Frosticus

Of course a scrapper will have an easier time, this is a controller vs defender discussion isn't it? My comment was specific to the fact that if any controller slots for damage they will be able to do roughly the same dps as a defender before pets are accounted for.

So relative to a defender which is what this topic is about; a controller either gets their damage for very little cost or they get their control for very little cost.

Additionally, a controller doesn't have to sacrifice control to do damage because of several factors with varying availability.
1. control is binary. If my hold lasts 40 sec or 15 sec doesn't matter if they target is held the entire time I attack it.
2. IO's and HO's all for both control and damage to be highly enhanced.

I strongly recommend that any controller tries out slotting their st controls as attacks that happen to do a great job of mezzing rather than mezzes that happen to do decent damage. You'll likely find (for most combos) that life actually gets easier for the toon.

You (generic you) will not get a fire/elec to exceed 300 dps after all the time lost using powersink and 95% tohit chance.

In fact a son/elec buzzsaw build can produce about the same dam as the fire/elec largely because it burns endurance at roughly half the rate.

Actually that's not entirely true, you could probably get both to just nudge over 300 dps with surveillance. Most just take /cold for the defense so you have a better chance of using the dps.

There are fire/shield and dm/shield scrappers with 5% of the best imaginable fire/elec build and are upwards of 50x more survivable.

I can think of at least 10 or 12 builds that range from edging out a fire/elec to outright humiliating it from a st dps point of view. None of which use -regen (well one does but it is bugged and doesn't actually work). They all share one thing in common though, they use massive recharge.

That isn't to say that fire/elec isn't amazing because quite frankly it is. The dps analysis does not do that combo justice. Quite simply, the st burst damage is so overwhelming that the long term dps is largely irrelevant (though no slouch) much more so than other high dps and/or burst st toons.

Zing!

Hey, if 5 people can keep a server alive they can easily keep a thread alive!

Of note is that we were specifically talking about early game. A red con boss will tear most trollers a new one pre-DO's, or at least has the potential to do it with a single miss. The extra duration of confuse makes mezzing bigger and badder enemies earlier in the game much easier.

I know that in terms of direct damage without PA Illusion is not particularly fast in the least. But without PA doesn't mean without two confuses Luts helping you take stuff down.

As of lvl 8 though plant just skyrockets ahead of everything by setting it to like -1/x5

I've mentioned in the past that my personal threshold for a "healthy" server is the ability to log in and (within reasonable time) do whatever it is I feel like doing.

I generally find that if there is ~1k people online at the same time as me that is generally a realistic happenstance. Now I rarely desire to run Hami, so that helps, but pretty much any other content is fair game from Mothership Raids, to a Doc Q, to the all but guaranteed ITF. I like to be able to just log in and be reasonably confident that no matter what content I might desire to run that day, some other people are likely feeling the same way at roughly the same time.

Actually 1k seems to be the very bottom of that spectrum just based on the random fun sessions I've had where I fire up search at the beginning.

Like I said though, that's just me and I like having lots of options open to me because just like how this game encourages altitis I feel it also (should) encourage widely varied content.

Because scourge is pretty and makes people feel important.

Early access to confuse makes it the second easiest (not necessarily fastest) solo'er from the get go.

The ability to easily take out bosses or other such difficult enemies in the early game while they award such large bonuses probably does make it the second fastest too depending on what you choose to face while leveling through the early game. Worst case though is that grav bumps its position.

I'm not sure what your last line refers to. I'll assume it is an inside joke.

It's not just fire/kins or an elite few builds. It's any controller that slots for damage. Well at least when it comes to single target damage.

Well it's not like anyone said Freedom was heavily populated. Just more populated!

He was once my hero, but after watching the Old Spice Man whip off nearly 100 personalized responses to youtube/twitter/facebook/etc comments on the Old Spice commercials I have decided I have extreme Man Love for him that only one manly man can share with another.

I dare you not to share the same opinion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GV2UqA5ElM

edit: I'm not Jason, but I laughed my *** off to this one. The responses to Alyssa Milano were terrific as well.

I love it! I'm going to say this to people in real life when I don't want to talk to them. You just made my day.

Anyone can do this, just pull up mids/red tomax and plug away at it. However the results will vary depending on the buff/debuff set it is paired with, the amount of recharge (uptime of aim/soul drain), procs slotted, powerpools included (ie assault), rank of foe being faced (for scourge avg), etc.

In general though I can tell you this: archery corrs (all corrs for that matter) need to have all cyclinders firing to keep up with high recharge versions of the defender that take /soul app.

Bang on post.

Just as a heads up, SC is likely going to be roughly cut in half in terms of damage. Or at least that is what it is 'supposed' to be set at according to Castles notes. I heard a slip up that its recharge also got whacked, but that is unsubstantiated.

If you aren't uber rich, or able to at least rapidly recoup the costs you may want to hold off until GR, or the usual patch that hits 1-3 weeks after with the nerfs/buffs. I know I'm waiting on my bs/shield scrapper before green-lighting it for a major investment.

True, but eclipsed (and I mean total solar eclipse) by the heals in thermal.
Definitely. Forge isn't exactly child's play though. Sonic siphon+DF vs forge+MA. Depends what we are fighting. Easy foes I'd give it to sonic. Hard to hit stuff, thermal. Add in the near immunity to slows/-rech of thaw and the increase that can add to offense (ie trying to run across quicksand) and it is less clear still.
Liquefy is a great and underrated power, but sonic already plows through minions pretty well when on a team and unfortunately hits a pretty big hurdle against the big baddies of the game. Heat Exhaustion, while for a different use is a better power for what is needed in the game when it is needed (if that makes sense).
Meh I like thermal gfx and dislike the sonic bubble, it still makes me somewhat queasy over extended periods. I don't think it is the graphics of the bubble anymore, but rather that it makes me try to focus at different depths at the same time...or something.

