Freem

*Sigh*
I was hoping they'd get rid of "out golfing" (small mallet).

/begin_indian_mystic_impression
Love and Hate are but facets of the same coin
/end_indian_mystic_impression

Geesh. I wonder why always I come across one of these threads in my aperiodic forums browsing.

But given the topic of this thread, why has it turned into Plant vs Mind, instead of Gravity vs Mind?

I do note the disparity between Lift and Levitate but since I play a gravity dominator, it has not have a big enough impact on me to try to dig up the reason behind it. My impression is that it is another example of dev inconsistency.

I.e. How anyone can believe that gravity would start overperforming if they up the damage of Lift given the other combos out there, or argue that Gravity should deal less damage than Mind (because Mind has more control than Gravity? Duh.)

(There is no sarcasm when I say that) anyone who considers freezing rain the centerpiece or best thing in Storm is much better off playing Cold Domination. It has clones of many "mash potato and peas" Storm powers with other things making it a powerful and relatively well-behaved set.

Secondly, the inability to leverage solo AoE-containment is a feature of Mind rather than a peculiarity of its combination with any particular secondary. Unless one is fighting cons so low one single AoE from mass hypnosis clears them out.

Thirdly, thunderclap does indeed have a small magnitude, but it is not small in radius of effect, as suggested by comparison with TK radius (which really is tiny).

But, as much as I like to give a rousing defence of the combo, game design and game population neither needs nor welcomes what Mind/Storm brings, and the combo also lacks what game design and game population wants from a controller. By this I mean that the game runs on the grease of 1) just enough control and AoE damage on large spawns of easily controlled, tightly packed mobs, 2) destruction of single AVs with all that it entails.

Sorry to be a wet blanket. I've played the combo since issue 3 and although I still play it and keep swapping my builds (you can do a lot with IOs), it's sort of easier to achieve what the game wants from the player with other combos, unless you really like what gale, hurricane, tornado, thundercloud do to mobs.

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FREEM these really were the better arguments below, you cherry picked the less strong arguments and didn't address the stronger arguments found here.

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The better arguments collapse like a house of cards if the logical structure of the argument lies on unproven statements.

Unproven statement: controllers better than defenders in damage, control + controllers equal to defenders in buff/debuffs
Leading to
"Better argument": Defenders not bringing anything to the team that a controller cannot

Unproven statement: defenders are awful at soloing / can barely solo (controllers toast mobs solo)
Leading to
"Better argument": Defenders are penalised for being a team AT, controllers are not.


What is really meant by the common refrain "defenders do not bring anything to the team that controllers cannot?"

It isn't because controllers do more damage than defenders. The problem is that teams do not recruit either ATs to bring damage to the table, but to bring damage mitigation and buffing to the high damage dealing ATs.

Controllers come as a two-in-one package of having crowd control and buff/debuff sets. Any perceived problem in teaming lies in perception that the defender is a pure support AT. People build defenders only wanting to support, neglecting their blast powers, and are disappointed when they do not support as well as controllers. Of course not.

People do not see is that control can be redundant, but damage is not, especially direct, unconditional burst damage. Arguments about "I (defender) is better replaced by a controller" comes from a prima donna support mindset that they are going to be the only "support" AT in the team. I don't need 5 controllers, but I am happy to have 2 controller and 3 defenders.

People who say 8 fire/rads will move faster than 8 rad/rad, need to ask themselves whether 8 ice/rads will move faster than 2 ice/rads + 6 rad/rads.


The second question is not that defenders solo awful. They don't solo awful. Controllers just solo better than defenders.

Why does a team support AT solo better than a hybrid AT? The reason is not damage, but damage mitigation.

As someone pointed out above, there is no reason to suppose why a controller needs containment if a defender can manage fine with .65 scale. The answer is -- there isn't. A controller will continue to solo safely whether it has containment or not. The question is simply whether soloing is annoying slow at a reasonable pace.

This is because all controllers have sufficient damage mitigation from their primaries to enable them to survive to finish dealing enough damage to foes.

