Blueeyed

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Didn't _castle_ it's exactly the same as fire controller smoke? Ignoreing the fact that it has almost twice the activication time.

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I believe he said something along the lines of : It is functionally the same power as Controller/Smoke and works identically to that power in terms of effect.

I assume that means the powers have the same base value, and when a Controller is using /TA, they effectively work the same. When in a Defender's hands, though, Flash Arrow should work a whole 25% (of a *very* small base value) better.

Running an [censored] Eden trial at [censored].

Oh...

Alright, Flash Arrow is equal to Smoke Grenade, maybe a whole 2.5% better. It's still a lot of your damage mitigation, a good 40% of it, so take this power and slot it. Doesn't stack, but it misses often enough that you'll want to fire it pretty often.

Poison Gas is the other 40% of your damage mitigation. Any enemies inside the area will be have their damage debuffed by a factor of .3. Against enemies with no resistance to the damage they produce, that's roughly equal to -30% dmg, or 30% resistance. It also comes with a very low chance to sleep. Do not slot for that sleep duration. I've seen it happen a whole 1 time.

Acid and Disruption are your team damage boosters. Each of them increases damage done to the enemy by 20%. That makes them great when used in combination, although the range on Acid isn't great. However, Disruption's recharge is HORRIBLE. If you take it, be sure you can slot it heavily.

Oil Slick provides the last bit of damage mitigation by knockdown. It's also decent damage, if you can hit the [censored] thing.

Glue Arrow's your best "oh [censored]" power. It provides a lot of -recharge for everything in the area, and tends to keep them in (roughly) one spot. But it takes a lot of recharge slotting to have up even every other fight.

Ice Arrow is a Defender hold. As such, it suuuucks. But it's the best you'll get, so take it if you can spare the power slots.

Entangling's the only real skip-worthy power, in that -fly and a short immobolize is about as useless for Defenders as it is for Blasters, and at least Web Grenade has -recharge and -movement speed. However, you *need* it for PvP, since no other power, including Glue Arrow, has -fly, so enemies with Hover will completely bypass your long recharge abilities.

Basically, every power (with the exclusion of Entangling for those who don't plan to PvP) is a good power in Trick Arrow. In fact, you'll WANT all of them (except Entangling, if you don't PvP).

The reason people like myself complain is that, with all of them, you're basically doing the same as my Stormer does with Freezing Rain and Hurricane.

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I wasnt aware that MoG has no psy resist myself, but it is true. Though it has no resist, it does give extreme defense for it.

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Moment of Glory no longer (and, hasn't for several patches, now) had defense against Psychic attacks. Using it near a few Rikti Monkies is a sure way to get killed.
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As for Tough, if you didnt have it in your power scheme as a Tank or Scrapper, im afraid a veteran would laugh at you for not having it. Nothing is mandatory(obviously you can choose what you want silly), but the point is made. Your response towards Tough is really self-revealing. Effectiveness is a matter of opinion, but generally when there's a power available that mitigates 23-25% of lethal/smash damage for you, common sense says that you'd make room for it.

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Tough is base 11.25% resistance for S/L damage. Fully enhanced, this provides a mere 18% resistance. It's also completely useless against energy, negative energy, psi, fire, and cold damage.

If you're not taking it before 30, don't take it - from 40-50, as S/L damage takes a back seat to Energy, Negative, and Fire damage.

Agree with Stupid_Fanboy on a few things :

Particularly on Shockwave - when enemies are on their backside, they're doing 0 damage to you. That's a hell of a lot of mitigation for a power that also happens to do decent damage in a HUGE AoE as well.

Spin I can see ignoring. Claws makes a great single-target powerset. That said, don't ignore Spin just because it expensive and has a short range : it's the same as all other scrapper PBAoEs (other than Spine Burst). And players don't ignore those, do they?
It's a decent attack when used either to hold aggro, or to do damage to a lot of minions. You just have to do some positioning work, first, and thankfully, Claws is damn good at that.

I did Invincible Rularuu missions for my Claws/Regen's last two levels, and I don't think you need that much accuracy slotted. I got away with 1 in each attack, and Follow-Up (1acc/2dmg/3rech). After all, yellows do drop fairly commonly.

