Are bruiser stats viable any more ?

[Anthony.7260]

Hello all. I main revenant engineer elemental ist and guardian.

Are soldier knight sentinel power gear useful any more for roaming and for zerg fights ?

I have a scrapper who uses maurader armor and soldier rings and ammy with a berserker back peice. The earrings are also maurauder.

I feel like bruiser builds suck in this meta since it's all about damage. Only my reve and guard can use minstrels and celestial. My ele i am not sure what could use.

Any ways i was kind of hoping someone can help me out if bruiser builds are viable any more.

[Dawdler.8521]

Viable? Well its not those gear types specifically but sustain is literally meta in small scale. 4-6 man groups all run insane tanky specs with 10+ boons up all the time, perma protection, perma 25 might, etc etc. Firebrands, holos and spellbreakers are practicaly immortal when backed by supporters like weavers/druids. Most will only bring one or two players built for "damage" - either the spellbreaker which will be tanky enough to go 1v3 alone, or a dire/tb scourge. Since the scourge onslaught have calmed down compared to the early days of PoF (nerfs, people learn to fight them, etc etc), these groups plow through anything.

Personally I run my roaming mirage with marauder armor and cavalier/knight mix weapons and trinkets. Killing zerkers is easy compared to sustain builds.

[Anthony.7260]

Sounds like i have some awful roaming and small scale classes. I like to solo and zerg but i guess i need to play meta huh. Well thanka for your answer friend.

I also should probobly not roam solo but go with my guild instead. Ty.

[Fluffball.8307]

If you see a guild group just go the other way because they're running something stupid. For natural encounters of random players and roamers looking to fight you, your stats are fine.

[Anthony.7260]

Thanks fluffball

[Kovu.7560]

In my experience its more difficult to win fights with 'bruiser' stats these days because bunker/sustain builds have gotten more ridiculous since before the first expansion was released. To be fair, burst damage and condition application have gotten equally ridiculous, the bar has lengthened at both ends. You'll notice how much more difficult is to kill those tankier builds if you're running power-based-but-less-than-glassy stats. Zerker stats might make the difference on getting around all of that sustain, but then it might not before you yourself are killed. Keep in mind when I say 'tanky' builds I also mean builds that are more slippery or have lots of invuln/evade/stealth buttons.

That said when roaming around on my ranger I tend to play with a mix of marauders and zerk. Some healing if on Druid. Full zerk and half the classes in this game two-shot me. Heck, mirages, berserkers & thief elite specs often still do.

~ Kovu

[Kiroshima.8497]

The reason why Bruiser is weaker is because it naturally loses to bunker, but doesn't survive long enough to counter kill most meta glass classes. This is because defensive stats do nothing in small amounts, compared to bunker which uses toughness, healing power, and vitality properly (they multiply each other's effectiveness). Bruiser runs defensive stats but doesn't make them last, so it's basically pointless since a lot of the "glass" builds use methods that just negate damage in the first place. Bruiser also lacks the ability to counter 1 shot enemy glass builds (because they are trading some offensive out), since any dangerous attacks can be negated by dodging or utilities.

Mirage is basically the worst offender, as it can almost never be punished. We're talking about a class that breaks stun on dodge, potential reflect on evade, huge mobility, and stealth access. Also, like daredevil, their defenses are affected by dodge food, granting them more evade time and more offensive pressure (their damage is keyed to using a dodge).

So yeah, bruiser builds are pretty tough to use, you have to out play opponents very well in order to make it work. It isn't impossible of course, but you have to abuse every weak point your enemies show.

[KrHome.1920]

The only viable Bruiser stat would be Demolisher (Power, Precision, Toughness, Ferocity) for Necromancers and Warriors (high health pool classes) if it would exist outside of sPvP. For Revenants/Heralds it would be worse than Marauder because of how Infuse Light works (more direct damage = more heal) and as the class is susceptible to conditions (more health = better defense).

Soldier and Knight don't deal enough damage to overcome power creep defenses like blocks, evades, defensive boons...

E.g.: A Berserker Warrior will just outregen your Soldier gear damage. A Marauder Dragonhunter can only be harmed in a very small time window between his blocks - if you have no burst he will outsustain you. A Marauder Daredevil can easily peel you if you can not burst him. The same with Mirage... and so on.

[Aeolus.3615]

@"Kiroshima.8497" said:The reason why Bruiser is weaker is because it naturally loses to bunker, but doesn't survive long enough to counter kill most meta glass classes. This is because defensive stats do nothing in small amounts, compared to bunker which uses toughness, healing power, and vitality properly (they multiply each other's effectiveness). Bruiser runs defensive stats but doesn't make them last, so it's basically pointless since a lot of the "glass" builds use methods that just negate damage in the first place. Bruiser also lacks the ability to counter 1 shot enemy glass builds (because they are trading some offensive out), since any dangerous attacks can be negated by dodging or utilities.

Mirage is basically the worst offender, as it can almost never be punished. We're talking about a class that breaks stun on dodge, potential reflect on evade, huge mobility, and stealth access. Also, like daredevil, their defenses are affected by dodge food, granting them more evade time and more offensive pressure (their damage is keyed to using a dodge).

So yeah, bruiser builds are pretty tough to use, you have to out play opponents very well in order to make it work. It isn't impossible of course, but you have to abuse every weak point your enemies show.

Classes that go with defensive stats or with quite some defensive gameplay skills should loose damage output, and classes that go to damage should loose more self sustain, this should be the trade of.Well not every classes sacrifice one thing for another in this game, game was built to carry trough damage output anyway, on pvp they are still tuned from how dev's think that class should feel when being played in PVE, sadly they do this over decent balance.