Concerned about Scrappers.

I can buy that. However, I think the horse representing correcting that imbalance probably left the barn a couple of issues ago.

Sadly, I don't think the circa-I6/CoV devs thought very hard about mixed CoH/CoV AT balance. I don't know if they didn't think the ATs would ever be co-mingled, or if they just didn't have time and resources to plan that mixing out that far in advance. I believe Brutes at CoV release were pretty much too good to be true when compared to either Scrappers or Tankers. While this made CoV-release Stalkers extremely superfluous in PvE, it didn't really break much else, because Brutes didn't really compete with hero ATs for roles on the same teams.

Notably, I believe the circa-I18 devs, meaning basically the same ones we have now, realized the issues this caused once side switching (and, later, wide-open AT selections) were allowed. And this led to the various attempts to reduce Brute performance during I18 beta. Unfortunately, the I18 devs were by this point painted into a corner of hard decisions to make. Brutes rank among their greatest success stories as far as popularity among ATs go - nerfing them was going to be pretty unpopular no matter what, and buffing everyone else raises lots of other concerns. So they tried a few things and settled on reducing Brute damage to a hair below Scrappers. Probably not far enough below Scrappers to really represent the "correct" ratios you're talking about for Tanker vs. Scrapper, but enough to keep Brutes from trodding all over two ATs.

I think a safer bet than further monkeying with Brute (or anyone else's) damage or mitigation levels would be to try and ensure that a Tanker was far and away the king of aggro, along the lines of the math Sarrate mentioned earlier in the thread. Yes, a Brute can stand in for a Tanker, and perhaps too well, but at least let a Tanker clearly be in command of aggro when they are present. Some people play the meatshield not because it's the "right" ratio of damage to toughness, but because they really enjoy doing that. Let them do it it with authority when they take on that mantle.

You only say that because it's a mantle nobody else wants because it doesn't benefit them.

So it's fine to give Brutes too much survivability for their damage if they give Tankers a token aggro buff because, "hey who cares?" Nobody is lining up for the Presence pool.

Hey, let's give Tankers the brightest shining power icons while we're at it. Or make them the kings of "ATs that get a free small orange inspiration on the third Tuesday morning of every odd month".

Seriously, Tankers don't need a buff that helps everyone else BUT them. "Happy Birthday. My present to you is I donated $1 to charity."



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Maybe, but I'll get to this in a second.

Interesting ommisions to the AT list would be Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, Tankers, Warshades, Peacebringers, SoAs, And Masterminds. That's actually more than half the ATs.

Thing is, while I said I could see Ranged capped blasters as being an intended target for much of this damage(Not the sole target, but part of the thought process), I don't think it's wise to compare Tankers vs Blasters. Tankers VS the others on that list of ommisions, sure. Stalkers and Scrappers are low on the list of concern, but Brutes are far too close to Tankers, and Masterminds are already in possession of a partial resistance to Unresistable damage in the form of BG mode, so it's not a suggestion out of the norm.

Making tankers able to resist the damage would still leave quite a list of viable targets for unresistable and autohit damage; it would neuter the threat to tankers, but leave it for the other ATs it's intended for.

Lying will never help your case.

You do know that I already came up with the numbers for scrapper critical hits? But I'll tell you how to get some of those numbers.

Now, critical hits from a scrapper apply double their damage, which means it is an extra 1.125 base damage applied to attacks. What you need to do is make a weighted average. That is, you take how much damage a regular attack does (1.125) and multiply it by how often it occurs (95% against minions), then take how much damage a critical hit does (2.25) and multiply that by how often that occurs (5% against minions), and add those together. So, the weighted damage that a scrapper does is...

1.125(0.95) + 2.25(0.05) = 1.181

There is actually a shortcut to the math. To show the algebra...

1.125(0.95) + 2 (1.125)(0.05)
1.125(0.95) +1.125(0.1)
1.125(0.95 + 0.1) = 1.125 (1.05)

Which is essentially one + the critical rate. Doing this, you can very easily find the scale damage done with ANY critical rate. That is how I got the following numbers with procs and different enemies:

1.181 vs. minions, 1.203 w/ ATO minions, 1.215 w/ SATO minions, 1.238 vs. others, 1.2823 vs others w/ ATO, 1.305 vs. others w/ SATO.

Where ATO = the global bonus from the scrapper enhancement set, and the SATO is the superior ATO version.


Now, your numbers are done with minions. However, minions are the worst thing to balance against since they are so weak they get killed very quickly. Lets balance things against bosses...

Now, bosses con at +2 your level, so all effects have only 80% effectiveness. This affects things linearly, so you can multiply it against the base damage output of the classes. However, the Tanker's resistance debuff is affected separately from their damage output, meaning that tankers only get a 16% resistance debuff instead of a 20% debuff. So, doing the math.

0.800 x 0.800 x 1.16 = 0.7424 scale damage from one tanker.

A scrapper's damage output depends on whether or not they have the critical increasing ATO slotted. I'll just give all the numbers:

No ATO =0.9904
ATO = 1.0258
SATO = 1.044

Which, as you can see, means the tanker always does less damage against a boss than a scrapper. The tanker approaches the 75% mark if and only if you pretend that the scrapper ATO global critical bonus doesn't exist. But since Scrapper's Strike does exist, it needs to be factored in.

A second flaw in reasoning is assuming that bruising would make a tanker on-par with a scrapper in terms of damage is AoEs. Unless I have missed my guess, enemies are almost never alone. A scrapper's cone's and PBAoEs still receive that critical hit bonus, applying a greater damage to whatever targets they are hitting. A tanker's bruising affects one target, and to apply it to multiple targets would require attacking each one of them with a tier 1 attack which leaves less time to use AoEs that a scrapper is already firing off.

Something not mentioned in a tanker's favor is the positive effect of bruising to their teammates. This isn't very good regarding comparing the damage output of other ATs since it benefits those other ATs, but nonetheless the whole team benefits from bruising. But, only if it is one tanker. Bruising doesn't stack, so any more than one tanker is redundant, whereas you can have multiple scrappers that continue to contribute to the teams overall DPS. The only benefit to multiple tankers is that you can apply bruising to more than one target, but alas with aggro needing only one tanker to really be held it is far more efficient to replace the tanker with a corrupter/defender/mastermind/controller that has a global resistance debuff in their set already.


As to whether or not a tanker's bruising truly compensates for their low damage, I would say that no it does not. Applying a single resist-able resistance debuff from their tier 1 attack to a single target doesn't perform at the expectations needed since the release of ATOs, and in an AoE centered game the single target resistance debuff only gives a marginal increase to the overall damage output of the team.

I ******* hate those people lol. Johnny curious here what would you do if you had 1 thing and 1 thing only to fix tankers to your liking? what just a simple damage cap increase or what.

Yeah, I'll bet Defenders and Blasters are just coveting the King of Aggro crown. Everyone is, that's why the Presence pool is soooo popular.



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Players on the same team are cooperative, not competitive. The bruising increasing the damage of all players is even more so a reason to have a tank on the team.

Where you'll meet the most resistance from other posters is you come off as wanting for Scrappers to be intrinsically "better" than all other ATs like they were for years, and their just being about on par with other ATs isn't enough if they're not better. I can understand the desire for this, and you even admit the unpopularity, but that's simply going to be the bone of contention - a lot of us are really ending our argument at "good enough," and as it stands, Scrappers are good enough. Considering I can't say the same about too many other ATs, changes to Scrappers appear unlikely.

And again, if we're talking about changes, I'd shoot for base stats and nothing more. No powers for free, no taking the perks of one powerset and giving them to all powersets, no mechanics that depend on enemy health and so forth. Up their health or up their damage or up their resistance caps. That's the extent I'd go when it comes to improvements.

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.

I don't think this is how it works. As far as I've been aware, the purple patch only applies for level difference. The native +2 con level for bosses is just a way to let the con system show bosses are more dangerous than other enemies, not a purple patch modifier.

Also, isn't bruising is a grantpower, not an effect? That would make it like interfaces where it's immune to the purple patch. The only thing that would lessen the magnitude would be any resistances held by the target.

That's correct. Rank does not incur the purple patch. There is one effect that is resisted by rank, which is toHit debuffs, but that is an explicit, and, as far as I know, singular effect.

I don't recall if it's gone live yet, but I remember seeing either a patch note or some comment about the devs planning to address that. If it hasn't changed already, that will probably change Soon™.

I would increase the Tanker damage cap so their damage would to be 25%-30% less than Brutes at their damage cap.

OR I would go for the root of both Tanker and Stalker problems and remove Scrappers and Brutes from the game entirely, leaving the remaining two melee ATs to do their own thing at each end of the spectrum in peace and let the devs go from there. Sure, it would be hugely unpopular with some people. But since I did it, I'd take the heat, and it's no worse than what I get already.


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This is true. Boss con colour is only cosmetic. Boss modifiers are still based on the boss's intrinsic level with no artificial increase.

For a fun fact, the "I3 boss buff" actually did exactly what you're describing, and bosses were effectively fighting with the modifiers of an enemy +2 to their current level, but this was rolled back and is not true today.

Bruising is indeed a granted power.

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.

It's a good thing you're not a lead developer, then, because you're clearly putting your very specific vision of how the game should work over the way people clearly want to play it. I recall a specific lead developer catching a lot of well-deserved heat for that, but I can't quite place his name.

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.

Thanks for reminding everyone that you don't speak for the community here. IYeah, sure, pretty much everyone I know would run around like a kid in a candy store if Tankers got a major damage boost. Pretty much no one I know thinks its a sensible thing to do.

That's because the presence pool blows, not because everyone hates playing the meat shield.

Newsflash: helping teammates is what the Tanker AT is for. Everything else it can achieve is bonus. If you don't want that "everything else it can achieve", play something else. When I play solo Defenders (and I do a lot), I know full well what I'm signing up for, and I don't come to the forums demanding the AT work differently because I think my vision of how that should go overrides every other consideration.

No, that's not the case. DR debuffs are normally resisted by any resistance you have. A 50% resistible DR debuff applied to someone with 90% resistance becomes a 5% debuff, resulting in 85% net resistance.

[edit] Irresistible debuffs do not work this way. They apply their rated % right off the top, without being resisted first. So a 50% irresistible debuff applied to 90% resistance would result in 40% resistance. [/edit]

Any resistance due to the purple patch is applied before this. So if you have a -50% debuff applied to a +2 critter, it becomes a 40% debuff (+2 critters resist effects by 20%), and that applied to 90% resists would result in 86% resistance. Even if the debuff is irresistible, the purple patch still applies.

Bruising circumvents the purple patch. It always increases the damage an enemy of any con takes by 20%.

But that is not the same as an irresistable damage resistance debuff.

And damage resistance debuff resistance doesn't exist because damage resistance resists resistance debuffs.

And a noise annoys an oyster.



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The people that choose to play tanks for tanking do so because they want to play the *role* of tank, which includes being the aggro managing meat shield. Stating that no one out there wants to play the archetype that holds the king of aggro title is a lie. People ignore liars once they are determined to be liars.

Yeah, if I were you, I wouldn't bring the popularity of Brutes and Scrappers versus Tankers into this. Granted, the last time they released the numbers was years ago before side swapping, but Brutes and Scrappers were the most popular ATs on their sides and Tankers were the second least popular blue side, just ahead of Defenders.

I can't imagine side swapping, power proliferation and defense softcapping helped Tanker numbers.


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I didn't take the ATO proc into account because it is not something that applies equally to 100% of the Scrappers in the game, you simply can't assume that every scrapper ever created and played will have that enhancement slotted. The base Critical Hit chance, however, DOES apply equally to 100% of the scrappers in the game.

Bruising applies equally to 100% of the Tankers in the game as well.

Interestingly enough, my effective damage scalar for tankers of 0.96 is almost exactly 75% of your Critical Hit value against LT or higher WITH the ATO proc slotted. (75% of 1.2823 is 0.961725, which would round to 0.96).

That means the effective damage scalar of a Tanker against a target Bruising has been applied to is actually somewhat better than 75% of a Scrapper's. And since Bruising does not apply to the first hit of a given fight, as Johnny so snarkily pointed out, it would probably just about even out in the end. The first hit of the Tanker's fight will not have Bruising applied, but conversely the Scrapper will only start a fight with a Critical 1 time in 20 (1 in 10 if the target is a LT or higher). As balance goes, I would consider that "close enough".

So, thank you for giving me the numbers for Critical Hits. As it turns out, it supports my point pretty well. Namely: When you factor in Bruising and Critical Hits Tanker damage is close enough to 75% of Scrapper damage that it can be considered to be about as balanced as it's ever going to get.

I also suspect that with the buffs stalkers just got that they fall pretty closely in line with that as well now.

That just leaves Brutes as the outlier.......

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.

I know that I, for one, was aware of that. Unlike you, I don't attribute that to Tankers somehow sucking at their designated role. I attribute that to their designated role having never been in high demand in this particular game. It doesn't mean it has no place or offers no value.

Consider it a whole-AT version of how the player base values the Empathy powerset versus a set like, say, Cold Domination. Is Empathy useless? Hardly. Are there places where Empathy shines like few other sets? Absolutely. Does that mean Empathy is widely highly regarded and something tons of people want to play? No.

Does all that mean that everyone who plays Empathy is actually bitter about that? If this was you talking about Tankers, that's surely the message I'd be getting. But I don't believe that about Empathy players as a whole, because I know players who either really like it, despite its niche role, or who at least go in to it accepting that it has a niche role that they're willing to fill. Something you seem to assume no Tanker player is willing to do with being a meat shield, simply because you aren't willing.

So because YOU don't enjoy that role, it means that role should.....not exist?

Johnny, my math proved you wrong. Specifically, it proved that Tankers are balanced at least in regards to Scrappers. It also proved that Brutes are overpowered compared to both of them, which we all already knew. I didn't even have to do the math to prove that one.

If you despise being wrong so much that you will outright ignore anything that you can't refute because it destroys your argument, that's on you.

It changes nothing though.

Have a nice day.

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.