I'm also against Hasten - the endurance crash at the end is too dangerous even in the best of situations, and the benefits are minimal. Simply put, anything that would be killing you through 3heal/3rech Reconstruction will kill you through 3heal/3rech + hasten Reconstruction's animation. Meanwhile, things that normally wouldn't phase a scrapper become problematic when you drop toggles at a bad moment.

Arcanaville, comparing Force Field powers in terms of survivability really doesn't look at the full context of the powers. They don't operate in stasis - everyone that has them not only can provide other defense buffs, but also can provide other ways to drop enemy tohit values. While a Controller (will) 'protect' his constituents a whole 40% worse, it takes a mere 10% defense or tohit debuff to nullify the whole difference. Many situations, characters end up with that without even thinking about it.

And I'd agree with you completely if :

a)
the precedent hadn't already been set in stone constantly as set after set were spayed for being to Controllerish, too Blasterish, too Tankerish.

or b)
Force Fielder Defenders could consistantly provide something that a Force Field Controller couldn't.

or c)
Force Field Defenders, given the same number of powers, could provide something useful in terms of Defense that a Force Field Controller could never reach.

Because we've had several powers redefined due to their previous ability to intercede on other archetype's capabilities. Every -res power, every +dmg power, risks that.

Obitus, the point wasn't to bring a rhetorical question to the table - I really do want to know how the two situations compare, and to be honest, I don't even know the base Force Field numbers anymore, nevermind those of Smoke. However, if a Force Field Controller can ever reach the same points as a Force Field defender, well, we've got a *big* problem.

I hate to ask this, but has anyone bothered to draw out what happens when you compare Defender Bubbles + Manuevers against Controller Bubbles + Smoke + Manuevers (and another other +def or -tohit)?

I mean, surely that's the standard we should go by, if we're relying on Radiation Emission Defenders as the ruler against which we measure the equality of our secondaries to Blasters, surely we must note what the maximum situation for Controllers is.

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Power values are the same. AT mods are different, except for the Perception debuff which is hard coded at -90% for all of these powers.

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If I'm reading you correct, I believe you've stumbled into the heart of a lot of complaints between Controllers and Defender powers. IF I'm reading you right, you mean to say that Smoke from Fire Control has the same value as Trick Arrow's Flash Arrow when used by a Controller (and a 1.25 modifier when used by a Defender).

That's a big issue for Defenders, because we've seen powers constantly reduced in order to ensure that Controller primary controls remain (significantly) more than 25% better.

It's 65% of Blaster base damage, Futurias. This can *easily* be verified with an unslotted level 25 En/ Blaster and /En Defender. Costs for the same powers are the same and probably have been so since i4/i5. The availability of Aim and Build Up alters this, of course, as does slotting.

65% Defenders, 112.5% Scrappers, 100% Blasters, 80% Tankers.

Originally, EVERYONE BUT DEFENDERS hit weaker. However, Blasters were basically debt machines. So they went from 80% of their current damage to 100%. That brought defenders down a few notches (as did the various redutions to -res powers). Then Scrappers, Blasters, and Tankers all got buffed to their current levels.

Why not apply a small 'inherent debuff' to the Defender version of each powerset's offensive powers? I'm sure Force Fielders would love it if they could get, say, 25% -dmg on an enemy. Kineticists with a heavy -recharge debuff on EVERYTHING wouldn't mind the extra survivability, particularly on powers like Transfusion. Radiant Aura and such could certainly take a small +dmg to them.

It might close the gap. Might even justify dropping the defender modifier to controls, if necessary for balance. I know I'd be willing to give up a three seconds of disorient on Repulsion Bomb for - 20% damage. I know I'd be willing to give up a couple seconds on ThunderClap in exchange for ten points of Endurance Drain.

It's just very nice to have someone looking at things, even if it just ends up being passed on. We understand that issues like Defiance lag aren't really one-man fixes, but it's a very nice change.

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4. Finally Spines should be all toxic damage.

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Are you NUTS? Theres only one power with enhancable toxic resistance in the game, and a couple powersets that NEED to lethal defense to avoid being constantly stuck in place.

Thank you, Castle, for doing that. It's nice to have a reasoning in writing, and having several hoaxes first is a lot kinder on the community than the previously commonplace rumor of complaints just being blown off.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for looking into the Freezing Rain bug.

