Blue_Mourning
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Quote:Then scrappers and tankers who aren't defense (as opposed to resist ro regen based) based in this system become completely neutered solo. Especially scrappers go from strong solo to very weak solo because they don't have two powersets with tools to deal with mezzing opponents. So now we have a situation where squishies who all usually do much better than scrappers on a team because of their multiplicative effect, or just because they do SO much more damage (blasters) solo just as well as scrappers do, and in many cases a damn sight better.Originally Posted by hedgehog_NA
Maybe situational mez protection is the answer.On a team the melee toons get it, solo they dont. Challenge restored.
How is that balanced? -
Quote:Oh, I didn't mean to say he can't do it, and I didn't mean to offend you by using the term misleading back at you (I wasn't offended by your term for the record, and hope you weren't by mine). I have used just Rock Armor, Minerals and Rooted (and of course Mudpots) to lead tank, but I also have Granite - which honestly makes more sense from an endurance management standpoint, but I digress.Originally Posted by Dissolution
True true... LOL then it all depemds on the roll.. regardless at times defense just epic fails.
Good point on CE!!
To the OP you can do it! It just might not be as easy as Ice... but you can do it.
I was on my Icer the other night doing Lady Grey and the Stoner we had fell often and hard while I got psi'ed from range once.
Bottom line is learn "YOUR" tank and you can do just as well as others in much safer sets! Have fun with your Stone
My only point was that I was confused by his question - why roll a stoner without granite when, for the most part in lead tank situations, when there are other all defense sets (okay, mostly defense sets) that do it better than stone sans granite. If he wants to, more power to him, and he absolutely can do it, but I'm just confused is all.
Good luck! -
Quote:Having played an FF controller on LGTF, and a traps defender on LGTF, the only thing that ever happens to me is that I get slept, which makes sense, I have a sleep hole. What doesn't happen? I don't get stunned, held, or immoblized. That's with mag 4 protection. Mag 4 (and probably mag 3) is enough to deal with the majority of the mez in a solo situation. I can only think of a handful on enemies that overwhelm it and the ones that do tend to overwhelm scrapper protection as well.Originally Posted by Futurias
That again states that having 3 points of mezz protection is all anyone ever needs.
That is a patently false statement. Otherwise every single tanker, scrapper, brute and stalker would only have that much.
When in all actuality, they usually have at least triple that (at 50th level.)
Heck, I even stated that if they gave a little mezz protection at the bottom (ie. squishies that have none now) they could actually increase some of the effects of mezzing without crushing the squishies and even make things slightly challenging for people that have high amounts.
But they can't do that until the bottom end is not Zero Mag. It would just make some enemies even worse for squishies to fight.
And the scrapper and the tanker? They're expected in a team situation to absorb something like 95% of the damage between them AND they're accompanying mezzes. That's why their mez protection is so high. -
Quote:That's somewhat misleading too. Ice will have MUCH better defense numbers, no movement penalty, a burst regen/recovery power (Hibernate), a burst end/defense power (Energy Absorption), much more aggro management, and the only thing they give up when compared to stone without granite is Regen and psi defense, and there's not that much psi in this game in bulk enough to manage. Even carnies, save for illusionists and MI's don't do that much psi damage; nor do Rikti, which is how I can tank Rikti and Carnies in Granite as opposed to dropping down to stone armor/minerals/rooted.Originally Posted by Dissolution
Aesthetics... OK.
A small correction though, Ice does not have 2 damage auras CE does no damage.
A smal opinion too
The statment on defense is a bit misleading. Stone will have much better psi defense compared to Ice and at the point of softcapp'n 4 other damage types... better is kind of a stretch. They both fall short in fire and cold.
I believe the choice then comes down to regen vs. Hibernate
If it came down to it, I'm not sure I would play stone without granite over Ice for just about any reason. -
If you want to play a stone tank without Granite, I see no reason why someone wouldn't choose Ice Armor instead, with the 2 damage auras, and the better (and easier to softcap) defense, other than maybe aesthetics.
