Need a bettter explanation, or a split: Lightning Bruiser

Here is the laconic version of Lightning Bruiser Fast, Strong, and Sturdy She is completely in the spirit of the main description of this trope ; so no, it isn't just fast and damage : it's fast and damage and durability. But your intervention show that Fast Glass Cannon need to be launch.

: I saw it, but I disagree : you can balance a Lightning Bruiser; for instance, he can do a lot of damage but a sufficiently fast opponent can evade the blow, there is an Elemental Rock Paper Scissor in action. And if you except the second set of example, I didn't see a lot of misuse of this trope.

Hmmmm... youre right, Lightning Bruiser is speed+damage+defence.

That fact in mind though, the Lightning Bruiser isn't necessarily overpowered.

For example, in Dissidia Final Fantasy, Ject is a Lightning Bruiser build, but this is balanced by the fact that he has terrible range, in a game where even other physically-oriented characters have at least one long-range attack, he's entirely close range.

Okay but range is another variable. Glass Cannon, Stone Wall, Fragile Speedster, Mighty Glacier, and even Lightning Bruiser don't say anything about range.

Glass Cannon and Stone Wall are two variables (offense/defense), Fragile Speedster and Mighty Glacier are two variables (speed/defense), but Lightning Bruiser is three (offense/defense/speed).

Any of those can be long- or short-range. So a particular game has a short-range Lightning Bruiser that is balanced with a long-range Fragile Speedster? Great, good for that game. A separate article for every possible combination of offense, defense, speed, and range is ~250 articles.

Arguing with "balanced with each other" or "overpowered" (ok, bad word choice, another variable could be added to balance them...) is Completely Missing The Point; Glass Cannon, Stone Wall, Fragile Speedster, and Mighty Glacier each describe a combination of two variables, but Lightning Bruiser describes a combination of three. It is one more variable, it is comparing apples and oranges to put it in the same category with the other four.

edited 8th Nov '10 4:22:57 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I wasn't saying to make more article types, just pointing out that Lightning Bruiser is not synonymous with Overpowered.

A Mighty Glacier also use three variable : lot of damage, lot of durability, lack of speed. If one of these variable isn't fix like that, you have a different trope (lack of damage -> Stone Wall, lack of durability->Glass Cannon, fast character-> Lightning Bruiser)

I think that Jecht is one of the few exceptions that prove the rule, honestly.

Obligatory link to Competitive Balance, since that seems to be what we're discussing at this point. The problem here seems to be that there are several different "scales" being used and no one seems quite sure what goes where. Before we do anything else we need to decide which character types are related to each other.

First of all, are we dealing with one particular genre of games (eg, fighting games get different character type tropes than RPGs), or are we trying to bring them all under one heading? We've got it sort of both ways so far (compare Competitive Balance, which professes to be about fighting games and racing/vehicular combat games, and An Adventurer Is You, which is about RPGs and MMOs... but most of the tropes under Competitive Balance have a ton of non-fighting/racing/vehicle combat game examples), but that's obviously not really working.

I'd suggest trying to get everything under one roof, so to speak, but I'm not sure how well that would work. From the discussion so far, we seem to be looking at the spread between attack/speed/defense, but where does that leave a lot of fighting games (like Mortal Kombat or the Soul Series) that don't even have a "defense" stat, with everyone having the same amount of health and taking the same amount of damage from the same attacks? I suppose we could try to take into account things like how well they dodge, block, or counter attacks, but that's getting a bit confusing. Then again, I'm not particularly familiar with fighting games, so maybe that's just me projecting my ignorance on everyone else.

Another problem is how people are using "speed". If we do the attack/speed/defense spread, then we have to define them well to prevent confusion. Speed in this context would basically mean how quickly they can attack — whether it's quick attacks in real time (as in fighting games) or a character with a high "speed" stat that lets them take actions more often (as in RPGs). It's not characters that have good reaction time or agility that lets them avoid attacks (that would go under "defense" for our purposes here; An Adventurer Is You mentions this character subtype as "evasion tanks" or "blink tanks").

