Hmm...hopefully by the end of the week I've geared my monk up enough to go into VD. I really want to test it out, so far with heroic zones I've just been chaining temps every single encounter, enough so that I only need heals during the gap where nothing is up. Then I just hit BLM/BT and mountain stance. Which pushes my mit up more during the time i'm actually taking a hit...using mend/draconic shout if needed and by the time that's done, my stoneskin rotation is back up. To me they just seem like a different kind of tank...avoiding the majority of the hits...the majority of the time. Much more help in regards to monks would be OP no? I'm sorry I don't have a bruiser...might level one up soon.
My only really complaint about monks right now is having the give up nuclear dragonfire to get the 2nd (or 3rd) avoid temp. I feel like the dps+defense combination that brawlers had was an important trade-off for taking damage in such a sporadic/volatile manner. As far as defense is concerned i've enjoyed ToV more on my monk than the last 4-5 expansions combined. It gives me great satisfaction that playing a brawler is finally what I thought it was going to be when I rolled one, ie. push wrong buttons and die // push right buttons and you'll make every other tank look bad. Anyway 5 star thread. I have no idea about bruisers or why anyone would choose bruiser over monk. Baffles me, that's a more important subject I think.
Hahahahaha, No. Being able to kill groupmates and screw up the dps of anyone who gives you lip has so much potential. On the point of Rasstan mentioning that we used to have weapons that gave upwards of 40-50% block chance, Back before a loot bot did the stats, These weapons actually had a really fair tradeoff. (Until Titaniir that is, But that was an expansion ending weapon). The weapons in Sentinal's Fate with block chance actually had much lower damage ratings but otherwise the same stats. About 30-40 less top end damage or so which I thought was a cool balancing mechanic. Another thing that just hit me was before loot bots you had certain items with + 900 (Plate Reinforced Drape from Research Halls) or +500 mitigation (Howling Hoop from SoH and some jewelry from Kingdom of Sky I think too) instead of mitigation increase which affected all tanks pretty much equally.
And yet, this thread appears to go unheard once more because Xelgad plays a monk and doesnt see a problem. Poor Bruiser /cry
Personally I can cope with where monks are in the expansion at the moment, given the attention they had the past 2 or 3 years. Its the Guardian time again, and as with all expacs, flavour of the month tanks appear. Are they perfect? But are they abandoned completely by guilds? Not at all. Only real complaint is the fact to compete actively with a plate tank we have to sacrifice nearly all DPS, which really does hurt with tanking, compared to the guard Focused Offensive, or Amends etc. Bruisers however, have been made pretty much redundant this expac. If they want to tank, a monk does it so much better. If they want to dps, an SK does it so much better. As stated further up in the thread, they have no real identity as it stands. Judging by the effect on Recklessness, SoE want them to be offtanks, but they really fail in comparison to SK's or Zerkers in that matter. They have no real key feature that makes you go "Oh, I know how we can hold these adds better, lets drop our OT for a bruiser OT".
Perfectly balanced (and similar) classes is both a fantasy and boring. If bruisers are feeling mistreated, then you have two options that I can see to fix your issues quickly: Betray to monk for the zones you can't handle as a bruiser, or Put together a stronger group with classes work better with your bruiser. The rest of the debate will be a moot point at the next release of gear or rebalance attempt.
You're obviously playing a viable class (I am too, my bruiser rarely gets played). Saying betray or be carried by a group for at least a year is not helpful. There's an obvious gap. The other OT fighters (zerk, sk) have %based heals on every hit, either by or against them. Maybe that's what's needed to make bruisers viable. Or give them the same length of damage avoidance temps as a monk. Or just give a few more stats to their armor so they can be the dps tank with the same mitigation as a reckless plate tank..
If I wanted to play a monk, I would have played a monk. I never said I " COULDN'T " run the zones, we said that the imballance is an issue. A stronger group or a weaker group doesnt change the issue at hand, the issue will still be there and will still be noticeable.
I've played classes that were crap for a long long time...then they get some love, then more crap. It's pretty much a ride of ups and downs. For anyone who CAN be uber at a class that's "unloved", they get my absolute respect for both sticking with the underdog AND doing things that are exceptional. As for people who are really upset that their favorite/chosen class isn't as easy to play as class X, you confuse me. I don't really understand your position. If you REALLY love the class I expect it's not because it's a dev favorite or because it's easy (otherwise you'd change to an easy and blessed class). No disrespect to you for wanting...MORE, but you'll get your day. Everyone does eventually. FYI: I chose and stuck with rangers long before they became easy mode decent dps while being heckled by people because I wouldn't betray to a REAL tier 1 dps class (assassin)...for YEARS. I'm actually a bit disappointed that they are almost a REAL faceroll class these days (but I digress).
I am used to playing the red headed step child class. My ranger and zerker were my first two characters, and they were always overlooked for other classes of their archtype until recently, even though I found that I contributed on them well. Both of them are now really good and desirable, so I've no need to fight for their shortcomings to be addressed. Through p*ssing and moaning (with others, I'm not so arrogant to claim it was because of me), rangers got a max hp debuff, procs from temp buffs and arrow consumption reduced. Zerkers, well, that just kind of happened through % based heals (after 3+ years of mediocre) My point is, if you don't highlight the issues of the underpowered classes and keep moaning about it, it doesn't become a priority for the devs. Right now, out of every class, I'd say Bruisers (and monks to a lesser degree) need some love. High incoming hits with high strikethrough means leather tanks with lower mitigation are handicapped. Their agile leather armor should mean they avoid more. So the whole strikethrough thing should be reconsidered, or, as suggested, give brawlers more stats on their gear so going full mitigation armor in order to survive a hit doesn't cripple them for generating aggro, etc.