Why there is a vast difference in solo ability in defenders, is not insufficient damage but insufficient damage mitigation. Defenders do not have burst damage so like controllers they must survive long enough to apply steady damage to defeat foes.

Debuffing defenders do better solo because they can apply their debuffs in a solo situation. Buffing defenders cannot, and when many of their good powers are unusable in a solo situation, they are effectively just playing with their secondaries.

Directly buffing defender damage isn't going to solve the problem. Nor taking away containment from controller. The problem defender sets won't become more soloable.


People also compare a controller's epic blasts to a defender without epics. Actually, difficult-to-solo defender sets become vastly easier to solo after gaining access to epic controls.

It would be better if defenders can apply a weak form of their ally buffs to themselves, or have a better inherent. Inherent is the easiest thing to do. Make the inherent such that they solo better, or are so utterly desirable to teams that they will always be in a team.

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We established that Defender Buffs/Debuffs = Controller Buffs/Debuffs. Or in some cases have a small variation which is generally unnoticable. (Exception: ForceFields) This is fact.

We established that Controllers Damage > Defender Damage in most cases, and similar in best case scenario's. This is fact.


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No, we haven't established that.
If your entire argument rests on the second, then it's not going to work.

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We also established that Defenders = An archtype that solo's very poorly and slowly.
...
Let us just make something clear, yes Defenders can solo.
Yes Defenders can complete missions on heroic difficulty without the assistance of other players.
Yes even Forcefield and Empathy Defenders are capable of this. (I should know, I have both.)


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We haven't established that. Defenders are not limited to soloing poorly only heroic. My non-rad/sonic defenders solo at difficulties 3, 4, 5. Again you have cherry picked the "standard" for all defenders.

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The disparity in damage between Defenders and Controllers is shocking.

P.S Please do not use Rad/Sonic or heck, Anything/Sonic as a baseline measurement of performance for Defenders when soloing.


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You still haven't proven that, having cherry picked your comparisons, and ignoring the presence of multiple attacks, both ST and AoE. You need to stop using FF/elec as a baseline measurement of defenders.

Those non-permadom not-fire/psis are getting uppity, I tell you. This game is going to the Americans.

While I largely agree with you about the situation with defenders, I have to object to your methodology. Defenders are the second most common AT I play (first being controller). If your methodology can't convince someone who already has the same conclusion as you, then I don't think you're going to convince someone who thinks defenders are just fine.

Firstly, you have cherry picked your comparisons.

1) Electric blast which is considered weakest single target, since it has only two ST attacks and lacks a third strong ST attack. You then used it to compare against the ST immob and hold of a controller (these ST immobs and holds are about the same damage).

You have neglected the fact that any other defender blast set will likely do much better.

Archery: snap shot + Blazing arrow + aimed shot; Ice blast: ice bolt + ice blast + BIB; Psy blast: subdue + mental blast + will dom + tk blast. So on so forth.

2) Then you used power blast which is not exactly stellar either. And compared it with Mind control, which has a strong single target attack chain, as a baseline for controller damage.

For a mixture of psy and smashing damage too, a psy blast defender typically uses tk blast, subdue, will dom, giving enhanced value
2 * (59.3 + 70.8 + 47.7) = 355.6
Mind control with enhanced containment, using hold to start off:
2*30.6 + 2*2*(30.6+40.4) = 345.2
It's not that bad if you compare two strong ST defender and controller sets right?

Secondly, you did not take into account the number of attacks available and the endurance/recharge of said attacks. To make a proper comparison, you have to construct attack chains -- ST and AOE. And you have to examine different powersets to find an "average" situation. Not an easy thing.

The controller may have an epic attack of fireball, psy tornado, or fissure. But the defender does not have one single AoE attack of Explosive Arrow. Again -- cherry picking. The defender in any realistic scenario does Aim + Rain of arrows, followed by fistful of arrows and/or explosive arrows; psy tornado and psy scream; neutron bomb, irradiate, electron haze; ball lightning and short circuit.

