Captain Fabulous

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On Detention: If there is a Magnitude value associated with it, which I'd expect there to be, it may be that Controllers get bonus to it. Controllers do get bonuses to other aspects of Buff sets (compared to Defenders), much as Defenders get debuffs from their blasts that Blasters don't.

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According to City of Data it does indeed get a higher mag value for Controllers than Defenders; same with Sonic Cage. I also noticed that Controllers get longer mez durations from the various Defender mez powers than Defenders do (same MAG level tho).

I'm guessing this is due to Controller's higher mez AT modifier. Even though it's in their secondary set, the Controller can use a mez power better than a Defender that gets it as a primary. Yet another strike against the Defender AT. What's the point of AT modifiers if Controllers are STILL going to be able to use a power that ONLY does mez better than a Defender?

So we do about half the damage of Blasters due to Defiance (even though it's supposed to be 65%), and Controllers who share our powers only get the lower % they're supposed to on non-mez effects.

Wow... and the devs see absolutely nothing wrong with this double standard? No wonder why so many people (myself included) have virtually given up playing Defenders. Why would you play an AT when other ATs can do nearly everything you do significantly better, not to mention a crapload of things you can only DREAM of being able to do.

JUST...NOT...RIGHT...

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And yet every time we've brought it up the devs have insisted that they prefer the powers as situational. What I would think of the change isn't going to make it happen.

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Not picking a fight with you but this inspired me to look at all the Tier 9 'situational' defender powers as the Devs call them:

Dark Miasma - Dark Servant - you only want to avoid this power when you want to prevent aggro on open maps

Empathy - Adrenalin Boost - Not much of an Emp player, someone help me here.

Forcefield - Force Bubble - Great to pin spawns into a corner on a closed map and some open maps, and has a lot of use in PvP right now.

Kinetics - Fulcrum Shift - Great in large teams to give potentially enormous damage boosts to all toons willing to wade into a large spawn.

Radiation Emission - EM Pulse - One of the greatest holds in the game, also -regen, no reason to not use it as soon as it recharges on every large spawn your team comes across.

Sonic Resonance - Liquefy - Not familiar with this power much, but it looks like a great spawn neutralizer when I've seen it used.

Storm Summoning - Lightning Storm - great for open and closed maps to hold back foes, protect a bottleneck, many other uses.

Trick Arrow - EMP Arrow - See EM Pulse

So... I guess the question is FB on the same level as the other Tier 9's in the case of usefulness?

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There is a certain amount of logic here tho. Most Defender tier 9 powers are short-duration, long recharge click powers, making them "situational" by that nature.

Force Bubble is a low cost toggle that can always be running. They make it situational by having the bubble extra large and unwieldy for constant use, the idea being you're only going to use it when absolutely necessary, i.e., an "oh crap" moment.

The problem is FF is full of these "oh crap" moment powers. One or two would be plenty. 4 is simply too much.

And again it cycles back to the fact that FF isn't a set that underperforms by and large. What it does well it REALLY does well. But the set is a one trick pony that's very binary -- either your abilities help or they don't, there is no middle ground.

And the lack of a variety of debuffs is another very sore spot. Every single Defender set has had debuffs added to them over the years to counter the extra abilities given to critters. All except Force Field.

So from the dev's point of view you have a very effective set with a large number of "situational" powers that statistically performs very well. But statistics can't convey pleasure or enjoyment. FF is a very boring, sometime frustrating set to play because you feel like you simply aren't contributing enough to the team, and when it's time for the other Defenders to bring out the big guns in the tough fights, the FFer simply has nothing else to offer.

And as has been pointed out a number of times by "he whose name I shan't utter..." many of the FF powers that are highly situational for the FF Defender actually work pretty well for Controllers and Masterminds who have the tools to make them less situational and easier overall to use.

And I think that since Castle has visited the FF set and the only thing he saw fit to do was add damage to Repulsion Bomb (the one thing Defenders by and large didn't ask for) kinda makes me highly pessimistic that any significant changes are coming.

Datamining probably shows that the set performs well compared to other sets for all ATs that can take it, and therefore doesn't need any adjustments. Unfortunately datamining can't tell Castle just how boring the set is to play. And I fear no matter how often we tell him, it's not gonna make a difference.

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Knock down is turned into KB quite easily by using KB enhancements. Lowering the mag of Repulsion Bomb's KB actually /increases/ the power's utility by letting players slot (or not, as the case may be) in order to achieve the desired effect.

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QFT

I would love it if they just made a blanket change to the set and turned down ALL the KB numbers by default to just under 1 so that they are all KD by default. Then guess what? You slot in one KB enhancement or not, and it acts like a "switch" that turns it into knockback or not.

I REALLY think that this idea more than anything would make the set infinitely more playable to the average player.

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QQFTFT

"Anti-knockback" apparently isn't an option since it equates to giving knockback resistance to your foes. However, simply not doing knockback in the first place and doing knockdown instead gives you the option to do knockback if you want.

I can only assume that the devs have given this capability to meleers but not to Force Field because it is simply TOO powerful, and would make FF's knockback powers TOO useful. Repulsion Bomb particularly. They would rather add a slight chance of disorient and some damage than make the power able to reliably disable all foes with no negative consequences.

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Unfortunately this also creates an unwanted side effect that you're ignoring. KB resistance also comes in various MAG levels. Reducing all KB powers to KD requires lowering their MAG value to under 1. As you say, adding in a KB enhancement then turns the KD into KB, but only for foes that have little to no KB resistance.

Repulsion Bomb has a KB MAG value of 10.386%. Your suggestion lowers that MAG value to something like 0.5 (same as Ice Slick). No amount of KB enhancements is going to bring the MAG value back up to 10.386%.

Now it's hard to say how much of an impact this might actually have without knowing the KB MAG protection values of various critters. But such a change could make RB completely useless against even more foes than it is now.

If a critter has even a moderate KB protection of MAG 4, the current version of RB will knock them back. If you change it to KD by lowering the MAG value to under 1, then the power will have no effect at all.

One way around this would be to add a knockUP component to it. Not many critters have KU protection, and it would have the same overall effect.

Trust me, I don't like uncontrolled KB either, but in an oh crap situation, one where you might actually use this power, you certainly don't want entire classes of critters being able to ignore or resist it.

Just be careful what you wish for. You don't want to accidentally stab yourself in foot.

Of course the best way to alter this power is to make it a cone knockback power. But that's just my humble opinion.

Brilliant... simply brilliant...

But you left out the part where Statesman goes mad, casts forth the curse of GDN and ED upon his children, then promptly ventures forth to a new set of servers leaving his faithful Archangels, Positron and Castle, to clean up his mess...

Ok, you two need to settle down before I call a moderator and have you both sent to the naughty forum.

If you're just going to sling insults back and forth, take it to PMs.

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Jade_Dragon , I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying an FF Defender is weak because they don't have a 30% damage buff? If so, I'm sure you realize the standard response would be to say FF isn't meant to be a damage buffing set.

Similarly, Mind Control has no pets. That doesn't mean Mind Control is broken.

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Yet another apples-to-oranges comparison. Mind specializes in confusion to compensate for its lack of pets. All other defender primary sets (with the execption of Empathy) get some form of resistance debuff or damage boost that the Defender can use to increase damage output, and Empathy can at least do that for others.

For all that, FF should at least be better at something. Knockdown/knockback? Storm does at least as well in this department, if not better. Buffing/debuffing to make it harder for enemies to hit? In my experience, both Rad and Dark doe this better. Their -acc debuffs trump FF's +def every time. Control? Dark and Trick Arrow both have better means of pure control.

And herding? I still say tanks do it better. While putting out better damage thatn most FF defenders.

I really don't think that FF needs a way to up the damage of an individual or group. But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.

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I agree with most of your post, but with one exception. The FF Defender is the MASTER at one thing and one thing only, bar none, and that's +def. No other Defender set can even come close to the amount of damage mitigation a fully slotted FF Defender can hand out. Period. With fully slotted bubbles + Maneuvers you can easily hit the 45% defense cap.

Remember that debuffs quickly lose their effectiveness against higher level and higher class foes. So although you might get a 35% tohit debuff against even level minions, you're going to get around half of that against a +2 boss.

Buffs never lose their effectiveness based upon level or rank, and for this reason are far superior mitigation tools than debuffs. This is not to say debuffs are bad, it's just that buffs are better.

As I've said before, FF suffers not because it's a bad set that's sub-par, it's because it's a one trick pony set full of powers that cannot be reliably used on teams in an AT that has been forcibly relegated to team-only play.

FF excels at what it does. But it only does one thing, and while that might have been appropriate in the game of 3.5 years ago, in today's game it's not enough.

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But this same reasoning can also be used with Blasters too. Fire/Fire Blasters are notorious for their damage output, whereas Assault Rifle/Devices are notorious for their lack of overall damage. So when trying to balance Blasters, do you factor in Build Up? Aim? BU + Aim? What about those Blasters that don't get BU? Or those that don't take it?

