Jabbrwock

Because the Toxic resistance is in Fiery Aura's excellent self-heal, Fire Tankers have excellent Toxic resistance = 60% with just SO's, if you're using Healing Flames on cooldown. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think that might be the highest of any Tanker primary.

Note: the 60% is if you are building Healing Flames for healing only. If for some reason you slot Healing Flames for resistance (seriously. . . why?) you can cap Toxic resistance.

Caltrops seem to produce more of a "run around aimlessly (and slowly) for the next 5 minutes" effect rather than the "stand obliviously in fire until you melt" or "run with great speed to the far end of the level and stay there" behavior I see from fire.

First rule of Masterminds is only you are allowed to play with fire. Target those stupid fire using enemies first.

The thing is, those aura powers are team support powers. Yes, they help the caster too, but they are key elements of how the Defender supports his team.

Removing Accelerate Metabolism or Recovery Aura from vigilance v2.0 won't make a big difference, they're on long cooldowns. Removing Radiant Aura and Healing Aura, however, just may. Now, an Empath has another tool available to provide what healing support his team needs. For a Radiation Defender, well, Radiant Aura is it. He can't choose another power, unless you seriously intend to suggest that a Rad should take Aid Other. That's it. And it's the bulk of the filler a Rad can use if his team needs more survival help than is provided by toggles + Lingering Radiation - the rest of the set is either long cooldowns or highly situational. So I object to the suggestion that a key element of the power set be excluded just because it might not be used for the benefit of the team. Blaster Defiance kicks in no matter how stupidlyt he Blaster chooses his target. Controllers get Containment even when they cast an AoE immobilize right over an AoE knockdown field. Scrappers get crits when they're nowhere near the rest of the team, or even not on a team at all. Why is it suddenly objectionable that Vigilance might work if the Defender is using it solo?

Yeah, you can go on about how an inherent called Vigilance shouldn't work when you're not vigilantly watching anybody else. . . so what? Change the name, then. Or just accept that knowing that you're all alone and have to vigilantly watch all quarters yourself makes just as much sense.

Well, if it has a damage type, it would almost have to have a resistance check. All damage types do is activate typed defense and typed resistance, and procs ignore defense since they don't go off if the slotted power doesn't hit, I'm pretty sure.

Why not? If your team needs healing and you have a heal power, using that heal power is being a better defender than wasting time shielding the guy who already got hit. If you want Vigilance v2.0 to be an actually good inherent, it should reward Defenders for doing what needs to be done, not reward them for refusing to use their heals and doing stupid other things instead of healing because heal powers have cooties.

Defender primaries that have healing powers have them for a reason - because those healing powers are part of how those primaries are supposed to help their teammates. It is no less idiotic to try to systematically discriminate against them than for the ignorant imports from other games to try to systematically discriminate against everything else.

I don't think even most of the folks who love Defenders as they stand would dispute that one. The hard part is finding a replacement that will benefit all of the Defender primaries, given that they are about the most diverse collection of power sets assembled under a single set type label. Some heal, some don't. Some buff, some don't. Some debuff, some don't. Some control, some don't. Some damage, some don't. It's so eclectic that it's hard to find a common theme for an inherent to buff. This is likely a common request is to instead just throw more damage at the problem - Defenders do have damaging blasts in their secondary, and if it's not their primary specialization, at least it's something consistently present in all of their secondaries. They may not need more damage, but it's something you can give them in their inherent that won't be amazingly complicated, completely useless, or hugely benefit some primaries over others.

Accuracy is multiplied by your base 75% chance to hit. To-hit is not.

No you wouldn't. It's already in the game, it just costs an extra $15 a month. If it were that exploitable, people would already be exploiting it.

Agreed. Scrappers are specialists. They are specialists in soloing, where they, as an archetype, are across the board excellent, by reason of having enough survivability combined with plenty of damage. Further, even looking at the basic functions of powers in teams, they are not generalists. In teams, you deal damage, you help others deal damage, you survive, and you help others survive. Scrappers only do two of these things to any reasonable extent. One they do moderately poorly, but they're not quite completely inept. And the last they lack entirely. That's not a generalist, it's a specialist in personal effectiveness, specifically in personal damage dealing and survival.

