LimitingFactor
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Posts
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If You Have Taken Vengeance:
Step 1: Set Vengeance to automatic.
Step 2: Wait for someone on your team to die. This may take some time depending upon your team's skill, mission difficulty, and your skill as a defender.
Step 3: Click the black name on the team window. (Optional: Activate Power Build Up prior to clicking on the dead teammate's name.
Step 4: Laugh maniacally as your team becomes effectively invulnerable. (Optional: Rez the dude you popped vengeance off of)
If Someone You're Teamed With Has Vengeance:
Step 1: Faceplant. (Skip to Step 2 if you are a defender with a rez power)
Step 2: Wait until you see vengeance go off. When you do, or if you have waited for 5 seconds or longer, go to Step 3.
Step 3: Apply rez method of your choice. -
While I've seen two Sonic/* defenders, I've never seen another Trick Arrow defender. What's that count for?
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Quote:I like this idea, though I'd rather see a much longer (60-70ft or so?) range on it so you can get more of a benefit from big open rooms full of Angry.Originally Posted by Captain_Fabulous
I've suggested this before and I still think it would be an improvement over the current Vigilance.
I don't have a problem with the -endurance buff. I think it's completely appropriate for a Defender. The Defender running out of end usually spells doom, especially if they're a healer.
But instead of basing the buff on the aggregate health of the team, base it upon the number of foes nearby. The more foes you're fighting, the greater the discount. It could be setup just like Invincibility (but with a much wider range, say 25'?); gives a greater buff for the 1st foe and smaller buffs for subsequent foes up to a cap.
Doing it this way makes it fair across all Defender powersets, whereas current Vigilance is very biased and encourages poor defending. And it also would give the solo Defender a decent buff, whereas the current Vigilance gives squat. It also would be a much more consistent buff, as spawn sizes are relatively constant, based upon the team size and mission difficulty. The current Vigilance buff can vary widely from mission to mission, based upon team composition and critters fought. This makes it very difficult to rely upon it, further reducing its effectiveness.
Just my 2 cents. -
Quote:Hm. On the one hand, an end reduction on the primary set would reinforce the purpose of this theoretical Vigilance, but at the same time there are some primary sets that can't do a lot to affect things that aren't your teammates. Maybe keep the all-powers -End that Vigilance has now, but tack on an additional -End and a +Recharge that just affects the character's primary powerset? That way you'd have your primary powers up faster and using less endurance per shot, without being able to just blast your way out of trouble with your secondary set.Originally Posted by Quaver
The +recharge makes sense, but the +recovery as well, that sounds a bit too much to me. Maybe -end cost for your primary set, but Blasters might moan that much of the time Defiance isn't as useful if they see Defenders going round blasting like there's no tomorrow and not suffering for it. As of course, most Blasters teamed with a Defender reach their peak performance and could probably use a little more +recharge themself.
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Quote:Assuming you're replying to me? That's why it would be +Recharge and +Recovery. You'd get to use your powers faster, and your blue bar would recover just as fast. The +Recharge would give you faster endurance usage by letting you apply more buffs, more debuffs, more heals, or more blasts as needed to salvage the situation. The +Recovery would be there to actually make the +Recharge worthwhile, simply by balancing out how fast you'd burn endurance. This wouldn't change how any powers work, but it would give the player more options simply due to making their effective slow-recharging powers come up more often. Make it a sliding scale based on the HP of the defender and their team, giving more of a benefit as people become closer to making out with the floor, and tweak until balanced.Originally Posted by Quaver
The funniest thing is that if we *did* get +recharge/some way to use powers while mezzed etc, during low levels our endurance would be hurting, for most sets.
If you need a thematic reason for it, this might work: Defenders wind up in a state of perfect focus when they or their teammates are in danger, becoming more in tune with the nature of their powers than they would otherwise be. This enables the Defender to use their powers more often and with less of an energy drain when themselves or their teammates are hurt. -
TA/A, currently at 40.