I do, however, believe that you should make sure that you can tank on 4 man teams without granite because Granite is overkill at that point, and you, and your team, is better off having you out of granite. -
Quote:Okay, then let me rebutt you, who doesn't have the skills to play any defender at +4x8. I can play +0 x1 bosses with no difficulty on a rad defender and a traps defender, every controller I've run, an nrg/elec blaster, an elec/elec blaster, a fire/nrg blaster, and several other squishies I've run with few problems. That includes Malta, Carnies (although, MI's are a problem, but MI's are a problem on my scrappers, and even, depending on the powerset, my tankers) CoT, Rikti (Chief Soldiers are FAR more of a problem on my scrappers than they are on my squishies, because they're less likely to get close on my squishies and they hit HARD, especially if you're an SR scrapper and they get very lucky).Originally Posted by Futurias
That's the thing... we mention 'people have problems at times' and we get rebutted with 'but I heard this Defender plays on +4/x8, so therefore they can't be broken.'
Then they forget to mention that it's the kind of person that tries (and sometimes succeeds at things that are supposed to be impossible) like solo Master of ITF. -
Quote:I guess I just don't understand why you would even need it. Yes, it's harder to solo on the different AT's than on a scrapper, but I've always felt like I had more to do on a team with all the other Archetypes. Scrappers have one mode, and yes it's a fun mode, but the other AT's are far far more dynamic. Mag 4 Mez protection makes me pretty much unmezzable except for some of the absolute worst foes (some of which are a nightmare on scrappers too) on my MM. Why does a Rad defender, who already has a whole lot of tools to neuter foes need mez protection?Originally Posted by Futurias
Who ever said that Squishies would get it before scrappers?
In my own mind, I'd been thinking of adding it their epic armor toggles or something.
Kheldian might get theirs earlier (it's hard to see where to add it to any existing power) and I've always liked the idea of splitting up their protection on the 3 different toggles (putting stun and hold in two different toggles.) -
Quote:Inspirations or not, you still did one of the hardest things in this game on an AT that's not built to take that kind of aggro, on an enemy that mezzes....a lot. There aren't too many things, even in the end game that are THAT hard to do. Sure there are tricky enemy groups, but in a game built to team, it's already amazingly friendly to solo.Originally Posted by PumBumbler
Either getting buffs or gulping some insps first before starting the herd really helps. Having 1 level of mez protection would be *nice* but wouldn't break the game. If you do it wrong no amount of mez protection is going to save you. Dead is dead.
Herding with a troller is far different than herding with a tank, it's not very easy to last toe to toe, so you've got to use the environment and your teammates as ways to help you out. Doesn't break the team aspect of the game either, it just makes your team work better when done right.
Of your changes to mez protection, I could, to some extent, agree, but that's a game design problem and not applicable at this point. IF you could enact those changes to mez protection then I would think about arguing for scaling mez protection out. There's one other problem I have with your inherent mez protection for squishies and that's a fairly minor problem. Scrappers have to, sometimes, wait for lvl 16 for their mez protection. Why should squishies get it right away? And how do you balance, say, defenders, when teams with 3+ buffers/debuffers already absolutely destroy content....is it even possible to encode a power that acts differently on a team than it does solo?
For all this talk about powerset generalization, this would start genericizing (spelled wrong I'm sure and I dont' want to look it up) AT's. Solo, a scrapper doesn't have much of an achellies heel, but in a team environment, defenders, controllers, blasters, even tankers, do much better than that AT does. So after this mez protection is enacted, and scrappers start asking for more of a role on teams, do we give it to them? -
Quote:If I'm understanding you right you're already herding rikti - lvl 54 Rikti - something most scrappers (the forum scrappers who herd rikti into pylons and then burn them down aren't indicative of most scrappers who play the game) have trouble doing. You're doing it without mez protection and you're using that as an example of why having mez protection would help?Originally Posted by PumBumbler
You can pretty much zerg *everything* in this game as it stands now. Even rikti ship raids. I've used my Ice/Storm to herd rikti on ship raids. Adding a touch of mez protection wouldn't make it easier, just a bit less annoying. Doing things wrong with a squishy wouldn't make me any less insta dead if mez protection was added or not.
