Brawler mit increase

[Aule]

<p>Test patch notes:</p><p>BrawlersBob and Weave and Inner Calm now give a small amount of physical mitigation.</p><p>Master of t9 is 1169, expert is 1023.</p><p>Not too shabby.</p><p>Seeing as it's pretty obvious they can't get avoidance tanking to work effectively, I'm happy to settle for getting up to the same mitigation levels that plate tanks do.</p>

[Bruener]

<p>Sweet, do the plate tanks get more uncontested avoidance now?</p>

[Hikinami]

<p>Stikethrough immunity on shields and uncontest avoid on self buffs in 2011?</p>

[Kota]

too funny. yeah i said years ago that avoidance tanking would never work. so now they just make brawlers into mit tanks. shoulda just made brawlers a scout class imo.

[circusgirl]

<p>Plate tanks have pretty close to what brawlers get actually.  A brawler's base uncontested avoidance is 17% (raisable to 22% with mythical and 27% with AA).  A plate tank in a nice fabled shield (such as arc knight towershield) has a base uncontested avoidance of 20.7%.  If you include the block chance inherent to the shield that raises to 26.3%.  This is before you count things like the crusader's block chance AAs (and remember that 27% for brawlers is including the AAs).</p><p>Now, a plate tank does not receive quite as big of a benefit from +block chance as brawlers do, since this stat is modifying 27% for a brawler and 20.7% for a plate tank.  However, this is balanced by plate tanks receiving a bigger benefit from +mitigation increase than brawlers receive (for the same reason--the mit on your armor is higher to start, so you're modifying a bigger number).</p><p>The other argument that <em>could</em> be made is that brawlers have more access to +block chance than plates.  However, this is only really true when it comes to T1 and T2 items.  Once a brawler gets into T3 equipment, that block chance is replaced by +mit increase and brawlers don't really have access to any more +block chance than plates.</p><p>Brawlers do have strikethrough immunity in defensive stance.  On the other hand, plate tanks have all of their avoidance in offensive stance, while brawlers avoidance drops from 27% to 5% in offensive.  </p><p>So the big picture is this: a brawler and a plate tank in mid-range raid gear have very similar amounts of uncontested block (27% vs. 26.3%), and similar access to gear to improve this amount.  Brawlers only advantage in mit is that +block chance gives us a slightly bigger benefit, but this is balanced by the same thing occuring with +mit increase.  At the end of the day <strong>plate tanks are already capable of reaching avoidance numbers very similar to what brawlers can do.</strong>  </p><p>My experience tanking has shown plate tanks with avoidance lends essentially reaching pretty much the same numbers I can reach avoidance-wise, unless I do something crazy like put on two weapons with extremely low damage ratings to up my block chance.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p>A brawler can dual wield, retain his uncontested avoidance and strikethru immunity, and have mitigation approaching what plate tanks can achieve, all at the same time. Warriors and Crusaders do not have strikethru immunity at all, and lose their uncontested avoidance if they dual wield or use a two-hander.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>A brawler can dual wield, retain his uncontested avoidance and strikethru immunity, and have mitigation approaching what plate tanks can achieve, all at the same time. Warriors and Crusaders do not have strikethru immunity at all, and lose their uncontested avoidance if they dual wield or use a two-hander.</p></blockquote><p>True technically, but you're implying something that is completely false.  First off, the only things in that list that a brawler can do that a plate cant is dual wield & have strikethrough immunity.  The rest was just a list of things that all tanks do when they're <em>tanking</em>.</p><p>In order to have mit that even comes remotely close to what plate tanks have a brawler needs to switch out essentially every single piece of gear they own to swap in +mit increase gear.  That nice bracer from 3-rune Theer with the awesome stats and awesome proc?  Gone in favor of one from the x2 with 1.5 mit increase and 10 crit chance.  Every single piece of gear from the offensive set swapped in for the defensive set.  That necklace with 14% potency?  Swapped for one with 1.5% mit increase and no potency at all.  I have to swap out just about every single piece of equipment when I'm tanking, and I'm still nowhere near plate numbers.  The result of all these gear swaps is that a brawler's dps absolutely plummets when we're tanking--and I'm talking dropping by 60-70%.  