Minotaur

While the general accuracy reduction is welcome, it still only keeps in step with the defence reduction of an already weak set, and the EA nerf makes it worse. Consider this situation which I've seen in I4 (Nosferatu was the AV) and will be worse in I5.

Ice tank goes into group with AV and the rest of his mob. Fires up EA, cool he can tank. A while later EA comes up for recasting, the other mobs are dead, just the AV left, fire it off, get a small boost, then the original EA drops, go straight to hospital, do not pass go do not collect 200$ as the AV pounds you into the floor in 3 seconds flat.

Please can I put in a request for EA to be modified. I don't know the real numbers but let us assume for the sake of argument it grants 3% defence per opponent capped at 14 opponents. Can we get this adjusted to say 10% for the first opponent + 2% per extra one still capped at 14. This would make AVs much more survivable without changing the large mob dynamic very much.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank
Hand of Bast 29 ice/fire tank
and 40+ others

[ QUOTE ]
I sometimes have the impression the people posting in the forums are a little community, compared to the whole of the CoH population, but a very vocal one.

Only thing is, their opinions are often a little off.
The idea I have about Defenders in the late game is somewhat different than that of most of the posters.
Simply put, it's never happened to me, in the game, that anyone felt that adding a defender to the team was superflous.

I play a tanker, and G*d knows I rarely NEED the heals or the debuffs, but I'm always VERY happy when a Def pops in. Dammit, me and the people I regularly team with always go "WOOT" whenever we see the little blue shield in the team box.

Defenders always enable us to win battles better, faster, safer. Sometimes just thanks to them only.
And don't even get me started about Psi damage and Dark defenders.
So, shortly and more accurately.
I never heard anybody yell " We do NOT need a defender" in team chat. I always hear "Yes! A defender! ".


[/ QUOTE ]

I think this also sums it up, my main is a 50 stone/axe tanker. I'm pretty much invulnerable, but slow and don't do much damage due to granite armor. My effectiveness is increased hugely by most forms of defender. Yes it would be improved nearly as much by a controller with the defender primary as their secondary, but I would rather team with the defender, as you don't have the problem that the phantom army takes aggro from you (usually after the phantasms have knocked the mob back), drops and a load of squishies get smeared before you reassert control.

Also I play in a group in which all the players play the same toons one evening a week, and these toons are never played outside these times. We're level 29 now and I play the bubble def (dark secondary). Having a fire tank and an invul scrapper (both resist based) makes the 3 basic FF bubbles and maneuvers gold dust. It also means that the rest of the party don't have to slot any defence in combat jump or the like. Having had a slight accident with the difficulty on the citadel TF we found that we were facing +5s to +7s at level 26-27ish. The remainder of the party was a grav/kin cont, ill/rad cont and elec/dev blaster. We found we could slowly and indebtedly work our way through the mission. We turned the difficulty down, restarted and breezed it with +3s-5s as the opponents.

If you go in for TFs or street hunting (where you can meet stuff at +4 or more) is where the defenders really earn their corn. Again I did Synapse with a level 16 and 4 level 17s, we completed it easily. There was a kin def and a rad def on the team (+ tank, scrap, blast), without their buffs/debuffs we'd never have hit anything.

Note that these examples are in the early/middle game.

I think that part of the problem is that SOs are too good and it is too easy to get close to the various caps using purely enhancements. One way round this would be to tinker with the caps such that there was a limit to how much you could achieve with buffs and inherent abilities, but further enhanceable with debuffs to your opponents.

eg: cap tanker damage resist at 7% damage taken, but allow the damage debuff put on the opponent to reduce this to 4 or 5%.

or minimise your chance to be hit at 8% from your defence, but let it be debuffed down to 5%.

A cautionary tale: With a defender probably more than anything else, you need to decide whether you're going to try to solo or play in a team. I played with a FF/energy def who was built to solo. He had all the repels and energy knockback, so he could solo, but kept dying when duoing with my scrapper (this was level 40+) as he'd knock the larger groups back and they'd toast him at range.

My FF def who is completely team orientated has bought none of the repels as the melee types hate them, and this allows him to have a decent number of attacks and leadership powers. This means that he puts his toggles up, bubbles the party, and then plays (poor man's) blaster and debuffer at the same time with his dark attacks till it's time to bubble the party again.

Another thought, if you're going to play a kinetics def, because you need to be close to the rest of your party and the monsters, how about a melee based secondary set as an option a bit like some of the blaster secondaries, or if that's a step too far, a distinctive set put together from the blaster primary/secondary pools. Non kin defenders would still stay at range so this would need to be an extra option rather than a replacement.