To leverage containment AoE-wise, the controller needs to either AoE hold the spawn, or AoE immob the spawn. Two controller sets lack AoE immobs, two other sets have control powers negated by using their AoE immobs.


Thirdly, what factor does the different strength of debuffs play in altering damage output, such as resistance debuffs?

* * *

Ok, one problem I see with controllers and defenders is that controllers are safer to solo than defenders and bring more team utility, but they do not give up solo capability/speed in exchange compared to defenders. Defenders are less safe to solo, bring less team utility, but they do not gain a corresponding increase in solo capability/speed.

The second problem lies partly in player perception. Controllers both control and deal damage with their primary. In the process of using their control primary, they will naturally slot the primary. I.e. the process of damage mitigation is the same as the process of dealing damage. On the other hand, a defender must consciously slot their damage secondary, often against the popular pressure for them to heavy focus on their primary. Too heavy primary slotting means they lack offense; not slotting their primary can mean lack of damage mitigation.

How to solve this? Either by giving defenders a damage buff, or changing their inherent. I don't think a direct damage buff will be likely because defenders are unfortunately 'capped' by the presence of corrupters, and corrupters are 'capped' by blasters. Secondly, due to the different defender sets the damage buff affects different defenders differently.

One other possible way is to weaken buff/debuffs on controllers, but then you'd have to look at corrupters and masterminds. And I'm not a huge fan of nerfing one AT to make the other better (it's like hitting all the pegs until they are flush with the ground).

I think the type of inherent to pick for the defender really depends on what the AT vision for the defender is. Is the defender supposed to be a team-oriented support AT with incidental damage, or a hybrid support/damage-dealing AT...or what?

You could give the defender
- a domination like button where they build their 'defenderation' bar by attacking, then when activated gives an effect like power boost (how does this affect buff and debuff powersets then?).
- a damage boost each time they use their primary power (how does this affect the buff and forget powers like FF then?).
- a damage boost with each teammate.
- a buff/debuff power boost with each teammate (can you imagine all defender teams then?).

There's never a lack of ideas...it's only the AT vision and whether there is motivation on the dev side to clarify that AT vision and implement the inherent. One gets the idea there's a lot on their plate now...

Try either of my arcs. The first 1st mission of the first arc, and the 3rd+5th missions of the second arc should be interesting.

I think I suffered from some kind of timezone dislocation. I thought meeting time was tomorrow until I read this thread.

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What would Hatter be?

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Mad Hatter => Lucid Shoemaker?

I'll second that and suggest you get stamina, at least until you have transference slotted up. Even post-transference, if you plan to run AA with leadership pools (tactics is useful for kinetics) and an epic armour, I would recommend keeping stamina. You don't "need" stamina, but it's nicer without worrying about transference hitting.

Gotta chime in here and say that playing my pre-PSW /psy dom is now fast-paced and fun. Before, it was like doing an appendix operation with a spork -- without anaesthesia.

What happens to post-PSW builds, I don't know. But at least the change will let me get up to that stage.

Thank you devs! Yay!
My favorite thing to throw is actually the identifiable cube-like thing...whatever that is.

There is this entire threads about how this game is rated T, or the like. When I read some posts in there, I really want to get something off my chest.

Last Saturday I received an email about a friend of mine. She's been missing since April, and we didn't know where she went. It turned out that she had killed herself.

What happened? She's transsexual. A lot of people think transsexuals are dirty and immoral. So they taunted her, flashed her dirty looks, refused her jobs, banged on her windows.

We used to go out. I tried to con her into playing CoX. But she became depressed. She didn't dare to go out, didn't dare to raise her head when she did, and didn't dare to speak because people would hear her male voice.

She was so depressed she went to hospital. They put her in the male ward of the hospital where she was r***d because for some guys it doesn't matter as long as someone looks roughly female and has a hole. The nurse said, if she got r***d, it was her own fault anyway.