We lose more than half of our dps going from offensive to defensive, more than any other tank sacrifices by far.  </p><p>So yeah, we can keep dual weilding, sure.  But what little dps that gives us is significantly less than the amount a plate can gain by staying in offensive stance (where you get to keep your uncontested avoidance and mitigation increase) and in not having to swap to gear that has absolutely nothing going for it except +mit increase.  </p><p>Oh, and lets not forget that Knight's Stance lets a crusader do the same damage as dual-weilding while still wearing a shield too, eh?</p><p>Look, when there are as many high-end guilds out there using brawlers as main tanks as there are ones using Shadowknights, Paladins, Zerkers, or Guardians, then you guys can complain.  In the meantime, I think its pretty ridiculous to try to pretend that we're oh-so-far ahead of you.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look, when there are as many high-end guilds out there using brawlers as main tanks as there are ones using Shadowknights, Paladins, Zerkers, or Guardians, then you guys can complain.  In the meantime, I think its pretty ridiculous to try to pretend that we're oh-so-far ahead of you.</p></blockquote><p>+1</p><p>I think if people spent half the time learning how to play their class better as they do complaining about other ones, there wouldn't be any arguments like this.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look, when there are as many high-end guilds out there using brawlers as main tanks as there are ones using Shadowknights, Paladins, Zerkers, or Guardians, then you guys can complain.  In the meantime, I think its pretty ridiculous to try to pretend that we're oh-so-far ahead of you.</p></blockquote><p>Exactly. I do not know of a raid guild that has its focus with a brawler as the primary main tank. Doesn't mean that there are some that do, but I just don't see it.</p><p>Vinka's post is a direct hit of truth. Brawlers must make a choice. Survival = less dps and dps = less survival.  Right now even a brawler in offensive stance is only slightly above or behind a zerker or crusader in dps yet the brawlers survivability is beyond sub-par. If anything brawlers while in offensive stance should bury zerkers and crusaders in dps since brawlers loose so much survival in offensive stance.</p><p>My hats off to Vinka. Great info.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p></blockquote><p>Now I know you didn't miss the test update notes...so what is this nonsense?</p><p>I see a lot of Guard abilities changed from useless to very useful.  I know my guild that has always used a Guard to MT just saw all the content get even easier...well that and we sport 2 rangers.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p></blockquote><p>You need to read update notes because he changes to guardians after the NEXT hotfix ill make guard the best DEFENSIVE tank by far.</p><p>LMS will become tower of stone on crack.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p></blockquote><p>Now I know you didn't miss the test update notes...so what is this nonsense?</p><p>I see a lot of Guard abilities changed from useless to very useful.  I know my guild that has always used a Guard to MT just saw all the content get even easier...well that and we sport 2 rangers.</p></blockquote><p>See, Guards complain, but they're still MTs in a lot of guilds.  See above.</p><p>I have yet to hear of a brawler MT in any high-end raid guilds.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p></blockquote><p>Now I know you didn't miss the test update notes...so what is this nonsense?</p><p>I see a lot of Guard abilities changed from useless to very useful.  I know my guild that has always used a Guard to MT just saw all the content get even easier...well that and we sport 2 rangers.</p></blockquote><p>See, Guards complain, but they're still MTs in a lot of guilds.  See above.</p><p>I have yet to hear of a brawler MT in any high-end raid guilds.</p></blockquote><p>Brawlers rock.  That is all.  Sorry for those that don't realize it.</p>

[Aule]

Brawlers rock more because those who've stuck with the class excel as players. Unlike shadowknights or berserkers which excel due to class design. Tell me Bruenor, when was the last time you made the choice to go into defensive stance in order to survive? Have you even left your offensive stance this expansion? Or how about dropping half your potency and a quarter of your crit bonus in order to get avoidance up to brawler levels the way I have to to get my mitigation to be approaching plate levels?

