Flaming1

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Yeah, but that's what he said, just not with your language.

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I don't particularly feel like parsing out States' post in detail -- but you're not very correct.

In fact, you're quite wrong.

Also, can I have your stuff?

I dunno -- I find it telling that since States posted, the overwhelming bulk of the thread consists of direct replies to him.

Granted, it's no small function of the forum -- to facilititate communication between the playerbase and the Devs. But I can't help but sense examples of the berating and personal attacks provided above discourage that kind of interaction.

For what it's worth, States is a bigger man than I -- I have far less compunction telling people to go [censored] themselves sideways.

Having intensively studied simultaneous climax, in-game and elsewhere -- I have it timed to 23.85 seconds ± 0.08.

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I believe my point is being lost in this discussion, so I would like to restate it. This is not a matter of "can't," this is a matter of "don't want to." I CAN fit my concepts into the framework presented, but I really, really DON'T WANT TO.

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Sam brings up an interesting point. How much content throughout CoX do we honestly consider "optional"?

Hamidon? The respec trials? Hasten? Additional costume pieces? The list is probably almost as long as the list of available content in the game.

We don't get particularly judgmental of player/posters who certain kind of build choices, let's say -- Stamina-less Stone Tankers. We try and educate those who may not know better, but there are often times reasonable justifications for making such decisions. It's their choice.

Likewise, we find it perfectly reasonable for a player to not necessarily have done every mission, arc or TF on a given character.

I wonder if no small part of the resistance to PPPs is their unique confluence of the powerset/build and overarching story narrative. The closest we have (and it's a stretch) could be the respec trials, which don't really have too much of an impact on build choices themselves. Nevertheless, they let us play the meta-game within the context of the game.

Likewise, I can see the argument that Ghost Widow's vaguely necro/psi powers don't work for a lot of toon concepts. But it seems to me like maybe it misses that there's explicit narrative surrounding those power choices; that a character has become heavily invested in the hierarchy of Arachnos to the point of having been granted extraordinary powers.

I don't doubt that there are plenty of characters for whom that won't work; but we have plenty of instances of selective conceptual and narrative conceits throughout the rest of the game -- why should this be that different?

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They're just as equivalently as optional as APPs in my opinion. You assert that heroes need their specialized post-40 choices much more than villains do. I don't know that that's true.

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"Need" perhaps in the same manner as Stamina. A matter of semantic degree. But really, many Hero builds benefit greatly from their choice of APPs. Not all APPs are created equivalently -- note the popularity of Body Mastery for Scrappers, over say, Munitions.

However, we see some evidence -- prospective, peppered with rhetoric and not yet supported by testing, granted -- that Villain PPPs simply don't look as utile as Hero APPs. I'd argue that's by design -- Villain ATs, by my estimate, simply don't need the diversification options offered by Hero APPs.

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Anyway, what does making an optimized build have to do with thematic concerns? And because of a perceived lack of villain player need for them (PvPers might disagree), it's automatic that the pools should be non-respecable? I don't see how the two connect at all and your post didn't help.

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I'm not sure it's perceived. All five Villain ATs are capable of greater basal damage output than the most damage-lite Heroes. They're mostly better suited to soloing, by virtue of that damage-oriented nature. Granted, many of the models indicate that damage-oriented Hero ATs are better suited for things like PvP, but that doesn't mitigate the point.

Furthermore, my point is that by virtue of not requiring the game mechanics of APPs, Villains simply aren't compelled to select PPPs, not in comparison to Heroes. In that case, PPPs become more optional -- not dictated by game mechanics, and instead become a matter of preference.

I think you miss a rather important qualifier of the Villain PPP's -- they're optional.

You allude to it:
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People want flexible post-40 power options now that they've had a taste in CoH.

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I'd argue that the diversification options that APPs afford Heroes are that much more necessary. Hero ATs are substantially more purpose-oriented, so the APPs provide options that simply aren't otherwise possible for Heroes. Blasters without mez? Defender and Controller shields? Scrappers and tanks without ranged attacks? The APPs helped cover many balance issues ascribed to the Hero late-game, by giving everyone options they previously lacked.