After she got out of the hospital which was supposed to help her, she killed herself.

She was 28 years old, liked manga and cats, dreamt of going to med school. She was the only child of a a single mother. Her mother had a stroke from the strain of dealing with all the hate and is now wheelchair bound.

There are people who have attitudes so strong they complain about some silly game mechanic to change the way electronic gremlins look on the screen... they say "a cross-dresser", "a guy in a skirt", like it is some abstract creature that pops out of nowhere.

No, there are no abstract creatures. There are human beings though.

I have this hope that people with those attitudes and made those posts would think about this, and change their attitudes. But I know this is a vain hope. People don't change, attitudes don't change.

In the end, "R"eal life continues, and "R"eal people continue to die.

Currently lvl 29. Originally I had
Thunder kick: 1acc 3dam 1end
Storm kick: 1acc 3dam 1end 2rech
Crippling axe kick: 1acc 3dam 1end 2rech

The was reasonably smooth could go on indefinitely, but had gaps when I ran out of attacks. I decided to fit in Crane kick, which gave me more burst damage after buildup.

This resulted in
Thunder kick: 1acc 3dam
Storm kick: 1acc 3dam 1end
Crane kick: 1acc 3dam 1end
Crippling axe kick: 1acc 3dam 1end

At earliest convenience I am going to add in recharges. After picking up crane kick, my fights go faster...but then I find my endurance running out faster as well, and I get really annoying long gaps when I stand around staring at my recharging attacks.

The other idea I had was to pull slots from my secondary into the attacks and slot my armour in the 30s, when I get more slots. I have both dark armour and shield defense MA scrappers, both stuck at the same levels because of this endurance/attacks/slots problem.

I'm not sure what's the best way to do things and thought I'd ask the experts... help me get my scrappers out of the doldrums!

I know this was posted before but it's been lost in time.

Can someone give me a decent attack chain that doesn't need a lot of recharge for MA, sans Eagle's claw and epics?

More info: I don't have hasten, not doing IO sets yet, keep 1 endred in my attacks (or I'll run out of endurance quickly).

This might make me finish my fire/thorn. I hated how all the big clunky attacks weren't really doing the type of damage you'd think would come with the animation. Now when I hit them, they can feel it as well as see it!

If Wormhole has a larger radius of effect I will be happy.

I hope they let me colour my arrows and bullet casings...Otherwise UNFAIR!

Not a good idea to make them invisible. Having mobs pop out of nowhere is potentially dangerous. People may also mistakenly think there are no more mobs, and move on.

Making them untargetable isn't a bad idea though, as well as more obvious visual clues when they're shifted, and when they are coming out of shift.

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Lowbie Sidekick, "I didn't get anything. @#$$#, mage!"
Lowbie Sidekick, "Waaaaah." (I actually got a chuckle on that one.)
...Lowbie Sidekick rage quits
Another possibility is if Lowbie Sidekick had all the radio missions down


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There are children who play the game...it's hard to tell online but the behaviour gives it away. So I think Lowbie Sidekick would not have been capable of the type of thinking/persuasion to get himself his pack.

I have one of those infamous earth/TAs. I think TA is not a good pairing with earth unless one is really aiming to be 'king of controls'. Earth already has so much control, so good primaries to pair with TA would be something damaging (Illusion, Fire), or to use TA to back up a weak primary (Gravity).

TA is rather like rad, but gives up some rad powers in exchange for some cc/damage powers. The main reason why TA falls behind in the debuffing game is that it takes many powers, many clicks (and hence time) to do what rad does, which is throw some toggles. When fighting spawns, this is an advantage in that there are no pesky toggles, small radius effects to take care of. When fighting an AV or GM, this becomes a clickfest which takes time away from doing other things.

Then the fact that TA lacks a heal. No -- wait -- the TA controller lacks the means to heal themself without going into the medicine pool. TA draws a good amount of aggro. This is more a problem for defenders than controllers since controllers have a primary that helps it out, but having self-heals is always a big-pro.