Shouldn't it be Time for Bruiser to Shine?

Discussion in 'Fighters' started by TinyRatongaofDoom, May 5, 2021.

  1. Paragonvii Active Member

    *BUMP*. ^^This. BTW I have mad respect for you Obano
    Obano likes this.
  2. Arclite Well-Known Member


    That was pretty much the crux of my post to begin with. There was no intent to derail this thread at all. The imbalance is not just in the brawlers class but in all tank classes. Essentially that is the case with crusaders as well these days but I would find it odd that bruisers with high levels of avoidance (hard capped on uncontested avoidance) is going to have the same level of issues as what crusaders are currently having with broken shield mechanics and defensive stats overall.

    The cause of tank imbalance is not rooted within one class be it bruiser or any other but it is the overall design of the class and the content we are getting these days. Long gone are the days when you felt powerful as you geared up on your tank class. The only thing that is currently going up with gear is dps for all classes. Defensive gear does nothing for any tank class these days because e.g. a zerker can stand like a champ while dual wielding with low mit and avoidance and the same content can destroy a crusader easily who even with a bit higher mit/avoidance is not able to handle the incoming damage.

    What i sense they are doing now (and have been for years) is to morph the conventional Tank class into a damage dealing class where they have some tools to hold aggro. It works well for other mmo's where the base design of the game is intended to be like that where there is no single tank class (e.g. guild wars 2). The problem for eq2 however is that in its core design tanks are not meant to be like that at all.

    Only logical explanation for going down this route is reduced development time (copy/paste armor/items across all classes). You are simply not going to gear all defensively because it has no bearing on your survivability except depending on the tank class you choose to play and this is not something clever by design but it ended up being like that.

    Its a systemic failure of content design. It is not about gear augmenting player skill anymore, its not about having the best healers or raid setup, its about stats and hidden checks placed that no one understands. We only moan about this because we happen to be the longstanding loyal fans of the games who still hope for something good to happen.

    We have adapted to whatever nonsense that has come our way and i seriously doubt there remains any hope to salvage whatever good this game still has and make something out of it.

    The next incomplete/broken content/expansion will come, we will still buy it, we will still pour money into pay to win mechanics and we will still complain about all of this again because on the other side all that matters is annual revenue that is enough to keep this cycle intact.
    Priority likes this.
  3. Paragonvii Active Member

    Nothing but love <3 to everyone.

    That being said lol~

    Bruisers have been a totally busted class for what, 8 years? Cmon its more than that. Cannot tank or DPS. My hats off to the fellow(s) who have mucked through the trenches and worked X20 as hard to play a class they love. Yes, there are misbalancing issues within the game, but I am sorry, this class deserves some love (a boost in tanking ability/ damage reduction and increase in DPS) for what people go through to play this game and play this class.. It needs to happen.
    Obano likes this.
  4. Smashey Well-Known Member

    It began slowly in 2013 when they removed our strikethrough immunity and replaced it with nothing.

    It began slowly, but then quickly it became a huge boulder going down hill when they continued to increase strikethrough on mobs to over 80% and at the same time left the bruiser left side prestige almost the exact same since and for whatever reason didn't increase the base combat art damage by the same amount (or higher) compared to monks.

    /clap
    Obano likes this.
  5. Obano Well-Known Member

    See Smashey's post below.


    Indeed when they removed strikethrough immunity Bruiser's effectively stopped brawlers and became just a mediocre DPS class. Then our dps slowly dropped until it became almost irrelevant.
  6. Priority Well-Known Member



    Felt relevant....

    https://imgur.com/0XK0NnJ
    Melt likes this.
  7. Priority Well-Known Member

    yup, that's what I thought; nothing to say when somebody flat out shows you that you're wrong and dont have it nearly as bad as you think you do in terms of actually staying alive like a tank should do first and foremost.
  8. Obano Well-Known Member

    You haven't proved anything other than you have more HP than me. My character was pretty much at its' limits with death prevents triggering throughout the fight. I don't think I could take anymore damage and still kill the mob. What does your actual avoidance report look like? That will show the real story. My HPS via avoids and stroneskins was 760.7 Million (Bottom right number). This is how much my character individually prevented and removes the variable of healer set up from the equation.