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Actually, the comparison that you make here is a very applicable one to FF's problems. Assault Rifle is the only Blaster Primary that does not get Aim. And Devices is the only Blaster Secondary that does not get Build Up. And those are not even significant damage boosts over the duration of an entire fight, I think it was calculated that this was a 10-12% boost to overall DPS, when applied to fully slotted attacks. A Rad Defender is able to get at least a 30% damage boost through most of the duration of a combat, more than likely even more since he can stack AM's damage boost on top of EF's resistance debuff.

I would actually compare it more to a Tanker or Scrapper's status protection powers. Defense sets have status protection powers because meleers are more likely to be attacked, and they need to keep their toggles up in order to survive melee damage. They aren't given a base 30% or 75% more resistance to damage just for being meleers, they need powers to give them that defense. If you were to take a defensive power providing about 30% of a Tanker or Scrapper's power away from him, or take away the status protection power, no one would say, "Well, Tankers are broken, because they don't have enough innate defense". They would obviously point out that that particular Tanker has 30% less damage mitigation than the other sets. (Or loses his toggles all the time, which is definately losing more than 30% of his damage mitigation)

Likewise, if someone were to take a Blaster's Burst or melee attacks away, and replace it with an ally targetted support powers, that set would rightly be called "broken". Blasters are balanced with having the ability to do a certain amount of damage in mind, and if you take that ability away, you break the balance.

And considering that this is ONE set that is causing all the trouble, it's rational to conclude that it is the set that is the cause of the problem. Because this isn't a game about base stats, this is a game about Powers.

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Actually that's contrary to what the devs have previously told us, most recently in Defiance discussions.

They don't take secondary power effects into consideration when balancing powers because not everyone gets the same effects. They also don't take Build Up and Aim into consideration, because as you've pointed out, not everyone has access to them, and not everyone who has access necessarily takes them.

And the only time they take outside buffs into consideration is when balancing recharge times on powers they don't want to be permable.

There is a reason why nearly every power in every set of any given AT has the exact same damage/end and damage/sec ratio. It's balance, plain and simple. Any discrepancies or exceptions you might find are simply done for flavor; and sometimes just to give a set that's perhaps not quite tangy enough a bit of a boost.

So no, the fact that a Rad Defender can increase their damage by up to 30% in no way as any bearing on Defender base stats because not all Defenders are Rad.

My point is that inherent buffs like Defiance and Scourge should be considered when balancing damage between Blasters, Corruptors and Defenders because ALL Blasters get Defiance, and ALL Corruptors get Scourge. It's not optional. You can't turn it off. And you can't "not take it". These abilities give Blasters and Corruptors a significant increase in damage without any penalty.

If you have any doubts about just how much of a difference there is between the solo-ability of a Defender versus a Corruptor, simple roll up one of each with the same sets (hell, go Rad/Rad just for sh*ts and giggles), take the same powers, slot them the same way, and go solo. The proof, as they say, is in the puddin'.

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If Defenders are supposed do 65% of the damage a Blaster does, that 65% should be based upon the true amount of damage a blaster does, not simply the base damage.

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The problem is that that presumes the archetype damage modifiers are "right." We can work the other way around: when blasters were 1.0 and defenders were 0.65, the devs discovered that blasters were broken, because their levelling was much slower than defenders (and everyone else). So they gave blasters more damage. The original 1/0.65 ratio was in effect proven to be incorrect, which prompted the change in the first place.

However, the 0.65 number itself hasn't been "proven wrong" yet because the devs haven't seen numbers which suggest the number is too low for defenders to function. It may or may not be but what they see so far suggests its not.

I consider the 1/0.65 number to be a first guess at what the blaster/defender ratio should be, not a conceptual decision on what they ought to be. Moreover, its not specifically saying what the ratio of total damage should be, but rather what the ratio in damage should be when given identical powers.

You say "not all defenders get damage buffs" and that's true. But you can't argue for a damage modifier increase based on the defender primary with the *lowest* damage buffs available, without simultaneously implying that the ones with the very high damage buffs need to have them taken away. Because if the damage ratio argument is valid, its valid in both directions. If FF defenders can use it to compare themselves to blasters, for example, the blasters and turn around and use the identical balance argument on rads, darks, and kins. That makes it a very dangerous argument to employ, because it ultimately creates a lot of collateral damage.


I happen to consider the damage boosting (and other) effects of rads and kins to be, in not balanced with the defensive benefit of FF, then presumed to be balanced for the sake of inter-archetype balancing. Meaning, when I compare "defenders" to "blasters" I assume FF defenders and Kin defenders should be considered equal representatives. Because if they are not, then there is an intra-archetype balance problem to solve that has nothing to do with blasters.

Having made that assumption, I then realize its really hard to compare an FF defender to a blaster, because the blaster has nothing to compare even remotely to an FF defender. But its at least not crazy to compare the offensive power of a kin or a rad to a blaster, so I compare them so see how the archetypes compare, using Blaster-ish criteria.

I then use Kins and Rads as a form of "pivot point" around which both archetypes are balanced. If the "offensive" defenders can be balanced against blasters (which is itself a subject of massive debate), then they can go back to defenders as "representatives" of the archetype balance model, and then the defenders can be balanced among themselves using more Defender-ish criteria.

Doing anything else is probably going to stall. You really can't compare a Fire blaster to an FF defender in a meaningful way directly, because there isn't a convenient way to normalize the benefits of the two around something you can quantitatively compare. Basically, you can't compare apples and oranges, but sometimes you can compare apples to apple juice and oranges to orange juice, and then you're left with the simpler problem of comparing apple juice to orange juice.

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That's why I think you're reading way too deeply into the dilemma. By and large most of the Defender and Blaster powersets have not changed much since release. And most of the Corruptor sets are the same as well.

Someone sat down and hammered out AT modifiers and the final decision was to have Blasters at scale 1, Corruptors at scale .75, and Defenders at .65. Now I could be wrong, cause I simply don't remember that far back, but weren't these modifiers different at one point, like before we had Corruptors? it's neither here nor there, just a question for my own edification.

Since the powersets by and large haven't changed much you can't really use them as reasons why this original balance shouldn't be maintained. Blasters were always fragile, Defenders always had buffs and debuffs, and the modifiers were set accordingly. Since then we've had a number of changes to the game. GDN made a lot of buffs and debuffs significantly less powerful, and ED along with changes to HOs cut all AT's damage output by as much as 66%. And to top it all off, critters were given more hit points, stronger attacks, a multitude of mez abilities, and an improved AI that makes them marginally smarter and less likely to herd together like sheep.

In return all ATs got "inherent" abilities. Tankers got Gauntlet to improve aggro control, Blasters, Corruptors, Controllers, Dominators, Masterminds, Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Kheldians all got some kind of damage buff, and Defenders got Vigilance for an endurance discount while teaming. That's 9 out of 11 that all got an inherent damage buff.

Controllers, who used to be the weakest AT hero-side (at least until they got their pet) were now doing double damage and were no longer squishy from 1-32. But what did Defenders get? They got reductions in their buffs and debuffs in GDN, they got 50% reduction in damage due to ED, and an inherent ability that rewards you for being a bad Defender. Defenders, who were once only marginally weaker than Blasters, were now suddenly the absolute weakest AT in the game in terms of damage potential.

And though datamining is useful, like all statistics what you get out depends upon what you put in. And even so, numbers can only tell you so much. Datamining said that Blasters were slower at leveling than Defenders. But did it tell us why? We can assume it's because they die more often and have more debt. But do they die more often because they are genuinely more "fragile" than other ATs or because of the reckless nature in which many Blasters are played? Is it due to them trying to get the most out of the old version of Defiance, which had entire fleets of Blasters running around with 10% health and not wanting to be healed? Is it because Blasters, who are very effective soloists, would often attempt fighting things much higher than they should? Or maybe it's from the overabundance of foe status effects leading to "death by permamez"? We were never told EXACTLY what the datamining revealed, other than "blasters are the slowest at leveling". I had asked many times for additional information in the proposed Defiance thread. I never got an answer. If Castle knows the exact reason, he's not sharing it. And without knowing the exact reason as to why Blasters are leveling more slowly than other ATs you simply can't assume it's because they aren't doing enough damage, even if that's how the he chose to address the issue.

I also have to wonder what datamining would reveal if you compared the leveling speed of Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders only while soloing, as well as comparing their respective difficulty settings when doing so.

The evolution of the game has forced most Defenders to be team players only. In that role, many are well protected from death, earn nice amounts of XP, and provide valuable assistance to the team. When you're on a team with Tanks, Blasters, Scrappers, and Controllers, the last thing a Defender needs to worry about is contributing damage -- focus on your buffs and debuffs, blast a little in between if you have the opportunity, and have fun.

So of course Defenders are going to look all rosy and wonderful in datamining, because the game has forced them into a single role, one at which they just happen to excel.

The picture starts to fall apart when a Defender tries play something other than the team buffer/debuffer, and I outlined this in my previous post. Despite all their buffs and debuffs Defenders do not have the damage potential nor endurance capacity to efficiently solo.

