Emberly

Not sure how I can prove my experiences to you, and I am not sure why you seem to think I am lying. I don't get any sort of commission for not hating /inv It's not my favourite set, either; that goes to /sd for the sheer fun. In any case, I can't tell you how I play and expect you to have the same impression, especially when you dislike invulnerability already.

edit: Now this is some amazing /inv in action.

[QR] (not an attack on any poster)

Nerfing controllers won't change how much damage your defender does. It won't change how many blasts you need to use to drop a +2 LT. It won't help what you see as a problem with defenders at all. Seems like what people are calling a defender problem is really AT envy.

I know how it goes; I used to hate controllers for their ability to buff/debuff almost as well as my defender. I was worried that controllers would get all the teams. When containment was announced, I panicked and made all kinds of now-embarrassing posts about how this was the final nail in the coffin of defenders. Thank god for forums purges.

Then I got back to playing the game.

Never once been turned down for a team because "controllers are better." Never once had a problem with killing things. Turns out these problems were all in my head, and exacerbated by bandwagonning forum superstars. The only real problem that I think defenders have is their absolute garbage inherent, and to be honest, my defender does just fine in spite of that. As another poster above me said, controllers are (in my opinion) a terrible bore to play, and that alone is enough to keep me blasting away with my defenders. Yes, they do less damage than some ATs. No, they don't do too little damage, which is an important distinction to make.

Also, if you think defender damage isn't up to par, you are not playing around with enough -res

[qr]
Furries in denial. Or worse, furries who are not in denial.

The current iteration of repulsion bomb is one of the go-to powers in the set. Good damage and knockdown makes me a happy defender.

Changes to forcefield? This is a long thread, and I am not gonna read it all. My only change would be to make it possible to cancel detention field. I'd use it (who am I kidding, I'd pick it for my team build) if it wasn't a guaranteed team slowdown 99% of the time. Soloing it's decent. Teaming it's a big "[censored] you, bubbler! " every time. Even as a bubbler myself, when I play other characters, I hate it when people use powers that make the mobs untouchable. I'd love it if it could be dropped at will. Make it an expensive toggle. Change the fundamental mechanics of the game so we can cancel click buffs and debuffs (yeah, right ).

Yeah, combining decent resistances and good typed defence is hardly meh. Most of the people I talk to who dislike invulnerability are trying to max out resistances and not paying attention to defence. This is a mistake. Once you start aiming for increased typed defence, invulnerability becomes powerful indeed.

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WP has everything you need to survive contained within the powersets where as invul you will need IOs and outside buffs to get the same level of survivability outside of unstoppable.

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My experiences with invulnerability and willpower are about equivalent, with no issues with either even before slotting set IOs. My invulnerability scrapper can dive into some things that my willpower scrapper gets quickly overwhelmed with. I can't disagree that Invulnerability gets a big boost from IO sets, but then so does willpower, and in the same area (typed defence). One stacks defence and resistance, the other stacks defence and regen. I'd happily play either one at any level of play.

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Dark is centered on the caster, Kin the target, which means if the target dies as the heal should be going off :

Dark is fine

Kin gets pretty (non-healing) special effects.

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Every time I play my /dark corruptor and this happens, I smile a little and say out loud, "[censored] you, Kinetics!" Way too many levels of kin/

It's me. I am the best healer on villain side. Sadly, I won't be joining your VG, so it's a good thing you are stepping up to the plate. Now make a fire/dark corruptor and enjoy yourself.

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they are absolutely going to let us switch sides 'for real'.
anything else would be a PR & sales disaster and they have to know that.

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Agreed. I don't see why people don't get this fact.

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Yeah, I think this is pretty much spot-on. If it's just a stupid instanced sandbox where my defender can play villain for a few missions and not a full-on side switch, I will be pretty pissed off. Same if it's a whole new zone or zones where I get to play villain, but still can't go to the rogue isles proper.

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Track record ?

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Sad but true

Re: market merging
Should have been done from the start. Want an RP reason? Stuff on the BM is stolen from WW! There you go. Want a gameplay reason? It's a vicious cycle: perception of worse markets make people play redside less, and less people playing redside means worse redside markets. I remember when I learned that the markets were cross-server but not cross-faction. It blew my mind. Of course, now if markets ever stopped being cross server, I would expect some anemic markets on low-pop servers.

Lots of times the difference between the controller buff numbers and the defender buff numbers is meaningless. The presence of the buff is enough. Umbral's right about the numbers, but most of the time nobody will notice the difference. People are just happy to have buffs.

