Antigonus

I'd say this is half the problem right here. I've started this trial 5 times and have yet to complete one because half the team quits after the first phase. Even starting my own doesn't help because they still quit.

That more than the difficulty demonstrates bad design. Don't front load the farmable part. Duh.

Cute. Looks like this thread has officially jumped the shark. I thought it was actually going pretty well till now.

I've always thought it would be hilarious if Fire DoT ticks caused KD in the form of NPCs doing a stop,drop and roll animation to put out the fire.

Yet it is very conditional in it's availability, which you conveniently don't mention, making it technically free, but not often available since not all PBs want to team. Hardly the definition of a useful ability, but ok I'll grant you that.



Well see I'm trying to get across that something should be done beyond simply piling more inherents on top of the heap that Blasters have become. I mean really, how many inherent abilities are they going to get? How well has that worked so far? But sure, instead of fixing the real issues, lets just keep throwing inherents at Blasters and see what sticks. Then we can listen to the other ATs complain that they only get one inherent ability and it's not fair blah blah powercreep.

Blasters do not currently get mez protection/resistance shields in any set. Other non-melee oriented ATs do get some specific power sets that offer mezz protection/resistance through resistance shields, the caveat being they must take and use those shields which some people consider to be less than optimal. My question is why should Blasters get free mezz protection/resistance as an inherent power, which is what many have been asking for, when those other ATs do not. In fact no other AT gets free unconditional mez protection/resistance. My preference would be for any mezz protection/resistance that is granted be done by adding it to existing powers.

And yet those are still powers that must be taken to be used, and as such not "free".

Yes, my bad. I was looking up the power descriptions on ParagonWiki which shows them as resistance, and not protection. I should have checked Mids first.

Ah, but it does exist, although rarely seen in it's natural habitat.

Dispersion Bubble is a toggle "shield" that grants mez resistance.
Sonic Dispersion is a toggle "shield" that grants mez resistance.
Forces Field Generator is a click power that grants a mez resistance "shield".

There are a few others, but you get the point.



Strictly speaking, Dominator mez protection is not free as it is not always available and must be activated. So that leaves only Blasters as the only AT with a form of inherent mez resistance I guess, but that doesn't exactly help the argument.

No other AT has mez protection/resistance that is free. None. Every resistance power comes in the form of a power that must be activated, either as a click power or a toggle. Even the other fellow squishy ATs follow this rule. It seems to be one of the few hard rules the devs have in regards to powers.

Granting only certain sets mez protection makes complete sense. For instance, as has been mentioned, there are only 4 primaries for Defenders (Force Field, Sonic Resonance, Traps and Radiation) that offer some kind of self mez protection/resistance. I think it's safe to say that 3 of those 4 are some of the least played Defender primaries. It's no different for Corruptors, Controllers or Master Minds. So, what makes you think that it would be different for Blasters? If mez resistance were added to Cloaking Device for instance, do you really think people would suddenly be clamoring to play Devices Blasters over everything else? If mez resistance were added to 4 of the 7 Blaster secondaries in which it made the most thematic sense, what makes you believe that people would just stop playing the other 3 sets, based on how other ATs have fared in the same position?

If Blasters are granted mez resistance as a free inherent power that requires no activation and no endurance cost, why not do the same for every other AT? At that point, why even have mez?

My question to you then would be, what purpose would mezz serve in the game if nobody were effected by it? Your hyperbolic suggestion to remove all mezz protection could just as easily be reality. If every AT gets mezz protection, why even have NPCs with mezz? It seems to me that if the devs are going to keep mezz as a threat, it would, by necessity require that somebody be effected by it. What argument is there that is so compelling that Blasters, as an AT, should not worry about mezz when other ATs that do not have access to resistance shields should?

I bold the part about shields because I think it is important in this discussion. Every melee-centric AT has 1 or 2 shield powers that grant mezz protection/resistance. They must take and use the shield in order to gain that advantage. If they choose not to take or use it, they gain no protection. No AT has mezz resistance inherent in the AT itself, and Blasters should be no different.

Best solution: Grant mezz protection/resistance to certain Blaster secondary powers, particularly those sets (looking at you Devices) that are considered to be underperformers.

I agree completely that they shouldn't be used for balancing the baseline performance. However, in this particular case, using them does give us an idea of what to expect from the possible changes many people are asking for. As I said, if people are using those tools available and not seeing a significant improvement in performance, that could indicate mez is not the issue and that giving Blasters inherent mez protection/resistance won't solve the problems they are having. However, we can't determine that if people aren't actually using those tools because of a preconceived bias against them. Because people aren't using them, all we are seeing reported is the worst case scenario.

This may very well be, and that's part of what I'm trying to get across to people. People need to try to see the whole problem and not focus only on what they think they already know.

