Concerned about Scrappers.

The question is valid, I'm afraid.
If the Brute AT really is what you want out of your game play why in the world are you fussing around on Tankers? Is it the small handful of sets Tankers get that Brutes don't? I've been trying to keep an open mind about your arguments Johnny, really I have, but you're starting to not make a lot of sense to me.

Moving to another country implies an awful lot of things that playing a Brute instead of a Tanker does not. You might not speak the local language, the laws will be different, you might not know anyone there. Nothing like that happens when you play a Brute.

So what is it about this that you think is so inconvenient about playing a Brute instead?

Lol, I usually don't do that so I won't in this case either. I did just receive a few pm's from people here urging me to ignore you, along with some information some of which questioned your sanity of all things... imagine that..

Once again it was not about what you were saying or liking it, it was about the manner in which your anti-social behavior in threads you don't start is rude, but since you are on the 4chan kick do your thing.

That would mean he would have to face up to the fact that his past tantrums and contact with the devs and his attempt to bully his way around got him butkis and he is mad about it.

No, I was just trying to make sense of the strange behavior of one, that has since been explained to me in pm's by the people here.

No, it's not.

The devs just buffed Stalkers because they had issues. They didn't tell people to roll Scrappers.

I have several Tankers with years of commitment put into them. I also have several Brutes. I have a couple Scrappers, but only one Stalker. Having played all side of the melee argument, it's my opinion the game penalizes Tankers unfairly in some ways, especially compared to Brutes. Namely, the issues I have explained many times about defensive and offensive potential. Given the development history of Tankers, Fury being developed for them but hijacked for Brutes, I feel that, yes, Tankers are owed something. Furthermore, they don't reasonably reflect their comic counterparts as well as all of the other melee ATs do (and in a comic book superhero game that DOES matter). They also don't line up with their official description when it comes to "dishing out all kinds of damage" and being "devastating hand to hand" combatants. And I don't care if that description is old; the other melee ATs live up theirs, if not exceed them, and the fact that Tankers don't and haven't for so long just makes it worse, not more excusable.

And, what angers me the most, is that so many people took BandX's advice. They gave up on trying to get Tankers fixed and defected to Brutes both when CoV launched and when side switching became a reality. Well I still give a damn, even if the people who used to support Tanker reform took off. So, if I have to be the diehard holdout, call me Captain Ahab.


That's kind of you, but really, I don't care about convincing anyone at this point. If I annoy you, again, that's why we have an Ignore feature.


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stubborn children tend to do that to people

LOLTankers. Roll a Brute.



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*snerk*

For those who wonder why he doesn't make a Brute i think at this point it's pretty obvious that this isn't about anything that might be viewed as being somewhat based in reality or logical thought. The whole J_B Tanker Crusade is literally that: a purely emotional, subjective crusade based on an early impression of the game, not even necessarily the game that existed at the time, but a hazy, emotionally charged impression that instantly became locked in his mind as How Things Should Be.

He really, truly doesn't care about game design, rules, balance, or how the game actually works. When he first read the Tanker description he formed an image in his head of what they should be and that's the only thing that matters. Well, that and the fact that the AT doesn't fit the fantasy in his head. He won't play any AT that actually fits what he wants because it really has nothing to do with actual gameplay or the actual game, but him wanting what he wants.

To that extent his quote about being unable to be reasoned with is spot on. Someone starts a thread discussing Blasters? J_B shows up to whinge about Tankers. Someone starts a thread discussing Scrappers? J_B shows up to whinge about Tankers. Someone starts a thread about Assault sets? J_B shows up to whinge about Tankers. Someone starts a thread about drop rates? Yeah, you get the idea.

If he was slightly less polite or slightly more repetitive i might consider using the ignore feature, but so far the spectacle that occurs whenever he shows up outweighs the annoyance. J_B sort of reminds me of this comic.

Edit: Also the comic has a treat bag labeled Beef Tensors. Win!

I strongly disagree. I'm glad JB has taken the role of the Tankers' defender. Brutes really do do what Tankers do nearly as well, while actually being capable of defeating foes in a timely manner. The core group role of a Tanker, which is aggro management, doesn't even make sense if the Tanker isn't actually much of a threat. Tankers as implemented are some sort of thematic compromise which makes them into a kind of durable one-trick controller.

I'm sure there are many options for giving the Tanker archetype some legs again. Personally, I favour the distinction between a slow/durable/hits-hard versus fast/agile/hits-precisely triad. If Brute-comparable raw damage is not an option for balance reasons, let them show their strength in other ways: let their attacks bypass a proportion of damage resistance, for example, making them more effective on the toughest foes (bruising seems a poor implementation of the general idea); give them lots of knock-downs and knock-ups which get the mooks out of the way, so they can concentrate on the big guy. I'm sure JB has his own suggestions.

