Res_Ipsa

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If you really want to settle this debate on the basis of resumes, just let me know.

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Actually I only brought it up as a response to your obnoxious patronizing. You said: "Looking at it the way you do trivializes the difference in a way that bears no resemblance to the true overall effect on survivability." It seemed to me that 600+ hours of observation allows me to have a considered opinion about the true overall effect on survivability contrary to Your Majesty's.

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If your 600 hours of experience says there's no real difference between 40% defense and 30% defense, I can't help you.

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My characterization of 40% +def vs. 30% +def: "noticeable, but not particularly important except at the margins, i.e., AV fights".

Your characterization of my characterization: "no real difference".

If anybody had any question about which of us is arguing in bad faith, this ought to settle it.

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If this is how you classify a "frivolous" objection, no one can help you.

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I think we're done, here.

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All I said was that calling the gap between 40% defense verses 30% defense trivial because its "only mitigating about 10% more of the absolute incoming damage" represents an essentially irreparable misunderstanding of how defense works all together.

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Good thing that nobody called the difference trivial, then; you can flog your straw man in peace.

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Looking at it the way you do trivializes the difference in a way that bears no resemblance to the true overall effect on survivability.

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Because, having actually played a FF/* Defender for 600+ hours, I'd clearly have absolutely no understanding, either practical or abstract, of how a 10% variance in +defense affects overall survivability.

I stand by my statement. Your objection is frivolous. The gap between FF/* Defender +def buffs and */FF Controller +def buffs in I7 will be noticeable, but will not be particularly important except at the margins, i.e., AV fights.

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You're saying that *if* the two are solo then an FF controller can get more out of FF than a defender because of pets, which is probably true but is a synergy problem with FF and other sets, not a statement about the FF set itself.

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That's not even a reasonably fair paraphrase of what I'm saying. And in any case, powers aren't used in a vacuum; if there's a synergy problem between FF and other sets, that's a problem with the FF set, because it's the constant. All you're trying to do here is scope the conversation in such a way that it favors your position.

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Originally, the statement was that it was trivial to prove that FF is stronger for controllers than defenders; that a simple straight-line argument demonstrates this. The *original* simple straight line argument is full of holes. They may be resolvable by resorting to much more complex analysis, but its still neither obvious, nor simple to demonstrate.

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Your not liking the straight-line argument is different from the straight-line argument being "full of holes".

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The fact that you can easily hand-wave the defense numbers away strongly implies to me the rest of your argument similarly hand-waves away a lot of other potential problems.

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I'm not hand-waving anything; I simply think you're profoundly and hilariously mistaken about the importance of the difference, especially relative to the obvious advantages that a Controller enjoys over a Defender when utilizing the FF set as a whole. You think the Defender's +def advantage is of such magnitude that it at worst offsets all of the the Controller's other advantages; I think you're dramatically overstating the importance of the +def advantage and that, beyond that, you either don't know what you're talking about, or are trying to artificially bound the comparison so that it favors your position. Thus far I've ssen absolutely nothing from you to dissuade me from that view. So the fact that you're accusing me of hand-waving strongly implies to me that this conversation is no longer worthwhile.

Good day.

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It seems that the power set was simply designed poorly, and that's the problem, moreso than that it's more effective for Controllers. The latter is just a symptom, a natural result of the powerset's high aggro and target-only buffs.

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Fair enough.

Though, IMO, this kind of thinking does have a statute of limitations, and is susceptible to estoppel. Allowing a poor design to go uncorrected for long enough constitutes, in my view, a ratification of that design; further, we've had Statesman expressly try to tell us that life for FF/* Defenders is perfectly peachy. I don't have a lot of benefit-of-the-doubt left to extend.

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I'm going to ask the community....what is that you really want from your defender?

1) Is this really about soloing?

2) Do you want to be unequivocably perceptually better at damage mitigation than controllers?

3) Do you want to do unequivocably perceptually more damage than Controllers?

4) Do we want a better harmony between our Primary/Secondary at the expense of versatility and variety?

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1) Yes.

2) Yes.

3) Yes.

4) For my FF/* Defender, yes (the set has no real versatility to speak of, so it's not like I'd be giving anything up). For my Dark/* Defender, no (I find the harmony between primary and secondary to be pretty good, there, but this I think is because Dark is such a damned good set).

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As others have pointed out, he was supporting you, Centerfire. Ironically enough, he was using the definition of "marginal" that you defended earlier, while you apparently put him on your ignore list based on the definition Arcana used.

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The context did not lend itself to that interpretation. But if that's what he meant, then I apologize to BrasswireBrush.

