Old_Ironside

I hope to be there if there's room. Probably with my Ill/Rad controller.

I'll join if there's room. Probably use my stone tank or earth/kin controller depending on what's needed.

If there's room on a team I'll be there with something, probably a crab spider.

I'm pretty sure I'm around this week so if there's a team two running I'll be there. My mind/psi dom most likely.

I'm hoping to be back in time for this today so mark me down as an alt. I'll bring whatever is needed.

I'll be there this week, preferably with a blaster but I'll bring a defender if needed as well.

I should be able to make today if there's still room. Probably use my 20 something stalker unless we need some support.

I should be able to make this week. Probably bring a brute.

I'm going to be around today after all so if there's room on a team I'll bring something or other.

Late message but I should be around to run this if a second team is going.

I should be able to make this week. Most likely use my 50 Mind/Psi dom for it.

I've been wanting to run this one. Sign me up as an alt DB since I'm not 100% positive I can make it at that time.

I can probably fill most roles but probably Master Daichi, a 50 Earth/Kin controller is my best since there is no tank shortage.

I'll sign up as an alt or for a second team if one forms DB. I'll bring whatever is needed or my 50 dom if no preference.

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Yikes, I remember when the Defender forums were considered some of the nicest around. Let's keep things civil shall we, devs aren't going to pay attention to a thread filled with personal attacks.

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You suck jerk face!

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Quiet you and keep healing!

I had forgotten about Ice buffs. A Frostworks like power would be thematic, but it would be hard to tack that onto something existing in the set without changing the whole power. Perhaps putting a minor HP buff for anyone inside Force Bubble. That makes it's big radius suddenly attractive and worth working at times. Although the in and out drop of HP might not be possible. Which would bring the -dam aspect back up I suppose.

The debuffs are a bit harder to work into existing powers, although overall the Ice set is a very nice one and maybe worth exploring for options rather since the sets don't share common AT's.

Yikes, I remember when the Defender forums were considered some of the nicest around. Let's keep things civil shall we, devs aren't going to pay attention to a thread filled with personal attacks.

While I normally don't much care for threads on improving FF since they all tend to go in circles, I've been trying hard to think of some new suggestions for the set. One thing that I'm not sure has been touched on before is adding movement powers to the set. For instance adding a type of superspeed, fly, or super jump to say Repulsion Field. Easily rationalized as low friction (can't think of a specific example but I'm sure there is one, a force field construct that allows movement (ala Invisible Woman) or literally a repel field that bounces you around (Speedball would be an example).

That stays thematic, doesn't necessarily change the default use of the power, and Kinetics has two powers that set precedence for this sort of behavior. It should also be in theory fairly easy to code. No it doesn't change how good FF is against AV's or drastically change the set, but it could give some incentive to take the less than stellar powers. Although if you were to put a travel power into the huge Force Bubble, we'd know that you do hate us.

It's probably been mentioned before, and while I'm not sure I like it myself, what about switching Repulsion Bomb to either replicate Bonfire or leave a similar effect in the area it's used. Sure almost everyone hates Bonfire, but the same can be said for Repulsion Bomb anyway, and it's possible that Force Fielders with our limitless potential for knockback could actually use Bonfire in some clever way. If nothing else it would let us play Hellion ping pong without having to find another bubbler first.

Hmm, I'd have to favour the Dull Pain punch as the primary change, simply because it will echo to Invul, Ice, and Stone as well. Why nerf one when you can get many? It will be the Global HP Rebalance. After all, it was never in the vision for tanks and scrappers to have that many more HP than the squishies which is making designing end game content more difficult. This has the added benefit of given another excuse why there is no end game content.

But because Regen must get it's own unique face kicking each isuue (rather like Invul), Quick Recovery will be reduced or eliminated as it is unfair to Stalkers that they can't recovery like their scrapper cousins and a scrapper only has to pop a yellow to render stealth useless. We'll forget about blues for that argument. This way we also keep the fine art of balancing the game around inspiration use.

Sadly, Regen is nerfed so badly as is I can't figure out how to hit the last dev tactic of multi-nerf to fix one problem.

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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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Come on Jesterman, you know that as soon as you delete your bubbler Force Bubble is going to be made into a field that causes fear and bloating in mobs, or maybe something that makes all psi users on the map explode.

