Zen_Concern

I completely agree.

*Gets down on knees with palms raised*
Do you hear us Castle? Do you?

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You forgot to include no toxic resistance in your list while being a smarta$$.

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Wait, there is no toxic resistance?

Wow, put me in the camp with the "Need to get rid of one of the weaknesses" crowd.

Some kind of healing power should really be included as a kind of passive buff in one of the armors or passives.

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let me see

controllers get better holds than doms
controllers get buffs/debuffs
controllers get medium-high dmg with containment

doms get worse holds 90% of the time
doms get low-medium dmg 90% of the time

hmm im not feeling any pity for the poor controllers

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controllers get strong holds
controllers get buffs/debuffs
controllers get low-medium dmg with containment

doms get moderate holds
doms get medium-high dmg


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Containment is an abomination that shouldn't exist. Critical Holds are all the inherent Controllers need. Not doing meaningful levels of damage is the logical result of not having a damage set. Each time I take a 400 damage blast to the face from a Controller on test, my opinion on this is reinforced.

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The reason the devs put containtment is the only ones who really played controllers where those that had them powerleveled. Since no one wanted to suffer through 32 levels of boring suckage.

Containment is/was needed.

on the other hand it might be set too high in pvp.

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Containment was never needed, the devs simply did not want to put a controllers damage at a level that was accessable to the masses. In other words, the developers didn't realize that they needed to make the pets available much sooner than level 32 for controllers. Controllers ALWAYS had the right amount of damage, at level 32. 1-32 was the problem and the developers didn't understand how to solve the problem.

Glue Arrow has -jump. So does entangle. They do not apply their -jump immediately. That is a problem probably due to server ticks and it is just going to be really annoying for TA.

However, being reminded that Quicksand does have -fly, I think the defender version could use it. Only the defender version is that is possible. Controllers don't need to have TWO quicksands in their arsenal. Not to mention but it would make Fire/TA even more powerfull than it already is. Actually, the level of controll in TA being considered controll and not actually a debuff is getting rediculous.

So many of these powers would be fine buffed for a defender, but in the hands of a controller in combination with their primary becomes really overpowered.

Color me a little frustrated by this whole situation. Had I known what to expect in terms of Trick Arrow, I would probably never have started the set. I just wanted to show everyone that a straight debuff set was worth as much as a buff set. I was obviously wrong.

To top it off. When it doesn't work, the developers are willing to let us suffer till it works. Oil Slick, just get rid of the requirement of useing a power to light it and let us get to use it in PvP and PvE without having to waste our already minimal attacks and TIME lighting it. TIME being the one thing that we cannot get back and is the most precious. Oil Slick wastes it too often and even when it does light in PvP, it is a waste of my time because, BAM assassin strike and my just lit Oil Slick goes away.

Power? Still recharging.

Debuff spawned patches need to stay after death. It is not fair to have them go away upon death. PbAoE buffs don't go away if you kill the caster, debuffs shouldn't be hampered by death either. Tit for Tat.

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When creating a blaster it says support for the secondary. Support comes in many ways. The only set that doesn't get any for of control hard or soft is /fire and it gets more damage. So I am fine that blasters can mez and do additional damage cause my poor controller can be beaten by 50 inf. Go buy a BF.

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I'm not saying blasters should never be able to mez. I'm saying blasters should not be able to mez through status protection shields without help. Can you see the difference?

If you look at brutes, scrappers, stalkers, and tankers, they have defense as a secondary or primary. One of the powers in that powerset is there to protect from Sleep, Stun, and Hold, plus a few others from: KB, Immob, Fear, Confuse. Why should I need break frees against an AT whose primary role is damage-dealing when I have a power dedicated to not being mezzed?

Buy break frees to deal with controllers and dominators? Sure. Buy break frees to deal with status effects I have no protection against? Absolutely. Buy break frees to protect myself from being held, slept, or stunned by a solo blaster, defender, tanker, scrapper, stalker, brute, corruptor, or mastermind? No, that should not happen.

No, that doesn't mean those ATs shouldn't be able to fight melee ATs solo and defeat them, nor does it mean anything else.

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Golly, I suppose that brutes and scrappers shouldn't have fear because it breaks through some of the Tankers mez protection.

I guess Tanks and brutes shouldn't have any mag four holds since those bypass Acrobatics and of course, Tanks were not meant to bypass mez protection.

Or maybe, just maybe you can back down off your high horse and admit that just possibly there should be a chance that you get mezzed by the AT with Blasts + Support.

Believe it or not, but there are some blasters that are designed to beat boss level mez protection. Why shouldn't they be able to beat yours? Are you considering yourself better than a boss? If so then hold the phone and get ready for more nerfs cause, a Boss is supposedly a Hero and a half.

You have really backed yourself into a corner with this arguement Kali. It doesn't make any sense and the more you argue about it, the more it appears you just want melee to reign supreme in battle.

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Repel

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Yep, fear my kinetics defender. He still has his 5% chance to knock off toggles that he always had. Yeah, BURN!