Ironically, of all the Defenders I have, the one that is best at soloing (and this is not to say she's actually fun to solo, merely less painful than others) is my Empathy/Sonic. Regeneration and Healing Auras take care of damage mitigation while Recovery Aura and Sonic's inherent resistance debuffs boost damage output and allows her to keep attacking long after other Defenders would have run dry. And her only pool powers besides travel is Hasten. She doesn't even have Stamina.

On the flip side the most difficult Defender soloist I have is a Storm/Electricity. While Storm has some of the most effective powers in the game, they come at a very high end cost. With no self heal, very situational debuffs, and very expensive toggles, she simply cannot do enough damage fast enough to defeat foes without dying or running out of endurance. And this is with 3-slotted Stamina and all attacks slotted 1 accy/3 damage/1 end redux. If she uses her debuffs she survives, but runs out of endurance before she can defeat the entire spawn. If she doesn't use her debuffs she barely has enough endurance to defeat the spawn, but will take massive amounts of damage and frequently die.

Most of my other Defenders are somewhere in between.

But the FF Defender is somewhat unique as far as Defenders go. With 4/9 powers that are extremely team-unfriendly, the FFer doesn't really have much Defending to do other than running a toggle and recasting shields every 4 minutes. This leaves them with not much else to do but blast. And this causes a few problems. First off, since FF is proactive instead of reactive, most teammates will never fully appreciate how effective your buffs really are. They often assume they just have a really good team, or a really good tank, or a really good healer, etc. Since you have nothing else to bring to the party as a Defender, you're oftentimes seen as a slacker -- a Defender who is doing nothing but blasting. And then the team leader thinks to himself, hey, all this guy is doing is blasting, not defending, and hell, since we're doing so well why do we him at all? I can replace him with a real Blaster and we'll be even better...

And don't tell me it doesn't happen, cause it's happened to me many times. Strike 1.

The flip side of this same coin is another downside to FF -- since you don't have any useful Defender abilities other than your 3 bubbles there isn't much else for you to do but blast. And even though your bubbles are very effective at protecting the team, you often don't FEEL very like a very good Defender. If the team gets into trouble there is nothing you can do to protect them other than what you've already given them. There is nothing left for you to "pull out of your hat" like other Defenders and Controllers can, so you keep blasting. Fighting an AV? Where other Defenders would start spamming their heals and debuffs, you, um, blast... since again, there is nothing else you can do. It very quickly makes you feel inferior to other Defenders, even though your abilities are oftentimes significantly superior. Strike 2.

And on to blasting. We have already established that the Defender is by far the absolute worst damage-dealing AT in the game (though Stalkers are a close 2nd, but that's a debate for another place and time). After being nerfed to hell and back by GDN, ED, and a sub-par inherent, my Grandma can do more damage with her walker. And while most Defenders are often too busy Defending to be blasting, the FFer is again the odd man out. And again, you are both seen as and feel sub-par because of it. Even fully slotted your attacks do pitiful amounts of damage, especially if you're fighting foes that are +3, +4, or even higher, which your bubbles very often allow a team to do. I often resort to only attacking foes that are already low on health or nearly dead, as some twisted way of feeling like I'm being useful while attacking, cause I know that if I choose a target with full health it can easily take a dozen or more consecutive attacks for me to defeat him. And that's not a good feeling. That's a very un-fun feeling. A very unsatisfying feeling. Strike 3.

There are really two very separate issues here, one is with Defenders themselves -- the imbalance of the AT damage modifier, their inability to effectively solo, and the ineffectiveness of Vigilance.

The other is with the Force Field set with its bevy of powers that can't be used on teams, its complete lack of debuffs in an environment where debuffs are often *required* to defeat foes, and its absolute binary nature -- shields on, shields off, shields on, shields off -- and nothing in between. And these issue are only magnified by the problems with the Defender AT itself.

If Defenders had a much higher (or even truly proportional) damage modifier and an inherent that always provided you with a meaningful endurance discount regardless of your powerset or team size, you'd be better able to solo enjoyably, which in turn makes all those previously unusable powers much more appealing. More damage means you'll defeat foes faster, and more endurance means less downtime and an overall improved soloing pace leading to a much more rewarding experience.

And things look just as good from a team perspective. Since most Defenders on teams spend the majority of their time Defending instead of blasting, the increased damage won't significantly alter game play or balance. An improved Vigilance allows all Defenders to be more effective, not just the reactive ones. And unique sets like FF will no longer feel inferior. Not only will your blasts do more damage and convey a much stronger feeling of positive contribution, but now that you're an able soloist you probably have powers like Repulsion Bomb, Detention Field, and/or Repulsion Field, which although cannot be used 99% of the time on a team, are excellent "oh crap" powers that can help turn the tide of a battle going badly. The FFer feels better because they are contributing more than just bubbles and a trivial amount of damage, and teammates can see how useful an FFer can be when the chips are down and the **** is about to hit the fan. Everyone goes home happy.

Now this is not to say that improving the Force Field powers themselves is not also a good idea the devs should seriously explore. Powers should be just as useful on teams as they are solo. With the greater emphasis and structure geared towards teaming, there simply should be NO powers in ANY set in ANY AT that is counterproductive to team play. Any power that works well on a team will also work well solo. The converse is unfortunately is not the case.

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So while Blasters are doing, on average, 120% damage and Corruptors are doing 85% damage, Defenders are still stuck at 65%. And I'll tell ya, just play a Defender and you know the damage is absolutely pathetic, even compared to a Corruptor who is supposed to be only 10% more. There is something very wrong here.

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Given that defenders have very strong ally buffs, how much damage do you think defenders should do, relative to blasters? Some of those buffs are very high: Enervating field is a -30% resistance debuff on the targets, which is effectively 30% more damage. 30% true increase, not +30% damage buff. So if a blaster is 1.125, and slotted to 1.125 * 1.95 = 2.19, or defiance buffed to a constant +50% damage (the high end) of 1.125 * (1.95 + 0.5) = 2.76, then defender damage is 0.65 * 1.95 = 1.27, or with something like an EF debuff 0.65 * 1.95 * 1.3 = 1.65. If we stop right there, and do not factor in other damage buffs like AM, we end up with average blaster damage being in the range of 2.76/1.65 = 1.67; the blaster is doing 67% more damage.

Is that already too high when comparing an archetype that specializes in dealing damage with the archetype that does not specialize in doing damage, but does specialize in ally buffs? Defenders are also, in the general case, a lot less squishy than blasters are: even with lower health, they have a lot of damage mitigation relative to the average blaster. How does that factor in?

Actually, I made this spreadsheet of exactly these types of numbers back in I11 beta. It seemed to show that if you compare blaster damage and damage mitigation to everyone else, the blaster ratio was lower than everyone else if you make the simplifying assumption that blasters as an archetype have no more offensive damage mitigation (damage mitigation effects intrinsic in their offensive damage powersets) than any other archetype. This included defenders.

That doesn't mean there isn't anything wrong with defenders, just that comparing them to blasters is probably the worst possible comparison to make. Datamining showed that when placed in the hands of average players, blasters levelled much slower than everyone else, including defenders. That combined with the damage/mitigation archetypal ratios suggest that blasters do not have a special advantage in combined damage/defense capability over defenders.

Blasters certainly kill a whole lot faster. But they seem to pay for that in the general case by being a whole lot more fragile.

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I just knew if I started talking numbers I'd get you to come out of hiding!

The problem with factoring in primary powers when seeking to balance secondary powers and vice versa is that not all of the complementing sets are created equal. A Rad/Rad Defender is certainly going to do a lot more damage than an Empathy/Rad or FF/Rad Defender would. It's simply the nature of the beast. But not all Defenders have a -resistance ability to help them do more damage. And even the secondaries themselves play a role. Radiation is full of def debuffs, meaning you're going to hit more often, doing more damage overall. Sonic has stackable resistance debuffs that allow you to do more damage as well when compared to Energy, Electric, Psionic, and Dark, none of which have any debuffs that alter damage.

But this same reasoning can also be used with Blasters too. Fire/Fire Blasters are notorious for their damage output, whereas Assault Rifle/Devices are notorious for their lack of overall damage. So when trying to balance Blasters, do you factor in Build Up? Aim? BU + Aim? What about those Blasters that don't get BU? Or those that don't take it?

Honestly, since individual powers are not balanced by their secondary effects (sonic attacks have the same damage/sec and damage/end ratios as any other sets, even though they can do more damage because of the resistance debuffs), I don't think ATs should be balanced that way either. You really should be looking at the lowest common denominator and balancing around that, and ignoring any specialized abilities that aren't inherent to every member of that AT.

If Defenders are supposed do 65% of the damage a Blaster does, that 65% should be based upon the true amount of damage a blaster does, not simply the base damage. Since every single Blaster, regardless of sets and power choices, gets roughly the same damage buff from Defiance, then that buff should be considered when balancing the "base" damage of other ATs. This is especially important because other buffs and debuffs are balanced by the same formula as damage, which gets completely skewed in favor of Blasters and Corruptors because of their damage buff inherents.