The issue with pets is a player one though, and not a powerset issue. As my Earth Controller I only pop out Animate Stone when the team needs either damage or we don't have melee players, or as a disposable tank for psi opponents. KB is annoying to melee which I understand from my tanks and scrappers. Controllers who choose to use pets when they are not necessary are simply making thing harder for their teammates.

People like to use their 'uber' powers, and I'd wager half the time it isn't really needed in a team situation. One of the biggest issues with the player population in general is that many folk have a lot of problems switching from solo mode to team mode. Probably why we have so many nightmare stories about rogue blasters and scrappers, tanks who do everything, and defenders that never use their primary/secondary.

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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I made a thread in the Scrapper forums, altough I should have put one in both the Blaster and the Tanker too where I asked if people could tell the difference between certain powers.

What I got out of it and was happy to see my own personal feelings reflected the majority of the Scrapper community who responded was that people don't distinguish between Controller and Defender powers. They're just happy to have any Buff/DeBuff along for the ride. At 80% efficiency (those powers that actually aren't 100%) over the course of normal play most people aren't able to discern a Controller from a Defender Buff.

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I think this is very important. Too many people seem to be losing sight of the problem for defenders in the high game. It's not one that 'defenders aren't needed'. That's simply not true. Almost any power combination from any AT will find use from aslmost any defender in some way. The issues, at least as I see it, is not the lack of desire for buff/debuff, but the fact that a controller is viewed to deliver the same power to the team as a defender. Meanwhile, a controller's primary is almost certain to be more effective than a defenders secondary. It may well be a perception, but it's one that I know I fall to and my main's a defender.

Most teams will gladly welcome either a defender or controller, but most will take the controller first. The perception problem seems to stem from the fact that defender secondaries just aren't usually considered whereas many people consider the controller's secondary to be more defining. Do you really care if that /emp is Ice/Earth/Fire/Grav/Mind primary? They all do the same basic things, only Illusion really mixes things up for controllers. Defender primaries, and therefore controller secondaries are all over the board in utility however, in fact as someone else mentioned, we're the only AT that really is a grab bag, which I think is positive.

Since defender blasts are generally viewed as a non-issue in my experience, defenders become only their primaries, which if you're not dark become replaceable by a controller. However, the blast powersets can't really be ramped up without blasters being boosted as well. Blasters really need the boost but that's another forum. I don't think defender damage is bad, but in the high game most defenders will only out damage a very few other powersets.

Solutions that I've seen that make some sense to me are the self buffs. That alone would make defenders radically differerent but wouldn't really change their teaming attributes for the most part, which is the problem. Do we really want to just turn Defenders into solo toons? Letting my bubbler protect himself better would be nice, but it doesn't make me any more useful to my teams than that /FF controller.

Adding more debuffs, armour-piercing mob types, etc isn't the fix for us either. It's likely the non-nerf fix for tanks but really, in the current game if you know you're fighting Malta all day long, do you want a defender or controller to deal with Sappers? I'll take the lockdown guy please. Specialized mobs favour the AT that can take them out of the battle completely, which while some defenders can do that, all controller can.


A terrific idea I read here was allowing defenders to bypass caps. Whether that's the answer or not it brought one thing to my mind. If defenders are a hybrid which overperforms/underperforms with it's powersets. How about making the defender AT itself extremely beneficial to a team. I'm sure I read somewhere about letting a defender do something like a Kheldians Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustanance effect to the team. To the point where you don't look for a defender for their powersets but for the fact they are a defender. There are many possibilities there but it could simply help the defender AT as a whole become something special rather than focusing on what we can do individually.

I see a lot of dark jealousy in here as well. I don't really understand that one. As dark is the only defender exclusive set and one that I think everyone will agree is an excellent set, we should be dancing in the streets. I choose to view things that Dark is what the devs feel a defender should be. Is that bad? If Trick Arrows and Sonics are what Dark currently is, I'd say it's a great thing for defenders, although without some changes in how shared sets work, the older sets would have the same issues as we do now.

Thank you for popping into our forum Statesman.