EDIT: For those wondering, repel takes forever to drop toggles. By forever, I mean that if you have defense it can take sometimes 15-30 seconds to hit.

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I think I am going no travel power on my Elec Brute. Going for medicine, Fighting and Fitness. It will be interesting doing a travel powerless build again. It worked well for my Stone/Energy Tanker so I can see it working well here.

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Something hit you in the head Concern? Ignoring the lack of immob and knockback. Good luck to you.

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True, I may get combat jumping. It will help in some of the harder to reach areas.

So that would be Boxing, Tough, Aid Other, Aid Self, Swift, Health, Stamina, Combat Jumping. That is alot of powers.

I could go without stamina. HAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAA

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So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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Since even without the GDR, Ed would've removed the ability to have 90% resists, so even your nitpicky argument is wrong.

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Uhm, think about it for a second, that makes my arguement stronger.

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In the Bizarro world, perhaps. Toggle-dropping was instituted in issue 4, when people generally admitted that tanker and scrapper defenses were too high to be easily overcome in PVP (well, some tanker and scrapper defenses - not all sets are made equal). If the defenses were reduced (and they were), and the devs say "This was changed because defenses aren't as strong as they used to be" (which they did), I'm not sure how it supports your argument at all.

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ED was something they were considering to put in the game.

The GDN was what they were testing with in I4. Yes, on live we were playing one thing while the developers were testing another. They instituted toggle drops while they were in fact useing GDN numbers for everything. Per their own posts. Every change they tested was done with GDN in place. Which means toggle drops too.

My arguement was that toggle drops were not balanced around the 90% resists that SOME tankers had. Since not all tankers obviously had them. There were tankers that didn't have resistance except to Ice and Fire for instance. Side arguement that also discredits the notion that the developers balanced toggle drops around 90% resists.

Then you come along and say that even without the GDR a Tanker could not reach 90% resists. Okay, so what? They were balanced with GDR being tested at the time. So what the developers said is absolutely true, they were nerfed because of ED which was introduced AFTER GDR and after toggle drops.

They didn't say they were nerfed because ED AND GDR made it unbalanced. ED may or may not have gone live, it was still up in limbo. If ED alone would have been balanced with Toggle droppers as they are now, the developers would have come out and said, "Toggle droppers were reduced due to the reduction in defenses by the Global Defense Reduction". They didn't say that either.

You are having a hard time believing that even after you got nerfed, that you weren't balanced in team PvP without toggle drops.

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So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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Since even without the GDR, Ed would've removed the ability to have 90% resists, so even your nitpicky argument is wrong.

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Uhm, think about it for a second, that makes my arguement stronger.

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With all the circular arguments being made in this thread, I'm beginning to think that this recent change is a great balance move. Neither side has been able to show how the other is better off in a team environment.
Add in my own recent experiences on Test and I'm damn near completely convinced.

This is coming from someone that PvPs primarily with Tanks and Blasters.

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Pfft, it doesn't matter what you say. You have a stalker! Therefore everything you say is suspect. You and your stalker conscpiracy, I'm on to you Meat man, oh yes, I'm on to you.

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Heh. Why do you think toggle dropping was added in the first place? Because the 30% unresistable damage wasn't nearly cutting it. How many attack cycles do you think a blaster is supposed to wait through vs. an EM tank or brute at the extreme of the scale?

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I guess I was under the false impression that it was because I had 90% resists across the board while my toggles were operational. And did I mention the defense? Having that type of armor available was a pretty decent reason to pass out toggle dropping ability to everyone in bucketloads.

But it is gone now.

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According to the quote that Kali made, you would be wrong. It was apparently not reduced because of GDN. So apparently the Global Defense Nerf was taken into consideration. It was apparently done as a result of ED. Which then brings into question the severity of the nerfs because in the grand scheme of PvP ED helped melee more than it helped blasters. Since melee didn't lose any of the HP that they had it means that team buffs helped them more.

So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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Well thank goodness that Kali isn't the 100% correct bottom line Oracle of absolute fact.


As for how to differentiate which might be the reason - how on Earth do you plan to do it? They both came so close together without any proper testing on the hero side can anyone (other than a red name) properly identify which was the cause? I wouldn't expect it to be possible.

And as for whom ED "helped" - are you kidding? It didn't "help" anyone save for the few people running around with their straight jackets on saying they always wanted to slot their characters that way. And having one of each AT I can flatly state that it hindered my melee more - (Tank moreso than the Scrapper even) because I lost a lot of defense AND damage. And my defense side was double whammied because there isn't anything else I can slot several of my powers with. No other AT (iirc) can make that claim. Sure Blasters were hit hard also being very damage oriented - but my Defender and Controller actually weren't really bothered by it very much comparatively.

Just mho.

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I meant the quote Kali made of the Dev response to the change in Toggle droppers. Not any statement that she made herself.

Just what I said, I didn't say "to quote Kali".