If we go with the attack/speed/defense thing, here's what we're looking at:

• Glass Cannon: attack
• Fragile Speedster: speed
• Stone Wall: defense
• Mighty Glacier: attack, defense (missing speed)
• no trope (Nimble Mountain suggested): speed, defense (missing attack)
• no trope (Glass Ninja suggested... Needs A Better Name): attack, speed (missing defense)
• Lightning Bruiser: attack, speed, defense.

edited 9th Nov '10 7:53:42 AM by NativeJovian

perfect summary, I would just add that speed can in some case be the speed in which someone travel.

: Well I don't see too much Game-Breaker entry in Lightning Bruiser.

About the "Glass Ninja" I still like the Blitz part would Brittle Blitzer work?

That is trying to put everything on the same scale again. Sigh. Glass Cannon and Stone Wall aren't supposed to describe speed at all.

edited 9th Nov '10 9:14:11 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I don't think "speed" as "speed of travel" works in this context. It doesn't matter how fast you can get somewhere so much as how long it takes you to do something when you get there. The only exception I can think of is for hit-and-run type characters in fighting games, but I think that's covered under "attack speed" since it doesn't make sense for someone to move quickly up next to their opponent and then stop for an attack with a long wind-up.

I like the sound of Brittle Blitzer, but I think it's liable to be confused with The Same But More of Fragile Speedster. Of course, thinking about it, I can't think of any intuitive name that doesn't run into that problem...

Well, that's why I said "if we do it this way". These tropes are very definitely related — there's at least one scale going on here. If you think there's more than one scale, then tell us what you think they are.

Here is a list of all the name proposed for "Fast and do a lot of damage", with their drawback

Fast Cannon : snow clone of Glass Canon
Glass Ninja : add an idea of stealth rather than speed
Glass Samurai : lack the element of speed
Blitz Blender : lack the fragility
Fast And Fragile Bruiser
Brittle Blitzer : can be confuse as The Same But More of Fragile Speedster

edited 10th Nov '10 8:52:48 AM by VioletOrange

Glass Cannon and Stone Wall describe two variables, offense and defense. Speed is not a factor.

Fragile Speedster and Mighty Glacier are muddled. According to one interpretation, they are only speed/defense (and you could be both FS and GC).

According to another, FS also means low offense and MG also means high offense, and they go with "average in all" to form the trio The Mario / Mighty Glacier / Fragile Speedster for = = = / + - - / - - + (offense/defense/speed).

Lightning Bruiser is "above" these because it is + + +.

edited 10th Nov '10 10:36:00 AM by rodneyAnonymous

So what would you suggest they should be? We know they're messed up as-is, that's why they're in trope repair shop. We're trying to make them into what they should be, not determine what they currently are or what people think they currently are.

It's been observed that all of these character seem to boil down to three stats: attack, speed, and defense. Suggestions have been made to reorganize the tropes based on where they fall on these stats. Do you disagree with this observation? Do you agree with it but don't think that we should be basing the tropes around it? Would it make you happier if we organized this collection of tropes into more than one group (ie, a group for Stone Wall, Glass Cannon, and The Mario, a separate group for Fragile Speedster, Mighty Glacier, Lightning Bruiser, etc)? If you want more than one group, could you specify what tropes you'd like to see in which groups, and what your logic is for that?

I get that you're unhappy with things as currently proposed, but you're not giving much in the way of explanations why you're unhappy or making any alternative suggestions, which makes it hard to come to a consensus about anything.

Making the new tropes makes a lot of sense to me in the way its presented... Most games and shows those three stats.

[1]◊ This frame from Negima is a major example of it. (later he is put into the speed+damage+defence Lightning Bruiser)

edited 10th Nov '10 11:12:38 AM by Raso

You're talking about Stone Wall, not Mighty Glacier. Mighty Glacier has high offense and defense ("mighty") but not speed ("glacier").