In that situation having mez protection would help, but it's not something that someone should expect to get. Overall this IS a team game and while they've made it easier to solo, and opened up new solo *challenges* (+2 x8 isn't supposed to be moar xp mode, it's supposed to be HARD). So if you're already at least moderately successful on something that's supposed to be really really difficult, in this case even fighting lvl 54 Rikti, (something we used to not even be able to do at all in missions) then why do you need mez protection? -
This entire argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what is a solo mission. While some scrappers (and I do think that this number is inflated by those who think forum scrappers = all scrappers) may be able to solo at +3 x8, I'm willing to bet that very few actually can. Mine certainly can't yet (except maybe my SR scrapper, and that would be WITH some inspiration usage), at least not reliably. It is a very tough challenge, and one that we seem to be over looking.
Once you go beyond +0 x1, we're looking at things that should be increasingly more difficult.
I come from someone who plays squishies and scrappers and tankers. The solo abilities of my squishies on normal difficulty modes are quite fine. They solo quickly enough to not be aggravating, even my defender, which, granted, is a rad defender. But they also have tools available to them that scrappers simply do not because most squishies have 2 powersets capable of affecting spawns and taking enemies out of commission. There are exceptions that might find it difficult, but those are exceptions and team oriented sets that tend to do quite well in team situations.
+0 x1 should be your standard difficulty. All the powersets I've played can easily play up to +2 x2, even on a blaster. Malta should not be the standard group that you take for solo play because they're meant to be difficult.
Imagine that. -
Quote:Heroes are as hard to mez as lieutenants.Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent
I'd say game balance is actually the minor concern here. When heroes (without mez protection) are as easy to hold, root, stun, and put to sleep as minions, that's so far out of true-to-genre that I find it's immersion breaking. Heroes should be at least as hard as LTs to mez for that reason alone.
Edit: Okay, okay, I was wrong I get it. Stop everyone negative repping me for one wrong comment I made that was proven wrong in the next post....sheesh. -
I love the look of Granite Armor so I'm not sure I would enjoy the idea of a change, especially since by now, I'm so used to it. However, I'm not against change but I would like to see the concept art before I make a decision like someone said above. Making a decision without knowing what both look like it rather difficult.
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Quote:Wait, what do tankers get solo?Originally Posted by Biospark
Hello Ultimo,
I am going to avoid suggestions regarding individual powersets for the duration of my solo Empath quest. But in regards to Vigilance, I dont think it should be tied to the defender primary powers in any way. As much as it would be thematic, it seems too dificult to arrive at ONE effect that every Defender would be happy with.
As far as basing it off the number of team-mates, well I have never liked that concept.
Regardless of whether its thematic, no other AT suffers from this type of Inherent effect (defect for me).
Every AT can count on their Inherent both on teams and solo, and the effect is pretty much the same. The only AT that could come to the debate with a legitimate complaint (Hero-side) other than Defenders, is Tankers, and at least they get "something" when solo, albeit not anything spectacular.
Gauntlet? Which keeps them aggrod? Tell me, what AT, while solo, has trouble with keeping aggro?
Besides stalkers :P -
Quote:Originally Posted by Chaos_String
Well in case you invite me, just make it clear that it isn't a speed run, that you want the team to stay together, fight as a unit, etc. I'll abide by that. I had a team leader who was a bubbler, and she tells us all to gather outside each mission for bubbles, and then gather once again inside for DOUBLE BUBBLES!!
And I thought, "Wow. Should I try to explain that I'm running at 47% defense to all positions with 89% debuff resistance and a handful of purple inspirations in my tray?" But no. I gathered for the bubbles and again for the double bubbles.
I simply don't ENJOY being kept on a short chain like that... and now there are ITFs just for scrappers (brutes, etc.) with a similar playstyle.