Strikethrough is a two-way street. Not only is there too much on mobs, there's NONE on items! A stupidly simple fix would be to put strikethrough back onto tank weapons and a bit onto tank armor and jewelry. As a bruiser I need at least 70% strikethrough to maintain a passable hit rate. Preferably 90%+. I get 0 from buffs. I get 0 from AA. I get 0 from items. How do you devs not see the problem with that? We don't all play classes that get massive amounts passively!
You can have 42-56 Strikethrough from purple adorments, 10 from ToV signature final reward mount, also 6 from rare purple adorment \aITEM -942744719 -2031667632 0 0 0:[">B0;L=0O 0==838;OF8O]\/a
Sure, at the expense of other things. Strikethrough purples fit in 3 slots. Shoulders? Gotta give up block. Forearms? Give up ae auto. Leaves you with only really one slot, gloves. And that's not even the point. Tanks have the highest number of needed stats, but are given the same amount of stat allocation per item to do it with compared to scouts, mages and priests. And strikethrough is an example of a bruiser having an even harder time of it than some others. I'd love to have a free 50% strikethrough like monks do.
Nope, only 3. But I'd use them in 2 (gloves, forearms) over AE auto. We have crane flock and AE snaps after all. I'm currently on about 50% by reforging AE auto into strikethrough. But my Bruiser is way off being able to tank Dom still. I struggle with Halls/Labs. Need mit arms and bracers plus a few mit jewellery/charm pieces and them all upgraded to 4/4 or 3/3 before I even attempt Dom on my Bruiser.
Put me down in the in the "fix bruisers" column. I have no problem tanking any ToV heroic content until I get to the scorcher in VD. It is frustrating that I have raided and geared this character and now the strikethrough spikes make tanking this mob with VERY capable groups (we do it easily on other toons with plate tanks) is impossible. 8 pulls last night and I am about ready to hang this bruiser up or at least betray and give monk a shot.
I doubt its the most popular view point, but id like to see all tanks in the same situation bruisers are in, where you have to decide between dps, agro and survivability. That's how this expansion pack was described pre release, so why back down now? Why do we have tanks that can hold agro, mitigate hits and dps all at the same time? Imagine if dps had to watch their agro and your average heroic group wasn't "pull everything and burn it down" make it tough but make it tough for all classes or fix bruisers I don't really care which. Djinn Oasis
Because the game doesn't work that way. A "tank" with DPS and survivability but no aggro is not a tank. It's... something that soaks up hits after all the DPS is dead, while the healer rezzes them. A "tank" with DPS and aggro but no survivability is not a tank. It's... a third-rate DPSer. And the way the game is built, many tanks can't separate DPS from aggro; their DPS is almost all of their aggro. Also note: every stat seems to be a sliding scale, but most of them are actually binary. Either you have enough survivability, or you're dead. 5% more survivability beyond "enough" is meaningless; 1% below "enough" means you can't do your job. Either you have enough aggro, or you let your DPSers tank. 10% more aggro beyond "enough" is meaningless; 2% short of "enough" means you can't do your job. Either you put out enough HPS as a healer, or you let people die. Healing people at 0% or 100% health is meaningless. 10% more DPS, though, always makes fights 10% faster (outside of one-shotting grey-cons, I guess.) Think of it this way: In Generic MMO The First, Class One uses 14 stats, and Class Two uses 9 stats, and every stat in the game is maxxed out if it can get "100 item points" assigned to it from gear. So the GMt1st devs balance items equally, and if you have the "best" group-obtainable gear, you wind up with items that give you 720 item points, spread among your stats. That means a fully-group-geared Class Two is at 80% of his potential, but a fully-group-geared Class One is only at 51%. So Class One characters are always going to suck at their job vs. Class Two characters. That's not balanced, and it's not fun. But it is how itemization is set up in EQ2...
I've said several times that brawlers, and in particular Bruisers as the weaker of the two, CAN do the tank job. But, it requires the gear quality way above that of a plate tank. A plate tank can use a a few pieces of dps gear (my zerk for example has 4 jewellery pieces and usually his boots as dps gear) and still have 18-20k mit when grouped, meaning he mitigates 75% of the hit from a L103x4 and has 100% AE auto, 100% strikethrough, 600dps mod, etc. My bruiser in full mit gear will end up with about 15-16k mit in a group (estimate, I'm not there yet), but he'll also not have capped uncontested block, he won't have 600dps or 120+ MA or 200 atk. He also will only have about 30% strikethrough and minimal AE auto (because I reforge it to a more tank critical stat as I have crane flock) and minimal hate gain. All these sacrifices to stats, because mitigation is the king for this xpac because any important named will strikethrough the uncontested block and one shot any brawler that has lower mitigation and doesn't have a damage prevention or death save up.