I think I am going no travel power on my Elec Brute. Going for medicine, Fighting and Fitness. It will be interesting doing a travel powerless build again. It worked well for my Stone/Energy Tanker so I can see it working well here.

Oil slick not lighting is getting depressing. I have had some really bad luck recently lighting it. I would swear it has never been this bad before but I literally went a few missions (3) and Oil Slick didn't light once. I have never had it that bad.

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Heh. Why do you think toggle dropping was added in the first place? Because the 30% unresistable damage wasn't nearly cutting it. How many attack cycles do you think a blaster is supposed to wait through vs. an EM tank or brute at the extreme of the scale?

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I guess I was under the false impression that it was because I had 90% resists across the board while my toggles were operational. And did I mention the defense? Having that type of armor available was a pretty decent reason to pass out toggle dropping ability to everyone in bucketloads.

But it is gone now.

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According to the quote that Kali made, you would be wrong. It was apparently not reduced because of GDN. So apparently the Global Defense Nerf was taken into consideration. It was apparently done as a result of ED. Which then brings into question the severity of the nerfs because in the grand scheme of PvP ED helped melee more than it helped blasters. Since melee didn't lose any of the HP that they had it means that team buffs helped them more.

So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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No, because a good defender will prioritize buffs. If scrappers, tankers, and brutes aren't arbitrarily losing their toggles because a blaster breathed on them, it's easier for the defender or corruptor to prioritize where the mez shields go (onto the squishies), rather than try to keep them on everyone. Considering that they typically have long animations (like Clear Mind) or short durations (like Increase Density), this isn't really a bad thing.

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From my own teaming experience in PvP, it seems as though they do prioritize. Usually with whoever is closest until the entire team is buffed. PuG PvP buffers for the win I guess. Not to mention the traps corruptors or other mez protection fields that both Heroes and Villains get. Team mez protection can be had by melee and melee definately benefits more from it with their toggles. Which do not automaticaly fail the instant a blaster breathes on them no matter how many times you sling the hyperbole around.

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No, it's more like saying that the blaster should play as if he shouldn't use ranged attacks.


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No, a blaster should play as if he does not have ranged attacks. That would be similar to saying "Tanks should play as though they do not have toggles."

Which I actually covered in my response to your statement. Blasters do assume that their range will be negated and that they will be in melee. A defender knows that his debuffs are not always going to hit and thus cannot be counted on all the time. He knows that certain powersets negate his debuffs. He knows that certain mechanics simply don't work in PvP. All of this I have already stated, however you are trying to twist what Castle said into something he didn't say.

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Strangely, buffs never seem to miss, but attacks can and do miss. I wonder which of these things debuff is more like...


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Actually buffs can miss. Siphon Speed, Siphon Power, Transferrence, Fulcrum Shift, Transfusion, Twilight Grasp, the level 32 /Ice corruptor power. All of those have buffs that can miss. Then there are the PbAoE buffs that require a team to gather together before dispersing again. Just a little bit more difficult to use than a self buff, wouldn't you say? It sure would be nice if defenders never had to worry about those hitting so that thier powers were usefull all the time. I mean, they are the primary powers right? Why shouldn't they work all the time? Gosh, thats irritating. Once again, melee got used to PvE, when PvP balance came around they got upset they couldn't eat their cake and stare at it too.

Also, depending on your primary, you don't have much to fear from corruptors.

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Here's another one, though: Obviously toggle-drops, designed as they were to bypass defenses, were balanced around the need to bypass issue 4 defenses. If they're weaker, you have much less need to bypass them.


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You tried to say the exact same thing by insinuateing that the toggle drops are unbalanced now that the GDN went through. You have ignored the possibility that they were balanced around the lowered numbers. It can just as easily be said that toggle drops were balanced on the numbers after GDN since that is what they were testing on at the time. If ED is the culprit as in your quote then damage got reduced right along with defenses. The defenses that a blaster could get from team buffs went down. Meaning that the HP of the melee classes that did not go down gives them an increased advantage in the world of less damage and less defense. Especially when they can stack defenses faster and easier than the squishy ATs. Melee HP counts for alot in PvP when you look at team buffs. Especially when you look at powers like Frostworks and sets like EA and the new Electric Secondary. No offense, but looking at the decreases across the board and the HP advantage of melee ATs, toggle drops should have been increased.

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I object to knocking off the right toggle and mezzing right through it, yes. Blasters should not be able to overwhelm or bypass mez protection any more than controllers should be able to outdamage blasters. If you want to hold a tanker, scrapper, brute, or stalker, get a controller or dominator to help. That's how it should be. Otherwise, face them without mezzing them. Blasters already get fairly heavy melee damage in exchange for being in melee range. However, it should not really be that simple to jump in and stay there.