Nobody's taking anything away from anyone; just forming a TF with a certain theme and mindset.
My point was that I did say it wasn't a speed run. In team chat. And in this case the tanker told him that he wanted Romulus. Now I do think that the tank in this case should have been more vocal, and there should have been more than one warning.
But it's been my experience - especially with scrappers and controllers - that they've tended to put their fun and their capabilities well above everyone else's....like leaving a team to deal with an ambush when they're already fighting two full groups. And on these boards especially because their built to deal with those sorts of things, people tend to applaud that sort of behavior. We're passed the time where the tank has to herd everything, and I very rarely herd on my tanker - but I also take it as a given that unless I know everyone on the team, and I rarely do, that not everyone is going to be able to survive in that team environment and all it takes is one person to be built using SO's, or generic IO's or just be new tot he Task Force for them to have a crummy experience. -
Quote:Also working with the team has to be part of being a really good scrapper.Originally Posted by Chaos_String
The fact that a scrapper who simply wants to do what he/she does extremely well is compared a "7 year old with no attention span"--in spite of the fact that he/she is quite clear regarding the mission objectives and very focused on accomplishing them--underscores the need for, and thus the popularity of, all-scrapper ITFs.
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Quote:And if it makes it less fun for the rest of the team? Or even more difficult for the rest of the team? What's there left to do? Don't invite really good scrappers?Originally Posted by Chaos_String
The fact that a scrapper who simply wants to do what he/she does extremely well is compared a "7 year old with no attention span"--in spite of the fact that he/she is quite clear regarding the mission objectives and very focused on accomplishing them--underscores the need for, and thus the popularity of, all-scrapper ITFs.
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Quote:There's got to be a midpoint between this and stopping every few seconds for saying "Gather for buffs" (which I never ever encourage - I like buffing on the run). There has to be a way for everyone to have fun and not act like a 7 year old with no attention span.Originally Posted by Chaos_String
This thread pretty well encapsulates the reasons why all-scrapper ITFs are becoming so popular on Freedom. They're run nightly (or almost nightly), and I've had the good fortune to get on a few of them.
On an all-scrapper ITF, nobody expects you to be a meatshield even if you aren't specced to play that role. Nobody expects you to gather for buffs, or wait for anything to happen. They just expect you to help achieve the objectives. Those objectives are clear, and the scrappers just go and do what scrappers do best. And if anyone dies, they've nobody to blame but themselves. Like BillZ said, "They die laughing, hit the hospital and are back before we know they're gone."
Of course, I never die...
Scrapper/Brute ITFs and all-melee ITFs (with Tankers and Stalkers too) are fun as well.
I've only done a handful of these (as opposed to, oh maybe 100 non-themed ITFs), but they are fun. Much, much fun. And fast. Not the fastest I've seen, but definitely not slow. Body count tends to be pretty high, too, which has brought me purple recipes on my last two outings.
I highly recommend them. -
Having just ran an ITF with a similar scrapper I have to say it's annoying. Firstly, not every ITF is a "Quick" ITF. I don't enjoy or like quick ITF's, and when I join someone elses, I take a back seat and run it how they want it to be run. So if they want to run a quick ITF I'm fine with it. But when I'm running an ITF, I generally don't like to take all of the short cuts. I do the basics - I like to go to the beach in the third mission, and straight to the plaza in the fourth, but I don't like speeding through the second mission, and I don't like speed running through the first. I've found that if not everyone is on the same page those are not fun missions at all.
The other day at the begining someone asked me if it was a quick ITF, and I said, "No, I expect it will last somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. I won't waste time, but I won't take all the short cuts either." Yet at every turn the scrapper decided to do what he wanted to do, and got a lot of people killed because of ambushes that he couldn't find it in himself to take care of. While I was on my tank I can't tank the 17 people that I currently have on me as well as the ambush that just arrived. While I respect scrappers who IO the hell out of themselves and can do things that no one else can, I don't respect the scrapper that knows what he's joined and proceeds to make it annoying for the man who recruited him.