Just because an AT cannot be liked by everybody doesn't mean the devs should simply stop caring who likes or dislikes them, either. I mean, you can't please everybody with a storyline, either, so the VEAT storyline is just fine, right? Of course not! There are a few folks who like it, and a lot of folks who just ignore it because they enjoy playing their VEAT characters, and another lot of folks who despise it and find that it turns them off on playing their VEAT characters entirely. That's not success. And neither is having an AT whose play style has pretty narrow appeal be the reward AT hero side. There is no easy fix for a bad storyline - it takes time and work to write a new story, and if you go back and rewrite the existing one, the veteran VEATs will be annoyed that they don't get to experience it. But fixing having the hero side EAT having narrow appeal is much easier - port over the existing SoA mechanics, reskin the mandatory uniforms, and (this is the hard part) write a new story for them. It won't fix everything, but it will fix more than not doing it would fix. Don't let the drive for perfection derail the need for improvement.

Humans thrive on both in different situations.

Sounds like you're missing some quotation marks.

/Macro DM inspexec_pet_target Enrage$$inspexec_pet_target Focused Rage$$inspexec_pet_target Righteous Rage

If you cut/paste this into your chat line, you'll get a macro that will just feed your pet an Enrage.

/macro DM "inspexec_pet_target Enrage$$inspexec_pet_target Focused Rage$$inspexec_pet_target Righteous Rage"

Cut/paste this into your chat line, and you should get a macro that does what you're intending. At least, I did when I tried it. My experience is far from exhaustive, though.

A secondary issue nobody seems to be interested in addressing is the degree to which squishies *ALREADY* trespass on melee territory late game, thanks to the huge number of defense IO set bonuses. Not only do these provide enormous damage mitigation, but they also provide a layer of avoidance against mezzes. The survivability difference between squishies and melees is already arguably too small at the extreme challenge/extreme power end of the spectrum. IO's dont provide nearly as many options for melees to infringe on squishie territory by gaining buff/debuff or control abilities they formerly lacked. This may be a significant balance argument against adding mez protection to squishies beyond what's already available - it's about the only thing left that melees get that squishies don't, that and a health bonus.

This is an odd definition of useless you're using. Being worse at teaming than Controllers is like losing at arm-wrestling against the Incredible Hulk - it by no means you're bad, just that your opponent is insanely good. Defenders have a specialty that is extremely good in teams. That makes them very useful indeed. The only situations where I wouldn't prioritize adding Defenders to a team are 1) if the team doesn't have a tank and we're running content that actually needs a tank, which is quite rare. 2) When I can completely fill the team with Controllers.

Being definitively ahead of 2 archetypes in team desirability, and situationally (and a very common situation it is) ahead of a third, is a long way from being "useless."

I know there are spots for high level SO enhancements that don't require the mission. Firebase Zulu and Rikti War Zone? Haven't played hero side at that level for a very long time.

When you respec, you get to redistribute all your enhancements. You can also remove up to 10 of then (a full enhancement tray worth), and all enhancements you don't slot or put in your tray get sold automatically, and for more than you'd get selling them normally, IIRC.

Respec is for fixing your build if a patch changes something critical, or just to try something new and different. Dual builds just let you be ready for two very different situations at a moment's notice, like having one farming build and another teaming build, since some powers that are awesome in one situation are worthless in the other.

On the subject of respecs, the terra volta trial still gives you a respec, up to 3 times total I believe. You can also get a respec invention recipe. Plus, when a new issue is released, everybody usually (always?) gets a free respec.

In th e short term, aim to drop powers you can cover with reasonably obtainable IO enhancements. Notably, drop Acrobatics, as you can get Knockback protection IO's relatively easily.

Burn is also skippable. it's good, but situational, and if you don't expect to run into the situation a whole lot, it won't do you much good. Temperature Protection may do you well, with its slow resistance - slow is your bane, given how nice Healing Flames is.

In the medium term, focus on improving your strength with damage and recharge IO set bonuses and shoring up your weakness with defense IO set bonuses. While you probably won't get to the 45% defense softcap, you can build up a solid base to back up your Fiery Aura resistances, allowing a single small purple to turn you into an unstoppable human crematorium. This will take more than one week-end, though. Also of note, pool powers that grant defense - Combat Jumping, Weave, and Stealth - are very excellent bases both to hold good sets for the bonuses and as a small base of defense to build your defense set bonuses. They also hold the expensive but awesome Luck of the Gambler global recharge bonus IO.

It's gonna take a lot of cash to put together a good Fire/Fire Tanker build, though. But that's why you keep coming back, there's always more missions to run, more recipes and salvage to drop, and more stuff to sell at Wentworth's for cash to buy what you need.