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All of which means you don't understand the support function of the secondary set. It really is there to support the blaster to do more damage and to get minimal defense by active manipulation of foes. The devs didn't simply let blaster mez go through tanker level mez protection. In fact, I don't think you can fire freeze ray fast enough to do that. They gave a chance for it to happen. If you can't accept a chance of failure then I doubt there will be any common ground that we can see. Hell, when I was trying to compromise with Circeus that was the one thing I realized that I had to compromise on. There had to be a chance of failure. I'm sorry you can even compromise that much.

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I'd prefer that too, but at the moment, it doesn't seem to be the case.

You might recall that I said I wanted the ATs to be rebalanced without toggle-dropping. That hasn't changed. I never campaigned to just eliminate toggle-drops and leave people swinging.


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No, but some of us had a pretty good idea that this was exactly what would happen. Actually, when you started on your campaign you simply wanted toggle dropping removed. You didn't have a solution. Which was fine with me, I rallied against simply getting rid of toggle dropping before there was a solution. I am still doing so since obviously no solution has been thought of by the developers. It wasn't like you guys were pushing for a new form of balance as much as you were pushing for a nerf to toggle droppers. Then there are the other melee players who were out and out calling for the end of toggle dropping. I point to Anarchicgorilla and his insipid commentary on toggle drops as well as his reasoning of why they needed to be removed. If there was ever a vocal melee player that spewed forth the nerfherding it was him/her.

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Which debuffs don't work? I've tested -res, -damage, -acc. I've never tested -def, but I assume it works.

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-res against a set with resistance is resisted. It doesn't result in a straight subtraction from their resistance. In other words, a set with 30% lethal resistance is not negated by Enervating Field.

-dmg is negated by an enhancement, one. I would consider that not working.

-def seems to be resisted currently by classes with self defense buffs. It isn't supposed to be but it seems to be. -acc works thankfully. Still, 3 out of 4 is a pain in the rear and two are not going to be changeing.

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The thing is that it did not take 3 people to drop 4+ toggles it took 1 player 2 hits

EP ---> BS then you have 100 % chance to drop 2 toggles, 75% chance to drop a 3rd, another 75% chance to drop a forth, and then a 33% chance to drop a 5th.

Roughly the odds work out to 2 hits dropping atleast 3 toggles and usually 4 toggles.


The change is good, it takes what was once dependable... and makes it undependable as it should be.

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The current situation on test is that you can depend on them not to drop toggles.

Also, on live having a blaster drop four toggles off of my brute is incredibly rare. Only once have I had more than three dropped on my brute. Which means that it hardly happens all the time. Maybe you should PvP more with teams, and maybe get them to buff you a bit. Your experience may improve to the point that you don't have to whine.

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LOL then it is you who have not played good pvpers.

here you go once again EP - BS

100% chance to drop 2 toggles
75% chance to drop a 3rd toggle
another 75% chance to drop a 4th toggle
and 33% chance to drop 5 toggles.

So thats 2 every time for sure.... then 2 rolls of a 4 sided dice with 3 sides being toggle drops... then another roll of a 10 sided dice with 3 sides being a toggle drop.

Also let us not forget if any TD that drops your status protection leaves you stunned dropping every toggle you have, so you have atleast 2 chances out of how ever many toggles running for this and more likely 3 or 4.

almost always 3 toggles... and very likely 4+ and left stunned....

Also no where did I whine... In fact I am countering all the blasters complaining that they cannot drop toggles at will any more. Perhaps you should read the replies and ones before them before slinging insults. And perhaps when you learn to actually read the replies and play with people who do powerplay, then you will understand the reason why toggle dropping was indeed changed.



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If you are "powerplaying" your not stunned even if you are hit with three stacked mezzes and all your toggles are off. Come back to me when you have more experience in team PvP.

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It is not always possible to keep status protection on everyone in a team in PVP. It's also not always possible to have someone on a team who can provide it.

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Stop right there. Then we come back to the blaster being at greater risk of being mezzed by the melee character. You are always going to lose on this issue. Either they both have buffs, or neither has buffs, either they both have insperations or neither has insperations. In any scenario where you paint it as balanced the melee toon has the advantage. Now they have more of an advantage. Your fine with that of course.


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Okay, it's fair for melee to PVP as if they don't have shields. At the same time, it's fair for defenders to PVP as if they don't have any buffs or debuffs. It's also fair for blasters to PVP as if they don't have any melee attacks. It's fair for Controllers to PVP as if they don't have any control. Masterminds should be playing as if they don't have pets.

Do you really want to make that argument?


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Absolutely. Especially in the case of defenders. Defenders PvP as if they don't have any -dmg debuffs. Because basicaly they don't. Not going to change either according the dev responses.

Also, playing as if you don't have toggles is not the same thing as saying you don't have them. It is telling you not to rely on them. They are an advantage similar to how range is an advantage for blasters. Since range is a blasters defense should he always be at range? That wouldn't be very fair to melee now would it?

You still have your defenses, you just can't rely on them. I can't rely on my debuffs hitting half the people I target if they have any kind of defense. That is the game I am playing in. Keep comeing up with these arguements where you try and convince yourself that you are getting the short end of the stick. You have toggles that almost never drop, hell give me some debuffs that almost never miss. I sure as hell don't have them.