Here's the thing with the Villain ATs -- they're all damage dealers. Even the most damage-lite AT, ostensibly Dominators, are probably still superior damage output compared to pre-Containment Controllers. I'd go so far as to argue that the Villain ATs were designed to be less team-dependent, and inherently more versatile than their closest hero counterparts.

So where does that leave us? Even before the announcement of the PPPs, I'd still been under the impression that an APP equivalent for Villains would be largely superfluous. Those ATs seem already designed with APP versatily largely built-in.

Heroes need their APPs to function more than it seems Villains will need their PPPs -- making the PPPs largely a matter of luxury.

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Can you get suspended or banned for chronic thread necromancy? I guess Kitty will find out eventually.

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I'm pretty sure it turns invariably fatal without a radical account-ectomy.

Cuppa! Prep for surgery! STAT!

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I continue to find it amusing that various powers get nerfed or shown up for nerfing due to their prevalence, and yet Stamina remains...

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Part of the problem with the extensive discussion that we've had with that particular power is the fact that it's relatively powerset-neutral. There are some powersets and ATs than ca do great without -- Kinetics, MMs, what-have-you. But undoubtedly, all can benefit from it at some point.

In some models, the asymmetry of the effect of ED on Stam, compared to the global End cost reduction accompanying ED wound up being a small, but not insignificant net minus.

The other side-effect of ED being that it's now more reasonable to slot End Reducers in many powers, than prior to ED.

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Storm? Prob'ly. But FF, Empathy and Trick Arrow are in the same boat as Dark.

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In terms of being aggro-attractors, yes. As I reminded upthread, part of that attractiveness is two-fold -- Defenders may be squishy themselves, but the potential benefit to their teammates by virtue of buffing or debuffing also makes them a great threat.

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I said two -seconds- guys, not two shots. And I stand by it. Energy blapper hits Aim, BU and superspeeds in with his first shot queued up, gets a second one in while his opponent fights to get a target lock... three seconds on the outside unless the brute tries to run.

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Your correction actually makes your claim even more specious, considering that the activation time for Total Focus is three seconds. The only way this model works is if you're also presuming that said Blaster will be capable of one-shotting said Brute with Total Focus.

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Perhaps it is merely an illusion of perception that these powers are not "Working as intended" after so long of them functioning without changes. At what point in the evolution of the game, even the evolution of the powers themselves, does one accurately say "This power is being used in a manner that was not intended". I think the question can still be framed in many ways that could be clearer from Development, such as : "Not working as intended for PvP and/or PvE", "Not working as originally intended" and "Not working as intended anymore".

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Well, the Devs can never be too articulate in describing the hows and whys. But that's not their primary job; it's making those decisions, even when they're not explained to our satisfaction.

In the end, I fear we're getting down to the rather troublesome morass of parsing away Dev semantics, rather than intent.

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Taking the Whirlwind example : I have known many people who had Whirlwind prior to Issue 5, I even have it on one of my concept toons. While it was regarded as a 'Lame' power before, it's uses in PvP underscored it's actual usefulness in PvE. Let's look at why it became more popular post Issue 5. It was a form of Damage Mitigation that wasn't needed before ED and Issue 5. After those changes were implemented, other 'Controls' were much more sought after, Whirlwind being one of them. So, not only is there balancing for PvP purposes and exploits, but I also see the nerfing of Whirlwind as a follow up and clean up of powers that were overly effective at Damage Mitigation post Issue 5 and ED.

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I'd seen WW prior to the Arena, too. But far, far less.

I don't dispute your point (and was kind of waiting for it to get brought up), that the unintended unrooting functionality of WW was always there, even before PvP. I'd argue in response that the datamining that reveals such issues are a two-way street. My point is more that overrepresentation of that power among the playerbase is both the ends and means of balance.

1) Overrepresentation itself is a metric, a tool that may flag certain powers and/or powersets as overperforming. One could make such an argument for the I1-era City of Blasters fix for Smoke Grenade. Similarly, the proliferation of WW among PvP players didn't create the problem; in this scenario, it's a symptom of it.

2) PvP didn't create the problem with WW either, it's one reason it's proliferated so widely among the playerbase. That unintended unrooting functionality of WW affects PvE, as well as PvP. I'd argue that PvP not only revealed the utility of WW to the playerbase by virtue of PvP, but through that, to the Devs.