Yep, just the one. I'd roll more, but a friend of mine is insisting I get at least one of my characters to 50 before I start another. -
Of the primary sets you listed, TA is the best choice if you want to have nothing to do with healing or buffing your team. Rather than making your team less squishy, you make them tear through things like a rocket-propelled chainsaw through a phone booth full of college freshmen. Great selection of multi-purpose AOE debuffs, a hold, an immobilize with a -Fly tacked onto it, and a nice big AOE hold that has a 50% chance of locking down a boss in one shot. Plus, you get a nifty bow that none of the other Defenders get from their primary. Here, have the Best Guide Evar to TA: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122243
I don't have any personal experience with /Dark or /Ice, though I will say this: If you go with TA as a primary you'll have to think about the redraw between your primary and secondary powers unless you go /Archery (which is pretty rockin' as a secondary, IMO), and unless you go with Magic or Tech as an origin (or otherwise have reliable access to a fire or energy damage attack after level 26) you won't be able to light the patch left by Oil Slick Arrow on fire. -
Quote:So what's wrong with switching Vigilance into a +Rech/+Recovery that activates and increases in effectiveness as you and your team get hurt? I might've missed the arguments against it but, while the concept doesn't specifically buff power capabilities, it could let any defender use their more impressive fight-altering abilities more often without having to worry as much about their blue bar.Originally Posted by SkeetSkeet
I would suggest this is unavoidable. Defender primaries may (mostly) fill the same role on a team but they're so different from each other in mechanics and playstyle there's no one-size-fits-all inherent possible. This also happens to be my favorite thing about defenders and what has made it fun for me to level up a variety of them.
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I'm just poking my head in here to declare my eternal love for Luminara. I mean holy jeez dude. Did you roll a critical on that post or something?
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Quote:This. Raid of Arrows is currently tied with Oil Slick as my TA's go-to AOE damage power, if just because RoA doesn't need to be lit up like Oil Slick does, and it'll probably take first place once I get it fully slotted with recharge and damage.Originally Posted by OneWhoBinds
And, of course, all of this can be disregarded in the case of Archery... and for Assault Rifle in i16. They don't have crashing nukes, so their t9 power should never be ignored.
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If you pump out happy green numbers? "thx 4 heals"
If you peel the team off the floor with a spatula? "thx 4 rez"
But god help you if your job is to actively prevent damage, or if you make everyone else kill things faster, or if you personally stop a team wipe with creative application of powers. At best you won't get any thanks - TA's EMP Arrow is an awesome "hey guys you might want to rethink that last strategic move" power, but nobody ever realizes you've used it - and at worst they'll come down with an incurable case of Stupid and scream at you for the cardinal sin of doing your job by defending their poor tender faces before they kick you.
Teams that don't know when the defender just saved them by using a power they're either not used to, not expecting, have never seen before, or have never seen used properly deserve to be educated. The ones that refuse said education deserve the frequent hospital visits and the lingering taste of Pine-Sol in their mouths. Simple as that. -
Step 1: Slot Acid Arrow as a debuff. Use it on everything.
Step 2: Slot Oil Slick Arrow as an attack. Use it on everything as well, and get used to the bugs.
Step 3: Slot Disruption Arrow for recharge so you can use it on everything too.
Now combine this with your favorite attack chain from Archery, plus Rain of Arrows whenever it's up. Congratulations! You're doing damage! -
I made a macro and put it in the ctrl-3 power slot.
/macro Oil target_custom_next Oil
Replace "/macro Oil" with "/bind" and the key you want, but fair warning: Teaming with anyone who can dump out AOE fire or AOE energy attacks will make this largely useless, as they'll likely set it alight before you can get off a shot with your ignition power of choice.
The most trouble I've had with OSA is when I try to use it outside of an instanced mission. The knockdown/slow/-Def component still works, the target disappears when I pop Blazing Arrow into it, but it just won't light sometimes. I'd suggest relying on your secondary set for damage when you're outdoors, if just because OSA's unreliable.
(PS: Rain of Arrows makes me tingly in my no-no places.) -
I've not been playing a defender for long, but I really can't wrap my head around Vigilance. Yeah there's an endurance reduction for damaged teammates, but I see a small problem.