This seems eerielly like a similar run to one of mine. -
Quote:Perception is, very rarely, reality.Originally Posted by Hatred666
Perception is reality. If the majority of the playerbase thinks that Defenders are underpowered, then they are underpowered. I believe there are a few reasons for this. For one, Controllers share too many powersets with Defenders. Sets such as Empathy and Radiation Emission should never have been accessible by Controllers. Secondly, there doesn't really seem to be any noticeable difference in the buff/debuff values of the sets Controllers and Defenders share. Defender values should be significantly raised, and/or Controller values should be significantly lowered. Finally, compared to Controllers, Defenders get screwed with their Ancillary pool choices. Every Controller Ancillary pool has good choice/choices of range attacks, especially AoE. Since they have access to good AoE attacks, Defenders Ancillary pools should have access to AoE Holds/Stuns/etc.
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Saying that all controllers do more damage than defenders is highly debatable. Earth, Ice and possibly mind controllers, in my experience, do far less damage than a defender merely because the powers that do damage for them are generally not slotted for damage - and to compound matters Earth and Ice controllers best controls don't *do* any damage (Earthquake, Ice Slick, Arctic Air, etc). We all know the outlier control sets, but this thread seems to be judging the entire controller population on the outlier sets, which isn't entirely accurate.
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Quote:Actually I've found Luminara to be far more polite than Ultimo. If you want someone who is actually being rude, I'd point to Talen (but at least he's funny. That doesn't excuse it, but I can't be mad if I'm laughing). Ultimo, however, has been wrong about the use of powers at several points in this thread. He's been wrong about Accelerate Metabolism, he's been wrong about how much defense/mitigation defenders have, since debuffing/holding/KD/KB/Caging are valid forms of defense. He's put his FF defender without one of hte most powerful blasts that has trouble soloing as an example of why defenders are weak solo, instead of thinking that he messed up his build. There's nothing wrong with screwing up a build. You should have seen my first few characters - hell, it took me seven respecs to get my stone tank the way I want it. He's been wrong about a lot of things. And he's been pretty good about responding to people saying he's wrong about specific powers.Originally Posted by halfflat
I'm amazed by the rank closing and hostility to Ultimo. I'm amazed at the support for Luminara, too, who is simply being rude and unhelpfully argumentative.
It really is common knowledge that Defenders do not solo as well as many other ATs. People, myself included, have observed how much easier solo play is with e.g. a Scrapper. It's just true; no matter what else is debatable, you cannot argue that an individual's personal experience simply did not happen.
You may think that nonetheless Defenders are fine or balanced, or that the fact that some powerset combinations allow a Defender to solo adequately is sufficient. That doesn't excuse the abject dismissive and rude responses.
So please, a little less hate.
Oh, and to Luminara, if they are bothering to read this: don't take my lack of response to your posts as conceding a point or agreeing with your argument; rather, I simply can't be bothered debating with someone who is as rude and as juvenile in tone as yourself.
What Luminara is taking offense at is that he's continued to talk about these powers as if he's an expert on them, yet he really really isn't, and that's been proven time and time again by his own words. He continues to talk about storm despite not having played the set in a year. Despite being told by several people that the powers don't have the effect that he thinks it does. I can attest by my own experience that if you are scattering all foes with a stormer, then you're not doing it right and need to change your tactics. His extreme lack of knowledge about kin/ is annoying, yet he continues to talk about it. He calls radiation emission a weak soloer, yet I can attest that it, indeed, isn't.
All of this, and more, would be extremely frustrating to people who actually do know a lot of numbers and have a lot of play experience. And when all is said and done, if defenders become better soloers as an AT as a whole, then something sure as hell better be done about scrappers and tankers, and God knows I don't think either of them should be buffed.
Put it this way. All defenders can solo on heroic. How much faster do you want to be able to do it? -
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As for cookie cutter = lol
we had
50 Fire tank
45 fire scrapper
50 Ill/kin
50 ill/storm
50 fire/fire blaster
50 MA/SR scrapper
47 grav/storm
very little debuffs , very little buffs.