I think you clue in to the underlying point, that balance itself is adaptive. The playerbase will seek out maximally performing builds or playstyles, if those builds and playstyles legitimately outperform others to the point of exclusion, then it's the Devs' turn to adapt to the playerbase.

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Changes to the PvE game are largely due to exploits of Statesman's "Risk vs. Reward" theory. Otherwise, there is no need.

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Risk versus Reward is a fundamental tenet of the balance principle in this game -- I don't see how you can separate them.

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To me, this only underscores why powers should work different in PvE than in PvP.

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They do. Well, some at least. Hold suppression, Blaster irresistible damage, and the upcoming fix to PvP Gauntlet are all indicators that it is possible to code PvP independently of PvE. The argument that PvP drives unwarranted PvE changes is substantially hurt by this point; if a power needs a PvP change that isn't at least partly warranted in PvE, the capacity exists to do so.

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Flamer : Can you give an example of a power that was changes in recent memory that doesn't tie back to PvP in anyway?

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All powers tie back to PvP in some way; that's how powers and powersets work. Even despite differential coding, even the powers that have been unchanged since Launch operate in both PvP and PvE. Despite the Devs' ability to alternatively code between PvP and PvE, the performance of powers in both domains is inextricably linked.

Powers that players eschewed for the longest time prior to PvP, like Whirlwind, suddenly gained popularity in PvE, as well.

If anything, WW is a prime example of a power that had gone unnoticed in PvE for the longest time -- it took PvP to reveal that the power was not working as intended, and that's true for its performance in PvE as well as PvP.

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the reason PvP is blamed all the time for changes is because PvP is truly the only time balancing is all that neccesary.

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Untrue.

PvP may necessitate balance more, but we've entertained rather convincing arguments, hearkening back as far as Beta for PvE balance. It goes something like this: if a given powerset or AT outperforms others to a degree sufficient to abrogate the help of other ATs, then why team? Why even have any toons of any other powerset? If all you need is a Tank Mage (or whatever) to complete the overwhelming bulk of content in the game, then why have anything but a Tank Mage? In that scenario, there's no reason to team, no reason to not have a non-Tank Mage build, and we're virtually an FPS which we happen to share with other players.

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It didn't really make my fire/fire blaster seem all that much more fun though, so I don't really see the point in the balance for the PvE game beyond psychopaths whining that their own characters are too powerful and evidentally can't be bothered to build their character in a way that is challenging for them.

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Changing Regen wasn't meant to improve your Blaster -- if that was the end, then your Blaster would've been changed. Game changes to one powerset don't change the absolute value of other powersets, they change their relative value.

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In short, PvP made the changes neccesary in order for PvP to work at all, whereas PvE really didn't really need changes in order to work.

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See my discussion of inductive versus deductive logic above. In short, you presume that PvE balance is immaterial, and neither I, nor apparently the Devs, see it that way.

Remember that we've been seeing balance changes as far back as pre-I1, long before PvP was introduced. If your argument were true, and PvE balance is immaterial, then by extension, broken Smoke Grenade should've never been changed.

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We're playing a superhero game. We have super-powers. If the devs wake up some morning and decide that any one of our super-powers is unbalanced, they'd be right. Of course they're unbalanced - they're super-powers!

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Rhetoric.

They're balanced in relation to each other and against mobs, not against some imagined "girlslap" ability of civilian NPCs or somesuch.

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When you get right down to it what we end up doing after level 30 is totally abusive. We plow through those Invincible missions like they weren't even there, and it's so easy that most of us are more concerned about speed than anything else. THAT'S unbalanced.

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Mostly true, but also rhetoric.

Not all ATs and powersets are equal performers in different circumstances. Many Defenders and Blasters may still find much mid-to-late game content still soloable, but probably not as easily as other ATs, speaking in the most general terms.

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The entire PvE game's unbalanced.

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Rhetoric.

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The definition of PvE balance is so subjective that we can't possibly argue that any of our powers aren't unbalanced.

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Actually, the PvE game has quantifiable metrics from datamining. Even if we don't have access to them, that doesn't negate their existence, or the knowledge that the Devs take into account these metrics.