This imbalance is not unlike what was recently done to Controller ancillary powers. When the ancillaries were first created there were no AT inherent abilities, so their damage was balanced to the appropriate modifier at the time. But this balance was lost once Controllers got Containment, allowing them to do double damage on any mezzed foe. Now you had Controllers throwing fireballs that could do at least 50% more damage than a Blaster's fireball. And we all know that is not right. And the ancillaries were eventually re-balanced, taking Containment into consideration.

The damage scaling imbalance between Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders is no different. The balance is supposed to be 1.0, .75, .65. Right now it's more like 1.2, .90, .65, or 1.0, .75, .54 when normalized. If this is indeed what the devs intend to keep as the "new" AT modifers, then the other buff/debuff tables should be modified as well, so that Corruptor buffs and debuffs are .72 of Defender values, not .87. And Blaster debuffs are .54 of Defender values, not .65. Why should the Defender get both less damage AND lower proportional buffs? That's no more right than allowing Controller fireballs to out damage Blaster's.

And as a personal aside, I enjoy both team play as well as solo play. And in my own experience I find soloing with Controllers and Corruptors to be much more enjoyable than any of my Defenders (and I have nearly one of each primary). While my Trollers and Corruptors can solo missions on the base or +1 difficulty settings at a reasonable and rewarding pace, all of my Defenders struggle to solo on heroic. I can do it, sure, but it's no FUN. It's slow and laborious, and the lack of comparable damage to other ATs is PAINFULLY apparent.

And let's face it, even that Rad Defender with his 30% resistance debuff is STILL going to less damage than a Corruptor without any resistance debuffs, and a helluva lot less than one with a resistance debuff. And while debuffs are all well and good, they still take both time and endurance to apply. Tohit debuffs, knockback, slows, disorients, defense buffs, etc. only reduce the incoming damage, they don't improve the speed at which you defeat your opponents, nor reduce the amount of endurance needed either. Defense debuffs only work to a certain degree, and in many cases don't improve kill speed for the solo Defender because they are already over the accuracy cap with one accuracy SO. So you're left with only two abilities, resistance debuffs and damage buffs, that actually help the soloist kill faster. The problem is that for the Defender, faster does not mean more efficiently.

Now it would be nice if all Defender sets got one or other other, but they don't. Empathy and FF have neither a self damage buff nor a foe resistance debuff. And even amongst the sets that do have them, they are all of varying degrees of effectiveness, endurance cost, area of effect, and duration.

The very best of them, Freezing Rain, provides a 35% AoE resistance debuff that lasts for 15 seconds, can't be made perm-able even with Hasten, and costs nearly 1/5 of a Defender's total endurance to cast. And as I pointed out earlier, that 35% resistance debuff barely brings Defender damage up to Corruptor damage, and requires a lot more endurance to do it.

And that is yet another area where the solo Defender falls flat on his or her face. They simply do not have enough endurance, even with 3 slotted Stamina and endurance reduction SOs in all toggles and attacks, to be able to efficiently defeat even level foes. Remember that Vigilance does absolutely nothing for the solo Defender. Let's also remember that while a Defender is doing 54% of a Blaster's damage, they still use exactly the same amount of endurance per attack. So the Defender needs to use twice as many attacks and burns thru twice the endurance per foe as a Blaster does. Even when you factor in the extra damage that a resistance debuff or damage buff might give you, the extra damage dealt is offset by the extra endurance needed to fuel the debuff. So while you'll likely defeat foes faster, you'll require more rest between mobs to recover enough endurance before moving on to the next spawn.

No matter how you slice and dice it, soloing a Defender is a slow and tortuous experience. With significantly less proportional damage than other ATs and an inherent ability that has the potential to alleviate some of the difficulties but simply doesn't, you're getting hit badly from two sides.

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FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets.

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Yet ANOTHER one of my impassioned FF "speeches" from another thread for your enjoyment. Damn I'm one heck of a bloviator! This thread was about the "usefulness of Vigilance", and UberGuy Didn't think it was particularly useful...

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Vigilance truly lets the FFer be "always vigilant". Vigilance lets FFers be more than a buffbot, it allows them to attack freely, knowing that they will have the endurance that they need to turn the tide of the battle when things get rough.

That is the power of Vigilance.

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A power that most FFers never get to use. Like you said, no FFer in his right mind is going to be using Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, or Force Bubble on a large team as they are 100% counterproductive. So you're going to have on Dispersion Bubble, perhaps Maneuvers and Tactics, throwing bubbles on your teammates every 4 minutes and blasting in between. Such is the life of a typical FFer on a team.

But because all that +def is stopping your teammates from taking damage, their health never drops. And if their health never drops you get NOTHING from Vigilance. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. And if you were silly enough to use any of your other toggles (assuming you were silly enough to take them in the first place) it would only make the matter worse, as all that scattering prevents foes from doing damage, and once they are able to attack again they are going to come for YOU. And there is no Vigilance to be had based on YOUR health, only the health of your teammates.

This is why I said it's better to be a sucky FF Defender who slots up all his attacks instead of his defenses. It's the only way the team is going to take enough damage for you to get any benefit out of Vigilance.

If you were to 3 slot Deflection/Insulation Shields, Dispersion Bubble, and Maneuvers with defense SOs your teammates just about hit the 45% soft cap on defense, meaning they are going to take little to no damage from anything short of an EB or maybe a high level boss (and in such situations it's usually the tank taking damage, not the whole team). If the team doesn't take any damage, you get NOTHING from Vigilance.

Now if you were to just slot up Dispersion Bubble for defense and left the other powers at base values you'd be giving your teammates only 34% defense, which will allow them to take much more damage. And once your team starts taking damage is when you start seeing the power of Vigilance.

And that, IMO, is [censored] up. I shouldn't have to purposely nerf my primary powers so that I can take advantage of my AT's inherent ability. But that's exactly what you have to do to get any benefit from Vigilance as an FF Defender.


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And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage

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Huh. Just tonight I was fighting CoT in the Portal Corp parking lot. A Willpower/Mace tanker was fighting near me. We both attacked one of those "twin spawns" of Death Mages, you know, the ones where there's two Death Mages facing each other? Anyways, we both each attacked one of them. I had mine down a full minute before he had his down. I ran over to him and did an /emote sit, laughing at him while he was still attacking his mage.

I think Defenders, even FF Defenders can do pretty damn good damage, if you build for it....

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Well you're comparing apples and oranges. For starters, Mace tanks certainly are not known for their damage, and you have no way of knowing how this tank was built. He very well could have been built for tanking, not damage, whereas most FF Defenders are built for damage, not Defending.

Also, Death Mages have that ridiculously overpowered Chill of the Night PbAoE tohit debuff -- something that in combination with the tohit debuffs of his dark attacks could easily floor that tank's accuracy. Being a ranged attacker, CotN would have no effect on you unless you got into melee range, which I'm guessing you didn't do.

And you also don't mention what your secondary set is. Not all secondaries are created equal, and some are well known to do a lot more burst damage than others, something that makes taking out a boss a lot easier.

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I've always thought the exact opposite. I picture force fields as being very solid; as solid as a steel wall would feel.

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I personally think of Jade Dragon's power (my main FF Defender) as being very "soft". Rather than making bubbles around people, he instead has a field of vaporous energy that he can expand into a cloud. Which is why I never took the ally bubbles until I was well into my 30s. Not just because I was always solo, but also because I saw his force fields as being "diffuse".

I'm the exception, though, not the rule. When I think of Force Fields in general, I think of "walls" of energy. They don't gently push you out of them, it's like hitting a steel wall. Or that's the concept, at least. They can't really be that solid, you can attack through them. (Maybe they open up "windows" to let punches or shots out, but not to let them in)

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This is why I see a disorient effect as being in-line with Force Bolt; a bolt of force, projected at high speesd would easily disorient you if the bolt was solid enough.

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Being hit in the head with a sphere or cylinder of force as hard as steel would definately daze you.

I see the disorient as being more getting knocked around and not quite knowing where you are. You take a second to get back your bearings.

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Well personally I think force fields can go both ways. You can create a large, softer bubble (like Dispersion Field), a small, much harder bubble (like PFF) or very small but rock solid balls of force (like Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb). They are all just variations of the same ability, used in different ways to achieve different effects.

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....

I think the reason that FF has gone so long with so many stinkers in the set is because the 4 powers that are good are REALLY good. And there are a ton of FF Defenders with just those 4 powers who prove it every day. The problem isn't that the set on the whole is underperforming, it's that it's BORING. You're basically an underpowered Blaster that has to stop blasting every 4 minutes to re-apply bubbles. Then it's back to blasting.

So where other Defenders can do cool things with all their nifty powers like Tar Patch, Speed Boost, Hurricane, and Oil Slick Arrow (just to mention a few), all you get to do is cast bubbles every 4 minutes, over and over and over again. Are the bubbles very effective? Sure are. But is the set fun and interesting to play? Uh, nope. Does it give you fun and nifty powers to use that make you feel like you're contributing in every battle (besides the trivial amount of damage your secondaries do)? Nuh-uh. Anything to help take the sting out of fighting EBs, AVs, or GMs? Not a single thing.