Starting to understand that maybe melee is complaining about having to play the same game that everyone else is? Do you begin to realize how much of an advantage self buffs are? Probably not.

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All player powers with Forced Toggle Drop effects have had the chance for those effects to go off reduced. The need for these effects is greatly reduced with the advent of Enhancement Diversification. No player power has a 100% chance of dropping toggles with this change.


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TAKE A GOOD LOOK, SEE ANYTHING ABOUT THE GLOBAL DEFENSE NERF? NO? Just wanted to make sure we were reading the same thing. So, does that mean that the toggles droppers were balanced around the GDN? If so, then one can argue that as much as the ED hurt defenses it also hurt blaster damage. Ignoring the other classes that were hurt by the toggle dropping nerf.

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No, I'm arguing that it is ridiculous that a blaster can mez melee characters due to the ability to bypass mez protection entirely.

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You are argueing about something that has a chance to happen. It is not guaranteed unless the odds are overwhelmingly in one sides favor in which case everyone agrees that the side outnumbered should lose. There is a chance that it can happen, but a chance only. By saying that a blaster can negate the mez protection of a melee character and objecting to it, you are saying that you cannot accept even a CHANCE that it happens. There is a chance that a blaster can stack mez, there is a chance that he can knock off the right toggle by taking the risk of being attacked in melee. ALL CHANCES. Which you object to.

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Actually, toggle drops should just go away entirely. Get rid of the whole mess and find some other way to balance the ATs in PVP.

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I have no problem with this. All that I ask is that they find the other form of balance first, then do away with the kludge, rather than nerf ATs that didn't need nerfing and ruining what little balance there was between the squishy and the melee.


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I deconstructed this claim above. Defenders were by and large not nerfed. Defenders need help in PVP, to varying degrees.

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Defender builds were nerfed. There is no doubt about it. It was a direct result of the global toggle drop nerf. Defenders definately did not need a nerf to their ability to PvP and the current numbers for the toggle drops is a rather huge nerf for those defender builds. Defenders could have used a buff, they could have used re-worked mechanics that would actually make un-resistable debuffs mean something. They could have gotten a bunch of buffs to go along with the nerfs but they didn't. I do see melee getting pretty much what they asked for. Defenders were told that since those changes dealth with game mechanics, they weren't going to change. Why did defenders get ANY nerfs? Go ahead, give me a really good reason. For melee not to feel irritated? At least you have defenses that are useable in PvP, we have debuffs that don't even work.

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Bonesmasher - Energy Punch - Total Focus - attack - attack - attack

That is mathematically likely to leave the melee target unable to react due to having the hell stunned out of him and the number of toggles the first two attacks will drop. So this melee character who has a mez shield and probably has defense or resistance against the incoming damage loses those advantages in two hits.


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Ah, we are back to 1v1 arguements again. Assume team buffs and it doesn't work that way. At least from the villains point of view. Didn't you guys come out of the woodworks and say that all my arguements were 1v1? What exactly are you presenting here? One, a Brute or melee toon that apparently doesn't know what a break free is for, and one that apparently can't kill a blaster while the blaster is in the TF animation of doom. Two, you present a blaster that apparently doesn't have to worry about his health and can "attack attack attack" and that the Brute or melee toon is not buffed to resist any damage. Who is bringing up 1v1 arguements? Did you read any of my arguements or examples from PvP play in TEAMS. Mathematicaly, in TEAMS the brute is not going to be held or stunned. He is going to be kicking the blasters [censored]. Been there and done it often enough.

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I saw Statesman come out and say several months ago that the blaster secondaries will be reworked. Not thinking about, but that it will happen.


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Yeah, a year ago. Over a year ago. It may get re-worked now only becuase if toggle drops stay the way they are, it will be necessary.

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- The fact is that a significant portion of every melee character's build is tied up in toggle defenses. By including a mechanic that renders those toggles pointless much of the time, you're effectively cheating those players out of those power choices. As _Castle_ has reportedly said, melee should play PVP as if they don't have shields.


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Yeah they should, they wouldn't [censored] so much about toggle droppers if they did. Melee is far from crippled in PvP due to toggle droppers.

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- Despite protests to the contrary, the core of the pro-toggle dropping argument is that 1v1 PVP is unfair between squishies and melee, to the point of claiming that squishies simply cannot defeat melee characters without having toggle-dropping available. One of the older threads was repeatedly marked with insistence that a blaster can't solo a tanker is unfair, but followed with "if a tanker has problems taking on buld X, get a team to help." Apparently, squishies shouldn't ever need teams to accomplish their PVP goals.

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Funny, in almost every one of the arguements I have set forth on the issue of toggle dropping, it has always been that if Blasters are to play their role in teams they must be a threat to the melee classes and a fast threat. Notice the word team. I haven't changed my tune. I have stated that PvP degenerates into a series of 1v1 brawls. That is absolutely true. There is still team support however in the forum of buffs.