    [IMG]
  9. Priority Well-Known Member

    https://imgur.com/4D9mPL2

    As you can see, my avoid is almost 18% less than yours character to character. Nearly 20% of my damage was avoided by the templar through stoneskins or their block. I'm not sure how you figure YOU take more damage when my incoming damage is higher, my average hits are higher, and your personal avoidance is higher; but i'm pretty sure you're wrong, at least according to the data. On top of the fact I took that damage in 5 minutes LESS kill time than you had. That means I took more damage, faster. Also, my HP in raids is like 1.6B and I died twice. Now, get a templar and take 20% off your incoming damage and tell me that YOU still take more INCDPS than me.
  10. Priority Well-Known Member

    And unless I'm mistaken, you DIDNT die; so how were you at your limits if you were still alive?
  11. Obano Well-Known Member

    I avoided more damage because my encounter lasted longer. (27min vs 22min). Normalized for the length of the battle you avoided more damage than me (760 million vs 811 million) HPS. This isn't the damage you took. It is the damage you prevented. The larger number indicates that you were preventing more damage than me. This proves your SK is sturdier than my Bruiser.

    [IMG]

    The point I am trying to say about the death prevent triggers is that it wasn't a stable fight. You didn't see how many times I wiped before this because Bruiser lacks consistent defense. These numbers are simply the result of getting lucky on the kill pull.
  12. Priority Well-Known Member

    That's not how any of this works. You need to read those again.

    The stoneskin are from the Templar. Not me. Stoneskin work on unmitigated damage. I get 2 total stoneskin that will block all damage. One is a 1 minute recast, the other is on a 2.5 minute recast and I use them for bulwarks. I, me, myself, avoided less damage than you did. My healers just picked up the slack. I honestly don't know if you don't know what you're reading or you're trying to mislead the uninitiated.

    Compare the lines that say Block, Dodge, Miss, Parry Riposte. That's the damage avoided by the tank. Then we take into account that the average incoming hit for crushing and slashing for me is bigger than yours means I had less DR and/or Mitigation.

    Any knowledgeable player that looks at those numbers can easily see you took less damage with the less defensive healers. Getting lucky on the kill pull means nothing. I literally died twice and recovered it. You didn't die at all. Kill time/duration has absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, I took more overall damage than you did in 300 seconds less time. Extrapolate my incdps out for an additional 300s for yourself if you want to see how much damage I'd have taken during your fight in the same group.

    22 minutes of combat is MORE than enough time to get a normalized INCDPS number that includes variables such as missed bulwarks (only 1) and RNG randomness such as poor/greater avoidance (relative cuz #avoidlol).
  13. Paragonvii Active Member

    Fair enough~ I am not going to lie, things are getting technical, and this old man has some tired eyes getting off work. Are you saying that bruisers can, in fact, tank as well as the other tank classes? Or are you saying an SK is at a disadvantage as well as the Bruiser?

    I would like to point out (no im not using tired as an excuse...well maybe lol) I am rather impressed by you gentleman working hard to compile data to prove a point. I like facts, I respect hard work (and occasionally I love my eq2 fix). Obano you already had my respect by being a bruisy MT but Priority you are gaining it as well it would seem.


    SO! This is without sarcasm...because I AM NOT ALONE ON THIS lol. Are bruisers broken as a tank class?

    Does this "change the rules?" because, as I said, they have been known as the diaper class for how long now? Are you telling me that, by far, the greatest majority of players I know well tell you its just a busted class, are you telling me they are all wrong?

    This is not sarcasm. This is a real question. I dont believe in following herds...but usually with an old school crowd like eq2 there may be some bearing to it.

    Also, isnt there DPS garbage? This is a big factor when holding agro I would think.

    Whats the verdict? Call an inquisitor? (chuckles)
    Obano likes this.
  14. Priority Well-Known Member

    I don't think any class is "broken". Zerks and Monks just do absolutely everything better than the rest of us.

    Ultimately, this shouldn't even be an Sk vs Bruiser thing. 4 tank classes have glaring weaknesses and Clintsat said it best when he said all tanks need to be brought up to the same level as Berserkers. What that looks like is up for discussion as every tank shouldnt offer what every other tank does.

    As far as the diaper class thing, Bruisers appear to be as viable as an SK atm from Obanos data he's shared so far. He just has an option to be an OT god with 50 loyalty tokens.
  15. Obano Well-Known Member

    I get what what you are saying about the Templar but you can't completely disregard the stoneskins. All those stoneskins aren't coming from the Templar. You got divine aura which gives 14seconds of continuous stoneskins. Combined with ready up, that is a lot of stoneskins coming from your class.

    The overall picture when you factor in the stone skins (not coming from the Templar) is the SK is still sturdier than the Bruiser. I definitely can't miss a bulwark and survive like you can. You guild seemed to have breezed though this fight like it was nothing. Meanwhile I struggled with this mob because my Bruiser was the weakest link in the chain.

    You are the one who made it into an SK vs Bruiser thing. I agree with what you are saying but what did Clintsat actually say...