While we can only conjecture as to what metrics they look at, we can make some reasonable guesses as to what they are -- such as mean levelling rate. Given that much of the PvE game is team-oriented, many of the differentials one can imagine for solo-performance seem like they'd readily even out on a team. Irrespective of that, outliers of over- or underperformance may likely still contribute to imbalance, even on teams.

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A lot of the fun of the PvE game arises from the balance of power being shifted in our favor. If we were on an equal footing with the mobs, life would be very, very boring.

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Weren't you just arguing for the converse model, that we're overpowered, compared to mobs in PvE? I'm now confused.

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It was all too coincidental. I've never overlooked what was lying right in front of me.

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As I indicate above, no small problem with that argument for PvP-centric balance is that it requires no small feat of inductive, rather than deductive reasoning -- and is dependent on entirely teleologic assumptions.

Again, your argument of coincidence is still perfectly in-line with PvP simply revealing balance issues that apply to PvE, which the Devs have acknowledged.

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Forsooth, while the game was born of PvE, it is being molded in the image of PvP now. While I agree that balancing is made harder by this fact, I still maintain that both segments of the game should not suffer changes for the sake of the newborn.

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I've seen the rather extensive arguments that balance is turning PvP-centric. And I remain unconvinced.

This PvP-centric model of balance has been getting bandied about since I4, Regen hits, the changes to perma-38 Scrapper powers, right on through Suppression, Global Defense, and ED. And in each case, for all the evidence (mostly circumstantial and rhetorical) presented, I am unswayed that balance issues addressed in PvP are not representative of balance issues in PvE.

The are mitigating circumstances and context throughout, to be sure. And I defer the point that PvP may be used as a tool to reveal PvE imbalance, and thus correct it. I think that point is one that a lot of players and posters confuse for the PvP-centrism model.

I don't see any reason to rationally believe that balance is primarily focused on achieving PvP balance, at the cost of disrupting PvE balance. None. Anywhere in the game.

And replies'll get brought up, I'm sure -- but I'm going out to celebrate a friend's engagement, so they'll have to wait.

EDIT: Oh, and Happy Passover, all!

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I don't consider those buffs. The sets were broken, and they got fixed. That's not buffing, that's the devs pulling their heads out of their behinds.

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Semantic.

A broken set is a matter of subjection. Plenty of players were using DA and SR, some begrudgingly, even as early as I1 and I2 to great effect.

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Many of those changes were necessary due to the GDN of i5 stacking with ED. Sets may not have performed at all had they not made them. There is a difference. When it comes to sets being more powerful/effective, the devs nerf to bring it in line with the rest, not buff everything else.

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Backpedalling and wholly disingenuous.

Your claim is that the Devs only nerf, never buff. Even when concurrent, that doesn't negate the point that a buff is made.

No offense, but those stacking buffs to DA and Stone are not inconsequential, and are not completely mitigated by either I5 or ED. Those changes help those sets relative to other comparable sets irrespective of other downtweaks that've been made.

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Of course, it is becomming clearer and clearer that this game will be balanced around PvP come hell or high water, much to many peoples chagrin.

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If anything, I'd argue that the many problems with PvP balance, as generously, but hardly comprehensively, detailed in this thread are evidence that it works the other way around.

PvP balance suffers primarily because the game is mostly balanced around PvE.

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Happy to oblige. I created a Dark/Psi defender specifically as a psi "offender." One on one against an invul brute in Siren's, his healing powers stopped me from finishing him off, even with Fear. It turns into this long, drawn out affair that ends when I run out of End.

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Some of the most protracted 1v1s I've seen in the Arena have been between a DM/Fire Brute and a Fire/Kin Corruptor.

Seriously. Total stalemate.

No small part of that is due to the skill with which those particular players wield those particular powersets, but it almost seems like a rather classic case of Irresistible Force v Immovable Object.

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Team vs. Team a defender's just this massive agro-magnet.

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Arguably, that's due in no small part to the relative ineffectiveness of Dark/ in PvP. If you were running a Storm/Psi, by comparison, I find it likely you'd be singing a different tune.