A lot of people have stated that Acrobatics and/or IOs have had little to no effect on performance. That's most likely anecdotal with no real evidence to back it up, but I won't dismiss the possibility they may be right. What they don't seem to understand is that if people are taking and using the tools already provided but not seeing any significant improvement in performance, it could very well indicate that the problem isn't really mez like they thought. That's the point I'm trying to get across to people.

The devs have access to a much larger pool of data than we have as players. They can, and perhaps have looked at exactly what the performance difference is between those Blasters that take mez resistance and those that don't. If they haven't seen a noticable difference, that might very well be why no change has been made in that direction as yet. There's no point in arguing for more of something we already have, but hasn't helped. That's like demanding they give Blasters a second T1 attack in their primary as a way to improve damage.

In what way is build variety crippled any more than it is now with virtually every build on these forums being essential cookie cutter copies taking the same four pools for maximum defense? The irony is that they are already taking Leaping for CJ, so it's not like it's a big stretch to take two more powers from the set to give a significant improvement in survival. There's no crippling whatsoever. As I stated earlier I managed a build on mids that had both defense and mez resistance in good numbers with no significant sacrifices in performance.

It seems to me that mez, in regards to Blaster performance, has been dramatically overblown on these forums. Yes, it is a problem that needs to be addressed. But it seems to me that if it was really as bad as some would have us believe, than why do people seem to work so hard to avoid taking the very best tools they have to alleviate the problem? That makes no sense. If mez was such a crippling issue, wouldn't people go out of their way to make it less so? What I see is that people recognize that there is a problem with Blasters, but they don't really understand what all that entails. They see that they are getting mezzed more than they think they should, and that is the thing they recognize. That is the thing they can most easily see as being a hinderance to performance, so that is what they grab onto. Then they come here crying WITCH! WITCH! and demand that something be done to fix the problem despite the fact that the devs have already provided powerful tools to fix it. The problems with Blasters go far beyond just mez, but that is the one issue that people are focusing on like a laser beam. Just giving Blasters inherent mez resistance won't fix Blasters underperforming.

My question to you is this: In all your testing, how many Blasters did you use have Acrobatics and even just the simplest IOs that could be slotted to resist the most common mez? I assume you did test more than one variant of build. I know the devs have access to the numbers, but we don't have that information. If we as players are going to test numbers on this, we need to test all the variables. What's your control build? How much of a performance difference is there when comparing builds with high defence vs high mez resistance vs some combination of both vs none of either?

Not at all. I think you are missing the point that all of those options for mez resistance start as early as level 10 for IOs. Acrobatics opens up at level 20 for those that are FTP, which is right about the time that mez really starts to become an issue.

Read my posts. I've never said that the AT is fine. I've never said it doesn't need to be looked at. What I have said is that any existing problems are magnified by the fact that so many are choosing not to take advantage of the options that are available because those options don't fit what most consider to be the optimized builds. Just look at the build suggestions on these forums. How many of them include Acrobatics? With a quick look I had to go 2 pages deep before I found somebody that took Acro in their initial build, and they were immediately told it was a waste and not to take it. I'm sorry, but the blame for mez issues cannot be laid entirely at the Devs feet. Players have the tools to help, they simply refuse to use them.

Earlier today, just to clarify to myself what I was going for, I got on mids and took one of my Blaster builds to task on this issue. I managed to get 39% S/L defense, all other types close to 30 and had mez resistance in the 90s, and I was only about 3/4ths through slotting it and hadn't gotten to Incarnates yet. My attempt on this was to get as much defense as I could manage while still getting respectable mez resistance, and I'd say it worked out fairly well. A few changes toward more defense or more resistance and I think a nice balance could be managed.

I can't imagine that removing inherent mez resistance from all ATs would be as dramatic as you want to believe. If there was no inherent mez protection for any AT, people would adapt to the methods that are available because they wouldn't really have a choice. Take it or die. As it stands now, they have the option to take it but choose not to because they feel it presents them with less optimal builds. They don't want to have to take two pre-requisite powers just to get Acrobatics (even though many of the high defense builds I've seen already take CJ).

For myself, having never really had a problem with my squishies and mez, removing all mez protection wouldn't change how I play at all. I'm a PvPer and have gotten very used to always being held by all mezzs, and have learned how to take advantage of the tools provided to us by the Devs.

I think this is ultimately the core of the problem. It is time for the devs to take another look at exactly what role they want Blasters to play and how best to go about that. I hope they do not abandon the original concept of the glass canon, but it seems clear people do not feel that Blasters fit that definition anymore. If they feel that inherent mez protection is part of that, then so be it. I do not feel that inherent mez protection will be the panacea that many think it will be as mez is only one part of the problem, and in my opinion the smallest part.