My thoughts on defenders is the same as many of my fellows, we're simply overshadowed by our controller allies at the highest levels. Up until level 40 or so, controllers generally cannot slot their secondaries to the same level as a defender can their primary. Post 40 however, the percentage difference is simply not noticable. As a FF defender I was often asked by my own SG to bring my late 20's scrapper or early 30's fire tank to our 40+ missions as we had a Ill/FF controller who was good at his job and made my bubbler fairly redundant.

To make matters worse is the damage. I admit I feel it most as a FF defender as I have no way to increase damage but while I felt that my damage was adequete at the time, defender damage does not seem to me to offset the damage of pets plus the power of control. On the other hand, a defender can always damage where a controller cannot always control.

I've finally reached 38 with my Earth/Kin controller and I much prefer to play him than a 45 Kin/Dark I have. The reason is mostly mezzes. I can deal with mezzers with my controller and not with a defender. And with APP's I can pretty much ignore mezzers with my controller. A defender is pretty much helpless in the face of a mezzer, even a bubbler as so many holds are sleeps when used by a mob.

I do think that most likely mathematically and for most general game play that before that final 10-15 levels a defender is fairly balanced to a controller overall. It's likely mostly a perception issue with the player base because as was previously stated, many defender abilities don't have a obvious effect. Post 40, there would be very few reasons to be a certain flavours of defender over their controller brethern. FF more than any, although Storm and Kinetics seem very well matched to controllers as well, and it could be argured that in the late game a /emp is easily as good a emp/.

About the only fix I can see is to break the bond between controller and defender. Make it so that even if the powersets are shared they could do more for the defender than pure percent differences.

I can also verify that the mission slider affects Trials. We were running the Freak respec and were fighting 42's the first mission. The leader was set to Hard Boiled. Leader line drops coming out of the first mission. Next guy in line heads and gets the second mission, the original leader logs back in and rejoins us but can't get the star back. We entered the mission to a sea of very pumped purple Freaks as the new leader was set on Invincibile. Surprisingly we can slowly manage the now +6 Freaks but it was an awesome pick-up team.

Needless to say we made sure the leader was set back to Hard Boiled for the reactor.

One of the ongoing issues I have with the boss changes is that I don't really see them helping long term. If someone is a hardcore soloer I don't think making the game unplayable to them is going to encourage teaming. They're more likely to just quit.

If you love teaming and are always in a group, then these changes really didn't do much for you other than perhaps limit the level differences in a group, which I seem to recall Statesman saying he wanted to limit a while ago. Many teams are at an easy or death situation with the new bosses. I've not tried it in ages but what would a multi-member Carnie mission like now? Isn't it wrong that I don't team with my scrapper in a Carnie mission just to avoid spawning more mobs or worse, a boss.

Myself, I do both solo and grouping. Or I did. Now soloing is frustrating or impossible (I'm an invul scrapper in the first Carnie arc, bosses are certain death). Did it encourage teaming? Not really, I already did that, just not often with that character.

So for some the changes could drive them away or they are simply doing what they always did anyway, just with substantial more risk and limitations.

As for the increased numbers of players, I haven't notice a huge jump in Justice but I'll also wager that many of the 'new' players are players who have left once coming back and playing Khelds. So many of them haven't got to the 25+ range yet (a Void Slayer boss, that's insta-debt). My experience with those that left was that the boredom they had was nothing to do with difficulity but with the repetitive missions, something that is still there. And if they left once because of that, I'd think they'll do it again.

This post has gotten long so this may be stated later on, but unless they are giving blasters Dispersion Bubble the force field set won't help them kill everything they see. Personal Force Field and Repulsion Field were mentioned. Repulsion Field is a nice 'keep away' power but it can suck endurance. Personal Force Field is incredible protection, but you can't attack with it. Aside from travel or "I'm gonna die!" moments the best use I've found for PFF is to pop it after my Atomic Blast and wait out the end drain.

Phase Shift has been available to blasters since day one and in the long run, it's a superior PFF. As a bubble defender I'm not worried about blasters getting some of my powers. They truly seem to need it post 40.

Sadly none of the epic pools for defenders look that useful to me but they do only list 2 of 4 powers for each. Maybe the energy based one will give power boost. Then my Energy Blaster friends and I can play skyscrapper tennis with bad guys!

On the other hand, I can see a good use for Fireball with my tank. What tanker wouldn't want another provoke.