And that's the biggest problem with FF. There simply isn't enough meat in the set to keep it interesting and fun to play.

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Good post Poobah.. again. This is probably the longest post that has actually kept me interested the entire time. Thank God we have you to balance out the MagicJ-ackass (Hey! I figured out what the "j" stands for!).

I'll admit that I loved being able to blast as much as I did with my bubbler, but the truth is, after trying more active sets, like TA or Storm, FF felt boring.

Instead of having 4 or 5 cool primary powers to use in conjunction with my 4-6 blast powers, I had a toggle, 2 primaries, and 4 blasts to fill my time with. The two primaries only got use every 4 minutes as well.

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Thanks. Glad to know that someone took the time to read it considering how long it took to write

Another downfall of the FF set that really hasn't been mentioned is the Defender power Vigilance. FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets. Being a proactive instead of reactive set means we stop the team from taking damage instead of trying to heal them up later. Well if the team isn't taking damage, then we get zippo from Vigilance.

Basically, the better you are at providing +def to your team, the less of an endurance discount your going to get. So in essence, FFers that slot up Deflection and Insulation Shields, Dispersion Bubble and Maneuvers at the expense of slotting up their attacks get *penalized* for being really good Defenders. Kinda stupid, right?

You're better off slotting up only Dispersion Bubble for your own defense and then focus on your attacks, since that's what you'll be doing most of the time anyway. This way the team takes a moderate amount of damage and you can easily get a 40-50% endurance reduction buff from Vigilance, simply by being a sucky Defender. Dumb... just dumb.

A better way IMO would be to base Vigilance off the number of foes around you instead of the health of your teammates. The more foes within, say, a 100 ft radius of you, the more of an endurance discount you get. This gives you a big discount at the beginning of a battle, which then gradually decreases as the foes are defeated and the threat lessens. And if by chance an unexpected ambush shows up, then whammo, your discount shoots up again, giving you the extra oomph to recast bubbles, heal, debuff, attack, etc.

This way every Defender gets the same amount of Vigilance regardless of whether they have a reactive or proactive set, are slotted to be good Defenders or good attackers, good team or bad team.

And it would be nice if the solo defender gets something out of his inherent as well. Though you might not get much of a discount from the 2-3 foes in your average solo spawn, if you accidentally aggro another spawn or have multiple spawns close to one another it would definitely help pull you thru considering the pathetic amounts of damage a Defender does. As it stands now, the solo Defender gets NOTHING from Vigilance.

And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage, something else occurred to me. In the grand scheme of things Corruptors get 75% of Blaster damage and Defenders get 65%. And any talk of increasing Defender damage always gets derailed cause of this "balance", cause if you give Defenders more damage, then they encroach upon Corruptor damage levels, so you'd have to give them a boost, which puts them too close to Blaster level, yadda yadda yadda...

But here's the problem with this line of thinking. Both Corruptors and Blasters have inherent abilities that buff their damage output by a significant amount. So while a Corrupter's base damage is 75% of a Blaster's, it's probably closer to 85% once you factor in Scourge. And we all know that with Defiance, even Blasters don't do Blaster level damage, it's more like 120% on average. And these aren't bullsh*t numbers. I'm sure Castle could give us the exact percentages on average from datamining, and I'm sure even Arcanaville could run the numbers and generate some pretty accurate statistical figures. But I'm betting they'd be pretty damned close to mine, if not even higher.

So while Blasters are doing, on average, 120% damage and Corruptors are doing 85% damage, Defenders are still stuck at 65%. And I'll tell ya, just play a Defender and you know the damage is absolutely pathetic, even compared to a Corruptor who is supposed to be only 10% more. There is something very wrong here.

If you're going to scale damage by AT you should be factoring in the effects of inherent damage buffs, otherwise the scaling is simply not proportional, accurate, or even fair, especially when you consider the scaling of buffs and debuffs across ATs aren't affected by any of the inherents.

For example, a Corruptor's Radiant Aura will do 87% of what a Defender's RA will do. In turn, a Defender's Neutrino Bolt will do 87% of what a Corruptor's NB will do. Sounds fair, right? But wait, Corruptors get Scourge, which can increase their overall damage by at least 10% or more over time, putting the Defender not at 87% of Corruptor damage, but more like 75%. Well hell, that ain't fair at all. Defenders really get shafted.

And the picture is far worse when you look at Blasters. With an average 20% buff from Defiance the Defender isn't doing 65% of Blaster damage, only 54% -- almost HALF. But not so when it comes to debuffs -- Blasters still get 65% of Defender values. So the Defender gets shafted again.

So while the game's buffs and debuffs are accurately proportional across ATs, damage most certainly is NOT, and the Defender suffers badly in both directions.

So not only do we get a highly inconsistent, imbalanced inherent, but we also do significantly less proportional damage with absolutely nothing to make up for it.

Frankly, it's [censored] up. Defenders are by and large my favorite AT, but they've become so weak and annoying to play that most of mine have been shelved indefinitely. I think it's high time the AT damage scale is rebalanced and Vigilance turned into something useful for all Defenders regardless of set or team size. Cause the way it is now, Defenders are getting nothing but the short end of the stick.

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I'd take a whole lot of time reading all the posts on this topic so I'll just add my two cents. I have a 50 FF Defender which I would love getting some improvement..

PFF: no changes.

Dispersion, Insulation Shields: make the cast times and recharges the same as sonic rings would be too much? I feel that bubbling many people in a team is a slow process, at least slower than applying sonic rings on them.

Detention Field: Even with the changes to the bubble effect, it's not as noticeable as the new Sonic Cage (which is really flashy and can really tell the enemy is "caged"). So my only suggestion here is just to make the effect noticeable - for good.

Force Bolt: Fine as it is. No disorient, please! It's a force field, not a rock. It *pushes* you, not *hits* you. It does almost no damage for that reason. Disorienting is moving away from the concept of the power.

Dispersion Bubble: I'd love to have Sleep protection on it but I see it's unlikely (yet I'll mention it, anyway :P).

Repulsion Field: It's fine as it is. I would *not* like to see it changed from KB to KD, for the simple reason it's a player-based repel (the Defender being the center of the effect), and since it's going to repel the enemy away, it is *supposed* to do knockback, not knockdown. If the power were supposed to knock down, the effect would have to come from below (the ground), like Ice Patch does. It's not the case with RF.

However, if I were to add something ELSE to Repulsion Field, I'd add a small resistance to the caster. As it is a repelling effect, you can imagine a material object, like a sword, slashing through it. The repelling effect from the power would reduce the speed/strength of the attack being applied, and reduce its damage. Of course, it would be applied to everything else, melee, ranged or area, even elementals (i.e., fire blasts can be slightly dissipated when hitting the force field thus decreasing its damaging effect, same with energy, and so on), but certain damage could not be resisted that way. Intangible types, for that matter, like psionic damage, since Repulsion Field repels material things.

Repulsion Bomb: I don't have any experience with this power, but I'd suggest the same resistance effect with RF, applied to the ally instead. I don't understand why it does disorient, concept-wise. If, allegedly, knocking someone back can stun them (I don't think it could, if you ask me), then by all means do it. But again, it's a force field, not a rock...

Force Bubble: I'd add Defense to everyone (allies) inside it. Let's say an enemy shoots something from outside the bubble, as the thing (a bullet, a fire ball, whatever) hits the bubble and gets deflected during that moment, having a chance of missing the target.

I am indeed thinking a lot about the concept of the power rather than anything else. That's why I don't suggest Force Bubble debuffing the enemy (i.e., -damage, as someone suggested on this topic). Force Fields are supposed to protect the team, it's not a debuff set, although you can already achieve similar results (it can decrease the -acc of the enemies by improving the allies -def) but it is just consequences of having buffs by one side (which will "debuff" the other).

Now if I didn't think of the power concept, OBVIOUSLY I'd suggest Repulsion Bomb to do KD and 100% stun, Force Bolt with stun etc etc. But it would be one effect the power, visually, isn't meant to do. That way of thinking can make the suggestions actually coherent.

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Well I do find your comments interesting.

First off, FF and Sonic shields have the same end cost, duration, and recharge time. The only difference is the cast time. Sonic is 1.33 seconds vs. FF which is 2.07. Personally I think they should both be shortened to 1 sec and be done with it. It can be really hard to get a full team of 7 people to stand still long enough to cast 14 shields @ 2 seconds per shield. But this is neither here nor there, FF has a lot more problems than this.

I am a bit perplexed by your comments about repulsion bomb and force bolt, and why you feel they shouldn't have disorients. I guess you could argue the "real life" applications, but since we have no way of knowing for sure if you'd be dazed and disoriented if a large bolt of force plowed into, hurling you across the room, we can only speculate.