If I may draw a slightly askance analogy, it'd be like claiming that my /Fire Blaster's underperformance in PvP is a sign that Blasters need to kill-kill-kill more in PvP and are deserving of a global buff -- irrespective of the exceptional performance of /Energy in PvP.

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Couldn't agree more. In this game, a /NRG blapper can consistently knock out a brute in two seconds flat, every time.

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I'm afraid I have to concur with Bluntzman -- I'm not sure I've seen an Eng Blapper two-shot a Brute, at least not without Insps or Con/Def buffs/debuffs helping.

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The data _castle_ showed says that only a ?/nrg Blaster is comparable to Scrappers solo in PVP. All other Blaster secondaries put them at the level of a Defender solo in PVP. Granted, Scrappers are supposed to be the solo Kings, but range should put meleers at a disadvantage. So that shows to me that only ?/nrg is at the level Blasters should be versus Scrappers. But, that is just me.

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Not really, it showed that the mean of the other Blaster secondaries was 60% Scrapper levels, by the one metric he describes, and only solo.

We can't conclude beyond that, given that information.

We can reasonably conjecture that among those sets, there's another level of variability between them. For instance, we imagine that /Elec and /Dev probably perform better than 60% of Scrapper killcounts, whereas /Fire probably performs worse than 60% of the Scrapper line.

Mind you, that 60% is probably some summation (an arithmetic mean, a geometric mean, or median) of Scrapper sets, which may have some consequential variability, as well.

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The same was said for scrapper (Regen) and tank (INV) defenses. Sadly, the devs take the easy road and nerf to bring one set down rather that buff many sets to bring them all up in strength. Thinking that the other blaster secondaries will be made equal to EM is wishful thinking.

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If you selectively ignore the End cost and toggle-stacking buffs to DA and Stone Armor, the new scaling Dam Resist for SR, and imminent changes to Defense scaling for all Defense sets for I7.

The Devs-only-nerf claim is patently untrue.

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Were you there in SC when CT and I were double-bubbling the Carls (and related affiliates)? I'm not sure if the non-bubblers noticed it so much, but the other team(s) had basically stopped trying to attack you and the 6 double-bubbled folks and were instead racking up a surprising number of kills against the bubblers.

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I'm not certain.

Though, it should be clear that my own recent experiences in PvP, and the whole point of this particular thread tangent, is the point that Defenders are a preferred target.

My argument is that the attractiveness of Defenders isn't just their relative squishiness, it's also that the whole team multiplicatively suffers from their absence.

A team that can keep its buffers alive more consistently is probably more likely to perform better than a team that can't. I don't think of this as a hard-and-fast PvP rule, but I suspect most players would at least agree it's a good guideline to follow.

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Defenders are funny. It takes, from what I've seen, 3 or 4 to hit a critical mass of buffs and debuffs to keep each other safe. Once you get 6 or 7, it's just insane. I keep coming back to the SC's event in CoV. With 7 or 8 defenders, we could take on 20+ villains without breaking a sweat.

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You forget the well-taken point that Controllers can fill in for a Defender in this model rather readily. The contention I've had in this thread, deferred upthread, is with the notion that the teamed Defender is completely without recourse for his relative squishiness. There are defensive options for Defenders, even if they're shared with Controllers, or dependent on assistance from teammates.

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And that's kinda' the problem; defenders stack very, very nicely. If they were any better on their own, they'd be unkillable in groups of two or three, and groups of eight would simply be gank-fests. Consider having 2 stormies, 2 bubblers, 2 sonics, and kins on a team. That'd just be ... nuts.

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I've had great success with as few as two buffsets on a team. The point is very well taken, though -- that as buffsets increase on a team, the relative bonuses increase geometrically. Note that the "critical mass" of Defenders being able to do without Tanks or Controllers or what have you, is not unlike the all-Defender teams that are popular in some quarters in the PvE game.

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And, once again, I'm at a loss for how to fix defender squishiness ... but, also, I'm pretty sure that defenders weren't meant to come in pairs since we can only log one toon in at a time with our accounts.

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Well, we're at a point in the game where a lot of players -- serious, casual, PvPers, PvEers, have a potentially extensive stable of toons to draw from to fill out a PvP team.