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So why are you worrying so much that a Controller can KB a mob as far as you can?

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Because when all you do is knockback and defense, you REALLY want to be the best at it?

Think about it, EG. Pretend every hard mez is a 100% -toHit debuff, and think exactly how FEW enemies you have to hold or disorient to break even.

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i'm pretty sure there are some assault rifle blasters, trick arrow and archery defenders who might want to argue this point with you.

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We had this debate in an earlier Issues thread. Ended up having people drag out herostats. Put simply, there are a *lot* more psi resistant mobs in this game than you realize, enough so that the distinction between lethal resistant and psi resistant actually, well, justifies players looking at how many enemies they've killed.

Brasswire, Arcanaville, and everyone else :

Can we stop argueing apples and oranges? With the exclusion of Tornado, not a single one of these defender issues is talking about a power even remotely similar to Short Circuit

Why?

Because Short Circuit has (currently) two valid effects. You can slot for damage, and kill every minion around you in two shots, or slot for end mod and drain every enemy around you in two shots. BOTH of those are VALUABLE effects.

Most of these powers don't have two valuable effects. They have a control, and that's it. There's no useful part of them that performs better for Defenders rather than Controllers.

Again, I don't expect the balance mechanism to change - for some whatever reason, controllers seem to have some sacred ground where none may tred, and as a result, anything considered a mez or soft control they get a bonus on. Fine. I don't expect to change that.

But let's try to make it so that an entire power perform subpar as a primary rather than a secondary? Cause this arguement sure as hell isn't helping that.

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* Bug: Hurricane, when used to push an enemy who is under the effects of a hold by another player, sometimes pulls or pushes the enemy in a different direction than intended. (Theory: Hurricane repels enemies Immobilized by another player as if that other player (caster of the Immob) were the origin of the Hurricane.)

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This is on my buglist, but I've not been able to reproduce it. In any case, it is almost certainly a code issue, which means until I get a reproducable case, it is problematic that it will be corrected.

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CoH Demofile - editted to protect the identities of the innocent, otherwise untouched.
You'll notice that the Crusher under the effects of the Gravity Distortion first repels directly away from heroa, not from Gattsuru, even when Gattsuru's on the other side of the enemy from heroa. This continues for close to ten seconds after the application of Gravity Distortion, after which, normal repel effects take over.
Information I've gotten from Champion controllers suggests there there may be a link to the knockback prevention Gravity Distortion gives (and similar powers give).
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* Bug: Flash Arrow gives a perception debuff. However, when the power is recast from within enemy's normal perception range, the Defender will be spotted, regardless of whether the second Flash arrow hits or misses, and regardless of how much time is left on the first Flash Arrow. (Voiced by Concern, several others)

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I wasn't able to reproduce this. Is it still happening?

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Flash Arrow Bug
This one's fairly self-explanatory. My character Flash Arrows an enemy, and can walk fairly close to them. He can even jump up and down next to them. However, casting Flash Arrow again instantly starts up aggro.

Uh, Lightning Storm got fixed last patch. Tornado MAY already be working correctly, I honestly have gotten too many conflicting messages about that.

This carries over to defender secondaries/controller primaries as well. A defender blast rated for 2 BI will do 118% of the damage a controller immobilize rated for 2 BI would, for example. Because brawl index is related to recharge time, this actually does make a difference in real damage.

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Can you elaborate on what is "slightly more damage"? Can we get the modifier number for that? We know controllers get 25% more for status effects duration (and crits) and that blasters do 50% with their attacks.

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After level 2(5?/8?), Controller powers do around 84.5% of Defender damage, and Defenders (if all things, such as slotting, are equal) do 118.2% of Controller damage. Not all powers go by this: Lightning Storm did not until recently, and some (possibly incorrect) testing with Tornado suggested that it didn't either. However, all direct attacks do follow this rule.

And actual attacks mess this up - Controller primaries are balanced differently than Defender secondaries, and as a result, don't tend to provude the same BI values.

Can we not argue over what's fair and what's not?

I don't think the developer's base assumptions about this game will change overnight. Simply put, if you think people are really stupid, announcing it in bright bold letters doesn't tend to change things. If you're right, they won't notice. If you're wrong, well, they won't care.