Now from first-hand experience I've been hit with a number of objects over the years that have knocked me off my feet and left me dazed or disoriented (like that soccer ball to the face in college, and that unfortunate incident with an old 70s telephone...), without causing serious injury (very minor damage, in game terms), so it's not completely out there as a concept. Force Bolt may not be a rock, but it IS a big ball of force. And I think getting hit with something like that *could* possibly leave one disoriented.

But then you gotta ask, what makes Force Bolt so different from the Nemesis Staff? Identical animation; both big balls of force, so why does one knockback and do lots of damage, but the other knockback with very little damage? The answer is "just cause that's the way it was designed".

And think of Repulsion Bomb like a stun grenade -- they're not designed to hurt you, just daze and disorient you. RB is not really any different from Super Strength/Hand Clap except that it's ranged instead of PbAoE. And just so you know, the in-game text has been wrong for years. RB was originally a teammate-targeted power, but was changed to foe-targeted a number of years ago. The in-game text, unfortunately, was never changed. So I can completely conceptualize the idea of a big ball of exploding force that knocks you down and dazes you. Again, completely logical IMO.

And I don't think anyone suggested changing Repulsion Field from KB to KD. That I think is the one thing that would actually make the power worse than it already is. At a minimum I would like it to perform on par with Kinetics/Repel, as the two powers do exactly the same thing. But Repel is available at lvl 2 and has a cast time of 1.07 seconds, while RF is available at 18 and has a cast time of 2.03. It also KBs in long pulses; foes often can get right up next to you and launch a melee attack between pulses. I've never seen that happen with Repel, as the KB seems instantaneous. If two powers are virtually identical in form and function they should be available roughly at the same level. Repel is superior to RF simply because it has no pulses. Yet it's a tier 3 power, where RF is tier 7. And honestly, I don't know too many Kins that take Repel either. It suffers from the same issues as RF does -- uncontrolled 360 degree knockback is counterproductive 99% of the time, that 1% being an "oh crap" moment. And because it's PbAoE, all the aggro it generates is right on you.

Honestly I don't like the power any more than I like Repel, and I'm willing to accept that, as nearly every set in every AT has at least one stinker of a power the majority considers undesirable. The problem is that FF has 5 stinkers where most sets only have 1.

I came up with a few workable ideas to enhance Repulsion Field that I think would be of varying improvements over what we have now, but it's gonna be a hard sell to make any radical changes to these powers, even if you can keep within Castle's "core function" limitation.

Detention Field is just another one of those stinker powers that most people simply just skip because they are counterproductive on large teams. Remember, these powers were designed almost 4 years ago, and the game was a lot different at release than it is now. Characters had a lot more protection and did a lot more damage, and teaming wasn't nearly as necessary as it is now, especially for the "weaker" ATs.

These cage powers are great for soloists, but the game just isn't really solo-friendly anymore. Jack somehow got it into his thick skull that forcing people to team would build people's social interaction with others, which in turn would keep them playing. Though not readily acknowledged, this rather draconian concept is what inevitably led to the global defense nerf (GDN) and enhancement diversification (ED). After trying numerous gimmicks and tricks to persuade people to team (like increasing XP on teams and halving debt in instanced missions), he finally just nerfed the hell outta everyone so they no longer had much of a choice.

Although I think virtually every character now *can* solo (with a few notable exceptions), for many it's a slow boring grind -- and exactly the way Jack wanted it.

Ok, I digressed a little, but there was a point to all that. Many powers were designed to be useful for the soloist, cage powers being among them. But since soloing, especially for the Defender, is pretty much an excruciating experience, these powers simply are no longer useful for most players, and are almost universally skipped. It's not necessarily because they are badly-designed powers in and of themselves, it's because the game has evolved (or devolved, take your pick) to a point where they have no utility based upon the way the majority play. Yes, I think there is some room for minor improvements to make cage powers better for those that do use them, but to make them appealing and useful to the majority requires at least a moderate overhaul -- and again, that's unlikely to happen.

Force Bubble is a completely different beast tho. This is the one that completely baffles me. There is no other power in the game like it at all; it is completely unique. The only other power in the game with a repel is Mind Control/Telekinesis, which also contains a hold and is actually quite useful. So unlike Detention Field, which is essentially like all other cage powers; Repulsion Bomb, which is similar to Hand Clap and its relatives; Force Bolt, which calls Power Push a cousin; and Repulsion Field, the red-headed stepchild of Repel, Force Bubble is like no other. Which makes its sheer and utter uselessness even more bewildering.

I mean, compare FB to the other Defender tier 9 powers. None of them you'd even consider skipping. FB is the only one that is universally reviled. Why? For exactly the same reasons no one like Repulsion Bomb and Repulsion Field -- all it does is scatter the mobs, pushes them away from the aggro controllers, and directs all their attacks on YOU. Oh, and let's not forget, like the 3 powers in the set that do nothing but (or little more than) knockback, there are too many foes that will simply ignore the repel, making the power completely useless cause that's all it does.

Now from my point of view I see Force Bubble as just that -- a giant sphere of outward-pushing force. The closest approximation in real life I can think of would be a wind tunnel. If the force exerted by the wind is so strong that you cannot move forward and all attempts to move forward simply push you back (repel) then it's logical that any physical projectiles, whether they be matter or energy, are also going to be slowed by the outward force, either not making to the target (-range) or having a reduced effect once they get there (-damage). It is also logical that your ability to accurately aim your weapon will be diminished, as the outward force could cause your projectile to alter course, missing the mark (-tohit).

Now in the event you were actually strong enough to move forward in the wind tunnel, chances are it will require great effort (-recovery/-regeneration), and be very slow going (-speed). Any kind of physical acrobatics would be impossible as you're hard pressed to just stay on your feet as it is (-fly, -jump). And since your movement rate and agility is so hampered by the force of the wind, you're a lot easier to hit (-def). You could also say that any projectiles traveling in the same direction as the wind are going to be accelerated, and consequently do more damage (-resistance). All of this would of course be in addition to all the detriments you'd suffer by just being at the edge of the wind tunnel (-range, -damage, -tohit).

Another way of visualizing Force Bubble would be like a giant ball of Jell-0™ brand gelatin dessert (only without the Cos). Most would never be able to enter the ball at all, and trying to shoot projectiles into the ball would prove difficult and highly inaccurate. And if you were strong enough to actually fight your way thru the goo, you're going to be moving very slowly, with very little agility, and expending a lot of energy to do it.

Either way you look at it, Force Bubble should be doing a lot more than simply pushing foes away from you. Any foe at the edge of the bubble should have their attacks severely debuffed in terms of range and damage (and though there should be a -tohit like in beta, -tohit is in essence +def, and I really don't think the set needs any more +def than it already has). And any foe that is strong enough to enter the bubble should have the rest of debuff library placed on them, as the bubble's force should not be binary (either you can enter or you can't), but should be constantly applying pressure to foes that are able to move through it.

Yes it's a lot of debuffs for one power to have, but here's the key to making it work without being overpowered -- the lesser debuffs like -range and -damage are only applied to those foes that can't enter the bubble, while the greater debuffs like -speed, -regen, -def, etc. are only applied to the stronger foes that resist the repel effect, mostly EBs, AVs, and GMs. This makes the power less effective against weaker foes, and more effective against harder foes, keeping things balanced. It's a lot like the changes Castle just made to Stalker's Assassin Strike. If nothing else, this would make the power a must-have for all FF Defenders, as it would be the only power in the set with foe debuffs, and the only thing they can bring to the table when fighting difficult foes. Not to mention bringing it in line with other Defender tier-9 powers.

Hey, I can dream, can't I? Do I have any expectation of a change like this being implemented? Not a chance.

I think the reason that FF has gone so long with so many stinkers in the set is because the 4 powers that are good are REALLY good. And there are a ton of FF Defenders with just those 4 powers who prove it every day. The problem isn't that the set on the whole is underperforming, it's that it's BORING. You're basically an underpowered Blaster that has to stop blasting every 4 minutes to re-apply bubbles. Then it's back to blasting.

So where other Defenders can do cool things with all their nifty powers like Tar Patch, Speed Boost, Hurricane, and Oil Slick Arrow (just to mention a few), all you get to do is cast bubbles every 4 minutes, over and over and over again. Are the bubbles very effective? Sure are. But is the set fun and interesting to play? Uh, nope. Does it give you fun and nifty powers to use that make you feel like you're contributing in every battle (besides the trivial amount of damage your secondaries do)? Nuh-uh. Anything to help take the sting out of fighting EBs, AVs, or GMs? Not a single thing.

And that's the biggest problem with FF. There simply isn't enough meat in the set to keep it interesting and fun to play.

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Just 2 days ago, after a few years of playing, I finally got the final FF power on my bubbler (I play lots of alts). I had been excited about this power for a long time, because its description sounds great. What a disappointment!

Based on the short in-game description, the EXPECTATION I had for this power was that it would push enemies away from me (as it does), and that it would continually knock them down along that perimiter -- similar to how ice slick knocks foes down. Instead, it just pushes them back and let's them all kill me!

