.

Again, with the first post you made in this thread being what it was, you've got no room whatsoever to be talking about someone else laying flame-bait.

Tankers are as balanced as they are likely to get. They have roughly 75% of Scrapper damage, I proved that much. Scrappers have 75% of Tanker mitigation, I don't need to prove that as it is a known fact. The balance point was struck between Tankers and Scrappers when Tankers got Bruising. Before Bruising they had 71.12% of Scrapper damage. If Bruising is always taken into account the damage scalar effectively becomes 0.96. If you assume that Bruising will be relevant to Tanker damage output half the time it would be fair to call the scalar 0.88. That's pretty damn close to 75% of Scrapper damage when you factor in criticals.

When looking at balance, you have to look at the BASE values, NOT the caps. Sure, Brutes have the same damage resistance caps as Tankers, but how many Sonics or Thermals do they have to have with them to reach those caps? Same goes for damage caps. A Brute will be at his damage cap for approximately 0.01% of his time spent in the game. I have never been at the damage cap for more than a few seconds at a time with either of my higher level brutes (1 50, 1 42). In practical gameplay, a Brute is only slightly more survivable than a Scrapper, and deals slightly less damage. The fact that their caps are that much higher is barely even relevant because they will not spend enough time AT those caps for it to impact overall game balance.

I've said it before and it bears repeating: Balancing something by the absolute peak of performance is sheer folly, because it is impossible to maintain that peak consistently enough to affect balance. Unless you can show me a situation where a Brute is constantly at his resistance caps and damage caps simultaneously. then that can't be used as a balancing metric.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

A Brute does not need to be at the damage resistance cap for his base damage resistance being lower than a Tanker to not matter. Once a Brute can jump into a spawn of +4X8 and beat them down and walk away, they don't need to be any tougher.

THIS HAPPENS NOW. This isn't an imaginary scenario. Softcapping, level shifts, Barrier and Rebirth have made this a reality. It's NOT uncommon. At all.

Tankers hit their damage cap NOW.
That is not some far off scenario either. All it takes is ONE Kin on the team. Any SS or Shield character is likely hitting their cap on their own too, and it only happens sooner and more often if you have anyone with leadership nearby.

So even on a just team with a Kin and a bubbler, not an uncommon situation at all, a Brute will NOT be faceplanting and will be outputting way more damage while the Tanker has hit their cap and isn't even receiving full benefit.

In practical game play, buffing, levelshifts, Destiny and IOs make "slightly more survivable than a Scrapper," with the same caps as a Tanker, pretty damn survivable. Enough so they don't really lose much for not being as tough as a Tanker, because they don't need to be. They get to not faceplant, but keep superior damage.

In practical gameplay, FOUR of my Tankers HIT their damage cap solo EVERY time I play them for more than half of the time. ALL of my Tankers get less from any kind off offensive buffing than my Brutes do, and get less from any defensive buffing (because they don't need any, it's superfluous, they're Tankers). One Kin or a couple SoA make it far too easy. I'm best friends with the Tanker damage cap. I see him every day. He's a nice guy, but a little short.


This is a clear cut case.
If Brutes are allowed to have the same survival caps as Tankers, Tankers should be allowed to have the same level of damage at the cap as Brutes.

If the caps as far off and irrelevant as you claim they are, then upping the Tanker damage cap shouldn't matter to you. It matters to me because even though I IO'd out for softcapping defense, my Tankers have limited chance to grow offensively and are already hitting their damage cap, while my Brutes, who are built to the same level of quality, have huge potential to just keep getting better both offensively and defensively, no matter what the future brings.



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I actually went to sleep thinking about just this subject last night, so sure. Actually, I want to an overall breakdown of what Brute design says to me about the kind of characters that it fits. Let's start with something simple:

Brutes have some of the best direct survivability in the game. I'm intentionally excluding ally help and effects that specifically debilitate the enemy and focusing on Brutes ability to face enemy threat and deal with it on their end of things. Brutes are either very tough, very fast or very fast while being very tough. Not only this, but the bulk of Brute offensive performance is warmup-gated, meaning that a Brute, on average, has to expose himself to enemy fire for an extended period of time in order to reach his full offensive capacity, which necessitates the ability to survive long enough to do this.

What this says about the kind of character who would fit a Brute is that this is a character who faces the enemy head on and takes the fight to their home field. It also tells me that this is a character who isn't shy about exposing himself to danger he cannot stop from being dangerous and is confident, above all else, in his ability to survive. A Brute is a fighter with time on his side, because the longer his enemies take to kill him, the more powerful he becomes, thus this is a character who is confident that his defences can outlast the enemy offences with a comfortable margin.