I've been of the opinion for quite some time now that no small part of the "Heroes > Villains" dogma that goes around here, especially in PvP, is largely due to the overrepresentation of Stalkers on the Villainside. Less Stalkers and more balance might not relieve all the imbalance (HOs and extra slots might only account for part of the rest), but I suspect it'd go a long way.

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That's all credible too... What I really should have put forward as a metric, is Mini-samples taken from 1 team at a time measured against their total Rep earned while in that team -- dataming the number of deaths of each person of the team and put into AT category, and then averaged later with any samples way outside the mean being discarded...but that's really labor-intensive

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I don't think it's a bad metric, but mostly limited by the resource-intensiveness of data-collection, as you point out, and the corollary that such resource-intensive data collection would probably limit the total n of such data. Remember that part of the premise of PvP itself is that player performance may be wildly variable, due to skill or particular team dynamics.

As a side note, there are statistical reasons for removing outliers, but there are plenty other reasons for keeping them in, as well. Simple, widely-used tests of statistical significance -- like the Students' t-test or Analysis of Variance, often make simple concessions for wide variations, or non-normal distrubtions.

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But I need to clarify that by "lacking deterrants", I'm not saying ALL Defenders are "Helpless"... none of them are Helpless until an /EM stalker manges to TP-Foe one of them and followup with a Stun. As long as they're behind the front line or on their front-line with some sort of Stun protection, they're never helpless in the vast majority of PvP situations.

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This is a fair concession -- I find it rather hilarious that in my most recent trips to Sirens' and 'burg, for some reason, my opponents keep thinking to try TP-ganking my Stormie. Doing it once, and getting Hurricaned is one thing. Doing it twice just smacks of cruelty.

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...That's the Defender and Dominator's cross to bear right there. It's all a matter of how much actual time you and your team have to respond. And if we saw the most accurate picture possible through datamining, I'm guranteeing it would show that Defenders and Doms don't have the Deterrants that other classes have which buy them enough time to escape quick deaths... and I'm not talking about a double-stealthed AS that they never saw coming... I mean seeing a train bearing down on you and not being able to slow it down one bit.

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Consider the "glass cannon" model for how Blasters are supposed to perform. Part of that problem was partly mitigated by the boost to Blaster HP. However, no small part of the adaptive response by the PvP playerbase comes about from teaming -- pocket Emps and other castable Mez Prots are almost indispensable for Blasters in PvP. In that regard, we hav ea rather clear example of the playerbase widely adapting strategies to counter the weaknesses of that AT.

I'd argue that the "glass buffer" performance of Defenders requires precisely that sort of thinking -- reliance on teammates in order to plug the gaps inherent in each AT.

Some of the best teams I've encountered in PvP are the ones who manage to manage to keep their Defenders safe. As soon as their Defenders start taking hits from a given player, guess who suddenly becomes a prime target for counter-attack?

Defenders being the "deterrent-lite" AT require support from other ATs (Tankers, are you listening?) to keep going, and that means PvP aggro management. Controllers get to provide their own aggro management, by virtue of their primary. Defenders get some tools in that regard, but can you honestly think of a better use for Tanker Taunt in PvP? Given the imminent changes to Gauntlet for PvP, that tactic should be even more useful.

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Now... Storm Defenders and Plant Doms have a number of tricks in PvP that work to great effect... but all other Defenders and Doms must rely on their teammates for survivability in PvP... which anyone who's been on a PvP PuG knows... is a total gamble.

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Which is fair. But we've come to accept that Blasters require Defender (or Controller) help to stay PvP survivable, why shouldn't that particular table be turned?

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I think he was getting at bounty and rep being shared by a team and then comparing how many times the ATs died. That is different from kills which are not shared by teams.

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Okay... maybe that too. But the difference between Rep and Kills is one of them has a timer on it and the other doesn't. Either way, it's impossible to gauge who's contributing to actual kills, and who's hiding in the hospital leeching b/c they don't have any mez/+PER protection of their own.

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Both of you (Ilr & Concern) make excellent points in this regard. But in the end, we're only looking at alternative metrics for Kills, in order to account for the fact that team dynamics may obscure the contribution of buff-heavy team-oriented support builds.