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Storm is massive debuffs. Assuming the stormies were doing their job, your Tanker may as well have been running with their defensive toggles off the entire fight because the AV was buried in -ToHit. Not to mention likely two applications of Freezing Rain were decreasing the AV's Resistance and Defense.
Then there's Kinetics, which is one of the best sets in the game for tipping the balance in a largely ST encounter. Not only was it decreasing the AV's damage, it was slowing the AV and how fast he could attack, while at the same time speeding up the attacks of the entire team, buffing their damage and improving their recovery.
And that team AT makeup is pretty much my definition of a cookie cutter team run.
One Tanker, two or three damage dealers, the rest filled out with force multipliers (ie, Controllers and Defenders).
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I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. I run a storm controller, and while extremely powerful against AV's, the massive -to hit isn't as useful as the -res and -def that it offers - in my experience. The idea that a scrapper or a tanker could run with their defensive toggles off is rather stupid and buried in hyperbole. The storm helps, but it doesn't win the game. I've run my stormer on an ITF stacked with 2 others, and when Rom finally did end up hitting me, he hit like a truck, and I went down. So please Johnny, please understand that hyperbole doesn't help your argument.
In fact, to the very people you are trying to convince, it makes you look like a fool who's never actually tanked hard content.
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Didn't seem like hyperbole, seemed spot on to me.
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As someone just said, AV's resist the -to hit quite a bit, meaning it doesn't become all that useful until you stack it with defense or more -to hit. Storm is a great...actually, no, fantastic....AV battling set, but not because of hurricane. And I just was on this TF again with an earth/storm controller and did have hurricane as often as I could at first.
Let me tell you what happened, becuase I was the equivalent of a tanker wtihout his toggles on at that point. Every time he did the massive stun, he stunned me. Every single damn time. If our team had had defense buffs maybe I wouldn't have. But every time he decided to use that power he stunned me with it.
So yeah. I stand by my words. Storm is a great anti-AV powerset. But not because of hurricane. Stacked storms might be a different story. But that's not what anyone's claiming. -
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while my defenses were mez suppressed
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Defenses dont suppress while mezzed
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Yes they do. The toggles just don't drop. -
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As for cookie cutter = lol
we had
50 Fire tank
45 fire scrapper
50 Ill/kin
50 ill/storm
50 fire/fire blaster
50 MA/SR scrapper
47 grav/storm
very little debuffs , very little buffs.
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Storm is massive debuffs. Assuming the stormies were doing their job, your Tanker may as well have been running with their defensive toggles off the entire fight because the AV was buried in -ToHit. Not to mention likely two applications of Freezing Rain were decreasing the AV's Resistance and Defense.
Then there's Kinetics, which is one of the best sets in the game for tipping the balance in a largely ST encounter. Not only was it decreasing the AV's damage, it was slowing the AV and how fast he could attack, while at the same time speeding up the attacks of the entire team, buffing their damage and improving their recovery.
And that team AT makeup is pretty much my definition of a cookie cutter team run.
One Tanker, two or three damage dealers, the rest filled out with force multipliers (ie, Controllers and Defenders).
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I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. I run a storm controller, and while extremely powerful against AV's, the massive -to hit isn't as useful as the -res and -def that it offers - in my experience. The idea that a scrapper or a tanker could run with their defensive toggles off is rather stupid and buried in hyperbole. The storm helps, but it doesn't win the game. I've run my stormer on an ITF stacked with 2 others, and when Rom finally did end up hitting me, he hit like a truck, and I went down. So please Johnny, please understand that hyperbole doesn't help your argument.
In fact, to the very people you are trying to convince, it makes you look like a fool who's never actually tanked hard content. -
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From reading these posts, I'm guessing that Reichsman isn't a pushover compared to most of the AVs in this game? Good, I like challenges.
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Reichsman isn't an AV. He's a Reichsman.