Denubis

Hey i just wanted to have people give some feedback on what some raiding bruisers liked, disliked, and suggestions on the class after raiding RoK for a couple of months now. Unfortunately i am going to run before i post my opinion on the class but wanted to open the discussion. So far i am very dissapointed to say the least with our tanking end of things, but i am pretty happy with our dps capabilities compared to other melee dps classes. Itemization for us in unbelievable i feel like to.

With all of this said however, i am in the process of PL a guardian which will become my main for hard encounters due to the fact our guild only has one guard, a pally, and me for tanks. ill post more on this tomorrow i think when i have time but wanted to see if others were sharing in this feeling of frustation that our talent is being wasted on a class that is been destroyed by this expansion on importanent elements of the game. I dont imagine us tanking mobs like silverwing, donkey kong, or later Avatars in RoK unless something drastic changes with the epics or the game itself. This differs drastically from kos and EoF where we could and did tank contested encounters as well as the hardest instance encounters.

If you can spare some time would be nice to hear back from the people that are still playing bruisers cause i know we lost so many with this expasnion due to reasons stated above. I know devs read these class boards so try to make the feedback accurate and useful if you guys can. i would really not like to give up my bruiser which i have played for almost 3 years now but i am getting very frustrated with limitations of the class and the growth in utility/dps/tanking survivability of other tank classes.

denubis

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[SIGPIC]

Crabbok

in ROK so far I've had no problem tanking T1 and T2 mobs, in fact I'd say I did quite well. But after my attempts to tank in VP, I've been more commonly known as Crabbok, "The One-Shot Wonder".

Seems like the only way I can stay up long enough to tank is with using blessings. It's pretty sucky. I need better gear, but I doubt that will make much of a difference.

What I'd like is for Sony to pick a damned role for us already. We have been dps for a long time, and also capable tanks if geared out. Personally I would rather shift our focus more towards DPS.

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gungo

I am still building my tank gear from t1-t3 set.
The amount of uncontested avoid off it should be helpful. That said we have been extremly luck on brawler loot. Or as many guilds would say unlucky.

Sardonis

Was actually trying to get around to making one of these. Anyways, its always interesting to see how things are when a expansion launches and a few months in. The most obvious way to know that something was done wrong and was imbalanced is when the majority of one class betrays, like with a lot of bruisers this expansion.

The most contributing problem to the imbalance of monk vs bruiser desirability in a raid is the actual design of the encounters, continuous rooted mobs was a horrible idea though it could have actually been done correctly. Its not all at fault of the encounters, the 80spells were ill designed, to have peel last so long and have no penalties it can be used along with other abilities that of that the bruiser has is still more or less useless. Comparing that to D&C is just a snap agro, which does still have its uses, but would gladly exchange it for something more raid desired, perhaps survivability though thats more of a call for better design to tanks. With this expansion and how hard mobs actually hit and along with the nerfs and horrible encounters, Drag has lost a lot of its use. Along with that, Drag is currently broken against mobs that start out as npc's and then become activated.

The other main factor is our raid buffs, the monks casting and melee haste has only become way more desired compared to bruisers 20% hate/dehate and increase to CA damage, because now some players can probably reach cap them selfs through gear and augs on +CA damage.

Things that gave us an edge over others in the past has been close mind and stone deaf, and to blame for that is horrible design. Most encounters that have a aoe is melee damage and nothing really does any magical damage. Close mind doesnt even work against some abilities due to them not putting a real effect on the player.

As for brawler gear, the pieces are there sparsely, but needs to be looked at like all of VP loot. Though most of my faith lies in Avatars, along with everyones im sure.

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"The flow is more important... not power. You have to be like the water."
Ne Plus Ultra

Crabbok

Well Written Sardonis. I think we are in a sticky situation right now, especially for orange mobs. There isn't much good tanking gear available to the bruiser who wants to off tank. The Bo from VP, along with the Juggernaught helm and 3 set bonus would be nice, but for me, juggernaught gear seems to be extremely rare, in fact I've seen zero drops from the set thus far.

Avatars coudl be great, but still monks woudl have access to the same gear that bruisers would. I think if we are going to have a salvation, it's going to lie in our epic. Our epic weapon needs to have something to it that redeems the class. I don't truly expect that to happen, but it would be nice.

