As neat as Defiance sounded in concept, something about its implementation and its design struck me odd. I couldn't put what was off into words until now.
Defiance attempts to add an extra game of risk-vs-reward for a Blaster to play, where red-lining one's health nets the reward of increased damage for the increased risk of death. Folks have already mentioned that Defiance's effects kick in way too late and that Blasters are too fragile to leverage their health effectively enough to "play" this game.
But there's a deeper problem here-- in group play, the one who's playing this risk-vs-reward game isn't the Blaster. It's the Defender or Controller who's healing the Blaster. So what we have are healers being encouraged to play the game of deciding whether or not to heal a Blaster, but the Blaster himself bearing the risk and paying the penalty for a healer's decisions.
Playing with Defiance is extremely risky given the volatile nature of the game at high levels... but a healer might consider sustaining the extra damage done by a Blaster at a critical moment to be well worth it, even if the blaster ends up dying once or twice in a span of a few minutes. After all, it's not the healer who has to put up with the debt that comes from letting a blaster die. So the healer could easily consider allowing a Blaster to perish a worthwhile sacrifice-- the villians are vanquished, the mission is finished, and the judicious restraint displayed in his or her heals resulted in minimal team deaths. Yet the Blaster walks away with a hour or two's worth of debt to work off, bearing the cost of the team's success.
Hopefully Defiance will get a re-haul so that Blasters don't pay so heavily for choices that others make who might be encouraged to benefit from a Blaster's loss.