[BChizzle]

<p>Brawlers have 3 areas in which they currently fall well behind other tanks in.  It is nice to see it being addressed.</p><p>1 mitigation, we are forced to use +mit gear to an extreme level to just complete with a plate tank in the tanking department.</p><p>2 ae agro, we produce the absolute lowest amount of ae agro of any tank class, especially when we are forced to turtle up because of #1.</p><p>3 utility, no group buff unlike other tanks who bring great things to the group.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Brawlers rock more because those who've stuck with the class excel as players. Unlike shadowknights or berserkers which excel due to class design. Tell me Bruenor, when was the last time you made the choice to go into defensive stance in order to survive? Have you even left your offensive stance this expansion? Or how about dropping half your potency and a quarter of your crit bonus in order to get avoidance up to brawler levels the way I have to to get my mitigation to be approaching plate levels?</blockquote><p>The SKs and Zerkers you see rocking are for exactly the same reason.  The ones that are good players.  Yep just like every other class.</p><p>As for defensive stance, I was in it last night some.  Any time we are working on a progression mob that I am tanking some I go into some +mit pieces and throw up defensive stance to get my mit to 75%.  So yes I go into defensive stance a lot, and its not nearly as detrimental as people seem to make it out.  Yes our Bruiser will sacrifice a little more DPS to go defensive, but the way I see it he is going defensive to get a few % less mitigation than me but he has a ton more uncontested avoidance than me.  And he can hold agro no problem while doing it.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>BChizzle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Brawlers have 3 areas in which they currently fall well behind other tanks in.  It is nice to see it being addressed.</p><p>1 mitigation, we are forced to use +mit gear to an extreme level to just complete with a plate tank in the tanking department.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The mitigation gap is small and should not be closed anymore at all.  Physical damage already does too little and the gap is small enough.</span></p><p>2 ae agro, we produce the absolute lowest amount of ae agro of any tank class, especially when we are forced to turtle up because of #1.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">This I can see, however aren't the changes giving you more AE auto attack, and being an all time DW class it means not only more AE auto from your mainhand, but also all that AE auto from your offhand too.  This is more AE agro.</span></p><p>3 utility, no group buff unlike other tanks who bring great things to the group.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Brawlers have the most survivable buff to another tank in the game.  That is utility.</span></p></blockquote>

