BurningChick

Ummm ... Ultimo_?

I'm not sure you read my post in its entirety.

You can't offer a fix For the Defender Problem until you understand Defenders, their powers, and how the powers in each set interact with each other, mobs, teammates, and teammates' own powers.

Here's the whacky bit: the interactions are so complicated, it is unclear if anyone, including the devs, understands all those permutations.

That is, in large part, why no one has ever come up with a good defender inherent that is both balanced and useful for all defenders.

Ultimo_,

You need more time playing defenders and less time playing with Mids. Simply put, you don't have a firm grasp of how defender sets work outside of limited theory-craft.

I don't think you've even thought through what happens to Regen Aura (and don't some heals work off base HP, also?) if defenders get more HPs.

A suggestion: put together The Defender Spreadsheet, along the lines of the ones Aracanaville and Starsman have done for damage mitigation and melee sets. Some things to remember: The Purple Patch (shortens duration and strength of debuffs); click w/ accuracy v. autohit click v. toggle debuffs; team size (a bubbler has an easier time keeping its ST buffs on a big team than a kin or empath do); team makeup (blasters benefit more from FF than ice tankers, for instance); interactions with blasts; teams with multiple sources of (de)buffs (i.e., the higher your damage multiplier, the more damage -resistance adds); time spent using primary v. using secondary; and lord knows what else.

Put all this data into the blender and start pulling out tidbits like, "Empathy is OK / poor solo, but in a duo shines by turning one Blaster into Superman. Empathy is then near the top of the pack through teams of 5, but drops off afterwards as it becomes impossible to keep everyone in ST buffs." Or, "FF is poor solo, but does increasingly better as team size moves up (assuming everyone remains under Dispersion Bubble). Team makeup, however, affects how effective the bubbler is; on Tanker-heavy teams, FF ranks poorly, while on Blaster-heavy teams, FF shines."

But, until that happens, what you're doing amounts to giving a tour of the Louvre ... without ever having stepped foot in the building. Sure you can pick up some tidbits here and there, but you won't have the same depth and breadth of knowledge that the tour guide who's been there for 20 years has.

Just IMO and all that.

Quick reply to Turbo:

I guess it boils down to:
1.) The OP not playing cold;
2.) Poor reading comprehension;
3.) Disbelief that powers that are usually crappy and best-avoided can sometimes be useful.

FWIW, I've used Force Bubble in tight spaces to much hillarity. And ramming hordes into a tight corner is, IME, the all-time best use of the power since you can launch rains, debuffs, and all sorts of whackiness being assured that mobs are crammed in as tight as possible, maximizing AoEs and minimzing runners.

It just happens to be hella tough to pull off -- something the OP should get kudos for.

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By that definition. Petless masterminds particularly petless/traps.

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Hmmmm ...

I just beat down a L50 Ballista to a sliver of health before I ran out of end and my PPP +def shield de-toggled on a thugs / traps MM using not one power (no summons, no guns, nothing) from thugs.

Traps, heavily loaded with damage procs, and vet powers FTW!

FWIW, the Longbow between the mish entrance and Ballista weren't all that hard, either.

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Personally, global changes like more DMG, more HPs or a better Inherent would be nice ( I certainly would not complain), however I dont think they are going to solve the real Defender balance issues.

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Just to riff on this:

Defenders as a group don't seem to have any real problems. Certain defender sets, however, probably do.

I think I said it many, many pages ago, but the devs have /never/ done a balance pass on (de)buff sets, and they probably should since they've done so on direct damage, controls, damage mitigation (i.e., tanker primaries), and entire ATs (blaster, stalkers, and doms).

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Guys it really shouldn't matter what support primary you take, if the damage is way too low on every blast set that isn't Sonic Blast then the base damage needs to be increased. By the way saying Defender damage is fine as is, is saying Ice Melee for tankers is fine as is since both are 20% less than what other tanker melee sets do.

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You're wrong.

The devs' definition of "fine" has traditionally been "able to solo on Heroic." I've never, ever seen a defender with something other than a LoLBuild who couldn't. Everything else is, if you're a dev, either gravy or thematic.

The players' definition of "fine," however, is often RADICALLY different and amounts to, frequently, "solo individual spawns set for 6 on Unyielding in less than 60 (sometimes 30) seconds."

But this definition of some players is out of whack and leads both to Monty Hall and an escalating arms war between ATs. If Blasters bring little to the plate beyond secondary effects (if that) and damage, why should defenders bring similar damage, generally superior secondary effects, and a complete (de)buff primary whose purpose is to make the game easier for entire teams?

Answer? Blasters should do more damage.

Response: But wait, if blasters do so much more damage than scrappers, but scrappers have to be in melee, how are scrappers going to get teams? It's a freakin' MMO! We need moar damage!

Then tankers.

Then controllers.

Sometimes, balance is arbitrary, but that's not a bad thing.

FWIW, if I specifically want to team, I'll bring a defender. If I want to solo at great speed, I'll grab my scrapper or dom. That's just the way the game is. And, for it to be anything else, we'd have embland the game to the point where everyone does the same DPS ... only with (to paraphrase Arcanvaille poorly) different kinds of spackle.

You know ...

I take it back; I don't think Ultimo_'s trolling.

But I do think he's goofy. I've never, ever been unable to solo the lower levels on my defenders on Heroic. It's not fast, but it's certainly doable.

FF in particular I found reasonably straight-forward -- I figured out early on that a well-used Force Bolt can be used to juggle 2 out of the 3 mobs in a given heroic spawn, and the third mob can be detained or punched in the face. Repeatedly.