I used to think this meant my defender would not get teams, because controllers brought more to the table. Turns out this is utterly untrue. My AT envy was pretty ugly. It turns out that no amount of changing other ATs fixed what I thought was wrong with my favourite AT, and when I actually thought about it the problem with my AT (defenders losing out to controllers in teams and other situations) didn't even exist. I got teams then, get teams now, and will get teams in the future. When I want to play easy mode, I play my tricked-out scrappers. When I want to play AWESOME MODE, I play my defenders

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Defender damage is justified when you compare it to blasters and scrappers in isolation.

When you compare it to Controller damage, even pre-EPP with containment, you start to really wonder why you bother. Why be Rad/Anything when you could be XX/Rad as a controller?

This is partly because of low damage blasters, it should be more corrupter level if anything. It is also because Defenders inherent is obscenely bad.

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I've long thought that the worst design decision the devs made was giving defender primaries to controllers as secondaries. I've come to grips with it, but it's still a little irksome.

I agree about our inherent. Useless solo and only rewards bad play. If the team's green bars are looking red, a decrease in end cost isn't gonna help me out much. I have faith that the devs will take a look at it someday, like they did with Defiance.

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-Your- defender isnt known for its damage.

Try not to speak for mine.

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Well, I don't know your defender for its damage I'm glad your defender is satisfying your damage-dealing needs! What's your spec of choice?

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The only balance concern I can think of is a metagame one. If 10% more of the CoH playerbase were enticed into playing defenders, the game would get way too easy for everyone.

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Heh, good call! On the flip side, if defenders did 10% more damage, blasters might start gathering dust

Honestly, some specs are great at handing out damage, relatively speaking. Having played literally hundreds (300+) levels of defenders of all flavours, I am interested in hearing about others' perceptions of damaging sets and combinations. My next plaything is gonna be a kin/sonic; I've shied away from /sonic since it was introduced due to the horrible animations of the blasts. However, recent playing about has made me a believer.

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Defender damage is sub par overall. Once it is accepted you get used to it.

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Yep. Despite apologia, the fact remains that defenders hit like girls with muscular dystrophy. I know it's for balance. It's just one of those things that makes you sigh when you are reminded of it. Defenders are still an amazing AT, but just like scrappers aren't known for their debuffs, defenders aren't known for their damage dealing.

oh hay guys let's run this into the ground, anyone made a joke about the carnies groping themselves and ruining the game's rating yet

Despite what some might tell you, that weak, crippled feeling never really goes away. Unless you are Sonic, then it never really appears. Rest assured that the def debuffs you are handing out in your rad blasts are equally worthless past level 22 or so, when everyone and their dog is pegged at 95% chance to hit anyway.

The only advice I can give you, as a 50 ff/rad, is to learn to enjoy the graphics and sound effects of your powers, and turn off the display of damage numbers. Rad has a cool snipe sound! Neutron Bomb looks like a mushroom cloud! Neutrino Bolt looks like you are flinging a booger at the enemy (and does the same damage)!

I wound up rolling a sonic blast defender. To quote a scrapper forum poster, things die twice. Nothing like stacking res debuffs to dodge that low damage cap/weak base damage combo that defenders get.

edit: To moderate my cynicism

At 32, a well-slotted anything/anything should be not too bad to solo with, and a decent contributor (relatively speaking) to team damage. The thing about defenders is that your damage contribution comes from making the rest of the team do decent damage, not necessarily from your own blasts. When you solo, you are relying on your own efforts to arrest villains, and this is where you tend to notice that, well, bosses and LTs seem to have a certain persistence in the face of your green death. As Justaris noted, Cosmic Burst is amazing and needs to be in every build. It's your big hitter and a major defense as the target staggers around like a drunk in the alley.

Rope-a-dope is right up there, but please don't kill my niche!

1. Nope.
2. Dunno, but I doubt it. Maybe!

Go Scrapper, if damage is your concern. Even if Shield Charge does more damage for Tankers, the majority of Tanker attacks hit like a wet noodle.

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Ehh, whatever. Knockback is at worst a minor irritation under certain circumstances, and I say that as a dedicated scrapper player. When a blaster or defender knocks an enemy away, why would I chase it down? Someone else is obviously trying to kill that mob, I will find another one. Also, a mob flying through the air and having to get up and run back is a mob that isn't chewing on someone. I respect knockback as a way for otherwise underdefended ATs to get some much-needed survivability.

It'd be different if mobs linked in this game like they do in others, where an aggro mob running through a different spawn picked up that new spawn too, but it isn't like that. What happens is usually someone knocks a mob back into the next spawn, and someone else fires and AoE or runs in to finish it off, thus aggroing the next spawn. As a scrapper, this is not a detriment to me, it's a bonus!

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Weave benefits wonderfully from Boost Power.

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I thought toggles only benefit from Boost Power (and similar powers) for one ten-second tick?

