Memphis_Bill

OK. Are you aware of the combat info monitor? If not, there's a quick "how to" link in my signature. Set it up with "Damage bonus" showing.

Go fight things.

Now, old defiance didn't ramp up until you were fairly close to dying. If you played smart (IE, took as little damage as possible so you could *stay alive,*) or were on a team, you weren't getting any sort of a bonus at all. Sure, you got a big bonus - IF you could leverage it, IF you could stay alive long enough to use it, and IF the attack hit. And it was only useful IF you had an attack to take down everything in that mob that was killing you - it may be two or more enemies, they may be mezzing you (in which case Defiance 1.0 does you no good,) etc.

Current defiance? For every attack but your first, you're getting a bonus to damage. And it's stacking. You're hitting EVERY mob harder - not 400% harder on a single attack, no, but you're hitting every mob harder. And you're doing it from 100% health as well as 75, 50, 25, and 1%. Someone can heal you. You can take purples, keep your health (because the mobs are missing you) and still get the bonus. You can be mezzed, keep firing, and keep getting the bonus. And you can move to the next spawn, which is at full strength, and still have the bonus without their first shot killing you.

In short? You're missing one *big* orange number that used to mean you'd have to get killed. You're ignoring the bunch of smaller-but-getting-larger numbers you get without *having* to risk death. (Edit: It kind of reminds me of people who insist they have to have a "healer" and don't like other defenders. They like the big green numbers "saving" them, but don't get the bubbles or debuffs are preventing them from needing healing in the first place.)

Teamed or solo?
I'd bet that if I went into a mission with you and just stood there, FRAPS running, it'd animate more often for me on my screen than it would for you, even though your character's the only one doing anything, and I could show you a video of it.

Since I know it works 100% of the time on mine, in a mission and out, there may not be anything FOR the devs to fix. There's information up top about posting system information - get the info and post it. Let people poke through and see if there's anything on your side that could be causing it.

Personally, I'm leaning toward system or network performance causing what you're seeing.

What do you say to the fact the developers deliberately replaced Defiance 1.0 with the current Defiance, not due to player opinion but quite a bit of datamining that showed it flat out didn't help?

I'm sure someone, somewhere wants the old Moment of Glory back, or exclusive armor toggles on tanks (for some reason,) but they were changed for a reason. Defiance 1.0 didn't help Blaster performance or survivability. They seem rather happy with Defiance 2.0 - as do most blasters, informally. (Defiance 1.0 is also tarred with being Jack's baby, with the suggestion to "tell your team not to heal you!" among other gems. Remember, a dead blaster is causing no damage (other than being used for a corpse bomb, with the appropriate powersets.)

Well, technically, since it was discarded for the current Defiance 2.0, it's also the Devs conclusion that 1.0 was inferior.

... little more on this.

- You don't get *any* debt until level 10. Which, yes, you reach quickly. Doesn't matter if you go to, say, Crey's Folly at level 1 and run into spawns of +29 enemies to you repeatedly, you won't get debt until 10.

- If you have patrol XP (automatically built up whenever you're logged off, providing 1.5x XP for a time,) debt is taken from that first. So you may, depending on your altitis, never *see* debt for quite some time.

Pay attention to your status bar. You should see icons similar to what your attacks use building up - stacking, even.

Also, full info on current Defiance here at the wiki.
The old defiance didn't help much when stunned/mezzed/etc, though. I've run blasters from I3. Stuns and such - even with Defiance 1.0 - were a big problem, especially in the late game (Malta grenades, anyone?) Now, I can still immobilize (with most secondary sets) a threat to keep them from coming into generally more-dangerous melee range and continue damaging them with my first two primary attacks until that wears off.

In addition, and part of the reason it got changed, it rewards smarter gameplay - no "Don't heal me," no "Run in and hope you get damaged enough but don't die before hitting purples," no "jump off a roof" (which, yes, I *did* do for laughs - 1000+ points of damage to a Spectral Demon Lord in the old Faultline was amusing, but not something I'd do in an actual fight.)

Simply, as mentioned before, blasters (as per the devs) were badly underperforming. Defiance 1.0 didn't help that. 2.0 seems to be a good step forward so far. Stuns and mezzes are no longer a death sentence.

Most of the folks you see in game, new or old, are going to be fine with someone new. (And vice versa.)

If you've played MMOs before, COH can be a bit of a culture shock. Other games (at least that I've played) tend to have a lot of things outdoors ("Go get 30 vials of bat snot," "Go save this person,") so you see a lot of people running around - and sitting and waiting for spawn points to reset, and complaining about campers, respawn times and the like.

Here, almost everything is instanced. There are zone events triggered by various things or on timers, as well as special events (go check out the ski slopes while they're around - head to Pocket D.) But if you have to, say, take down Terra (a later mission dealing with a group known as the Devouring Earth - check out the wiki link in the signature) you don't have to wait. You'll go to that mission, enter it via door, portal or train, and have one just for you and your team.

Now, not everything IS instanced - we'll have zombie and Rikti raids, sometimes triggered by the devs (and announced ahead of time,) sometimes triggered by players taking certain actions. Those are outdoors and shared by everyone who wants to participate. But by and large, you don't have to worry that "Bad guy 35's spawn point is being camped, I can't get my kill."