Now to the exciting bit: Fury. I've seen the description of it, yes, but let's go ahead and break down to he power based on what it does, as opposed to HOW the developers explain it does it. Remember - I'm the one who went out of his way to insist that the motivations and explanations for my own character are mine and mine alone to give and the game should GTFO and stop assuming it needs better, to use a crude expression. So instead of trying to read the description of what Fury is, let's look at what it does:

Brute damage/offence/strength is naturally low, but ramps up as a Brute attacks or suffers from enemy attacks. So far so good, but how many situations do you think I can think of that conform to this framework? Quite a few, actually.

1. Obviously, "Hulk Smash!" The more you get hit and the more you hit enemies who refuse to go down, the angrier you become and the harder you hit. That much is a given, but what else?

2. How about a character who's holding back, Dragon Ball Z style? Work with me here. Say my character is much more powerful than his enemies, but he wants to mess with them, so he doesn't use his full strength to kill them outright and end the fun too fast. Instead, he lets them get some offence in, hurts them a little and keeps messing with them for a long time. Of course, this character never holds back on defences and won't let himself actually get hurt, but he's not interested in just killing his enemies. Eventually, as he grows bored or the enemies prove to be stronger than he thought they were, he begins using gradually more and more power to keep himself on top of the fight.

3. A character's power is somehow derived from combat. Let's say my character's powers are fuelled by death and pain. When first attacking a healthy, confident platoon, his power levels are low. As his enemies start getting getting killed and he suffers pain and damage, this fuels his dark powers, making him stronger for it. This character would be naturally less dangerous when he has no death and pain to feed on, but would grow stronger as combat generated more of those.

4. Suppose my character is just lethargic and laid-back, but naturally very powerful. When he first enters a fight, he's essentially just waking up. However, once he gains momentum and gets on top of his game, he becomes unstoppable. Yet as the battle ends and there's no more fighting to do, his enthusiasm wanes and all he wants is to take it slowly, maybe sit down for a while and not really rush things, just because he's a mellow dude. In essence, he's GREAT once he gets going, but it's just so hard for him to get going because he's naturally unagressive.

5. My character has AMAZING power, but he can't let anyone know about it, ala Ben 10. Maybe this power can be tracked, maybe it's just too obvious, maybe it's just too destructive, but by and large, this character will pull his punches and only resort to using his full power if he absolutely has to. Or maybe he's living in a "world of cardboard" and doesn't want to cause too much collateral damage unless the situation REALLY calls for it, or unless it's REALLY cool. The bottom line is this character plain doesn't WANT to use his full power, and so won't unless provoked.

That's as far as I go for the moment, but this line of thinking could explain quite a few other concepts, as well. It's just a matter of how much you want to stick to the letters of the description and how willing you are to re-interpret the characteristics of your own personal characters.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebasti...w_%28comics%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Guy



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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

No way, Cap is a scrapper through and through.

This thread really went all over the place. The one thing I am sure of at the end is that the AT I love the most, the Scrapper, will most likely not get anything cool and unique.

What I have enjoyed, no matter how heated it has been, is the passion I see for the game. Even after 7 years we care so much for the game and our creations in the game that we fight tooth and nail for them. That is a pretty awesome thing.

I still want my beloved scrapper to get something unique to them, something that they share with no one else. It seems a little unfair that all the other ATs have that, but scrappers don't. It is what it is though. Scrappers are the first to step up in any given situation, I think it is just part of the mentality that goes with playing that AT. After 7 years of playing this game, playing any other AT still pales in comparison to me. I step away for a moment or two, but I always come back to the scrapper.

They do meet the expectations of comic book tankers!



Total tanker, not known for damage output!

Unless you're a Brute, then you can get Barrier and not have to give up anything.

I can show you many Brutes who's survivability is high enough it doesn't matter that it's lower than a Tanker for 90% of the content in the game and who retain way better damage then them regardless.

Of course not! That's the point. That's because they're not set so ridiculously low, like a Tanker's. One Kin shouldn't ram Tankers into their damage cap. A Kin or few SoAs in your league shouldn't make Build Up, Rage or Leadership toggles much less relevant, if not irrelevant.

You still can't justify why a Brute should have as much survivability potential as a Tanker but way more damage potential, can you?



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You realize those Brutes who survive 4/8 are usually surving some of the easiest enemies for them to survive, right?

Surving a 4/8 Fire Farm with a Fire Brute is not impressive

Roll up more Fire Armor tankers! Burn, Fiery Embrace...those add up the damage...now take Gloom! Just like Brutes, Gloom helps with your DPS.

Your tanker just got up there!

Want to compare Tankers to other ATs based purely on numbers...that IO Fire Armor/ELM Tanker is dishing out the damage while surving 4/8 content, while that Energy Melee/Stone Armor is widdling away at enemies slowly!

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.

Well yeah Sam. It doesn't take long for people to realize there's no need to be concerned about Scrappers

I wanted to read all this thread before commenting, but couldn't let this slip by: No no no no no! No!

This would be exactly the type of thing that means I would have to change my playstyle to take account of and thus exactly the type of thing I never want to see.

At the moment I only play scrappers because they are the only AT that just are irrespective of how I play. Let's PLEASE keep it that way.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"