Mighty Glacier and Lightning Bruiser work off of three stats, but Glass Cannon and Stone Wall only work off of two. Glass Cannon is powerful + fragile, independent of speed or range or whatever. (Stone Wall is the inverse.) If we shoehorn in a speed requirement, then Glass Cannon loses a lot of relevance because lots of settings don't even have a "speed" stat. I disagree with splitting off the "Fast Glass Cannon" variant because the split implies that a regular Glass Cannon must NOT be fast.

Although the Glass Cannon without speed is still very common and very tropable. They generally make use of massively powerful long-ranged attacks to make up for their minimal armour.

What is the problem with the Glass Cannon not being allowed to be fast when we now have a new trope to accommodate the fast ones?

If you make "Fast Glass Cannon" a Subtrope of Glass Cannon, then you imply that you can have a fast Glass Cannon. It's just that this kind of Glass Cannon is worth a subtrope. Idem with Stonewall and Nimble Mountain

edited 10th Nov '10 11:52:49 AM by VioletOrange

Because Glass Cannon is a pre-existing term that doesn't care about speed. A fast Glass Cannon is just a Glass Cannon that happens to be fast, just like a Glass Cannon with blue hair is a Glass Cannon that happens to have blue hair. It isn't part of the trope.

Also, it's not as if we can just split the examples between fast and not-fast. There are Glass Cannons in games that don't even have a concept of speed.

edited 10th Nov '10 12:01:51 PM by troacctid

Then they should remain as glass cannons. This new trope is only for those where speed is clearly a factor.

But why do we need The Same But More Specific here anyway? Is there a problem just listing the character as both a Glass Cannon and a Fragile Speedster? What makes a fast glass cannon so distinctive that it needs its own trope?

I don't agree that these tropes all need to be neatly sorted into speed/power/defense or that we need to have a trope for every combination thereof.

"But why do we need The Same But More Specific here anyway?"

Exactly that. Putting these on one scale is Square Peg Round Trope. These tropes don't naturally fall on the same scale. The "burden of proof" is not on me (or anyone else who objects) to devise a scale that they do fit... only to make a strong case that they don't fit that one, which I think has been done.

I disagree that we should change the definition of preexisting terms (Glass Cannon and Fragile Speedster, specifically) and also disagree that there is a hole that needs filling by making more tropes (Glass Ninja and Nimble Mountain, or whatever). That is all.

edited 10th Nov '10 6:33:28 PM by rodneyAnonymous

No these new tropes would only be about specific combos of both.

Take my Negima example above his lightning form has high attack and speed which puts him in both Glass Cannon and Fragile Speedster at the exact same time that's what what the new trope will be.

The Ninja class in FFT is the exact same way he is fast (sometimes 2 turns to others 1) and hits like a truck (thanks to dualwield) but can not take a hit.

Now the +D +speed Evasion Tank type is rarer but Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII is this her tank stance lears Elude which let's her dodge more + Nimbletoe boots accessory which does the same thing she is nearly unhitable but can take it when things do connect, she can't dish out much damage at all.

Bear Druids in World Of Warcraft are this during the end of the last 2 xpacks... its the reason why they put in the -20 dodge debuff into Sunwell and ICC.

edited 10th Nov '10 10:33:16 PM by Raso

I'm not totally against making Fast Glass Cannon a subtrope of Glass Cannon and Fragile Speedster. What ever is true of a supertrope is also true of it's subtrope. As such, the proposed subtrope wouldn't change the definition of either existing tropes, only provide a place for a specific type of example.

Is a single proposition crowner in order? It seems like both those for and against the proposed subtrope understand the other side's arguments. If so, we should take our time outlining the Pros and Cons before we post it.

edited 10th Nov '10 11:14:02 PM by Rhatahema