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- Toggle-dropping was introduced in issue 4, when invuln and stone tankers could cap their resists without outside help, and invuln could also reach very high defense with bugged invincibility. Ice Armor was still able to reach a very high defense with Energy Absorption. In conditions like that, toggle-dropping is an end run around those powers to enable characters to overcome those defenses. In issue 5, defenses were reduced across the board. No defense primary or secondary was able to match the numbers they'd reached before. In issue 6, ED reduced those numbers further, compounding the GDR in issue 5. I realize that many would counter that damage also suffered from ED - and this is true. However, damage was not reduced in issue 5 before being reduced again in issue 6. The simple fact is that defenses were hit twice, and the first hit magnifies the result of the second. If toggle-dropping was balanced in issue 4, it is most assuredly not balanced now.


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Here is the biggest myth of all. Toggle dropping was introduced in a time when defenses were higher. No doubt. Since toggle drops reduce the benefit of a toggle to zero it cannot be argued what they were balanced for. If they balanced the sets around GDN it would still apply to the higher values of the defensive toggles before GDN hit simply because it reduced those values to zero. So, simply saying that defenses were reduced does not mean that toggle drops are unbalanced. Also, at the time that toggle drops were introduced the developers were playing with GDN values on their test machines. It could be argued that they current toggle drops have always been balanced around GDN.

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- On live, there's a have/have-not dichotomy where some powersets get a lot of toggle-dropping potential, often with good mezzing to back it up. Not only do you have a good chance to drop toggles, you can leverage that by mezzing your target if you knock off the right shields. This makes balancing these sets more difficult as well as encourages FotM PVP builds


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The core issue. Ice/EM. It always seems to come back to this. Personaly, I fear an Ice/Ice corruptor more but that is just due to some personal experiences I have had recently in PvP.

It has always been a percentage chance that the melee player will be stunned. That chance hovered around 20% with EM unless he activated TF, or he applied a mez before ATTEMPTING to drop the mez protection of the melee toon. It also disregards mez protection that is in click form and not toggle form. It also disregards that in team PvP there is normaly mez protection being passed around. Notice, my arguements in Brute VS. Blaster is that a brute does indeed have enough damage to kill a blaster before the opposite is true. I don't even think about mez. Granted, I carry break frees or team something that most melee toons haven't figured out yet. They probably never will if things stay as they are. They'll just complain about how easy it is for a controller or dominator to hold them. It has already started actually.

So essentially, your argueing about the possibility of this happening. As if it simply should never happen. Not surprising. Blasters want 50/50, melee wants what? Thats right, a team to challenge them.

You are absolutely correct however, there are several sets that could have used more toggle droppers. How ironic that the devs instead of bringing those sets up to par, nerfed the working sets into obscurity and mediocrity. /Fire and /Ice should have had more toggle drops, your right. They should have at least equaled Energy Melee and Elec Melee. TA defenders should have been given toggle drops as should Dark Defenders in some form or another. Probably a 20% chance on the heal or something like that.

That didn't happen however, and believe me, in 1v1 duels it hurts an incredible amount not to be able to drop toggles. Not against melee, but for my own defender against corruptors. Yes, I know. Incredible as it may sound all those arguements I made about toggle drops not being completely designed against melee had a point. More than melee uses toggles and the toggle debuffs are the strongest AoE debuffs in the game. Believe me, I would love to be able to knock snowstorm down from a corruptor when they are useing it to completely neuter my TA defender. I can't though because players whined their [censored] of about toggle drops.

Remember when Blueeyed and I argued that if the developers nerfed toggle drops it would effect defenders just as much as everyone else. All the melee proponents said the developers wouldn't do anything as stupid as that. Who was right Kali? Who was right? Who got hurt in the end? Yep, the poor defender got nerfed along with everyone else.

Yet, the melee toons don't know when to stop and pause in their nerf cry. It all has to come down and be damned if there are no fixes to fix the mess it creates. Something irritates melee, it must be fixed NOW and bedamned the defenders.

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- The most common argument pro-TD posters produce is "I hate those damned dirty melee characters for whining and getting us all nerfed."


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Gosh Kali, watching my defenders get nerfed along with everything else. Why would I be upset with melee? What possible reason could I have for being upset at all the nerf calls that melee made when we warned them that this would be the consequence.

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If the game was somehow engineered in such a way that blasters' optimal attack strategy is always to stay at range, and gains no advantage from entering melee range, then what would that mean for blaster vs melee fights, when the melee doesn't have range?

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I pointed this out many pages ago, but it bounced off someone's Invincibility and was lost. Enjoy the kiting guys, it's what you seem to want. 1 in 20 or 25 odds to knock your mez toggle isn't too attractive.

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The odds are lower than that on some melee builds. Hell, the odds of dropping a toggle in melee before the melee player kills you is already rediculously low. It is the latter part that melee players don't understand.