Team-wise, many other games seem stuck in the "holy trinity" - tank, healer to keep them alive, and DPS. Here, pretty much any team will work for anything (and sometimes, the "squishiest," lowest-damage ATs, when put together, can be a holy terror. And a LOT of fun.) You don't *need* a tank, or a "healer" (don't call a Defender that, they do so much more - and yes, some sets have no heal at all in them.) Just people willing to work together.

Noting your "you guys will kill me," don't worry about open-world PVP. It doesn't exist. You're not going to be playing your Controller and get skewered by a Stalker. You *can* go to one of four PVP zones (depending on level - see signature, PVEers guide to PVP) or the Arena if you want a fight. PVP's not *huge* in this game, though, and with changes made some time ago, there's a bit of a learning cliff to deal with. (Edit: seeing your later response, PVP - Player vs Player combat.)

The game's very alt-friendly (and generally encouraging.) Go ahead and fill up your slots. Don't limit yourself to one server - they've got different 'personalities' and different events, groups and the like. Check out the server section at the bottom of the forums. (Personally, I started on Pinnacle. I've got 250+ characters over two accounts, spread across all servers. But Pinnacle and Victory are my "home.")

Site to bookmark - http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Main_Page - Paragon Wiki. (You can also just go to cohtitan.com, register there, and pick up things like Mids hero designer, poke through Ouroboros portal and the like. Both are very useful sites.)

Yeah, that it is. It's a *fun* END hog, though. (Mine's mid-40s.)

Yeah, the enhancement screen I've seen.

Just tried to reproduce this (without the enh. screen) though and couldn't - character with steamy mist out of view of my main account, waited a good minute and a half, ran in - nada. Looked normal. Tried a couple of distances, 30 sec. a piece, too.

i7-860, 8 Gb RAM, Radeon HD 5770, 10.12.

Sure. Fortunately for the sake of this, I haven't run that character since 2xp weekend - so I have a newspaper mission I can pretty much AS everything in at my leisure.

Result: 30 of 30 animations worked.

Normally doesn't (or we'd be seeing this constantly on Freedom and Virtue. Especially virtue.)

Anyway, lvl 20 blaster I have hasn't run it, so checking now... and yep, rather good size ambush. Abandoned, tried again - same. Two ink men, three enforcers and an ancestor spirit in the second. Set to 0/0.

No, I'm right about stalkers as well. I play them, as well as every other AT (and have at least one of each AT to 50. Happens with several years of playing.)

Does the power itself activate? Does it do damage? Then you're looking at an animation bug, which does not make the character "unplayable," any more than my blaster just standing there when their snipe goes off makes that power unplayable. The power still goes off and damage still gets done (or, of course, you miss.) You just don't see an animation.

If the power itself is *not activating,* you're looking at something affecting playability. And I'd suggest keeping an eye on your combat logs for "Interrupted," as AS *can* be interrupted. (If you're high enough, go fight some Knives of Artemis. Standing on caltrops? AS won't work. If you're NOT high enough, make an AE single-mission arc and run it in test mode so you can see what I mean.) You're mentioning "in teams," so we're looking at higher mob spawn sizes than are likely your usual. While Hide, when not suppressed (typically before an AS as opposed to after) gives a very high AOE defense, it's not making you invulnerable. Watch your hidden status. Make sure you're not moving. And yes, even if you're invisible, if aggro "spills over" (and aggro's been seeming weird of late,) the enemy *can* target you, even through hide, even without +Perception. (Part of why I don't take out PPP pets on a stalker. Enemy sees them, shoots them - and me.)

But from your own description:

(Emphasis mine)
the power *is activating,* you're just not getting the animation. Which makes exactly zero difference as to the character's playability.

Well, I think you worry about it too much in that case. But that's just me. I'll play a build I'm happy with at baseline (SOs/common IOs) - that's where I decide if I'm happy or not with it. IOs? Yeah, I'll add IOs to them (don't think there's one that's any "uber build" or anything) but do that over months, at times - it's only making something I'm happy with *now,* better.

At least that's my approach. I know others want to be at or near their max from day one. Different strokes.

As far as experimenting, I still think that the Arena and/or AE should have "free temporary builds" you can mess with. I mean, people use Test for that now (well, when they can.) It'd let you mess with builds, mess with powersets you don't have (or don't have very high,) and let you tweak a build or plan before you apply it "for real."

You're right, and I apologize to the OP and everyone else for the direction that took - I know *exactly* what Leo's like from dealing with him and his nonsense before, and shouldn't have let him goad me. (Of course, he let his true colors show.) Honestly, I should never have taken him off of ignore in the first place. Not sure why I did. Fixing *THAT* mistake now and getting rid of (or at least rewording) my part of the argument.

I happen to be running a Shield/Stone, btw. Bit END-hungry, but fun. (I think I mentioned that, come to think of it.)

I'm not sure if it's doable (or feasable) to have a "no shield, animate as usual" option there. I *suspect* it'd need a whole other set.