Btw the controller complaining that it took him 15 mins to solo a group with his pets was an ice controller, and having a 34 one of those myself, ice pets are pretty poor compared to illusion or fire who would probably have taken less than 2 mins.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Toxic Texan 44 DM/regen scrapper Infinity
Psycho Clown 40 Ill/kin cont Freedom
TheoPWildebeest 40 en/en blast Freedom
Ms Blizzard 34 ice/storm cont Freedom
RollingDoughnut 29 FF/Dark def Freedom

Others:

puppies = wolves on 40+ portal missions (not farmed like they used to be due to a timer).
kora = another 40+ portal mission that used to be farmed loads but no longer is
CWK = clockwork king, again usually the 40+ psionic version
AV = archvillain
FN/fake nem = fake nemesis, a villain type needed for a badge required for one of the accolades
RM = ring mistress, one of the carnie boss types
BP = banished pantheon
Bridge = an intermediate level toon used to sidekick a lower level one when power levelling
Anchor = the target of a debuff which then affects stuff around it. As in "don't kill my anchor". The debuff goes when the anchor dies.
PA = phantom army

Toxic Texan lvl 44 DM/regen scrapper Infinity
Mr Minotaur lvl 50 stone/axe tank freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So I was on with my SG on Champion a while ago, and we were doing the Positron TF. At one point, we were ambush right in front of Positron and Valkyrie. So here's all these guys shooting at us, trying to kill us, and Mr. Bigshot "I got my armor upgraded" and Ms. "I have this fancy spear that none of you can get!" are just kinda standing there watching.

THANKS A LOT, LEGENDARY HEROES!

Seriously, though, it would be cool if the trainers got some sort of automated power similar to the police drones. There's just something wrong about the eight most famous heroes in all of Paragon city standing there watching you get pounded on.

[/ QUOTE ]

All that crap is grey to me, no XP.

[/ QUOTE ]

Am I missing something, isn't Positron too high in level to get XP, so what he's saying is that unless there's influence in it he's not interested.

As an aside, having been one shotted twice this week (in the back, I didn't see them till I was dead) with toons the right level to be in steel by DE ambushes of level thirtysomething, it would be nice if Positron could do something about those if the owner hasn't dealt with them.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Toxic Texan 38 DM/regen scrapper infinity

In I3, I had a definitely sub-optimal regen build that was fun.

In I4, sub-optimal appears to no longer be sustainable.

[/ QUOTE ]

Amen, I designed a DM/regen as a concept character designed to be perfectly adequate without either hasten or stamina. Post issue 4, I've had to respec hasten in and am most of the way to getting stamina. The problem is that changes like this restrict rather than encouraging diversity as now most DM/regen scappers will look very similar, whereas before you had a fair amount of choice how you built them. 'Flavour' powers are just not an option any more.

Toxic Texan 35 DM/regen Infinity

I play a 43 tank, I usually solo on invincible difficulty and have no real trouble with the enhanced difficulty bosses, provided I stick to villain groups that don't steal all my end. I don't touch malta/carnies if I can help it as sappers/ring mistresses are just fatal solo. The I3 changes made the game fun again as nothing challenged me at my level, and also allowed me to keep up with the scrappers by killing the hard bosses and getting the good XP they provide. If you are going to drop the difficulty and increase the team XP, can I ask that if you do a 43 mission on invincible, you actually get mission experience for the 45 mission you've done. It seems silly that if you are in a duo, you on 43 invincible, the other person on 45 normal, and you do the same mission twice, one of yours, one of theirs, they will get credit for 2x45 missions, you get a 43 and a 45. It makes it better to do other people's missions than your own at present.

Mr Minotaur Stone/Axe tank Freedom

I don't see what the problem is, I play a stone/axe tank 29 at present. Of the armours I only have RA but have all the other non armour powers from the set. I have stamina 6 SO slotted, plus all my other powers including attacks liberally slotted with end reductions. I run Combat jumping and RA permanently, plus use rooted at every opportunity (6 slotted for heal/recharge/end red). I tend to solo (dull, I could do with missions at +2/+3 levels to be interesting) or duo with a kinetics defender or /rad controller. Both of these can recharge my end (as can an empath) so I can run mud pots permanently as well, meaning I can hold aggro and only resort to provoke if there's a problem.

I may have to reassess my powers after 32, but hell that's what respecs are for, I may have to acquire teleport and/or SuperSpeed, but with the upcoming changes to the taunt powers, I'll only be using one pool for stamina and one for movement so there are plenty spare.

My major problem is that if I fight anything lower level than me, I knock it back instead of down and can't chase it if rooted.

I find the regen in rooted does help me fight large groups, particularly in the pre stamina days when I was having to stand around like a lemon letting mobs hit (or mainly miss) me while I recharged my end.

Mr Minotaur (Freedom)

PS I have higher level toons of other ATs so while I haven't played tanks at that level I've played with them, and playing an energy/energy blaster with an immobile tank just means you have to be careful how you play the blaster, don't go crying about how bad the tank is, don't knock stuff back out of his range that then vapes you and complain he can't hold aggro.