[urgthock]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Brawlers rock more because those who've stuck with the class excel as players. Unlike shadowknights or berserkers which excel due to class design. Tell me Bruenor, when was the last time you made the choice to go into defensive stance in order to survive? Have you even left your offensive stance this expansion? Or how about dropping half your potency and a quarter of your crit bonus in order to get avoidance up to brawler levels the way I have to to get my mitigation to be approaching plate levels?</blockquote><p>The SKs and Zerkers you see rocking are for exactly the same reason.  The ones that are good players.  Yep just like every other class.</p><p>As for defensive stance, I was in it last night some.  Any time <strong>we are working on a progression mob</strong> that I am tanking some I go into some +mit pieces and throw up defensive stance to get my mit to 75%.  So yes <strong>I go into defensive stance a lot, and its not nearly as detrimental as people seem to make it out.</strong>  Yes our Bruiser will sacrifice <strong>a little more DPS</strong> to go defensive, but the way I see it he is going defensive to get a few % less mitigation than me but he has a ton more uncontested avoidance than me.  And he can hold agro no problem while doing it.</p></blockquote><p>I just don't get how you can be so obtuse.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Brawlers rock more because those who've stuck with the class excel as players. Unlike shadowknights or berserkers which excel due to class design. Tell me Bruenor, when was the last time you made the choice to go into defensive stance in order to survive? Have you even left your offensive stance this expansion? Or how about dropping half your potency and a quarter of your crit bonus in order to get avoidance up to brawler levels the way I have to to get my mitigation to be approaching plate levels?</blockquote><p>The SKs and Zerkers you see rocking are for exactly the same reason.  The ones that are good players.  Yep just like every other class.</p><p>As for defensive stance, I was in it last night some.  Any time we are working on a progression mob that I am tanking some I go into some +mit pieces and throw up defensive stance to get my mit to 75%.  <span style="color: #ff0000;">So yes I go into defensive stance a lot, and its not nearly as detrimental as people seem to make it out. </span> Yes our Bruiser will sacrifice a little more DPS to go defensive, but the way I see it he is going defensive to get a few % less mitigation than me but he has a ton more uncontested avoidance than me.  And he can hold agro no problem while doing it.</p></blockquote><p>This is the problem.  For you, going defensive involves switching in "some +mit pieces" and "throwing up defensive stance."  For me, going defensive involves switching out about 70-80% of my gear and going defensive.  For you, its not particularly detrimental.  For a brawler, we're talking about losing half of our dps.  </p><p>As for the brawler utility you're mentioning, there are 10 classes with avoidance buffs.  All 6 fighters, both clerics, and both bards have avoidance buffs.  And if the brawler is in offensive stance, then the plate tank buff is actually significantly better than the brawler one.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Basically every tank is getting fixed or made even more beast except for guardians. Lawl GG Xelgad... well played.</p></blockquote><p>You need to read update notes because he changes to guardians after the NEXT hotfix ill make guard the best DEFENSIVE tank by far.</p><p>LMS will become tower of stone on crack.</p></blockquote><p>Alright, that's pretty sweet.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>Best defensive tank? That will be applicable in raid only, since the content is currently scaled far below the gear. Thus, defensive tanks have no real role since DPS is king in Sentinel's Fate. A player outfitted in high end instance/mark gear can easily complete any instance.</p><p>Also, comparing defensive stance on a crusader to a brawler is silly. The defensive stance penalties on crusaders are entirely negated by AA choices, the only real penalty comes from losing the STR on the offensive stance. Hitting the mit cap is almost automatic these days with healer phys mitigation buffs for plate tanks. I hit 72-73% all the time wearing my offensive gear in a group. Brawlers on the other hand, completely shift what they are doing to go defensive, just look at what the buffs do alone.</p><p>That being said, there are a ton of crappy crusaders out there, a ton of crappy warriors out there, and a ton of crappy brawlers out there. I've seen legendary geared tanks do what fabled geared tanks cannot. Tank skill has very little to do with class, and everything to do with player skill. Some people just suck at tanking. Those people tend to whine a lot more about other classes, and don't really understand how to play their classs in the first place, which is why they cannot effectively tank.</p><p>I have seen successful tanks of every single class, and the only ones that really have problems are guardians(and brawlers to a degree, but the incoming brawler fixes should go a long way), because they simply don't have the tools to deal with real T1 AE DPS(such as a warlock) right now. They have to have a coercer or xfer DPS class in the group backing them up.</p>

[BChizzle]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>BChizzle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Brawlers have 3 areas in which they currently fall well behind other tanks in.  It is nice to see it being addressed.</p><p>1 mitigation, we are forced to use +mit gear to an extreme level to just complete with a plate tank in the tanking department.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The mitigation gap is small and should not be closed anymore at all.  Physical damage already does too little and the gap is small enough.</span></p><p>2 ae agro, we produce the absolute lowest amount of ae agro of any tank class, especially when we are forced to turtle up because of #1.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">This I can see, however aren't the changes giving you more AE auto attack, and being an all time DW class it means not only more AE auto from your mainhand, but also all that AE auto from your offhand too.  This is more AE agro.</span></p><p>3 utility, no group buff unlike other tanks who bring great things to the group.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Brawlers have the most survivable buff to another tank in the game.  That is utility.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I was reffering to how things are currently, not on test, the ae increase will be nice, the mit increase will certainly open up some options of not having to stack so much +mit items. </p><p>But you are incorrect about the avoidance buff, any tank with the most block chance has the most survivable buff to another tank in that game.  You could say that brawlers have the highest block chance potential but in actual practice buffing their block results in an completely unworkable situation where you end up with a brawler who can't dps because his gear is [Removed for Content] block gear and can't tank because his gear lacks the mit needed to be effective, that is hardly an ideal situation and hardly something you could call class utility.  They should give brawlers each a group buff plain and simple.</p>