And ... I also found FF to be /quite/ good at dealing with bosses since few lowbie bosses resist KB. Force Bolt > blast > blast > wait for boss to start getting up > Force Bolt > blast > blast.

But what do I know? Maybe some people don't like switching targets during a fight?

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What bugs me the most are the Dark defenders without Darkest Night

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Maybe I suck, but, when I run (even on teams), I rarely use DN on anything other than EBs on up. It takes too long to animate compared to using Fearsome Stare & Fluffy for mitigation, which gives me more time to light off Tar Patch, Tentacles, and Nightfall. DN just slows me down.

...

And even on some AVs, I don't bother with DN. A dark / dark / dark defender has PRODIGIOUS amounts of damage mitigation, and removing one tool of many is not a big deal.

Edit: FWIW, I'm not a member of the build police except when it comes to defenders and their secondaries. I can't stand seeing dead-weight toons who feel compelled to add a second rez into their builds at the expense of something useful.

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Once we get more details on the new boards, I'm commissioning a new and permanent-ish avvy.

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Maybe I'll make one?





No, probably not.

I gotta back up some PMs from the devs. I even have one from War Witch I can no longer decipher, beyond it being vaguely about hockey

We did one yesterday that spawned the occasional L40 PP (the TF maxes out at 35). Those were a drag to take down, especially since we did it with 6 people (we padded in order to start).

It was ... weird, especially since the AV in the final mission was a freakin' piece of cake compared to the PPs.

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I don't understand, have I said or done something to you personally that warrants such a snide comment?

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Well ...

You're posting in the Defender Forum, but you don't seem to understand how defenders work. And you really don't seem to understand how defenders work together.

Defenders can fill in each others' weak spots. All-defender teams are among the most powerful that can be put together in the game, and all-defender teams don't need /enhancements/ in their powers, let alone set bonuses, to be powerful.

That's the trade-off for not being able to self-buff or tear through PvE content at the same speed as a scrapper. 8 random scrappers on a team with good builds but red SOs will have no end, little damage, and no survivability.

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Also, it's something that is only the beginning of an idea. I've not considered how to make it balanced and viable yet.

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It's lovely to see that you have such high regard for yourself

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Thus, I'm now considering ways of adjusting the buffing sets in a way that will allow them to be used by the Defender (eg. Force Fielders would be able to bubble themselves).

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Thank you for blessing us with your wisdom

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It's worth noting that the idea of adding diminishing returns to the game is hardly new, and debates about it come up every few months. Castle did weigh in on this. In essence, paraphrasing his post as I interpreted it, doing this would be a sweeping rebalancing of the game. While it would provide the devs headroom they currently lack, the current state of affairs doesn't tie their hands all together (clearly), and people are enjoying the game as it exists now. Performing that sort of rework of the status quo was deemed unlikely, presumably because the overall benefit was not deemed clearly worth the cost.

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Going Rogue might just be that opportunity.

Well ... you're boned.

You want Cloud Senses' bonuses, but you also want damage.

You want damage, but you aren't taking Repulsion Bomb, one of the best direct damage powers available to defenders.

You want to be soft capped, but you're gilding the lily by piling on ToHit debufffs.

Anyway ...

At the very least, I'd nuke Torrent, replace it with Repulsion Bomb, and slot Bomb with Positron's Blast. That gives you a great opener, decent AoE damage, and 5 seconds' worth of free blasting while the mobs pick themselves up. You wouldn't be giving up much defense, you'd still get a recharge bonus, and you'd be doing some damage.

I don't think he gets the nature of stacking (de)buffs, and how -damage reinforces +resistance, or how - resistance works with +damage. &c..

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Why anyone falls for it these days, I'll never know.

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It's been a slow week in the Defender Forum, so some of us decided to feed the troll

But, in this case, the troll appears to be a li'l headstrong, even by troll standards.

Or possibly insane.

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If doms can get their secondary damage buffed to around the 1.0 scale, they ought to buff defender damage to the 1.0 scale too. Same thing with corruptors as well.

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Except ...

Doms aren't force multipliers.

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My inclination is to buff Defender damage to close to default Scrapper levels, but perhaps the focus should be put on the sets that are unable to be useful to the Defender.

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I would LOVE to see a rad / sonic with round-about the same base damage as a scrapper.

In fact, I'd love to see 8 of them on a team.

But, seriously.

You're nuts.

Giving giving the game's force force suppliers high base damage renders everyone else obsolete.

Scrappers > defenders at self-buffing

Defender > scrappers at buffing the entire team and debuffing opponents.

So ... what, precisely, is the problem?

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I'm told the Devs have described the Defender as the best balanced AT.

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I stopped here, sorry. I might go back and read the rest...but can you provide a link or something that supports your statement?

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From Statesman, 4+ years ago.

But this post often gets paraphrased out of context, with this bit being frequently omitted:
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BUT....I'm extremely concerned about the perception that Defenders "aren't needed" and thus "can't find a team" at high levels. Defenders should fill a valuable role at ALL levels and help Archetypes achieve levels that they can't reach by themselves. After all, Defenders are all about buffs (and debuffs). Every Archetype should be extremely happy when the Defender provides a resistance or defense buff...

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This bit also gets glossed over:
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There are certainly issues with individual sets and powers - and those we're always looking at. Defenders, however, don't have any overarching problems.

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FWIW, I think this post still rings true. Some sets do have problems ... but defenders in general? Not so much. I can solo on my FF / rad OK, but I can solo much faster on my scrapper. But, mostly, I'd rather team with my bubbler than my scrapper, and my scrapper is purpled.