Oedipus_Tex

I know this is blasphemy on the Defender boards, but I'm going to back someone up and say I think you should at least consider rolling a Controller. The shields will be weaker but they also be getting tested less often, because things will be shooting at you less.

Key Control sets to I'd consider are (IMO):

Ice - Ice's mainstay is Arctic Air, a toggle power that slows mobs, terrifies them (making them run slowly away from you) and confuses them. Because this power is always up there is less need to baby sit your controls, and replacing buffs is that much easier. The biggest risk of death to an Ice troller is getting mezzed, and both FF and Sonic protect you against that possibility. Additionally, if you decide to solo, you have a pet on which to place your shields and Sonic's debuff ring. If you go FF, you can enter Personal Force Field, run to melee while letting things waste one shot on you, then Arctic Air the group so they can't shoot again.

Earth - A very clicky set compared to Ice, but comes with a monstrously resistant pet that is nearly invincible when protected by your shields. Add to this mix what most consider the best Hold in the game (Volcanic Gasses) and a very reliable AoE stun (Stalagmites). Again if you go Sonic you will have a place to hang your debuff donut.

Plant - Like Ice and Earth you have a reliable place to hang your buffs (tho the Plant pet is less reliable about entering melee than either of those sets). Plant's Confuse power will take a lot of pressure off your team.

Other sets would work well too (including Defender sets), just make sure you consider all of the available options.

Oddly enough when people ask for a "healer" they seem perfectly content to have my Ice/Therm or Earth/Therm characters on the team. Maybe it varies from server to server. I've also never had to /kick a team member because s/he was a "healer," but I did once /kick a Trick Arrow Defender who spent a solid hour telling another team member he was an idiot because he had selected any heal powers at all.

And that pretty much sums it up for me. I would rather team with a player who isn't very good than a self proclaimed expert who is really just a bully. I would extend this to people so sensitive they feel like they've had their civil rights violated because they are bringing bad memories of WoW into their CoX gameplay.

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Exactly! There is no "healer" in this game, and quite honestly the only people who use that term are demonstrating their own ignorance and general stupidity.

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Beyond tactless.

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Actually it can. Glue Arrow alone stops a lot of incoming damage.

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Ok, I'm sorry if it seems like I'm picking on you, but now we're promoting science fiction. Glue Arrow is an AoE slow that provides -20% recharge. This is the same amount of -Recharge as, for example, an Ice Controller's Frostbite. It's not useless, but it is not going to fill the void for a low level team that is taking lots of collateral damage and would like for their as-yet unshielded Scrappers to stop dying.

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But I mainly wanted to talk about debuffs, which are already way better than heals even on lolsewer teams.

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Since everyone knows a Defender armed with Flash Arrow, Glue Arrow, Ice Arrow, Poison Gas Arrow and a single target blast is going to make the team completely survivable. Nevermind that, at the time the sewers are initially entered, said Defender probably only has Flash and Glue. (I'm giving the best case scenario here and skipping Entangling Arrow altogether).

If you define "healer" as someone who stands in the back and only heals, yes healers suck.

If you define "healer" as someone who is pretty good at "healing" then they are not bad to have around.

The word "Defender" doesn't cover it because a Controller can very easily fit the role of "healer."

No one complains about the word "bubbler."

We all have too much free time.

I like that people are talking about the undesirableness of "healers" as if no of us has ever gone into the sewers before. Do some quick math on the value of a heal versus the value of a buff at that level, and tell me that there aren't occasions when a "healer" is highly desirable if not outright required to keep the team running. Evem if healing becomes gradually less needed as the game progresses, it doesn't start out that way.

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Why do I have to press the Howl and Scream buttons over and over? They're on this frequent, every-few-seconds recharge, as if the game wouldn't know I want to shoot my opponents as frequently as possible.

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Maybe the solution is to reduce buff durations down to 10 seconds. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Just wish you could choose where you wanted to teleport directly, instead of zoning into Oro and then rezoning into the new location.

By the way please post that keybind!

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If you can't tap one key sixteen times (I tend to separate my targeting and casting binds) every two minutes, you should not be playing a buff set.

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Having to hit one key 16 times is exactly what I'm talking about when I say the power is balanced by irritation. There is no strategy to it, outside of long fights. There is little concern about endurance. It's just the game interface forcing you to write a keybind and hit a key 16 times (or 480 times per hour, assuming you're slick enough to replace the buff the instant it expires) because the power works that way and to not use it gimps your team. It, and powers like it, seem more designed for a computer than an actual human player.

My problem with Speed Boost is that the developers have balanced it not around recharge, endurance cost, or power, but around a cost in irritation. The power is literally balanced around the idea that "yeah you can use it to keep a team running, but boy is it annoying!"

I used to develop spells for a different MMO (not that this gives any special weight to my opinion). In that game, we routinely rewrote spells that fell into the "too good to be true but annoying as heck" pile. SB is a perfect example of that kind of power. It's like the game is beating you in the face with the power. It's a combination of it being simultaneously (IMO) overpowered, having a short duration, and a very fast recharge. To NOT use the power is a huge mistake, because it is so effective. But to USE the power is so annoying that you just wish you didn't have the power at all.