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+down doesn't break emotes, either. Therefore, for any emote you can do while flying, you can slide around with as well. Example: /em lotus, fly down, and lean the camera back so that "Down" for you is a bit forward. Slide along your butt

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My dog did that once. . . when she had worms. I think my heroes will pass

Christ almighty, if I waited for the team to be ready before jumping into things, my scrapper would die of old age. Tanks are especially bad; for such a heavily-defended AT they sure act like whiny babies when it comes to jumping in and busting heads. The thing I love about scrappers is that I don't care whether the rest of the team is ready. I appreciate buffs and fire support but they are optional in the extreme. If I die while off soloing the next spawn while the tank is typing out "herding to here" with his big old tank fingers, then so be it, that don't confront me none.

Worst thing in the world is a team who doesn't understand that the purpose of a scrapper is to kill things early and often, not to twiddle thumbs and wait until everyone has a fat and happy blue bar or whatever. I don't expect backup, I don't expect the tank to come in and taunt mobs off me. If I start a fight I did it with the intention of finishing it. Help is appreciated but not expected. I think this is what [censored] tankers off so badly; they don't like the fact that scrappers don't place them on a pedestal as being the most important member of the team, the one that decides what happens when.

Of course all this goes out the window when it actually matters. If me scrambling off and picking a fight with a certain minotaur is gonna cause a teamwipe, that minotaur is safe from me. I might put my own neck on the block but I won't stretch anyone else's out there.

edit: Tomorrow I am gonna make an all-scrapper ITF, me and my wife will start it. This is gonna be awesome.

My own BS/SD is softcapped without parry and tough as hell. I used lots of set bonuses to get there. My wife's claws/SR is also softcapped, she got there easier and honestly we both feel like tiny gods in the middle of tons of +mobs. The main difference is that when we exemp below a certain level she loses most of her AoE defense whereas I don't.

edit: I spent less than 100M inf to softcap my BS/SD scrapper; the expensive bits I bought with merits that I gained incidentally while playing the game. In addition, some of the things I bought (perf shifter + end, Celerity +Stealth) were expensive but not need to cap defenses. So don't worry that it costs the world to cap out your defenses; some of my attacks have multistrike in them XD

I know that my character isn't optimal or perfect, but I feel like I do just fine without worrying about eking out every last possible benefit. My goal was to cap defense and not gimp myself; I feel I accomplised that.

Fire_Away, I don't think marketers accumulate their inf from single transactions for billions of inf. They get it from many smaller transactions. Some of those transactions might be in the hundreds of millions, sure, but that doesn't require anyone to buy inf to pay for them. I don't think the market has much to do with RMT.

I am pretty sure that a lot of folks just hate the market and nothing will ever change their minds. I would love to know why this is. What did the market ever do to harm anyone? It changed things, but harm? I can only see it being harmful if people refuse to use it, but that's about it.

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Worse, in my opinion, many proponents of the market system actively block some fixes to other aspects of the game that would greatly improve player's enjoyment of the game. There are also adverse design decisions that are pretty much dictated by market considerations. The mentioned base salvage removal and being forced to compete with other uses of invention salvage being one of the most notable.

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What fixes and how are they being blocked? What's this business about base salvage disappearing being bad, and how did that come about from the market? Were some items rendered uncraftable with the removal of base salvage? What's adverse about simplifying the crafting system? This is what I mean by change, it seems like the means of making stuff has changed and people just don't want to accept it.

What would anti-market folks like to see instead?

edit: I know that this is off-topic. It's just that asking these questions in the market forum seems to get responses that are coloured by all kinds of perceptions, and I am interested in other angles.

This thread was very confusing! Why do people hate the market? I don't understand why there is a huge division between base builders and people who use the market. Is using the market a playstyle now? I just throw things on there, buy things as I need them, you know, use it as intended. Over time I've gotten a sense of what things are worth; does that make me a marketer? I also built my SG base and these two aspects of play did not negatively impact each other. In fact, having a base lets me use the market better (storage of stuff like enhancements and salvage) and having the market lets me build stuff in my base easier (all the crap that you need to build like teleporters). The two parts of the game work great together!

^^ sup regdate buddy

Yeah I hate killstealers, one attacked the group I was fighting in Atlas Park and I had to walk almost a hundred feet to find another group, it was awful and ruined my entire game day.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but someone jumping in on one group is meaningless and you should just let it slide like water off a duck's back. If they follow you and do it constantly, that's harassment, and you should petition. Otherwise, you just look like a whiny baby. As previously noted, it's not like those hellions are rare spawns or anything. Chances are very good that it was an accident and won't happen again. No need to attribute it to malice.

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