Jesterman

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That's a GREAT idea! While we're at it, could you put Psi protection into Invulnerability?

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An invuln tankers is virtually immune to most forms of damage as well as holds, plus has way more hitpoints than any defender could ever possibly have. You can't compare the sets just with vulnerability to psi. Play a force field defender then get back to me on how much worse off invuln is.

Also, while I'm posting let me add on to what I said earlier. Defender powers need to be better not just in terms of numbers(like resistance debuffs and heals) but also things like speed boost, accelerate metabolism, the radius of heals, buffs/debuffs etc. A defender dispersion bubble should be bigger than a controllers, same with EF. You should be able to look at a power being used and know whether it's a defender using it or not. Since Kin defenders can't hold, an increase in the radius of transfusion and transference would really help things out.

Shared powersets need to be distinctly different so that defenders have an advantage over controllers in terms of buffs throughout the whole game.

As I said before, the best defensive powers in the games are the massive holds that prevent any attacks from going off. Defenders just can't match that. We need to be brought up to speed, particularly after controllers can do everything we can + hold + pets.

My bet is that once I5 hits and controllers pre-32 are tweaked, you will see a lot of unhappy defenders that have had their niche usurped.

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That's why I recommend everyone to make a bubble defender. You'll quickly learn both team and solo aspects and as an added bonus you're not going to get any 'uber' final powers that you feel the need to fire off constantly.

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Damnit the glass is half EMPTY, not full, EMPTY!

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speed boost - siphon speed is now more or less worthless, slowing the boss isnt the reason i cast it, its just a hella-nice side effect.

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Use siphon speed on an AV and you will never look back. It's the only debuff that actually works on them anymore. Plus can you ever have too much hasten on some of those long recharges and nukes? Kinetics, emp, storm, and FF would all make out like crazy(assuming the knockback to knockdown change was also put into effect). And finally there would be some equality between rad/darks and the other 4 sets, as well as defenders superior at defending and controllers superior at controlling. Both of whom could then solo well.

Sorry if I repeat someone, everytime I went to read this thread it got longer.

I hadn't thought to notice it, but most of the people I've seen in the 40+ range are controllers, scrappers, and of course tankers. Tankers are so powerful now that many don't need anyone. Do some datamining on what level of what AT's are doing all of the killing in misisons like the portal mission Dreck and you will see it's almost entirely tankers. Most of the PLing I've seen and "bridging" is done so that the tanker is doing all or most of the work.

The biggest problem as I see it are the post pet differences between controllers and defenders. Prior to level 32 I have no problem, the complementary sets to the buff/debuff sets work well. But once pets come into the game most controllers can dominate everything and anything.

I put over 400 hours into my force field defender and got to 37 with a lot of help. I put 250 into my controller so far and got myself to 44. Post pets nothing can touch me unless I make a big mistake.

The problem with the defender/controller relationship is the same as the tanker/scrapper relationship. It's always there it just becomes much more noticeable in the late game.

After pets, controllers get all or more of the damage a defender can do, plus they get expendable teammates, PLUS buffs that are virtually indistinguishable from a defenders. You overhauled tanker and scrapper powersets to differentiate them, now it's time to do that for defenders/controllers(and give blasters some hitpoints and some survival skills in their secondary, how many blasters use melee attacks?).

My suggestions:

Defenders first and foremost need a way to be clearly better buffers/debuffers than controllers. CONTROLLER HOLDS ARE THE BEST FORM OF DAMAGE MITIGATION! If a defender can't surpass the protective abilities of controller holds, he cannot contribute as much to the team as a controller.

-Defender buffs need to be more powerful, the 80% difference isn't sufficient for anyone to notice.

-Much as I hate suggesting this idea, defenders need to be able to survive just as long as the buffed teammates in order to ensure the safety of the team. Adding the ability to self target would be an incredible boost to defender sets like EMP, FF, Storm, and Kin. This would be a defender only ability and would bring these sets further into line with the capabilities of rad/dark.

-Defender secondaries need to be more effective. Not in terms of damage control or we usurp blasters but in terms of the buff/debuff effects. Rad should debuff defense substantially, dark should dramatically affect accuracy, psy should slow recharge to a crawl, not just a slight effect.

-For the love of god, change all knockback in all powers to knockdown, and let us slot for knockback IF WE WANT IT!! Tankers can customize this, why can't defenders?? FF and storm powers would get a huge boost from this. This is why controller storm is superior to defender storm.

