Gerswin

Don't let any mushy lumps go to waste.

I'm still here, El Guapo!

I took a 650 mile trip this holiday weekend. My butt took quite a pounding.

A few things:

First of all I like the guide, and it clearly demonstrates how defense and resistance work together to mitigate damage in idealized circumstances. I think the conclusions may not give the whole story, though. In most cases I find that any tank, if built properly, can handle sustained steady damage in most solo and teamed situations. More specifically, any tank can survive the sustained DPS that they will face solo, or teamed with support.
Problems arise when faced with debuffs, spike damage, and enemy buffs (such as Nems and their Vengeance). Certain mob types have the ability to almost completely negate one aspect of damage mitigation. For example, sappers make the resistance aspect of damage mitigation for invul (sans unstoppable) less useful than the defense aspecs. Similarly, DE quartz eminators almost completely negate the defense aspect.

Spike damage is also a problem for defense based damage mitigation. Imagine a tank with 1800 hp and 3 attacks of 1000 damage each incoming. The tank with 50% resistance will survive every time, while a tank with 25% defense will survive approximately 84% of the time (but will be unscathed 42% of the time). If this happens every fight the defense based tank is gonna debt cap pretty fast. Defense does more than mitigate damage., though so it balances out.

... that we have 6 doors to camp instead of just the base? I know where I'm setting up my deathtraps now. Bonus points for killing the opponent before they finish zoning.

It is always said the game isn't balanced for 1 vs 1... this is my view of the current balance:

1-2 Damage AT's > 1-2 Support AT's
2-3 Damage AT's = 2-3 Support AT's
4+ Damage AT's <<< 4+ support AT's

Anyone that has ever run an all defender, controller, or corrupter team knows this is true. You can make even more potent combinations with some mixing, but the price of being good in a duo or solo is reduced contribution to a group. That is how this game is balanced.

They couldnt win the zone because there was a team of 4 heroes at every pillbox that moved in as soon as the swarm of corrupters left. That was our plan once we realized we were no organized enough to fight them directly.

A few thoughts on this thread:

Do some testing in the arena. Lots of times zone PvP results can be skewed. I cannot hit an eluding stalker at all with my dm/regen (3 to hitbuffs in FA and tactics), 3xacc in touch of fear (inherently more accurate) in the arena, but I was chewing them up in RV because of a friendly empath giving fly-by fortitude. On the reverse side, I can generally hit nearly every time against non-elude/overload/MoG/PFF users in the arena, but in the zone PvP I often miss due to debuffs from the nearby mobs.

I think that this causes an unhealthy PvP environment because there are a lot of players that feel like they can only compete while their top-tier defensive click power is running, and then they just wait in their base or zone to refill inspirations while their power recharges. The "crash" which is dangerous in PvE is not so much of an issue in PvP because the fights are so much shorter.

What you end up with is a bunch of people that are "uber" for a few minutes, then bored until their power recharges. This prevents effective teaming, encourages base-camping, and creates a tohit/acc vs defense arms race that breeds a limited selection of PvP viable builds. I am hoping that the Pillbox mini game becomes popular, because you can throw FOTM out the window when it comes to taking, defending, scouting, etc. the pillboxes. Last night I saw a TA defender doing more to slow down the villain attack on the turrets than any scrapper or blaster, even though his build could be considered "gimp" for arena-type PvP. Also, until last night the zone has usually been dominated by stalkers and brutes on the villain side, without too much success. The swarm of corrupters, dominators, and a few MM's that showed up late night nearly succeeded in winning the zone against a higher zone population of heroes.

I think the entire zone would be more fun if there were no drones whatsoever, and when you die you spawn in a rez ring next to the zone entrance. That way, there is no "safe zone" that creates siege dynamics. Also, when you zone in you should spawn at a random location, such as on the tops of buildings, throughout the zone.

Also, the base camping phenomenon is not entirely based on camping to get people that just rezzed, most of the people camping the base are there because someone they were fighting fled there.

A few things:

The heroes have more advantages than just slots and HO's:
Accolades, epic powers, and the 4 extra power slots make a huge difference. Also, just about all of the heroes are fully HO'd on test. due to the ease of duping them. On live when villains get their accolades, epics, and slots it will not be so 1-sided. Stalkers will have a field day in RV as long as they can get a teammate to grant invis. Some stalkers have already figured this out and were feasting on squishies last time I was on despite being vastly outnumbered. In 1 vs 1, ice and rad corrupters with web grenade will be demolishing meleers. With bodyguard, MM's will be disgusting when teamed. I still don't think dominators will be viable solo, but on a team they should be out-mezzing controllers by a longshot. Brutes with stuns and web grenade are very scary for just about every hero AT except the strongest scrappers and tanks. On top of this, every villain will have a pet. I wish they would give a level bump already because the rigged setup going on now isn't accomplishing much besides making villains whine and heroes get bored.

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Time to tele-gank masterminds.

They should make a badge for getting killed 500 times in PvP... it would make everyone happy.

The problem for all tanks is the outperformers... superstrength in sirens and EM in Warburg+. A SS tank in sirens or an EM tank in Warburg feels balanced, mainly because you do near scrapper damage. Tanks cannot fulfill their PVE role of holding aggro from multiple attackers with the current system. They can play like defensive stalkers with their extreme damage attacks, but they need gimmicks or trickery to actually kill anyone that sees them coming.

I would be willing to accept less damage in exchange for some more survivability. As much as I enjoy my fire and ice scrankers, they have more in common with blasters than tanks. Tanker passives and mez resistance are a joke, and resistance is negated by crits and defense is negated by tohit buffs. Yes we are left with a big bag of hitpoints, but when you get mezzed in 5 seconds all that means is it takes them 10 seconds instead of 5 to kill you.

In siren's call I can still tank pretty well with my ice tank, mostly because I am mostly facing non mezzers. In warburg controllers can crush my mez resistance very quickly. I can stay alive by jumping and tping around constantly and picking off the noobs and squishies, but that prevents my from holding any aggro. All in all, tanks are weak scrappers that die a little slower when mezzed.