So let's thing of a workable change within the existing balance. Give mez-heavy powers a big enough debuff for there to at least be a tradeoff. To take the sample of Endurance Drain, the primary purpose of a Blast is to do ranged damage. Sure, it might not be the best range, and it might have some secondary effects, but it's almost always damage. Blasters give up a bit of end drain for a huge amount of damage. Well, let's have the primary effect of buff/debuff powers be buff/debuffs. A Controller better be giving up a lot of buff/debuff power to get spare control.

Just a general note about the hurricane bug. I'm trying to get a good /demorecord of it, but it works with Earth Control's Hold all the time (when the control is used by another player), but not all the time with Fire Control. The -knockback debuff?

First of all, I'd like to say thank you for sparing your own free time to work on and look at these issues. I'm personally extremely grateful, and am sure that's a feeling shared by most defenders right now. I'm going to focus on some negative stuff, but before I do that, I do want to make it clear that I am VERY happy about things such as the series of fixes that have made it to the live servers so far, and changes such as the reduction to Archery endurance cost.

Just as general stuff...
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* Balance: Single target ressurection powers should not be expended and the associated endurance used unless the target accepts the resurrect. (LadyMage)

[/ QUOTE ]This is an odd one. Endurance is paid as part of the casting of the power, which is calculated before any attributes of that power take effect. So, the power system has to pay for the power to go off then the target gets to choose whether or not to accept the Rez attribute. We can't do this without a lot of changes to the system. Well, technically we could, but then you would not be able to slot for Endurance Reduction.

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That may be a more viable choice. Most players slot their rezzes for recharge at least slightly, while few slot for Endurance Reduction. Would this quick change be able to prevent the rez's recharge from activating?
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* Balance: Currently the last three powers in the FF set are highly situational and generate a great deal of aggro, all of which is drawn on to the least defended member of the team -- the FF Defender. (Telok)

[/ QUOTE ]Drawing Aggro only applies in Teams. If you are teaming, try to get someone with Taunt to be on your team. So long as you aren't hunting +4's, Taunt should last long enough to mitigate this. As far as situational, that is by design.

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Taunt powers suffer from a relatively low AoE cap. I'm not certain, but I believe this is at 5 enemies, and am sure it's under 10. However, Force Bubble can easily affect an entire spawn of enemies, and even well-timed use of Repulsion Field or Repulsion Bomb can do the same in bad situations. This makes the powers less than viable while in groups with enemies greater than the number that a single Tanker can taunt.

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* Quality of Life: Detention Field's graphic needs to be more obvious -- currently teammates can't tell when an enemy is detained and waste attacks on it. Are there any plans to either make the graphic more obvious, or to otherwise make it more difficult to waste attacks on a DF'd enemy?

[/ QUOTE ]This is something that is a good idea. In fact, it is on geko's whiteboard for "when we get to it." Since it is art time, getting something like this done is problematic -- the artists are overbooked already.

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Suggestion : as a short (or even long) term fix, grab the bubbles used by Wisp Overlords. While it would leave the power as not being visable against those opponents, this is a better solution than having no opponent being obviously DT Fielded.
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* PvP: Knockback suppressed players, or players with knockback resistance, can stand near a Repulsion Field for a long time without ill effect, draining the Defender of endurance.

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This is by design. It is to prevent Repel from locking enemies in a corner.

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I understand that the suppression is intentional, but could the endurance usage during suppression be looked at? Repel and similar powers have a lengthy (20 seconds) recharge time, and having to choose between losing 20 endurance or your primary protection against Stalkers after every knockback seems a bit extreme of a choice.
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* Bug: Hurricane, when used to push an enemy who is under the effects of a hold by another player, sometimes pulls or pushes the enemy in a different direction than intended. (Theory: Hurricane repels enemies Immobilized by another player as if that other player (caster of the Immob) were the origin of the Hurricane.)

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This is on my buglist, but I've not been able to reproduce it. In any case, it is almost certainly a code issue, which means until I get a reproducable case, it is problematic that it will be corrected.

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**working on producing a demorecord**
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* Bug: Flash Arrow gives a perception debuff. However, when the power is recast from within enemy's normal perception range, the Defender will be spotted, regardless of whether the second Flash arrow hits or misses, and regardless of how much time is left on the first Flash Arrow. (Voiced by Concern, several others)

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I wasn't able to reproduce this. Is it still happening?