I can't resist stirring the pot.

Some say "healer" isn't an adequate term, and to use "Defender" instead.

This leads me to ask: does a Trick Arrow Defender share more in common with a Defender, with a Controller, or with a "healer"? And which category does a Controller with an /Empathy secondary fall into--does the word "Controller" sum up what the team is getting when they invest in adding this hero to their team?

Earth/Storm is probably the most dramatic power set combo in the game. Nearly every single action you take is followed by a huge BOOM sound and a shaking screen. I actually have to turn the sound down on my computer every time I play that combo.

Making Lift an AoE would be incredible.

I want to add something else.

One thing that hasn't been accounted for in this discussion is the value of having topped off HP. This isn't something I expect well-armored characters to understand, but anyone with a high level squishy probably can.

Basically, any time your HP is not topped off, you are at risk of a one-shot death. If you have done any amount of high level teaming you have seen this happen to your team mates. One second they are doing great, then in the next instant they are KO'ed. This happens mostly from accidentally pulling aggro from a boss, many of whom are quite capable of dishing out massive damage.

When you are at 100% HP, it is impossible to die from a single source of damage. This is why my Controllers get *really* nervous when they lose even as little as 10% of their HP; all it takes to put them completely out of the fight at that point is one good shot.

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Rezzes can restore HP, but they aren't heals.

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I'm boggled by this statement.

By the way, as to why people get the idea that having a healer is important early on, it's because early on a healer, *is* extremely effective. I'm sure someone can come up with an obscure build to try to prove this wrong, but that fist run through the sewers is made ten times easier if someone can heal.

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Mesmerized by this thread. The healer-hate just seems a little dramatic.

Healing is not as bad as people are making it out to be. Heals, numerically, work exactly the same as damage resistance in that they extend the amount of HP you can sustain before dying. They are reactive, but they "protect" from all forms of damage, regardless of source.

Arguments that you can just carry a tray of greens miss the point that you could have been carrying a tray of something else.

Healing is effective in some situations. Waiting an hour for a "healer" is stupid if you could have had a different team member join you. Both of these facts are pretty much undeniable. I would think.

I have played characters that have heals. At level 50 they do sometimes have to use the heal. And sometimes the heal helps a lot. Sometimes not. It depends. Just like my Controllers, who sometimes don't get get to use sleep/knockback/knockdown because of what the team is doing.

Level 16 is the game changer for Storm. That's when you get the almighty Freezing Rain and your usefulness in groups about triples.

I hope no one who thinks developers don't use "god mode" for a portion of the testing cycle ever goes into game or level design. You would never see a finished product.

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Holds set up Containment just like Immobilizations do.

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This actually revealed something to me when I went to test the numbers. Not that both Immobilize and Hold set up Containment (they do, of course), but that Damage-Over-Time abilities base their containment flag off whether the mob was contained the moment when the power was fired, not when the damage actually procs, as I had always assumed. This makes the situation somewhat more complicated to calculate.

The main thing about containment and maximizing damage is that you want your least damaging power to be the one that establishes containment, so that you lose as little as possible from the damage dealing powers that follow. Looking at the numbers for the Elemental sets, and only using the first 3 powers in the set, the resulting order of opportunity looks like (depending on which powers you have and don't have):

- AoE Cages, Hold, Single Target Cage
- Hold, Single Target Cage (they do almost the same damage so might as well try for the Hold)
- AoE Cages, Hold
- AoE Cages, Single Target Cage (and then go respec yourself to get the Hold!)

In practice, you wouldn't always do this because 1) this assumes we are only taking damage into account and ignoring safety and 2) you usually end up with better ways to set up Containment anyway.

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Then simply lower the difficulty, or test it with a higher level character. Why you could even do both.

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You cannot "simply lower the difficulty." Lowering the difficulty causes bosses not to spawn and AVs to spawn differently than intended. It also prevents you from seeing what the mission would look like to a player who did attempt the mission at that difficulty. Just because your character isn't capable of soloing the mission at that difficulty doesnt mean you shouldnt spawn into the mission to get an idea of what it would look like for those characters who do.

Absolutely /signed.

In addition there needs to be an invisible option, infinite in-mission rezzes, and a /kill option for enemies. There is nothing more annoying than changing one small piece of a mission, like a broken goal chain, and having to spend 2 hours running the entire mission to make sure it works correctly, which in turns requires you to own a solo character powerful enough to even survive accomplish it.

I think, clearly, that when the developers build missions for us they are not doing it with a player character who they then have to run through the entire mission.

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I'd say it's best to do the opposite. First you use the hold, then the "cage" ( immobilisation, slotted for damage ).

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You can do this, but you sacrifice the Containment bonus you'd get for caging first. It probably depends on how much you fear the retaliation of the mob.