Perhaps a proc that gives 50% haste and dps to the whole group for 30 seconds, or perhaps a really amazing tanking weapon, say with 25% uncontested avoidance and stoneskin proc on attack.

Epics could be our redemption, but I doubt they will be.

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Mimn

Now as a monk I understand your frustration. You guys used to have the upperhand upon the release of KOS and continued though the first part of EOF. I know as it is now if you have one spot on raid its going to the monk more times then not . With the utility of Peel+Tsunami/mit root/stun and the raidwide buff while having now very similar dps makes things a bit out of balance for the 2 brawlers. Make your voices heard and do whatever you can to get your class worked on. And it may take months to a year but the balance will shift again either though enhancements to your class or a nerf of the monks (you keep that fucking nerf bat away from my class SOE))

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Crabbok

Yeah I'm very happy for monks having the utility they have now. Raid haste and tsunami+peel adds up to a nice toon for a raid spot. Bruisers have good dps, but we really don't bring anything uniqe to the raid.

In my opinion, they shoudl gear bruisers more toward dps, and give us a seriously good mitigation debuff similar to dispatch, and have it stack with everything.

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Splorch

I'm more for survivability, but to each his own.

Honestly after testing D&C I've simply given up using it. Its failure rate is pathetic. I'd say 1/3 tries fails vs mobs even or above in levels, and i've had it fail up to 4 times in a row(with an AD3) even with some extra + aggression. It doesn't even increase my hate to the mob as near as much as the encounter taunt and when it's duration runs out if the person who pulled aggro in the first place kept on nuking the mob it just runs right back to them, and was probably a worse choice for using than control hate or drag + kick out the dps. The spell is a failure.

I dont see how Brawlers are supposed to progress as the system is now. If you were in avatar loot you can tank. If your in VP gear with sprinkles of t1-t3 loot you can tank. Avatars have been removed and you cant take the hits that mobs in t1-t3 put out. So in order to progress as a tank, you have to have access to equipment you can't reach.

pagansaint

LvL 4 Defensive Stance Master ftmfw... just an FYI.

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Denubis

***********************Warning the content of this post might make you not make a bruiser*******************************

Wow was happy to see the responses. As i said i would post my own view of the bruiser atm in regards to other fighters. Hopefully i won’t wonder to much but here are the problems i have encounter.

Biggest Issue: The biggest issue with bruiser atm is we are the ONLY FUCKING TANK that doesn’t have a melee survivability move. Even though crusaders DA is somewhat broken for how hard mobs hit, they do have a choice to get one. ATM on hard fights like silverwing, if our tank needs me to assume agro for short times when he is charmed i pretty much pray not to get hit twice in a row...or use a miracle for 15 seconds of death immunity. These are my only two options. This is a joke for any tank class when mobs can randomly hit u for 20k without wards. A bruiser SHOULD never tank because of this. Fights and hits are to random. Many of the times i might only last 6 or 7 seconds cause i cant survive huge hits that are going to occur.

Second issue: Agro/Utility problems. One reason i always liked playing a bruiser is how much fun agro can be. it is always a challenge and in the past we could get away with having no real thing that locks in agro. All class now but us have something whether being signet, reinforcement, insolence, deathmarch, or peel each class has something that last for extended periods of time or multiple moves. However, in a game where we cant auto attack shit or land CAs really for that matter, a bruiser simply cant hold agro on tough mobs. We had a chance to get something useful on this front with our lvl 80 but as we know it is a joke. not only does it get resisted a ton, but 4 to 8 seconds of a random part of an encounter is completely awful compared to the guardians pally and monk lvl 80 agro management. Recapture as much as the guardians complained can be extremely useful for when they spike or for bouncing agro between two tanks which is needed on some encounters. Ours is 4 to 8 seconds of randomness....When compared to peel it is even more of a joke.