Giving defenders just these options would greatly ensure our survivability.

And let me echo Ninjamonkey and ask what the reasoning was behind giving dark a resistance debuff? The sets NEED to be somewhat different, you just made dark the uberset. Pets, holds, heals, mass rez, AND resistance debuff. All it's missing from the entire set is an endurance recovery boost, seriously, that's the only thing missing.

Anyway, I'm on my controller now and loving it, so do your thing. Do controllers need help pre-32 yeah definitely. But blasters and defenders need to feel as heroic to play as tankers, scrappers, and controllers do in the late game and they fall drastically short.

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Sister Psyche is an interesting case due to the fact that she has switched bodies. Baseline she is a Mind Control, Force Field Controller.


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That explains why she's in the hospital at least.

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Blasters have gameplay issues though that need to be addressed, they have lost their role and the title of damage king.

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I was referring more to specific powersets. Force Field users are becoming few and far between because the other sets can all do more. Empathy and Storm could also use some tweaks. Maybe Mind and Earth controllers as well.

Can you look at all Squishies and not just blasters? This may be the wrong forum for it, but several controller and defender powersets have been having complaints about their powers for a while now too. Controllers were due for a look in I5 if I recall, but defenders thus far haven't been mentioned.

Frankly I think all of them could use a little spiffing here and there.

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Like most high level power, it is situational and is very powerful when suddenly faced with more foes than you can handle.

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Geko, if you don't mind, could you elaborate on this statement? What do you mean by situational? How often should a situational power be used in your mind? And finally why are the higher powers, particularly with several builds like storm or force field situational whereas other builds contain useful powers most of the way through? Like why are some situational powers/powersets more situational than others?

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Really the only group bothered at all is Ice Armor b/c it is the only set focused on defense against a specific typed attack.

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And force fields? We have three powers in our set worth taking, no heal at all, and now our defenses don't do what they used to do. Yes it's a bug fix but it hurts us, and even more so because we are so dependent on everyone else for exp. Tanks will still survive and can easily rely on their other powers and abilities.

It's not so easy for force fielders. And we already have little enough to bring to the team for tanks/scrappers because of the last issue that remade your archetypes and powers.

Enough whining from the ice tankers, you guys still have great defense and hundreds if not thousands of hitpoints, plus ice slick and a handful of other powers that don't depend on defense.

Adding defense is ALL that force field does(well that and 4 knockback powers that many mobs are resistant to). We have one power to protect ourselves and dying in one shot through that isn't uncommon. Force Field defenders just took a major shot to the pants, and after all the attention tankers and scrappers have been getting lately you are still complaining.

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These were pre-I3 numbers. Defender primaries got a boost in I3 so if we account for the 25% boost at I3 we get 25% / 1.25 = 20% for deflection, and 18.75% / 1.25 = 15% for dispersion (These would be the numbers for controllers now).

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I don't remember reading anything in the issue 3 notes about a boost to defender primaries and nothing like that was on the test server as far as I know. Do you have a link for any of that info?

ha! I beat you Synergy.

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The Deflection Shield would give you 25% Defense to Lethal and Smashing attacks and the Dispersion bubble would give you 18.75% Defense to Lethal, Smashing, Fire, Cold, Energy and Negative Energy Attacks.

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Are those the real numbers for force field or just used as an example? A while ago a force field defender went on the test server and recorded the frequency of hits against even level minions. He collected data for around 1,000 attacks for each bubble and reported dispersion bubble to be +12.5% defense unslotted and insulation/deflection shield to be +20% defense unslotted. This is the first I've seen of a developer posting numbers for force field and I wanted to make sure that those were the real numbers and not being used as an example? I don't think the site still has his data but I can post the link if you want.

And if each SO does 20% defense buff, then six slotted insulation and deflection should be +55% defense while dispersion is 41.25%...Is that correct? That seems extremely high.

I'd love to be able to have the founder remove inactive members, particularly the upper level ones, but here's something I haven't seen mentioned so far.

Would an SG only version of teamspeak be able to be incorporated into COH? I know nothing of the logistics of it, just curious.

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate being kept in the loop and how forthcoming you guys are about developments. I've played games where things were kept completely secret and changes took months and were often ill-conceived or poorly implemented. So thanks for listening and working with the players so well! We appreciate it even though we sometimes get snippy about our powers.