Clearly the power is supposed to have a knock down component to it. Right now it appears to knock down enemies once every minute or two (I stood among a group of level 20 enemies for a while). It should CONTINUALLY knock them down.

That would put it in line with an ultimate power for FF, and would not be unbalanced because it would only knock down along a perimeter, and you'd have to manually navigate your bubble around to knock foes down (unlike ice slick which covers a static area that enemies can't leave).

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According to City of Data it does indeed have a knockdown component, but it's only a 1% chance. Having a toggle knockdown power with any real ability to KD foes would be way too powerful. The only thing even remotely close to it would be Choking Cloud, which has a 15' radius, 80% chance to hold a minion, 50% chance to hold an LT, and a whopping 4.16 end cost (Force Bubble has a 0.17 end cost).

But as you've noticed, using Force Bubble doesn't deter or stop foes from attacking you as MagicJ has stated (due to some cockamamie BS about how it changes the AI behavior), it just pisses them off and makes them all want to attack you after a quick switch to their ranged attacks. The only foes that you can effectively neuter are those without ranged attacks. And the number of critters in CoX without ranged attacks that aren't resistant to repel? About 6.

But it's good to see another eager young FF Defender completely disgusted with getting Force Bubble as their tier 9 power. You join the ranks of a very long list of Defenders who have experienced the same disgust over this crap of a power.

Just don't tell MagicJ, otherwise we'll be subjected to another 20 posts of "but you're just not using it right", or "well it works great on my Mind/FF troller, and here's a video to prove it", or "changing it by giving it debuffs or changing the size of the bubble would be a nerf cause then I couldn't effectively use it with geometry and my troller and mastermind won't be uber-soloists anymore".

Yeah, we really don't need any more of that nonsense.

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I'd be more than happy to leave this thread if we can get a red name to guarentee none of the changes that may come from this thread will ever see the light of day outside of the Defender AT.

I don't need +Pie on my Mind/FF and Bots/FF toons. I'm not asking for +Pie. I'm frankly more worried about getting nerfed by someone's great idea for an "improvement".

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So you don't even care about FF Defenders?

Great, thanks for the help.

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No, he's made that very clear from the beginning. No interest in making FF Defenders better, no interest in Defenders at all. The ONLY interest MagicJ has is for MagicJ, so that he can do his uber-solo Controller/Mastermind act. And he's convinced that any changes to the FF powers that actually make them useful for a Defender will spell ultimate DOOM! for his uber-soloist toons.

And that he will simply not stand for, no matter how many times he has to contradict himself and blather on nonsensically about game mechanics that only exist in his own mind.

To sum up MagicJ in one blurb (which I would hope will prevent further his further embarrassment by getting him to stop posting, but I'm not holding much hope on that): The FF powers work great on my Controller and Mastermind so I don't want them changed one bit, even if it means that 4/9 powers in the set are utterly useless to Defenders. And if you're an FF Defender who can't get these wonderful powers to work you're either not using them right, have the wrong secondary set, or should have rolled a Controller instead, cause well, Defenders just suck anyway. And no matter what ideas you come up with I'm going to call them either "terrible" or "cottage changes", cause I don't want the powers changed one bit, even if they do suck for Defenders.

Did I sum it all up nicely for you MagicJ? Now will you just [censored] and go troll another forum please?

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More quotes from Ex Libris in the Gather Around the Campfire" PvP Thread (but IMO applicable to any community effort to effect change)

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Here is my feedback... narrow down to your three top priorities and tell us exactly how you would like to see them designed for PvP, what elements to currently remove as they impede the game, and give suggestions on what things like "more maps" means. Give us examples of maps that already exists, or of things you think would be cool to see and a picture is worth a thousand words.

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*I am using the example of arena maps in the above suggestion.*

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Giving us your bug list is great, including steps to reproduce is even better. Giving us a huge list to pull out design changes from is a lot more difficult because we run the risk of releasing something you all don't like. If we are clear about what your "Magic Bullet" is for the collective group, we can work towards meeting that need.

Also keeping expectations realistic is helpful. Handing over a huge list and saying "when you fix this then we will be happy," that's tough especially in MMO development, because fixing one thing can often break something else. Design and implementation take time, and with us bringing on new team members a lot of effort is going to be placed on training new people on our engine and on how to use our tools.

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The way I read this is; Achieve agreement on a 3-point bullet list, or be ignored.

So, if this thread could move back to Defender issues with FF - which requires that we accept (and to a point ignore; this is about magicj) that there are other points of view, then we could perhaps get something done here.

* Steps back from thread again

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Not really necessary, as I have it on good authority this thread has been read from start to finish by a member of the dev team. Our voices have been heard. Whether or not anything gets changed... we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

Y'know, I was thinking. What if they changed Repulsion Bomb into something very similar to the Nemesis Staff v1? If memory serves correctly, the original Nemesis Staff temp power (not the vet temp, but the one you get from the Freakshow around lvl 30) did a nice chunk of AoE damage with an AoE knockback, but the radius was very small, maybe only 3 ft or so. You would typically get at most maybe 3-5 foes that, again if memory serves, almost always flew backwards, not outwards (I'm guessing due to the small radius). The attack itself looked exactly like Force Bolt, only it had a small AoE and did a LOT more damage.

But that could be a workable solution. Right now Repulsion Bomb has a 12' radius, which can easily contain the max # of targets (16?) and send them flying. Reduce the radius to 3', add a meaningful damage component and keep the disorient and you basically have an upgraded AoE version of Force Bolt. It does damage, still has an AOE knockback and disorient, but is no longer the mass scattering power that Defenders have no use for.

And com'n who didn't absolutely LOVE the original Nemesis Staff? It was one of very few temp powers you wept over when it was gone.

What do you guys think of that?

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Good posts Poobah.

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Why thank you!

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*** You are ignoring this user ***

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Hmm... I'm sorry, did you say something?

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Honestly, I don't get what this ...buff?... to RB is supposed to achieve. As of right now, Repulsion Bomb doesn't accept damage enhancements, so it would have to do, out of the box, a /lot/ of base damage to be considered a worthy apart of an attack chain ...

But that much base damage would make it /insane/ for a 'troller who can contain the KB, work the disorient to her benefit, and further boost the damage with containment.

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Yeah, that's what I said (again, does NOBODY read what I write??)

Defenders aren't going to get much use from the damage, cause they're still not going to take or use a power with uncontrolled 360 degree knockback.

But adding damage will turn this into a Troller's best friend. Slap down an AoE Immobilize, establish containment, and not only do they get NO knockback, but double damage AND an AoE disorient that will stack with Stalagmites, Flashfire, etc.

Cause it's not like Stone and Fire Trollers do enough damage or lack superior control abilities as it is, right?

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Mystic_Poobah, I've already discussed my feelings on these changes and some of them are just flat out "cottage" change that completely rework the power.

Never the less, here are my thoughts on your suggestions.

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1a.) Changing Repulsion Field from a PbAoE to a location AoE similar to Bonfire.

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A PBAoE can simulate a drop. A drop cannot simulate a PBAoE. In effect, you are requesting that the Devs nerf what you feel to be an underperforming set.

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Actually, it's the other way around. If you want to simulate a PbAoE effect in Bonfire you simply stand in the middle of it. Voila! it's now PbAoE. How do you NOT make the current Repulsion Field PbAoE? You can't. It's always PbAoE, whether you like it or not. And since it's your power, not a pet (as is bonfire), all the aggro is on YOU instead of the pet.

Your logic is flawed here. Detaching it from the caster makes it MORE versatile, not less, unless of course you enjoy running thru the map tossing everything all over the place. Then yeah, this change would put a damper on that kind of recklessness.

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1b.) A more radical change for Repulsion Field (but still keeping with the core function) is to change it into a Singularity-type pet -- a small mobile field that follows the caster around and knocks back any foes that gets near it.

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This is a cottage change. It's also giving a pet to a non-pet AT.

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Well I would argue it's not a cottage change. The core functionality of Repulsion Field is AoE knockback. That's what it does. As long as you keep that core function everything else is fair game, at least in my interpretation of Castle's statement regarding core function.

And where is it written that FF can't have a pet? Dark gets a pet. Storm gets 2 pets. */Electric Defenders get a pet too. There is nothing written that says it can't be a pet, as long as the pet performs the same core function. I agree this is a much more radical idea, but if nothing else it shows how we can start to think outside the box and come up with creative changes that still retain a power's core function.

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2.) Change Repulsion Bomb from a targeted AoE knockback to a cone knockback

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You can already get a cone Knockback from Repulsion Bomb by using positioning. You cannot get 360 degree Knockback from a cone. Again, you are asking the Devs to nerf what you believe to be an underperforming set.

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But again, you're missing the point. The point is to get RID of the 360 degree knockback -- it is counterproductive in nearly every single instance you choose to use it except in 2 situations: you're soloing and only have to worry about yourself; or someone is getting overwhelmed and you're doing a Hail Mary to try and save them. Now again, if you're soloing and love tossing foes all over the damned place, then yeah, this change would suck for you. But for the rest of us that actually like to team and want our powers to be useful on a team, this change is invaluable.

