BurningChick

FF defenders should be first for both CM and Fortitude.

Why? Because if the bubblers are on their feet, the need for anyone else on the team to have either defense buffs or mez protection are VASTLY diminished.

Tinfoil hat time!

When Posi promised to continue working on PvP post i-13, I think he was working under the assumption that there'd be people PvPing. When nobody (relatively speaking) showed up on the live servers even to try out the changes, NCSoft (Clayton?) probably stepped in and said, "We're not seeing the same return on developer resources from PvP that we see from expanding PvE content. Suck it up." Posi most likely made the promise in good faith, but a business decision was made to make him eat his words.

Jack, for all his problems, at least submits himself to the occasional public flogging.

/tinfoil fat

I13 gave the devs a LOT of numbers to twiddle in order to achieve some kind of balance, far more than the previous system. But ... they lost all momentum in actually fiddling with the numbers BEFORE THE ISSUE EVEN WENT LIVE. They knowingly released a flawed system under the expectation that they'd get around to fixing it. And then didn't.

That's bad on two levels: 1.) MMO players give a feature one chance, and one chance only -- get it wrong, and they won't come back; 2.) they promised to update PvP on an ongoing basis and didn't -- you shouldn't lie to your customers. And lying to your customers twice (I4, also)? Bwahahaha.

But here's what kills me: the devs completely rewrote the rules for how powers work in PvP and then didn't explain the rules. And, despite their promises to give us the numbers, I don't see anything in-game that tells me how my bubbler's buffs work in PvP.

So you're saying that you can leave out powers like LR and, I'm assuming, Fearsome Stare, use a stilted team makeup, and still come up with an accurate model?

Fascinating!

So ... what did you find?

So ... you're agreeing with me?

Really? I'd love to see the numbers!

Most of the comparisons I've seen so far leave out some details like The Purple Patch, team size, (de)buffs from mobs, and team composition. Even small things like +recharge can make a huge difference in a set like Traps, at least in my experience, but do relatively little for, say, FF.

I'm not a math person, so I might be off, but calculating the permutations of defender performance seems rather daunting, so my hat goes off to you for doing it.

Well ...

It ain't gonna happen.

Beyond the aforementioned cottage thing, Castle's hands are tied by the set's bible entry. I've speculated about this before, and the entry probably reads, "Keep 'em safe. +def. Status protection. Distance." Detention Field was a /very/ late addition to the set -- it replaced a third ST (fire / cold, to go along with eng / neg and s / t) bubble while the remaining two bubbles had their duration doubled.

Castle's willing to twiddle numbers and how some powers work (changing clicks to toggles) ... but he's /very/ reticent to add new effects to powers, and tends to only do so for under-performing melee sets (and melee set mitigation performance can be modelled). And he always maintains the flavour of powers he changes.

But ... here's the thing.

Can anyone point me to hard data that FF underperforms compared to other defender primaries? No one around here has the time and chops to put together that beast of a spreadsheet. And, unless Castle lets us do some datamining to see in-game performance, all we have is speculation.

So ...

Yeah.

FF, simply, offers exceptional performance out of 3 primary powers and one pool power, with few slots spent. That is, IME, the tradeoff for not having any other tools for bumping team performance beyond mez protection and mitigation.

Yes yes yes!

Duh wha'?

I think I might be bringing Burning Chick out of retirement!

I've never had a problem with the squishiness of the set; but it's boggles my mind that I built a WP scrapper with more HPs, survivability, AND damage than my dear ol' fire / fire namesake.

Howdy! Long time no see!

Uhhhh ...

I think I moved all my toons of Pinnacles years ago.

I read through that thread, once upon a time.

IIRC, most of the suggestions and fixes were geared towards improving the status quo; it didn't have much for making PvP more inclusive. Only a small subset of players cared enough about PvP to make detailed suggestions for improving PvP, and they had /very/ particular axes to grind. They LIKED the PvP system, particularly the movement and speed. They liked the exclusive, cliquey atmosphere surrounding high-level PvP. They liked the arcane builds required for high-level PvP.

But those are the same elements the devs and community reps were frustrated with. And, eventually, all sides stopped dealing with each other -- the positions were too far apart for there to be a lot of common ground. And, ultimately, the devs decided to cut the hardcore PvPers loose.

FWIW, I find the language used by PvPers fascinating. When they talk about The Golden Age of PvP, they're using a very loaded term ... one that, for me at least, has connotations of rose coloured glasses, nostalgia, us versus them, new versus old.

Anyway ... I have a feeling the devs are unlikely to revisit PvP. As I said, nothing much they've done has ever brought in large numbers of PvPers. And there really haven't been a lot of PvEers saying, "You know, I love the PvP experience, but the bugs keep me away." For most of the game's players, PvP is irrelevant. And I don't think anything will ever change that.

There's the rub, no?

You'd have to pay the staff.

Set them up.

Give them office space.

Give them insurance.

Train them.

Wait for them to get up to speed.

Would the investment be worth it?