At the moment, Twilight's Grasp is weaker than inherently appropriate for a MM version of a Defender ability because Fluffy and Tar Patch are stronger than inherently appropriate for a MM version of a Defender ability. If/when Fluffy and Tar Patch get properly reduced, Twilight's Grasp will need to be restored to its proper radius. Until then, well, it's sloppy, but in the end the set works well enough. It's hard to make the argument that MM Dark Miasma is a weak set. I'd prefer things were neatened out. You'd prefer things were neatened out. I wouldn't be s hocked if the devs would prefer things were neatened out. But at the end of the day, rebalancing a set that, as a whole, is popular without being obviously overpowered has to be a low priority issue.

Games are like politics and sausage. People who love any of them should be wary of watching them be made.

Tanks are tougher. Scrappers are better at doing damage. Tanks get better numbers survival numbers out of Shield Defense, Scrappers get damage numbers out of Shield Defense.

And on the subject you mention in the next post - yes, if tanks get a set with Parry, it should provide 20% defense (not 30%) because Scrapper defense values are supposed to be 75% as good as Tanker values. Regardless of primary set vs. secondary set, Scrappers are better at damage, Tankers are better at survival.

We've already seen that the devs want melees to rely on support classes for survival in teams, at least to an extent. That was in large part what the global defense nerf and ED were about. The problem with his proposal is not that it makes melees useless in teams, it's that support classes can't universally provide the needed mez protection, which would further marginalize some of the less popular buff/debuff sets.

With the current state of buff/debuff sets, melees absolutely need high mez protection. I'm not too thrilled with melee characters getting to essentially remove mezzes from the game entirely while solo, when squishies have mez avoidance as, generally, the number 1 priority for any successful solo tactic, but the state of current power sets means that's the way its gotta be. It's not that making melees rely on external buffs to survive the kind of mezzes that fly around in big teams is a terrible idea, it's that it's an impractical idea.

My stance: I'd like to see a bit of mez protection on squishies, but I'm not gonna get upset if I don't see it. I don't think it would break the game, but I don't think that its absence breaks the game either.

This is a false comparison. Most defense debuffs have to hit to take effect, and defense defends against that. Of course they take full effect when they hit, that's what defense is all about, avoiding getting hit and providing no mitigation of anything that makes it through and hits anyway. Resistance is about taking the hit and reducing its effects. The two are equivalent in this way.

Where defense gets boned is that defense debuffs are *EVERYWHERE*. You find them right from the beginning of the game and they never go away. Resistance debuffs are far less common. Also, autohit defense debuffs, while not ubiquitous, do exist in pve. I don't know of any unresistable resistance debuffs in pve, but if they exist, they are likewise less common than autohit defense debuffs, in my experience.

The cottage rule is that if Build Up today increases accuracy and damage, tomorrow it should not be changed to build up a cottage for you to live in.

Or, more reasonably, that a power that serves a specific purpose today shouldn't be dramatically changed into something completely different in tomorrow's patches. It's the reason Clobber in War Mace is still a stun (now with tons of damage too), and Energize in Elec Armor still gives an endurance discount. It's also the reason Energize in Brute Elec Armor didn't get moved to an early spot in the power set the way it did in the Scrapper and Tanker versions - the cottage rule also forbids changing power order.

It's a guideline, though, I'm sure the devs would violate it if they felt the need, just that the need would have to be pretty serious before they would do so. Since neither SR nor Ninjitsu is currently a broken set, I don't see it happening.

Note, though, that it's still a very flexible rule. As long as whatever replaces Evasion still gives some AoE defense, merging Ranged and AoE defense into Focused Senses would probably still be Cottage Rule Compliant. At least, that's my take on the War Mace and Electric Armor changes.

I'd have expected the absence to at least be noticed. That's the real issue. An Empath who doesn't cast Fort is underperforming. When she *STILL* gets singled out for compliments, something is desperately wrong, not so much with her, as with her teammates who have such low expectations that just casting heals is enough to earn compliments.

If the compliments had been team wide, "Nice teamwork," or "We really worked well together," or "We wtfpwnt these guys, they never had a chance," that's one thing. When you single out a single player for compliments, though, it should be because they are overperforming what you generally consider normal for their AT and power sets. If just casting heals through an entire TF is that, then yeah. . . your expectations are low.

Meh, if it's OP on scrappers after being boosted to scrapper-appropriate damage, then it was already OP on tankers and brutes. Which is a case I'm not going to argue either way, SD seems awfully uber to me, compared to what my fire/fire tanker gets in the other "give up survivability, gain damage" armor set.