Currently Tankers are in a weird no-man's land. We shouldn't have to abandon the archetype and all switch to Brutes — let's fix Tankers instead!

I wish someone else who was better qualified and more effective would.



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The older sets have several tricks- Tankers were designed like melee Controllers, and not just aggro. This has kind of been lost as new sets are designed for all melee ATs, which is a shame.

You don't all have to abandon the archetype. Just those of you who want the archetype to be something it's not, and almost certainly never will be.

Edit: By the way, JB's only been suggesting one specific quantitative change in this thread - a damage cap increase. If that were to happen, it wouldn't really bother me one bit. I have a really hard time imagining the devs actually doing it, for a variety of reasons, but I wouldn't be on the forums somehow campaigning against it. That suggestion, though doesn't really seem to mesh well with the vision of Tankers I think JB's been describing in qualitative terms for ages now, so I'm pretty sure that wouldn't the the last of the topic from him.

To repeat myself:

I'll settle for the cap being raised*. Then at least Tankers can mainline red inspirations if they want to, or wait for a +Dam Destiny power to come along.


*And by that I don't mean "raised 5%", I mean their maximum damage potential brought into line with Brutes, factoring in Bruising and the 10% more HP cap.



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While it kills me to discuss Tanker ideas in a thread that shouldn't have been about them, that's something I've disliked about Taunt as a general concept. I get that it's a game necessity for aggro to be controlled, but actually trying to apply the Taunt mechanic in player vs. player combat will quickly demonstrate just how disconnected from any sort of believability "taint" really is.

What's at the root of the problem, at least for me, is that taunt represents veritable mind control - it forces your enemy into behaviour which is clearly and obviously wrong. What possible reason would I, as a faceless grunt, have to attack a Granite Tanker that I cannot kill, but who can neither hurt me nor indeed even catch me? As long as I can walk faster than he does - and I can - then "defeating" the tanker is as simple as walking at least ten feet around him. Enemies never have a reason to attack a Tanker specifically because attacking the Tanker accomplishes nothing. A Tanker is hard to kill yet not terribly dangerous, not compared to the Blaster blowing holes in my chest or the Controller constantly putting me to sleep so the Blaster can put holes in my face, too.

I get that games aren't always supposed to be realistic, super hero games least of all, but this is a mechanic which tries to make the clearly irrational decision of attacking a Tanker rational by explaining it away through taunting. But being taunted by a Tanker is like being taunted by the offensive graffiti on a wall and going to beat the wall to death with your bare hands. It just makes no sense to me.

As far as I'm concerned, aggro control needs to be implemented through a system which makes attacking a Tanker the SMART thing to do, thus giving enemies an actual explainable reason to do it. How? Well, why not actually go ahead an indeed give Tankers considerable damage... But only against enemies not currently attacking the Tanker? The point here is that if an enemy ignores the Tanker and heads straight for the "healer," then that enemy has just made a serious mistake. Not only does enemy behaviour make more sense then, but this also gives Tankers a much stronger incentive to "control aggro" by constantly going after enemies that aren't already engaged. I'm not saying actual conventional taunt and aggro control can't go hand-in-hand with this, but actually having a situation in the game where an enemy NOT attacking a Tanker is making a mistake is what counts, at least in my book.

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.

How would that work exactly? The second a Tanker moves to an enemy, they're being attacked. Solo, this does nothing. On teams, this does nothing (unless a Brute has momentarily stolen aggro).

It's kind of like in Mystery Men, with the kid who could turn invisible when no one was looking at them. So Tankers would be great fighters...as long as they're not fighting?



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Um, no. Flamethrowers were so big of a target because one bullet into the canister on their back and you take out them and anyone around them. And they were much more lethal when at effective range. Getting a bullet in the leg? Patch it up. Quite survivable. Flamethrower? Burning fuel sticks to you, keeps on burning to bone. Burns over the majority of your body in battlefield conditions, the medic can't just put some gauze on that.



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Stalkers just got a buff that increased their HP cap and moved their survivability closer to that of Scrappers because some of their powersets hit the HP cap way too easily. They got better crits and damage outside of Hidden, again, like Scrappers. And pretty much everyone thinks they're great now.

Stalkers previously suffered for being too far out on the extreme end of the melee spectrum and being overspecialized for front loaded damage. Tankers, are at the opposite extreme end of that same spectrum and IMO, suffer from being overspecialized in aggro control and, on some of their powersets, hit the damage cap way too easily.
I can see parallels there.

In other words, it worked for Stalkers.


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I'm getting to the point where I think they should merge Tankers and Brutes and Scrappers and Stalkers. Actually I was at that point a few years ago, but I'm thinking that it makes sense now!