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Arcanaville's point (at the risk of putting words in her mouth) was simply that your contention (and others') that FF is superior for Controllers, is not as clear-cut as perhaps you might like to think. From my perspective, you haven't addressed any of her objections in a logical manner. Can you explain how exactly the Controller version of FF is superior, despite that the Defender version will be providing more than 40% more mitigation through DEF?

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A few reasons:

(1) If I understand the I7 defense changes correctly, that 40% figure is the relative difference, not the absolute difference. In absolute terms the Defender's shields floor enemy to-hit, while the Controller's shields get enemy to-hit down to about 15%. So as a practical matter the Defender's shields are only mitigating about 10% more of the absolute incoming damage than a Controller's. That's a difference, sure, but it's hardly this earth-shattering, orgasm-inducing one.

(2) Because of the better synergy between most Controller primaries and the FF set as a secondary, the Controller gets more mileage out of his shields: they do nothing for the solo Defender, but the solo Controller can buff his pets with them. That advantageous synergy is certainly an offset to the superiority of the Defender's shields: the Defender's are stronger, but he gets absolutely no personal benefit from them.

(3) The knockback and repel powers are equal in numerical strength for both ATs, but, again, Controllers enjoy advantageous synergies: most of these powers are problematic for a Defender because of the aggro that they draw, while the Controller can manage the aggro with his controls, or he can let his (shielded) pet take the aggro; either way, he's able to use the powers in much greater safety, and they're thus far less situational for him than for the Defender.

(4) The control-oriented powers are, simply, superior in the hands of any Controller. Detention Field, which is a mainstay in the attack chain of any FF/* soloist; and the disorient component of Repulsion Bomb, which is the only thing that makes that power worth casting to begin with.

So Arcana's contention is, essentially, that ~10% more absolute damage mitigation makes the Defender's overall capabilities with the set at least arguably superior to those of a Controller despite the fact that (a) that damage mitigation is of no personal benefit to the solo Defender, whereas it's of tremendous personal benefit to any Controller build that includes a pet; (b) any Controller already gets far more mileage out of the set's knockback and repel powers, inasmuch as he can better manage the aggro that those powers draw; and (c) any Controller is concededly superior with the set's ST immobilization/phase, and its AOE knockback/disorient (note that a good phase or a good disorient is better than a +defense buff as damage mitigation, inasmuch as for the duration of the effect the target(s) aren't attacking at all).

As I have said, I find this contention entirely frivolous. ~10% absolute damage mitigation is not all that; it's roughly a Luck inspiration, for God's sake. "FF Defenders can floor enemy to-hit rates!" is a nice talking point, but that's all it is, and I don't know a single FF/* Defender who wouldn't give up ~10% of the absolute damage mitigation conferred by his shields if it meant that (a) the shields, though weaker, were still pretty good, and of some personal benefit to him; (b) he could better manage the aggro from his knockback/repel powers (particularly Force Bubble), and thus be able to get more mileage out of them as soft controls/damage mitigators; and (c) Detention Field was a better phase and Repulsion Bomb was a worthwhile disorient.

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I find your argument to be not marginally dishonest.

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It's always great when trolls self-identify; makes it easier to add them to my /ignore list.

*plonk*

What a hopelessly stupid attempt at a rebuttal, Arcana. If I didn't know better I'd think you were going out of your way to embarass yourself. Allow me to remark, briefly, on the superlative idiocy:

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Define "marginal." My estimates suggest that controller bubbles admit something between 30% and 100% more damage than defender bubbles, depending on situation.


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Marginal, i.e., by some margin. I was not suggesting that the difference is negligible; that's your inference, not my implication.


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This would be an example of intellectual dishonesty, as most people would define it: explicitly or implicitly suggesting that one was unaware or not fully cogniscent of the facts, in direct contradiction to how they were originally used for effect.

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Use of the term "marginal" is not ipso facto editorializing, and need not imply "small to the point of irrelevance"; in point of fact the first (and therefore most common) definition of the term up on Dictionary.com is "of, relating to, located at, or constituting a margin, a border, or an edge". Far from brain-death as a prerequisite to adopting this definition, it is, in fact, widely accepted usage in economics (for instance, "marginal costs" being the additional costs of input necessary to generate the next unit of output, above and beyond the costs of input necessary to generate the current unit of output). It's not until we get to the fourth definition of the term that we start seeing the word as a synonym for "bad".