    [IMG]

    He said SK is more than viable. Then Vinere agreed with him and you agreed too unless I am reading too much into your reply. Did you disagree with him when you said SK is way more fun. Seems it is not 2 good tanks and 4 terrible tanks. But 3 viable tanks with SK being one of the good tanks.
    Paragonvii likes this.
  16. Priority Well-Known Member

    I think Clintsat was saying that SK is serviceable, but a berserker is absolutely better in every way but personal dps. Even then, who cares because they're handing out CB like the **** flier guys in Vegas. Also, most people are never going to see current end game raid content or challenge heroics. Any tank is viable for soloing/normal heroic content.

    My comment was strictly saying that Berserkers are boring AF to play. You hit the same 5 buttons over and over. I have 6 hotbars full of abilities to hit and sooner or later in a fight with no lag they all get used.

    As far as "one of the good ones" SK is in that realm simply because we can do decent dps and step right in to tank with no notice because of the epic 1.0.

    Zerks and Monks are in a class by themselves, the rest of us but Pallies are pretty similar. We offer garbage buffs, our dps isn't astounding without massive p2w, and our survivability is a joke in comparison. I don't believe that Bruisers are as far behind as you seem to think they are this year. You've just got monks on the other side of the fence as your alter ego. It's the same thing with Pally vs. SK. There's no comparison.

    That's a failure on DPG to give each tank a buff that's suitable for a different situation and making all tanks similar in dps/threat generation.
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  17. Obano Well-Known Member

    I agree pretty much on all points Priority. Though I don't think Bruiser is too far behind SK right now. See this comment you quoted from 6 months ago. I predicted that SK and Bruiser would be essentially tied for 3rd best tank. Though Vex 2 threw me for a loop and opened up new gaps in the meta.

    [IMG]

    At the end of the day the issue really isn't defense but DPS. I don't care about the 1 mob per expansion that I have to tank. I can consistently out parse a Zerker if I sacrifice all my defense. Problem with Bruisers is Monk and SK can do that better in terms of pure offense. Monk has got us both beat when it comes to defense.

    Bruiser doesn't really have this luxury. I want to be able to parse as high as an SK and swap in more defense when needed.
    Paragonvii and Priority like this.
  18. Melt Actually plays the game

    I think they are, but unfortunately the gap goes something like this:

    zerker - monk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sk/bruiser ---------------------- guardian ----------------------------- paladin


    What it comes down to, and I've had this discussion with other bards (the class I personally know the best) is that the content is far too easy. We should have to have variety, but we don't. It's the same argument for healers, why have anything but mystic/fury/templar? The reason that we're allowed to just stack those classes is because the content is so ridiculously easy that the only thing that matters is DPS. Bards are basically condensed down to Jcap/CF because the only thing that matters is DPS. Defensive temps, movement, ae blocks, stoneskins, aggro tools, powerfeed. Bards can do a lot, but all that matters is DPS because the rest of those things don't need to matter, because of how embarrassingly easy the raids are.
    Priority likes this.
  19. Obano Well-Known Member

    The original design document for EQ2 called for the tank classes to be inversely proportional in terms of offense and defense. The strongest tanks defensively were supposed to be weakest in terms of offensive.

    It terms of defense the best tanks were supposed to be.

    Guardian > Paladin > Zerker > Monk > SK > Bruiser

    Offensively in terms of DPS it went in the opposite order:

    (T1 dps) > Bruiser > SK > Monk > Zerker > (T2 dps) Paladin > Guardian

    Then the tanks were supposed to have more or less equal utility.
    Bruiser gave dps modifier (currently fervor)
    Monk gave the group haste (currently doublecast)
    Paladin could heal the group
    SK buffed mages
    Zerker had melee buffs
    Guardian had defensive buffs

    That was the promised balance but they screwed it up on day one due to a rushed launch. None of the expansions fixed the issue and it has gotten really bad in the last couple years. Currently Monks have nearly the highest defense and can practically reach T1 dps levels. Zerkers have insane defenses and the best utility of the tanks while still having a solid parse. That is the meta.

    As for difficulty of the game, it is impracticable to make difficult content when the classes aren't balanced. If you make something challenging for meta classes then it becomes impossible for those who don't play meta classes. Try to earn a raid slot as a Bruiser or Paladin and then tell me the game is too easy.
  20. Paragonvii Active Member



    Points noted from everyone on this~ learning a bunch (thank you!). so it seems bruisers may not be "as bad" as some may say in terms of defense as a tanking class, but there is an imbalance with their low DPS.

    Yep~ I am asking a bunch of questions about this because I love the bruiser class and yes I get a LOT of flake when I am on him. This thread answers a lot of questions I do think many may have. Thank you again to everyone for clarifications.