IMO sonic is probably the superior minion muncher (in a team), but it isn't a landslide. Thermal is the better high end content tackler (ie AV's/TF's) and it is a landslide.

That's ok though because I think thermal is just viewed as a really solid set, which means sonic has some room to be improved in a fairly meaningful way. If I were going to take a crack at sonic I wouldn't change much though I'd just make it better at what it is supposed to excel at; resistance and -resistance.

Well you certainly seem to know what you are talking about so far be it for me to correct so much misinformation but here goes...

GI is not FAR less potent than SI. For the purposes of providing invisibility against mobs they are identical. Identical as in they both provide full invisibility. SI would provide invisibility in situations where something is reducing your stealth radius, but that never happens as far as I know in pve.
Additionally GI costs about 1/20th the endurance of SI. GI's threat reduction also doesn't suppress when attacked, which SI's does.

Like I said in a previous post: SI is actually the redundant power not GI and GI is actually the better of the two powers in almost all situations. However, SI is a signature power and not going anywhere.

haha no. Maybe you should try out GI (or SI) sometime. The things you can do with it might just astound you based on your misconceptions.

Certainly an interesting theory considering the st damage was actually increased for the blaster version.

Yes snipers out range player powers, but 160ft blasts out range normal npc attacks (160ft would be if psy had retained 100ft+boostrange).

I agree with regard to psy scream, but the devs love their useless snipes for w/e reason.

You lost me. How is buffing my ill/cold with an emp going to prove that a solo emp defender that could self buff would be ok? I'm not sure what claim you are trying to test and how you think an outside buffer would validate it.

You did say you specifically wanted this tech for defenders right?
Target self. Can you? if so you are the only person in the game that can.
New vigilance was put in specifically to address defenders solo'ing. Most people are reasonably happy with it and most people realize that solo defenders are barely tailing behind solo corruptors now.

If you read the patch notes introducing new Vigilance the devs made it pretty clear that the "problem" was purely on our end and the buff was effectively a bone being tossed our way. The change was not accompanied by the usual dev comments about datamining, and missing performance marks that typically go with buffs.

You keep saying this, but it isn't having the impact that you believe it should. Probably because controller pets:
1. Have very limited powers
2. Have very limited AI
3. Are not affected by recharge

If I put adrenalin boost on Animate Stone it won't cast regeneration aura more often. In fact it won't do anything more often. It won't know that it can now use powers with reckless abandon because endurance is meaningless. It won't know that it can rush ahead into the most difficult encounter and laugh at the enemies.

But if I can cast AB on myself, holy guacamole I just hit myself with:
+100% rech
+80% res to slow/rech
+800% recovery
+500% regen

With just generic IO's I now have 2 seconds off of perma hasten and all the benefits that normally come to billion inf builds with that much recharge. Those benefits are large. Large like now being able to keep fortitude on 6 other people easily if I wanted. Or if not on a team, large like having rain of arrows recharge every 16 seconds.

With just SO's/generic IO's.

I largely agree with everything you just said. Especially the bit about tactics. Like for instance fighting Regent Korol on my corruptor was impossible from range, but fairly trivial from melee.

However, I disagree that the 7ft vs 5ft disparity falls under tactics. The tactics in this situation are the fact that Infernal is happiest using his ranged attacks. So an active kiting method that encourages him to use his ranged attacks the most would be tactics. However, generating enough dps as a melee toon doing this would be a challenge.

But standing just out of his melee range and using your own melee attacks and only facing him at his intended strength at the times he runs out of ranged attacks and switches modes is not so much tactics as much as taking advantage of a glitch in the system.

The last time this was discussed I made mention that it was similar to when mobs that were leaning against walls wouldn't fight back. Now obviously Infernal even in a limited capacity is much more of a threat than that, but my point is the mob is behaving in a limited capacity and it isn't because of anything you are doing, but rather because of a bug in the game.

If my ill/emp could use all my powers on myself it would curbstomp the feats my ill/cold can do. It wouldn't take down single hard targets as well do to the lack of -regen, but it could easily solo 85 foes at once which is roughly the agro cap of an illusion character.

Additionally it could do it on SO's, compared to the multi-billion inf build my ill/cold is running. And that right there is the crux of the issue. Peak power in this game is something that generally gets whitewashed over by the devs. They know that with team buffs the feats we can do are ridiculous and they know that via huge investment in IO's many solo characters can perform at i4 levels.

However, very very few toons are permitted to "break the game" with just SO's (the only one I can think of is bots/traps). A self buffing emp would have an immortality line that eclipses most tanks and would literally only be kill-able via extreme burst damage. Allowing it to do that AND bring the buffs that it does to a team is just a ridiculous premise. Not something I'd expect from an educated player at any rate.
This is a different premise. Depending on the strength and what powers they were allowed to cast upon themselves (ie clear mind is probably off the list as mez protection is a very coveted self power for squishies) then this idea could have merit.

I'm not sure developing entirely new tech just so a defender can get 25% of the benefit of their team buffs (I doubt they'd go above that) is a worthwhile use of their time. Not when you can just add a message to the loading screens that says "not all power sets are designed to solo as well as they team"...oh wait they already did that.

Hopefully your next line of reasoning will involve some of the crazy things debuffers are allowed to do and ask why buffers aren't permitted to do much the same. That's the next logical stage in this discussion anyway. Like ask why a dark defender is allowed to have the equivalent of softcapped def and allowed to debuff damage to the point they are at the res cap and other such fun stuff. It's a good question to ask if you choose to, but fair warning as the answer usually stops these "buff myself" threads in their tracks.