Had I said, "the margin by which a FF/* Defender's buffs and debuffs are superior to a */FF Controller's buffs and debuffs does not offset the superior damage mitigation the Controller can bring to the table through his primary and his superiority with the controls in his secondary", you not only would have understood me, but it would have been functionally identical to what I did say. It was not my implication that the difference between Defender buffs/debuffs and Controller buffs/debuffs is small to the point of irrelevancy, either relatively or absolutely; and you would have to be basically brain-dead not to see that this was not my meaning given both the context, and the definition which I gave you, when you asked.

In short, you can only accuse me of intellectual dishonesty by attaching meaning to my words that I (a) never intended and (b) specifically disclaimed; you can only do it by, essentially, putting words in my mouth, which merely reinforces my point about your frivolity and bad faith.

Feel free to not comment on my "lack of argument", as you see it; in fact, I'll consider it a badge of honor if add me to your /ignore list posthaste.

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then why play a Defender at all

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I would actually agree with this. I think the Defender's problem is simply that their declared "speciality" is not nearly common enough in their own powersets.

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Bingo.

See, Mieux, this is why much as I'd like to, I can't accept it as gospel, posthaste. We play the game we have, not the game we'd like to have; and in the game, Defender primaries are thick with powers the devs consider control (see Eisregen's list).

If Defender primaries were significantly more buff/debuff-oriented, with the occasional control power thrown in here or there, then I wouldn't care if Controllers got equal or better mileage out of that occasional power (just as I'm sure Blasters don't really care that Defenders get equal mileage out of Aim). But that's not the case; our specialty, as Starshield points out, isn't nearly common enough in our own power sets.

Similarly, if buffing/debuffing offered significantly better aggregate damage mitigation than alternatives, then I wouldn't care if controllers got equal or better use out of some of our powers. But that's self-evidently not the case: Controller-level buffs and debuffs combined with Controller control provides equal or better damage mitigation in virtually all cases.

So we get it coming and going. We have comparatively few tools that take advantage of our specialty, making that specialty comparatively worth less than other ATs' specialties; and Controllers are at least our equals, if not our betters, in the service of damage mitigation.

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Two problems already. First, without any further comment, if controllers are better or equal in five of nine, then defenders are by your own admission unequivocally better in four of nine. If even one of the five of nine is close to equal, this is not a strong statement at all.

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I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that this is not a strong statement. Fact: Defender secondaries are Blaster primaries. Fact: Defender secondaries function at 65% of Blaster primaries, across the board. Fact: Controller secondaries are Defender primaries. Fact: More than half of at least one Controller secondary functions at 100%+ of Defender primary.

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Second, the number is not self-evident to me either. Of the nine FF powers, I'd say that:

PFF: defender better
DS: defender better
FB: questionable, arguably equal
IS: defender better
DF: questionable, default to controller
DB: defender better
RF: controller better
RB: controller better
FB: arguably equal

There is absolutely no question that PFF, DS, IS, and DB are better for defenders, which I'm assuming are the four you don't include. But it would be difficult to make a case that FB is in favor of controllers: knockback distance is not terribly relevant to the damage mitigation of KB in general. It would also be difficult to make a strong case for force bubble being significantly in favor of controllers, since it has a defense component.

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Which is why I said "as well as or better than". Kindly read for comprehension; you went to a lot of time and trouble to confirm precisely what I already told you.

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Define "marginal." My estimates suggest that controller bubbles admit something between 30% and 100% more damage than defender bubbles, depending on situation.

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Marginal, i.e., by some margin. I was not suggesting that the difference is negligible; that's your inference, not my implication.

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For this argument to work, you have to believe that the significantly higher defense numbers in FF for defenders is basically immaterial, even though the numbers strongly suggest otherwise,

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Um, no. I have to believe that the somewhat higher defense numbers in FF for Defenders is more than offset by the additional damage mitigation a Controller can bring to the table via (a) his primary and (b) his equal or better effectiveness with more than half of the FF set.

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that the other control-oriented powers in FF are all strongly weighted in controller's favor, even though thats not easily demonstrable,

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Not a necessary predicate for the argument. Thanks for playing.

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and then above that you have to amplify with synergy problems.

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Synergy problems are not unique to Controllers; they're suffered by both ATs, and are therefore a wash. Thanks for playing.

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I consider that quite a few hoops, actually

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Then we can stop right here, because I consider your various objections to the straight-line argument I've presented to be at best frivolous if not downright intellectually dishonest.

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AT modifiers are good...Primary/Secondary modifiers...not so good...imo.

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I don't really see anything to respond to, here, Mieux. The devs expressly repudiated a free form, AT- and Origin-oriented, system that you and Arcana are essentially advocating for before the game was out of beta. They established the primary/secondary system; they've promulgated it for 20 months and imported it into COH's sister game; they made this bed, and I see no reason not to require them to lie in it.