[Chanson]

<p>I copied my bruiser over to test to take a look at some of the changes. I was pretty surprised to find that my mitigation was pretty much the same as it was on live. Live: Chest = 526 mitigation Test: Chest = 408 mitigation After a little further testing, I reset my shadow AA line. This dropped chest mitigation to 398. Putting 5 points in to Hardened Skin brought chest mitigation back up to 408. Again this was a testcopy from two days before, exact same AAs and gear.</p><p>Anyone else having this same issue?</p>

[Silzin]

i will look between the to night , but yesterday when i was on test my over all mit was about 1000 higher and i only have the adept.

[Chanson]

<p><cite>Silzin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>i will look between the to night , but yesterday when i was on test my over all mit was about 1000 higher and i only have the adept.</blockquote><p>This might be a bruiser specific issue, I'm not aware of monks having a Hardened Skin equivalent, thought I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time =)</p>

[vinere]

<p>They "fixed" +mitigation increase blue stat to accually do what it says.  This resulted in a large decrease in the amount of mitigation gained from these skills.  They said brawlers were getting over 5x the effectivness out of +mitigation as they should have.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=486130" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=486130</a></p><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You may have noticed that currently on test mitigation numbers seem lower. There was no notes in the Test Update notes because it was pushed to Test a little sooner than we expected. We've been evaluating all of the systems in the game to find out what is working and what is not working correctly. During this investigation, we found that there was a bug with the blue stat "Mitigation Increase" causing it to give noticably more than the listed amount of mitigation. This bug has been fixed and is currently on the test servers. A mitigation increase of 10% was increasing plate mitigation by about 30% and leather mitigation by about 54%. This has been fixed so that the mitigation increase that says 10% will increase your mitigation by 10%. The addition of mitigation to the brawler self buffs was to be in tandem with this bug fix. This change is important because reaching the cap on mitigation causes some abilities, advancements and gear options to become irrelevent. That is obviously detrimental to gameplay and it can be detrimental to balance as well. If some classes have been balanced around having abilities to boost their mitigation and players end up capping out that stat then that element of balance is lost. This bug has been in the game for a long time so the fix will reduce the mitigation of most tanks. For the sake of being able to balance the tanks in the future, we needed to correct the formula that was used to calculate the effectiveness of "Mitigation Increase."We'll try to address questions and concerns regarding this fix and we aren't in a rush to get this change to Live. If it looks like there may be problems with it, we'll take the time to get it working right.</p></blockquote><p>I take back what I said about Brawlers. Once this change goes live, Brawlers (and really all tanks in general) are in for a world of hurt.</p>

[Chanson]

After removing all +mitigation items, I get the following: Live: Chest = 435 mitigation Test: Chest = 391 mitigation Still looks like Harden Skin is buggy. But they are a lot closer than they were, appears the +mitigation gear is getting 'fixed'.

[Silzin]

<p>nm</p>

[Mosha D'Khan]

<p>anyone but me think it is funny that they are only fixing tanks? not other class that need balanceing to, and to fix us they are just using a giant nerf bat</p>

[Boli32]

<p>Other classes arn't 6 separate classes fighting for 2(3) slots on a raid... so balance isn;'t that much of an issue unless its as obvious as ranger/assasin.</p>

[Banerm]

<p>I won't be happy as a Bruiser till Velious hands me an upgrade to Harden Skin. I want Improved Harden Skin "Increases the mitigation of the bruiser's armor making them slightly less mitigating than plate maxed out". It's not like we get WoW Feral Druid's bear form to actually make us equals. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/c30b4198e0907b23b8246bdd52aa1c3c.gif" border="0" /></p>