Third Issue: Loss of utility through game design nerfs. Closed mind, drag, and even stone def has become for the most part pretty useless. Although these skills kicked major ass in eof and kos (obviously not drag) they are virtually useless as most mobs stuns, fears are incurable thus making close mind completely useless. IN addition, drag doesn’t work on any of the rooted encounters and often turns mobs when used which many time forces the mob to face the raid. As stated above, as more mobs lean towards melee aoes, stone def has lost much of its glamour. I know i would gladly trade it and closed mind for tsunami atm. Comparing to our monk counterparts, i still fail to see the reason why we cant blow all our timers to be able to use rock skin and closed mind in combination with one another. at least we would get some much need mitigation for surviving melee aoes and put the close mind skill to use. With this said our raid wide buff isnt bad, while the monks one is better, having more CA dmg and 20 to deagros and taunts isnt a poor raid wide. It just isnt enough to justify a spot to put a bruiser in a raid.

DPS: If our role is purely dps purposes, our dps should go up drastically. This is becomes even more important after u consider how much we have lost in the tanking department, utility, and even agro field. Being in o stance this expansion without any avoidance on epic mobs, unlike a plate counter part that has a shield while dpsing, if i ever peel a mob, my mitigation is like 2.3k and this means i get lit up for anywhere from 13k to 18k. Most the time i am am either dead instantly or of need of a survivability move which i have none. I have no complaint with this if our dps was that much better then a guardian or zerker in buckler stance or if our dps was on par with swashies and brigs on long fights. However this is not the case, and in the case of zerkers and guardians, both those classes are more survivable when dpsing. This as sardonis stated hurts us more that every single aoe in the game atm is pretty much melee based. This means that we cant sit in on aoes while our plate counter parts can and even monks could occasionally with the aa line.

AA Strength and Weakness: I have been a big fan of the bruiser EoF tree since i saw it. although i dont think it is the best aas in the world, lots of things are extremely useful. The stone skin proc idea is nice just they havent made it as powerful as it likely should be. In addition, drag is still useful occasionally.

Brawler aas on the other hand are the worst out of any fighter class in the game hands down. After playing a guardian for a time and having an sk lvl 70 alt (who i retired when RoK came out cause i didnt want to buy the expansion) i am so jealous of their aas choices and combinations it isnt funny. In each of those trees they have a dps line, an agro line, and a survivability line. We have none of those. Our lines are so spread out with worse version of some of other fighter lines. We get less melee crit chance, we dont get our have a chance to proc to multiple targets unlike both crusader and warrior, we get no melee survivability move like reflexes or DA, nor do we get a true dps lines or reuse times. Our str line, which was supposed to be our dps line, makes u drop half ur dps to use it because u cant use weapons.....If u look at all the final skills the only two good ones in my mind are really altruism, which is a great skill btw, and then chi which no one gets because no one wants to waste 20 in the str tree. The intel line is worthless with mobs that two shot u...if i am ever below 25% health i am going to die the next time i get hit. The mantis leap line wont even get into that one, crane flock is okay but 16 seconds of auto attack isnt really much in form of snapping agro at best it is okay for allowing us to parse higher on aoe fights. So our of the 5 final points we have 2 good ones and one of them isnt worth getting to. This leads us to having one legitatemly good final part in a tree of our KoS aas.

Itemization: Itemization for us has been great in my mind. Our dps capability and tank capability within the items at least has been great. increasing riptose from our jug set and the supple staff with 15% dodge is great items for tanking along with the jug helm piece. For dpsing we have many choices that incrase our melee crit and double attack dps/haste mods. I have no complaints in this area. I feel that brawler gear for the first time has been more geared to brawlers although it would be nice to see the brawler gear with deflection parry and even mitigation bonuses.

This is my stance on the bruiser atm. Atm i feel we are the worst tank at tanking by far. If i had to place tanks it would go guardian on its own tier, then sk zerker monk, and pally just below them, then somewhere far below pally even comes us. For utility, i think we have lost a lot of what made us special, altruism is a bad ass move but monks have it and put us to shame in many other aspects regarding utility. In terms of DPS we are still one of the best dpsers of the fighters but continue to struggle to separate ourselves from the pack despite not having the tanking ability of the other tanks.

these are my thoughts on the class atm.

if i were a dev i would greatly increase either our dps abilities, give us a much much much needed survivability move, or greatly bring back our utility. atm this class should die out on the late game raid scene, not to say it wont, but i see no reason to bring a bruiser on any encounter that i have experienced on the grounds that a bruiser does the job better then class x. This wasn’t the case in EoF or Kos.

i apologize for the long post but wanted to hit on all the things