Besides which, as a practical matter nobody really gives a crap that Mieux the Defender is the Supreme Grand Poobah of Buffs and Debuffs. They're interested in two things: damage, and damage mitigation. Buffs and debuffs are just a means to the latter end. If every other CoH AT provides superior damage, and Controllers (through a combination of superior control and almost-as-good buffs and debuffs) provide superior damage mitigation, then why play a Defender at all, except as a concept? And why invite one to team at all, except out of pity?

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Consider the significant hoops that have to be jumped through to claim that force fields "might as well be" better for controllers than defenders. That isn't a straight-line argument.

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On the contrary, it's a very straight-line argument.

(1) Controllers always control better than Defenders, regardless of whether a power comes from primary or secondary.

(2) Thus, five of the nine FF powers function, in the hands of a Controller, as well as or better than they do in the hands of a Defender.

(3) A Defender has access to marginally superior +def buffs through the other four FF powers.

(4) However, despite the marginal superiority of the Defender's buffs, the Controller provides better overall damage mitigation through his marginally inferior buffs plus his superior controls.

No hoop-jumping required. If I wanted to nail the coffin closed even more convincingly I could mention that with Containment active, the Controller outdamages the FF Defender, too.

The bottom line here is that this:

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controllers should be better at control powers than defenders, all things being equal

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is counterintuitive and indefensible when for the last 20 months we've been sold primary/secondary, not AT, as the first, last, and only differentiator between strength of powers. The idea that Controllers will sometimes get more mileage out of a power than a Defender, even though it's in their secondary but the Defender's primary, is completely out of left field and makes absolutely no sense.

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But the big three powers in FF will work twice as well as a Controller or MMs bubbles after I7 against bosses and AVs. After I7, FF Defenders will be able to cap defense to all damage types for their teammates with Manuevers. Controllers and MMs will be able to get them down to 15% or so (which works out to about 22% for AVs and such)

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Bolded the part that makes me say, "Who cares?"

I mostly solo, and I don't have Maneuvers. I don't think it's too much to ask that my primary be more than a bag of atrocious crap that forces me, when I do team, to be nothing more than a buff-bot.

Thanks for looking at this stuff, _Castle_.

With respect to the FF set, you mention that the final three powers are extremely situational by design. I'd be really curious to learn what the motivation is, there; do you guys consider the rest of the set dramatically overpowered, such that you felt it necessary to give FF'ers comparatively weak/useless top-tier powers?

Again, thanks.

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Only on Tuesday nights.

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pix plz

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*Without* suppression, though, one thing you could always do if you were really good was to ensure your foe always used ranged attacks while you were using melee attacks (again, especially if you were a blaster) by timing your melee runs to happen essentially right as they were firing a ranged shot, guaranteeing that they couldn't switch to melee on you. Its questionable if this was game-breaking, though, since it was only "risk-free" if you were really good at it, and if you judge on that basis, there's a lot of things that are risk-free (and being shot at by ranged shots is not "risk-free" for blasters or anyone else really).

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What kills me about this is that there's a long tradition of comic book characters using exactly this kind of tactic to hand down some beat down. Hell, in Champions, which Statesman allegedly plays and drew much inspiration from, Move By and Move Through maneuvers are the bread and butter moves of speedsters and bricks, respectively.

It's really regrettable that the developers have made a risk/reward analysis their be-all-end-all of game balance, because in that analysis creative methods of reducing one's exposure to risk become "exploits".

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We're tweaking with toggle dropping...mostly decreasing its overall effect.

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In other words, my bubbler will now be even more of a buff-bot in PVP than she already is.

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Why are there so many Canadians in Texas? I'm from up North and now live in Austin. I'm not in the gaming industry but I feel so... farmed.

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It's all part of an evil plot to colonize us, and turn us all into NHL fans.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Very cool. Thanks, _Castle_. I hope that when you get through with it, you'll be willing to give us a followup post discussing each point in the list.

I agree that people are getting too worked up about the whole "valid" thing. It was just a quick way of saying, "We'll look at the things we think are worth looking at." Geko wasn't trying to call anybody a liar, for heaven's sake, and those of you who are letting the EF donnybrook animate your outrage -- sheesh, let it go, already.

This said, it'd be wonderful if the devs to go through the issues list and comment briefly on each item, even if it's just to flag it works-as-designed or will-not-fix.

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you know in the legan system saying one thing in print that a complete and total lie is called libal. And while it is often used in the terms of defimation of character the essense emains the same.

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That sounds you hear is me, a 1L, laughing his [censored] off at you.

I, for one, welcome our new eyeball overlords.