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**working on producing a demorecord**
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* Bug: Acid Arrow's -resistance does not stack with itself. It is the only -resist power to do so. (Concern)

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Looking at the other -Resistance powers (Enervating Field, Sonic Siphon, etc) none of them stack with themselves. The only ones that do seem to stack are Sonic Attacks debuffs, which have very short durations.

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This may have changed without our knowledge, then. It's been known information for a while that, pre-ED, Tar Patch can and did regularly stack. Will attempt to test that power, but it's not exactly easy to find enough Kineticists.
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* PvP: Trick Arrow/Archery proves very ineffective in PvP, unable to kill a detoggled and unmoving Regen scrapper.

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Regen Scrappers are very difficult to kill for low damage characters. I *was* able to kill one, but it took several minutes, which is a highly unlikely "real"-world situation. This is a more general concern than just with Archery, but it is most visible here. No solution I can discuss, yet.

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Just as a general note : this was NOT an issue with Scrapper Regeneration. Another test with a Dark/Dark Defender showed it was possible to kill a stationary and detoggled Claws/Regen very quickly, and to kill an aware one (although not at reasonable speeds). This seems to be an issue with sets performing low damage in favor of a seperate aspect (accuracy, endurance drain) and those without permable debuffs.
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* PvP: Entangling Arrow does not prevent people from jumping (Concern)

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I was unable to reproduce this.

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To state it more clearly : Entangling Arrow has no -jump feature against targets who are protected from the immoblize. Web Grenade does have this aspect. Given that *many* Trick Arrow powers can be jumped/flown out of, permable debuffs regarding -jump seem necessary to the powerset in PvP.
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* Bug: Some defenders have gotten 'trapped' in the Voltaic Sentinel summoning animation, and could not use other powers until Voltaic Sentinel recharged and was cast again. (Reema)

[/ QUOTE ]I put this in the bug database, but I've not been able to reproduce it.

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Bugged fixed at the same time that it was for Tar Patch, sorry for not updating the issue in time.
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While few enemies are especially vunlerable to Mental attacks, comparatively few have defense against it, either.

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That's not very true of the 40-50 game. Taken from Guide to Villain Resistance :
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Psy vs. Nemesis humans: 100% (includes Fake Nemesis)
Psy vs. Nemesis robots: 50% (includes Warhulks)
Psy vs. Crey humans: 100%

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Carnival Women: 80%
Carnival Brutes: 80%
Rikti Unarmored: 100%
Rikti Armored Non-Psi: 100%
Rikti Armored Psi (Chief Mezmerist, What Not): 70%
Rikti Drones: 70%
Knives of Artemis: 100%
Malta Soldiers: 100%
Malta Titans: 40%

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Crey, Armored: Psi 100%
Rularuu Eyes/Natterlings: Psi 100%
Rularuu Wisps: Psi 80%
Rularuu Brutes: Psi 100%

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This is a sizable portion of the end-game enemies who actively resist psychic damage, it's also ignoring powersets like Paragon Protetor Moment of Glory (still giving positional or base defense, it seems). Given how significantly changed this balance mechanism changes in the endgame, should it be rethought?
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Actually, the math shows Controllers being slightly more effective with this power compared to Defenders. Since it is a Control power, that is by Design.

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Many Defender primary powers have Control as their primary or sole function. I was under the impression that secondary powers should not equal or outperform primary powers. That seems to be in direct contradiction with your analysis of Detention Field and Thunder Clap. Can a debuff or buff be added to these powers to at least give some balance toward the defender edge of the mechanism?

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Completely off-topic, but. You owe it to yourself to throw F.E.A.R. into that list if you can. That game is pretty incredible.

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Spent too much time in that game rolling on the floor laughing my backside off after slow-mo jump kicking a giant robot to death.
And I thought the old Martial Arts animations were bad.

Kinda find the psycho kid thing less than scary. Of course, I have to deal with em enough in real life to be used to them.

It's kinda depressing to see so little for heroes on this update. I'm fine with the lack of missions or zones. It's the lack of powersets or archetype updates or missions or zones. Other than a couple costume options and some graphics options I'll be turning off asap, it doesn't look like my hero will be noticing a difference from i6 to i7.

On the upside, Defense fix. :shrug: