Johnny_Butane

I rolled a TW/DA Scrapper once.

Then I deleted it when I stopped being able to even tell what attack set it had, let alone what the character even looked like.



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Or...how about a Druid?


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By definition, a point can't be pointless.

It is extremely hard to build a case that something is lacking qualitatively.

I can't produce numbers that say Tankers don't suitably live up to the image their official description and their four colored counterparts evoke. You can't find that on a spreadsheet.

I could, suppose, conduct a survey, show what a large enough sample of players think, but that is as much against the rules as what I'm accused of.

Indeed, there may not even be that many that disagree with me on that point, because the most common responses I get to that seem to indicate they don't dispute Tankers fall short conceptually, they just don't care.

As Megajoule put it: "many tank players have simply become resigned to doing the kind of damage they do. I'm one of those"

Obviously, feelings and subjective opinions don't go far in convincing the devs or anyone. Even when I dredge up a quote from the lead designer saying plainly Tankers should be powerful and capable of doing a lot of damage, that gets dismissed derisively.

So I look for some quantitative justification. Perhaps there's something in the numbers that would justify Tankers damage being looked at. Oh, look Brute damage survivability caps. If high survival caps and high damage caps are OK for them, why isn't it OK for Tankers?

Nope, that's handwaved too. Why? Because, just because.

Pointing out the decreasing value of increasing survivability over the immortality line? Nope. Pointing out the increasing abundance of survivability buffs, the relative lack of damage improvement options and the fact Tankers can't even make use of all of them? Nope. Comparison with Scrappers giving them some wiggle room? Nope.

Well ****. Oh, and here comes Arcana, the answer to a question nobody asked to crap all over everything.

It's like being sat down in front of 4chan and being told to prove the justice of our culture.

I get nothing but trolled, deliberately misquoted and misinterpreted and scrutinized endlessly every single day. Just for pushing for something I believe in and not caving.
And unlike the devs, I don't even get paid for it.

:\



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Yeah, after Wonder Woman shamed him about it at their big meeting.

Seriously, six months have gone by and the best he manages is a "well done son guy".

While they tried to end the first season on an upbeat note, the kid is still gonna have major issues unless things pull a total 180.



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Because nobody ever got anything by giving up.


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You mistakenly assume I'm out to prove anything to anyone. I could produce and airtight case and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

You also wrongly assume that Arcana gives a damn about Tankers or my efforts beyond self-amusement.

I understand that some people have issues with Brutes and Scrappers sealing aggro from Tankers. I'm not convinced it's a problem because as I've stated before, both ATs are intended to share tanking duties with Tankers and as long as the aggro isn't on the squishes, there's no problem. Plus, as I said before, it's a self correcting issue; if they can't handle the aggro, they wont be pulling it after they faceplant. Naturally, this is no consolation to some Tanker players. All I can say to them is that only goes to show that putting all of the Tanker eggs into the aggro control basket was and is a dumb thing to keep doing when Brutes and Scrappers (and even other Tankers) aren't going away any time soon and the former wants and needs aggro as well to fuel their own gameplay. Aggro control can't be the Tanker's exclusive domain so suck it up and don't oppose them pitching in on the damage dealing more instead of them making a paltry contribution.


I only regret it wasn't a Brute thread that was hijacked for more poetic justice.


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Arcana is doing me no great service and I'd rather they went away.


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The thread is otherwise derelict. Besides that, I'm just paying back some karma.


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I have the courtesy to not constantly pick apart arguments for Blasters and harass Aracana's efforts. I don't see that Blasters need anything, but I at least have the respect to leave alone the people that think they do.


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What if the damage rate increases as the fight goes on, like from say cascade failure and other stacking debuffs. Or that cheap b**** of a Sapper who drops your toggles if you can't one shot him. There are also other factors like patrols wandering into a drawn out battle.

Things aren't as cut and dry in practice as they are looking at numbers.
I can say for a fact this has been the case on more than a few occasions.

Now I ask you kindly to take your hypocrite self elsewhere, like to a thread where you're asking for more survivability for the AT designed for the most damage while you have the gall to belittle my efforts to get damage improvements to the AT designed for the most survivability.


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This is a discussion it itself.

Up time is a factor, yes. Another consideration is Bruising isn't on the first attack.

Another is that you have to take your Tier 1 into consideration for your attack chain:
Compare an EM Brute and EM Tanker. The Brute may have an attack chain that doesn't use Barrage at all because better Damage Per Animation attacks are there. But a Tanker *has* to use Barrage every 10 seconds to get Bruising to work when perhaps a larger DPA attack would have been better. You lose from having a worse attack chain, but it's still a net gain, but it's not 20%.

Another thing to take into consideration are any sets like Dual Blades. Trying to do an Attack Vitals combo? Your 10 seconds are up and you have to use T1 Nimble Slash, even though it breaks your combo mid way. Choose!

And obviously, Bruising doesn't improve Tanker AoE damage really.

Given all those caveats, I'm loath to call Bruising a straight 20% damage boost.

BUUUT...

In all fairness, Bruising helps when it comes to things like Interface procs, and Lore Pets.

It has advantages, and disadvantages. So, in the end, I prefer to treat it like 20%.


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Forgive me if my numbers are off.

Scrappers have 1.46x more ST damage at cap than Tankers, if we factor in Bruising as 20% damage, (which it really isn't the same as). That's without factoring Scrapper Criticals. They also do 1.75x more AoE damage, again not factoring Criticals.

Tanker maxHP cap is 1.46x higher than a Scrapper.

Given that, Tankers and Scrappers are in line for ST damage with Bruising...until Criticals are taken into account. Further, Tankers lag behind proportionally for AoE damage.

However, Scrappers only have 75% damage resistance caps and Tankers have 90%, so Scrappers take 2.5x more damage per hit at the cap than Tankers. A 100 point attack will do 25 to a capped Scrapper but only 10 to a Tanker.


Agreeing so far?

Here's where you're probably not going to.
Those numbers don't tell the whole story.

There's four points I think that need to be taken into consideration that aren't usually.

Point #1: The first is that damage resistance and HP (and defense and regeneration) do not make up 100% of an AT's survivability and damage mitigation. Melee ATs get substantial damage mitigation from their attack power sets. If you disagree, look at Foot Stomp.

Given two identical attack power sets on a Scrapper and a Tanker, the damage mitigation that they get from them is probably identical.

The question is, what proportion of damage mitigation is gained from your attack set? I don't know, and it would vary from set to set. But even if it was a 80/20 split (80% from your defensive set/survival numbers and 20% from your attack set) that would put Scrapper survival potential in practice a lot closer to Tankers than the damage and HP and resistance caps alone would suggest.

Point #2: Dealing damage itself is a form of damage mitigation that improves survivability: If you kill the enemy before he can inflict damage and debuffs on you, you take less damage than if the fight was drawn out. So when Scrappers can kill faster than Tankers, that actually pushes Scrapper survivability up in practice. This can vary from enemy group to enemy group, but it's still something that needs to be taken into consideration.

Point #3: If you put a Scrapper and a Tanker side by side on a team, two things happen (or should happen). First, the Tanker takes the brunt of the incoming damage if he has aggro. He should have aggro, and if Scrappers are pulling aggro from Tankers, I agree that's a problem that should be looked at. What this means is when teamed, the Scrapper having less survivability than a Tanker means less because the Tanker is taking the heat. The Scrapper is in practice safer than his own numbers would allow him to be on his own. The other thing that happens is that the Tanker's Bruising more or less buffs the Scrapper's damage 1.2x. The net result is that the Scrapper is safer and doing more damage and the Tanker. When teamed, the Scrappers damage gap from the Tanker increases (because the Tanker is essentially buffing the damage the Scrapper does whenever they share a target), and the survivability gap decreases (because the Tanker is pulling the heat and protecting the Scrapper).

Point #4: Not all situations in the game require Tanker level survivability to survive. In those situations, the Scrapper having less survivability than a Tanker really doesn't penalize them any. Once the Scrappers and Tankers are above the survivability threshold for the same given situation, the Tanker having more survivability than the Scrapper becomes a moot point and doesn't serve him any. In a radio mission against x1+0 Council, chances are no Scrapper or Tanker is faceplanting. So why punish the Tanker with less damage for survivability edge that doesn't matter? That doesn't make sense. Situations like that happen enough that I think it should be taken into consideration, and they only happen more often the more survivability Scrappers are allowed to get (hello Hybrid Melee and Rebirth Destiny).

TLDR: Scrapper survivability in practice is higher than the resistance and HP numbers alone would suggest and Tankers having higher survivability than Scrappers is sometimes superfluous.


So, given those four points, plus the fact that Bruising still leaves a disproportional larger AoE damage gap, and that Scrappers get Criticals that also allow bonus for damage above their 500% damage cap, I think a case can be made for looking at the damage numbers for Tankers again and upping their damage cap. I apologize if you don't find my arguments coherent. I'm doing my best.



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The hell I do.

If they nerfed Brutes or not, that wouldn't improve Tankers and wouldn't shut me up.

It would just tick off a lot of Brute players for nothing.



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Or if you want to go dark, go the Damian Wayne route and have a member of his rogues gallery have a child with him without his knowledge or consent.


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Depends. Which of them would be satisfied by creating more epic pools and expanding on number of powers in them (and lowering their level requirements) that I suggested to you before?


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So what is it you want? More survivability or more damage? Or prettier colored power icons?



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Someone gives me an in, I'm gonna take it.

500 x 0.9 (what Reiska said) or 545 x 0.8 (what I was gunning for)

Either works for me (even though mine was less).
*shrug*



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Seems to me Blasters have issues of their own. Someone should make a thread about that.
It's a good thing they have someone like you to look out for them.


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500% cap with a .9 modifier, I wouldn't complain.

A dev will be right around to make that change aaany second now...


Now...


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I agree. I have Natural characters who could easily learn some basic magic and I've got Magic characters who could walk into a shop and buy a pistol or sword like anyone else. Let me decide my own concept.

Also you must be thrilled to have an attack named(sorta) after you.



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If it did happen, I don't expect it to suitably address my concerns. If they did, well, better stay indoors...





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No thanks.

-Brutes would still do 1.34x the ST (and 1.6x AoE) damage of Tankers at the cap while only having 10% less max HP.

-Tankers would still be getting screwed out of +damage buffs and Hybrid Assault.

-It would be giving Tankers higher damage out of the gate which is something I don't think should happen.


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There's no thread to derail because it never left the station. The OP took back the original comments. At the very least, it was under the larger issue of overall melee AT balance, of which Tankers and Brutes are a part of.


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A developer is at least likely to stumble in here based on how ridiculous the thread name is.

Putting "Tanker" in the thread name just ensures they won't look at it.


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