See, if your team starts taking damage, it's usually because they screwed up. If they screwed up, you have to start farting out your buffs/debuffs/heals much faster than you were before, and I'll admit that the endurance reduction helps. The problem is this: If you're in really deep, the need for you to apply awesome may become greater than the speed at which you're able to apply awesome, which may lead to a team wipe. Sure, you could take Hasten, but that eats up a power slot that could otherwise be used for a buff, a debuff, a heal, or a secondary blasting power.
Something that might work better could be +Recharge/+Recovery instead of endurance reduction, based on math similar to the existing inherent. That way you could apply your awesome faster when your team starts dying, with enough of that happy blue bar to continue applying awesome until either you die or the emergency's over, which would hopefully bail them out of whatever fire they stuck themselves in.
But that's just my opinion. Said opinion is based off my experience with a TA/A, where the faster I can splatter debuffs on things the better, so I may be just a little biased. -
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given an 8-person team built entirely of the clueless and badly built, how long does it take you to get through a 54 Maniac boss farm, and how many people die during the run?
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I think you mean 7 people and then you.
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Making yourself clueless and badly built adds an extra layer of challenge :P
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Pfft, where's the challenge in that? All you need to do is to stab yourself in the head with a power drill and the bad build will just come naturally after that. -
I think you mean three words: crossbows plz, tia.
Of course, this only works if you consider acronyms to be words, but you get my point. -
Oh right, I'm logged into the forums. May as well update on my progress. I'm up to 36 on my TA/A, picked up Maneuvers and Tactics on my team build, and managed to shove a heal proc into PGA for the heck of it - amusing, good for keeping myself topped off, but unreliable. And I discovered that OH MY LAWD EMP ARROW IS AWESOME.
I've already lost count of how many teams I've bailed out of an aggro-overload situation with it. Some poor sap accidentally aggros an extra Unyielding-level spawn with a mis-targeted blast, or the scrapper suddenly decides to play tank, or the tank mistakenly thinks they can drag the other half of the room over while they're taking damage and their emergency button isn't up yet, or the door's surrounded by Far Too Much Angry for the still-loading team to handle, or somebody missed a comm officer and there's a pile of angry Rikti chewing on the squishies? Y HLO THAR PAUSE BUTTON. Suddenly everyone has time to realize that yes they should probably rethink what they were doing a moment ago, yes their toggles should probably be in "fighting" and not "travel" mode, yes the person currently healing can't keep up, and yes the TA/A cannot in fact hear them over the sound of how freakin' awesome he is for saving their butts without healing a single point of damage.
I'm not even sure if I'll be impressed by Rain of Arrows at this point, even though dorking around in Mids has shown that it's possible to get a sub-20s recharge on it without totally boning its damage. -
Don't expect to see me posting much. I hit 26, discovered the joy of Oil Slick Arrow, and now I'm enjoying lobbing pointy sticks at things too much to bother with posting on forums regularly.
I mean, seriously. An oil slick that I can place where I want, set on fire with Blazing Arrow, then laugh myself stupid at minions tripping and falling in it while burning alive. Can this possibly get any more awesome without the addition of ninjas? -
This thread is what made me roll a TA/A as my first defender, and frankly? I'm loving it.
I'm an MSG-laden bullion cube dropped into the chicken soup of any team I join, and I revel in it. I give scrappers and blasters more of those big orange numbers they adore with resistance and defense debuffs. I give tankers more survivability with damage and to-hit debuffs, and I can keep runners from getting too far away. I give controllers an easier time with bosses and higher by stacking my own single-target controls with theirs. I even make other defenders happier by helping keep angry things further away longer and reducing incoming damage.
Sure, I might not be healing my team, but I don't care. That's not my job. My job is to make it easier for the team to melt the faces off of whatever it is they're killing, and if they get in over their heads because they mistook the little blue shield by my name for a little red cross, it's not my fault it happened.
I used to think that my job as a defender was to keep people from dying. Now that I know the TA set isn't supposed to put rubber bumpers on all the sharp edges in Paragon City, I'm okay with falling over and tasting the pine-sol if my team has sudden-onset stupidity and pulls a room full of anger down on my head.
Now, here's the real question: Am I doing it right?