And trying to get Repulsion Bomb to act like a cone KB is a LOT harder than you think due to game mechanics and the differences between the way spherical and conical effects actually work in the game. Trust me, I tried many times to use it that way, and it just doesn't work.

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3.) Reduce the size of Force Bubble down to 20-25' to match Dispersion Bubble, and add two layers of debuffs, similar to Storm/Hurricane. Those foes stuck at the outside of the bubble suffer a -tohit, -range, and -damage; those that are able to resist the repel effect and enter the bubble still receive those same debuffs but also are hit with a slow/-recharge, -defense, and -regen. We can't change the nature of the power, that being repel, but there is no reason it can't be made much smaller and be the one power with a slew of debuffs that FF really needs.

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I use the large bubble with geometry and other powers to keep baddies out of action. Reducing the bubble to the size of Dispersion Bubble would effectively remove this capability. Again you are asking the Devs to nerf what you think is an underperforming set.

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No, I'm asking the devs to IMPROVE an underperforming set for 99.99999999999999% of the people that use it (that tiny left over fraction is YOU). The current size of the bubble makes it very unwieldy and often causes unintended aggro in large rooms or thru walls. It also requires melee teammates to leave your Dispersion Bubble to fight foes stuck at the edge of Force Bubble. And some of those melee fighters (namely Blasters) actually rely on the mez protection and defense in Dispersion Bubble. But I guess that only matter if you actually give a [censored] about your teammates, which I'm gathering you don't.

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Force Bubble already duplicates -Speed and -Recharge, as well as -Damage, through changes in the baddie AI.

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Um, maybe for the first 10 seconds or so as baddies keep trying to get close to you. Once the AI registers that they can't get into melee range they will promptly switch to their ranged weapons and proceed to beat the snot outta you from 50' away. And since they are all spread out around such a large circumference it will be very difficult for the team tank to gather them in one place and get the aggro off of you.

And I'm guessing you're never used Hurricane then? Cause it does everything Force Bubble does and more, and I can very easily use geometry to trap foes in corners and such.

Yeah, I think I've stumbled onto your theme here -- I love being a badass solo Controller and Mastermind, so any change to any powers that impinge my ability to be the ub3rl33t soloist I am I'm calling a terrible idea and a nerf, regardless of how it might improve an underperforming AT I've already said I hate and will never play. I don't care about anyone else but me. Period.

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The idea is to make Force Bubble into Hurricane v2.0 instead of Hurricane v0.5.

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If you want Hurricane, play Storm. It's a very nice set.

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So it doesn't bother you in the least that Hurricane, a tier 6 power is significantly better than Force Bubble, a tier 9 power? And that their basic core functions are exactly the same? By the way, that was a rhetorical question. I know you don't give a crap.

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4.) Ideally I would love to see Detention Field turned into a reverse PFF, meaning they can't move or attack, but we can attack them with either greatly reduced accuracy and/or damage. It could be tricky to balance in PvP, so if an idea like that is completely off the table, turning DF into a limited toggle would be a huge improvement.

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I don't have a problem with making it so the team has some small chance of hitting the baddie in DF. But at the same time this doesn't really solve the problem of the team wasting attacks on said baddie. It just reduces the waste from 100% to 95%.

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Well I'll agree with you there. It shouldn't be a "small" chance to hit them. Although you could do it by granting the caged foe a high defense, I think a better option is to leave defense out of it and apply damage resistance instead. A 50% damage resistance would still require twice the number of attacks to defeat the foe, but it's a whole lot better than what we have now, and that's at least 1 person on the team who is going to waste on average 2-3 attacks or more before they realize a foe is caged. But again, YOU would NEVER make such a mistake, so why should you care if other's waste their attacks and endurance. No skin off your nose, right?

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I don't want to see DF made into a toggle as I believe they'll be some sort of penalty associated with this, such as longer recharge time or greater Endurance cost.

And generally, asking the FFer to use the power intelligently and the team to wait a few seconds for it to drop is not that big of a deal in the first place.

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Spoken like a true soloist who has never used DF on a team and seen first hand the kind of hate is generates. But then again, it's all about you, isn't it? Considering the average time a team takes to defeat a spawn is 10-15 seconds, and the average time DF will hold a foe is 30-40 seconds, I'd say that's more than having to wait "a few seconds". In the time they're standing around waiting the next 2-3 spawns could have already been defeated.

And there is no reason to think that recharge time or overall end cost will change. They might, but the also might not, especially if the only change is to make it a limited toggle. It doesn't in any way make the power stronger or more powerful, so there would be no reason to alter its stats.

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5.) Add a knockup component and minor disorient effect to Force Bolt. Many foes that have resistance to knockback do not have resistance to knockup, and this extra bit allows the power to affect many more foes. The disorient effect is just another little bonus that, again, has the chance to affect foes immune to other aspects of the power, and can stacked with the other disorients in the set to briefly stun more difficult foes.

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I've already said I don't care what the Devs do with Force Bolt. They can turn it into a power that does /em alakazamreact for all I care.

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Translation: I don't use the power at all, so I really don't give a crap if it's made better for FFers everwhere. It's all about ME, DAMMIT! ME! ME! ME!

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That said, the chief advantage of Force Bolt is it's fast recharge. I honestly think any buff the power gets will need to be offset by slowing down that recharge.

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If the target is immune to KB, the power is useless no matter how fast it recharges. Unless of course you enjoying spamming a power that does nothing but 1-2 damage against a particular foe. Yeah, that's sound strategy.

I guess I should have heeded the old adage "be careful what you wish for". It's crystal clear at this point that MagicJ's only agenda is his/her own, and has absolutely no interest or care for anyone else except him/herself. I've said it before and I'll say it again, status quo for the minority = bad; change for the majority = good. And poor MagicJ, you are SO in the minority I doubt you even register in datamining. It's actually painful to read your ridiculous nonsense.

Back to the ignore list you go. Buh-bye!

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Something from Castle: "Damage increase to Force Field Repulsion Bomb".

Hahahahahahahaha.

He's not addressing the power's real problems ... he's just going to make it do more than the current quarter of a brawl of damage. But, I guess, this would make the power a crapton better if you're a controller with a -KB immobilize.

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Meh... MagicJ is probably crapping her pants right now since she chose Mind Control -- no AoE immobilize in that set. Pity...

But dammit, all that does is make the power exploitable for Trollers and does absolutely nothing to address the issues Defenders have with the power.

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There is no community. The only thing I have in common with anyone else on this thread is that I play CoH with a FF toon.

There is no good reason why anyone should drop their ideas of what FF should be for anyone elses or for a "greater good" ideal.

I'm not convinced this thread will make a lick of difference to whether FF gets any changes to be honest. The devs have shown no inclination to buff unpopular sets in the past and I don't see why they will suddenly start now. They have all the numbers, they know it doesn't offer the same uitility as other defender primaries and they know its not widely played. Don't hold your breath.

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Well it took them 3.5 years to finally get around to revamping MoG. If that actually gets done, then I'm gonna say the gloves are off and anything is possible.

Let's not forget that we also will soon be getting real numbers, something that would have NEVER happened under the Emmert regime. Flashback too.

It's the dawn of a new era for CoX, and a lot of the old verboten taboos no longer are. I think it's highly likely FF will get looked at at some point. There is no longer any reason not to. Admittedly, Castle has a full plate right now, but look at the changes he's just recently made -- the aforementioned MoG, Frozen Aura, Defiance, Assassin Strike... Remember, just as Posi no longer has to answer to Jack, Castle is no longer shackled by Geko.

At this point I think any under-performing power or set is fair game for adjustment. We just need to give Castle a good reason to look at them (and hope his datamining supports our position).

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Mystic_Poobah
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Please read over the changes to FF that I posted, and explain to me, in detail, why you think those changes would after the various FF powers in such a way that your Mind Controller would lose the ability to do what she can do now.

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I've already posted a list of concerns with the various ideas on this thread. You can find it on page 34. If I missed some of your particular ideas, could you re-post them so I don't have to dig through 45 pages of stuff, and I'll tell you my thoughts on them.

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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....ue#Post10019171

That post contains the abbreviated version of my suggestions. Please explain to me, in detail, why these changes are terrible, and why they will have such a drastic impact on your Controller. Cause from the way I see it, none of the changes (save 1B) change the powers so radically that they cannot continue to be used in exactly the same manner as they are now. Unless of course your whole playstyle is about crowd scatter. If that's the case, then yeah, we're gonna have a problem...

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I am trying to play CoH on my laptop that as you can probably guess, Vista on it. Everything is cool until I get to the Character select screen after I choose the server. The screen is choppy and gray here. Then when I go in game the screen is the same and nothing will move. Could anyone possibly help me?

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Make sure you're running the game in the same resolution as your desktop. For example, if your Vista desktop is 1440x900, make sure the game is 1440x900 as well.

If you want to use a smaller resolution in the game you either have to change the desktop resolution first to match (could be done with a script, ask and I'll show you how) or play in windowed mode.