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Hyperbole? Not at all. When dueling other melee characters, I found it very easy to constantly knock toggles off with just brawl. I mean, only a 33% chance, but since I was spamming it like crazy, I could whittle a DA scrapper's defenses down to the minimum and then smack him around with all my knockdown/up and mez powers (yay stone melee).

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Is it really 33%, because I recently went to see how good brawl was at dropping toggles and we got something closer to 20%?

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If I could, in two seconds, knock out two toggles, with a very high chance to get three, a moderate chance to get four, and a low chance to get five on top of probably stacking a stun that might land through knocked out mez shield, I don't see how any melee character could retoggle in any decent amount of time.


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If you are fighting a squishy, I don't see why any melee character would need to re-toggle.

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PVP is not balanced on live right now. The only thing propping some blaster secondaries up is a cheap trick that flies in the face of genre and fun - and you have admitted repeatedly that it's not fun.


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Absolutely; you don't see the developers shedding a tear over it do you? You didn't see them come out and say that perhaps some of the other blaster secondary sets will be getting a change soon did you? I didn't. I know they are thinking about re-working them, but that is pie in the sky.

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So it comes down to Concern making swipes against other players because he doesn't really have a strong argument? You're whining like a regen scrapper with a small tweak in his finger.

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Well, I admit that the math from Blueeyed and my own personal experiences is probably not enough of arguement for the melee proponents in this game but that is all I have. Just the numbers and my own experiences to back me up. What have you got?

*looks back at the pro-nerf arguements*

Oh, it seems alot of whine. Here, the developers handed you your cheese, I hope you enjoy it while it lasts.

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The thing is that it did not take 3 people to drop 4+ toggles it took 1 player 2 hits

EP ---> BS then you have 100 % chance to drop 2 toggles, 75% chance to drop a 3rd, another 75% chance to drop a forth, and then a 33% chance to drop a 5th.

Roughly the odds work out to 2 hits dropping atleast 3 toggles and usually 4 toggles.


The change is good, it takes what was once dependable... and makes it undependable as it should be.

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The current situation on test is that you can depend on them not to drop toggles.

Also, on live having a blaster drop four toggles off of my brute is incredibly rare. Only once have I had more than three dropped on my brute. Which means that it hardly happens all the time. Maybe you should PvP more with teams, and maybe get them to buff you a bit. Your experience may improve to the point that you don't have to whine.

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Look past that and see the root of the problem. The melee player does not want to have the weakness of knockback or immobilization and thus feels compelled to eliminate the weakness. Otherwise, what is forceing them to get SJ? If they accepted the weakness then they could pick any travel pool they wanted, but melee players don't want any weakness. They can't handle it.

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No. In Dark's case, Dark Armor relies on being near or in a crowd of enemies to function to its full potential (Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear, Death Shroud, Oppressive Gloom), never mind that with only a few exceptions, melee ATs generally don't have ranged attacks. Knockback minimizes those strengths and can negate them entirely depending upon how much KB there is. For brutes who have taunt inherent to their attacks and auras, it's even worse because the brute takes more fire than a scrapper or stalker.

There's also the fact that most melee defenses have KB protection, with only three on live giving it up for (according to Statesman) protection from a relatively rare damage type, or for damage that has been nerfed several times.

However, since you are unable or unwilling to imagine that anyone might have a valid complaint about melee ATs that doesn't parse down to "melee is overpowered," every complaint must be unjustified and characterized as petty. This happens every single time balance discussions about melee characters come up.

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Take a chill pill Kali, if you look it was a comment made in regards to the new Elec set which as far as I can tell we still don't have all the numbers for.

Also, even in the elec debates I stated that one of the reasons that I supported knockback protection being added to /Dark was because of the mechanics behind Dark Regeneration. Hell, I even [censored] about it on the scrapper forums. Don't come at me suggesting that I am throwing balance to the wind or that I am suddenly changeing my stance on issues. It won't fly.

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But when engaging a team of heroes it was regularly the first thing that would happen to our Brute. I wasn't the guy running toggles here - I was supporting him. He would run in and, if there were two or three Blasters they would gang up on him and repeatedly toss out 50%+ of his toggles. It was frustrating for him.


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Tactics for the win. Again, it took multiple players to take down an armored player and those multiple players had support. That is exactly the balance that you say that you want. Multiple players being needed to take down a single armored foe. What? Did you want to him to be able to stand there and take it?

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If you have three people who hit you with 100% 1 toggle drop powers and then secondary chances for more toggles to drop, and you have 5 toggles, odds are exceptional that you lose your mez shield.

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Why yes, if three people are attacking me with toggle droppers then I do expect to be defeated. Why wouldn't I?

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Where's our invincibility to Defender unresistable debuffs? Our invincibility to stacked mezzes from control characters? Where's our invncibility to slows, recharge and regen debuffs? Where's our invincibility to toHit debuffs? To Fear? How invincible are we to that 30% unresistable damage?


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Here is a comment with some meat on it. I never said you had invincibilty. You have defense. You do not have defense against everything. In regards to specifics, count the number of debuffs that a defender has that are not resisted. You'll find that you are down to just to-hit debuffs and negative damage debuffs. Everything else either by mechanics or by their nature of being a controll and not a debuff is resisted. Negative resistance is resisted for instance and that is because of how negative resistance is applied.

There are melee classes that get defense against a variety of the debuffs that you mentioned. Ice Tanks get resistances to a majority of them includeing slows. Focused Accuracy will give you defense to to-hit debuffs on the Hero side and that is available to any melee hero.

The best comment though is stacked mezzes. Uhm, why didn't the mez work the first time? Right, because you have those nifty defenses that you said were negated upon entering combat.

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This is the complaint about Fire, Dark and Electric Armor - their lack of knockback protection is not some occasional weakness but rather a constant source of irritation and reduced efffectiveness.

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Yes, things that are irritating should never be used for balance. Man, my blasters and defenders sure get irritated by mez and that mez completely negates my ability to perform my job, but I have the ability to realize that it is a balanceing factor. Like I said, you don't want any weakness. Anything that irritates you must go away.

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You must be playing some other game than I am. What I see are posts all the time about how it makes more sense in PvE to grab a Defender and a Scrapper than to take a Tanker, since the Tanker needs a Defender anyway, and the Scrapper does more damage. Funny how only the perspectivew that support the current discussion come into play.

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Before the Global defense nerf, there was pretty much no reason to take anything other than a couple of defenders and grab a load of Tanks, although you didn't even really need any defenders. Melee was adjusted so that the rest of the team could support the Tank in the battle against the enemy NPCs. Now, the tank was pretty much the focus of the NPCs. Hence, he needed his team and his defenses to support him against basicaly an entire team.

This is not the same as PvP. The entire team is not trying to kill the tank. Ergo, the tank should not be balanced around trying to fight an entire team with team support. He should be balanced around fighting single opponents with team support just like everyone else. If you don't do that, then it becomes support + Melee VS. anything. You think that range is going to mean anything with all the negative travel powers in the game? I just took my TA defender out for a spin, No one is going to be at range for very long or airborne for that matter.

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So it comes down to the issue of melee not wanting to be weak against anything. I can back that up with statements from melee players concerning the new electric set. The set has built in weaknesses and the players are complaining up a storm about how it is retarded for any melee set to have a weakness.

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you realize that most of the complaints are due to the fact not that the set is weak but it forces them in SJ just like fiery aura. that is the complaint

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Look past that and see the root of the problem. The melee player does not want to have the weakness of knockback or immobilization and thus feels compelled to eliminate the weakness. Otherwise, what is forceing them to get SJ? If they accepted the weakness then they could pick any travel pool they wanted, but melee players don't want any weakness. They can't handle it.

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Maybe because, in a team context (you know, the way the devs want you to play) it was positively impossible to keep any toggles up.

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Hyperbole. It is also completely untrue. Unless, for some reason only known to the lord himself I have just never suffered like you have. I run 5-6 toggles on my Stone/EA brute and the most I have had dropped is three. I have had EM come up to me and knock off three toggles, and I wasn't mezzed. Does that contradict everything that you believe? Well, it is normal gameplay experience for me since I do PvP regularly. Maybe if more melee types got out there with a team and fought they would have similar experiences.

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Because of their by-design inherent toughness, I utterly fail to see how it is a problem of any sort that Tankers in particular should require multiple damage dealers or a damage dealer and a buffer/debuffer to defeat.

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Because you end up with a team of Tankers + various support casters if you go down that balance road. It is what ended up happening in PvE. The Tankers have the damage to kill anything. If it takes multiple people to defeat them, then why in the world would a team want to take less of them?

Here is the other flipside of the equation, since we are talking about team PvP we can ignore all 1v1 situations. So, taking a tank or brute and pairing them off against a blaster with both sides having the same support, is it an = fight. From what I have seen with toggle droppers the way they are NOW, it is if you are comparing comparable sets of Tanks, Brutes to Blasters. EM VS. EM for instance. Throughout various leveling stages this balance is thrown off by power acquisition. The only way to balance that would be for everyone to have all their powers whenever they go into a PvP zone, or in other words, the zones are not balanced.

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You can't tell me that it's reasonable that they have powers that simply never come into meaningful effect. In contrast Blasters do not have any such powers (barring EPP armor toggles, which they should also be able to use).

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Except that if you PvPed at all, you would know that the armors do come into effect since you are not only being attacked by blasters 24/7. Your entire fight is not against a blaster. There is this team out there, and your armor helps you against most of them. If nothing else, it helps you against the initial melee attack of a blaster or any of the blasters attacks from range.

So it comes down to the issue of melee not wanting to be weak against anything. I can back that up with statements from melee players concerning the new electric set. The set has built in weaknesses and the players are complaining up a storm about how it is retarded for any melee set to have a weakness.