In either case, the example you present gives a false negative outcome -- the Leecher doesn't contribute to team Kills, even indirectly -- so if anything, Leeching behavior will minimize apparent contributions of a given powerset to his team's ability to Kill.

We presume from any of these metrics, that a team with buff/debuffer will score more Kills (or whatever) than a team without said buff/debuffer. The Leeching model you propose only decreases that apparent contribution, since the teammate in question isn't actually contributing.

Furthermore, there's no reason to believe or assume that such behavior partitions to a given buff/debuff set; there's no reason to imagine that Dark Defenders would have more reason to Hospital Leech than an Emp Controller, let's say.

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If it was up to me, I'd Calc these stats off of 2 very specific things:
# of Deaths per hour while 200ft or less from a Teammate
PvP Rep earned per hour.

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This metric you propose definitely has strengths over raw killcounts, or what-have-you, but it has its own problems, too. Buffing platforms could look insubstantial from this metric -- hiding an Emp inside a Hurricane or Force Bubble, and letting Blasters and Scrappers run wild, often outside of that 200' range, once they've picked up CM or Fort or whatever.

Ultimately, the metrics one considers just about anywhere in the game are simply representations of what actually goes on. They're models, and aren't guaranteed 100% accuracy in depicting actual player practices. The particular outcomes one chooses to look at will invariably color their interpretation in some way; and each has their strengths and weaknesses in minimizing that inaccuracy.

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Of Course a Blaster or Scrapper or Stalker or whatever is more likely to biff it when they leave the safety of their team to chase down the runners or take another team on...that's soloing but with the "I'm still in a team flag" up. No no.. I'm more interested in who's really getting GANKED here... sitting directly adjacent to their teammates or following them in, and then getting whacked so fast their teammates can't do anything about it. ...that's the kind of datamining I could trust.

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It's been reasonably argued by some that such "ganking" (a slight misuse of the word, mind you) is part of the premise for the Stalker AT. Hence, the Stealth component of the AT's very purpose.

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Point One: Controllers actually slow better than defenders because slow is considered a controll not a debuff as many thought it was. So in the above examples that I gave with a controller useing storm and his primary to create a synergy, remember that the controller is flat out better regardless of the synergy. The synergy is a nice fat bonus.

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This is fair, I'm totally unaware of testing regarding Slows, so that's a point I'll readily defer. I suspect that no small source of the problem lies in the rather nebulous definition of the Defender role.

We've had plenty of discussion and argument about the nebulous definition of an Offender, for instance. If we consider a Defender's primary role to be support, particularly in PvP, thenthe available damage in the secondary seems mildly superfluous by comparison. Tangentially, I'm curious as to how well self-described "Offender" builds perform in PvP, both solo and teamed, in comparison to more team-oriented builds.

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Point Two: I never said that defenders were without deterants, I simply said that they had less than a controller. Which is true. Due to the synergy between their secondary and primary, controllers are more dangerous in PvP than a defender. That is also true. That is before I consider X3 containment.

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If you look upthread, I'm pretty sure I voiced that position in response to Ilr. I don't argue that the Controller represents a greater threat, but to quote from upthread:
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Controllers can buff too. ...no, the "attractiveness" you're looking for is their complete lack of deterrents. Blappers and Controllers have ways of making others Sorry that they got up in their grill. Defenders have NONE

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It's that argument that Defenders are completely helpless in PvP that I don't find reasonable.

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Yes, publishing the data would be a really bad idea (from a public relations standpoint alone, a complete nightmare). Four AT's screaming about the other eight being better...the other eight getting upset 'stop nerfcalling!'...the top four ripping each other in board wars...and everyone mad at the devs.

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Well, we do that plenty enough around here, no?

My point is more that Dev verification of some of our favorite AT/powerset-ist dogma simply creates more problems than it solves.

I've said for some time that the Devs don't need us to nerfcall, that's the point of datamining. And people are right to question whether or not the metrics they're looking at, are the correct ones, are the ones which reveal true imbalance. But it's frankly not in the Devs' (or the playerbase's) interest to widely publicize that data -- it only adds fuel to the fires of AT-versus-AT politic.