Rial_Vestro

Well it started out as Defender horror stories and progressed into... well I don't know really... It was tails of awesome Defenders last I remember that was actually a subject pertaining to Defenders so we should probably go back to that.

There are times when I'm not for real... I'm pretty sure this is not one of those times but I haven't gotten allot of sleep in the last 3 weeks or so and you didn't really quote me on anything so maybe I've gone on my regularly scheduled sleep deprived insanity. Please stay tooned for randomness.

That's because level 1 is the only time you can see what the real base is because at 50 the numbers are scewed by other powers and things that could very from one character to the next depending on their build.

Also that page doesn't make any sense what so ever. The cap on Masterminds is not the lowest. They're calculating each AT the same way which seems wrong on it's own then their method of calculating is just really long and complicated.

They admitted at the top of page that some powers can have an effect on HP but there's nothing in their incredibly long complicated calculations to account for it which is why MMs still end up the lowest.

If you want to see what the MM cap SHOULD be, you gotta log onto a level 50 Mastermind, get the HP for the Mastermind, AND each individual pet. Add them together and there's the real HP. As noted earlier Masterminds have extra hp because their pets take most of the damage for them.

I've never looked to see if all the pets have the same HP or if every one is different but if they are different that would mean every MM has different max HP just depending on what their primary power set is.

I'd just like to point out that I can see the numbers just fine but if you start referring to teams by color with me I'm not going to know what to do. I'm color blind, I never know what people are talking about when they insist on referring to things by color.

I've had several moments in game where someone will ask for a small blue or a small purple. I'll have a trey full of CaBs but I prefer not to waist them in case I actually need them at some point so I tell them I'm color blind and they'll either give me a name I can read or get ignored because I'm not going to give up CaBs if I don't know that's what they're asking for. Some times I'll have Lucks and Break frees in my trey as well and to me they're all the same color. They're all the same shade of purple, not actually but that's how I see them.

Even the colors I can see like Enrage I still refer to by name trying to encourage the use of something I can actually read rather a color that I can't see.

Also if you can't see numbers, you can still count. They're in order. It's not hard to figure out what number you are if you just count them.

I also get rather annoyed at the start of trials when people say to press the green button because it's not green to me. It's yellow. So I always say to press Enter because everyone should be able to read that but not everyone can see the green button.

That would be a DRASTIC change in the game that I haven't heard about until just now. I did a check on all the ATs except for Soldier's of Arachnos who didn't exist yet though it was about a week or so before they were first announced.

I don't remember the exact numbers for all of them but Blasters have always been known as the lowest characters for HP on heroes. That's part of the reason they're so squishy.

Now that you bring this up... and sense I never really did a comparison for SoA anyway... I'm going to check in game and post my findings in a couple hours.

Why exactly are you talking about level 50 and incarnate content when you quoted me as talking about a level 10 character who was deleted 7 years ago? And the other post mentioned IOs which again isn't reliant to a 7 year old character.

Anyway...

Each archetype has different base HPs with Tankers having the highest, Brutes are second. Masterminds have the lowest base HP not even reaching into the triple digits but they actually do better than most others because of pets taking DMG for them. Blasters have the second lowest HP.

Now while all characters have the same END different powers use more endurance than others. This is partially why some melee toons have more issues with END than others depending on their ratio of toggles VS. Automatic shields and how they're slotted. Just as an example Super Reflexes vs. Willpower. SR for the longest time was the only truly natural power set but it's almost all toggles that drain END when activated. Willpower provides an alternative for people who wanted a natural power set without the massing END drain because while there are still a few toggles there are enough auto powers to make it more worth while if you choose to skip your toggles than SR is without any toggles.

That being said Controllers use allot more END than their Defender counterparts. I specifically choose a Dark/Dark Defender because I wanted a ranged attack character with a good amount of HP and didn't drain END too quickly. My main character was suppose to be a controller originally and that one was Ice/Storm. I deleted him at level 36 shortly after City of Villains came out. Even with SOs in him I still couldn't keep up Endurance.

I normally keep 2 columns of Respites, 2 columns of CaBs, and 1 Column of Awakens on me at all times. With a level 36 Ice/Storm I'd go thew my attack chain once, wait for all my powers to recharge before going threw the attack chain again, and repeat. Eat a CaB when waiting on recharge wasn't enough. This was the only way I could keep my END up without running out of CaBs in less than a min. I hated doing it because non of my other characters were this bad with END unless there were Sappers around.

I did manage to keep most mobs held long enough that I didn't need to attack any more than I was. The holds would be up again before they got out of the last set of holds. But I always felt like if I wasn't sitting there waiting for END to recover all the time I could actually help kill guys rather than just hold them.

I enjoyed Domintors more for that very reason because Domination make it so the END use isn't even an issue. Domination goes off right when I need it most, bringing END to full again so I can keep attacking even after a controller would of had to stop.

Illusion/Empathy. And I tried it two ways. Still trying to use illusion while healing at the same time. END sucks. Ignoring illusion and only using Empathy. END sucks. The Empathy set was actually what was draining most of my END as I had little to no issues when I was only using my Illusion powers.

And it should probably be noted that this is how the power set was at level 10... and 7 years ago.

Actually Corrupters get stuck with that title as well even though it's not even their primary power set. Though people are more likely to actually ask a Corrupter if they can heal rather than just assume they can.

My first Corrupter was fire/thermal and actually the very first time someone yelled at me for attacking and not healing on that character and kicked me off the team I had a moment of "Oh no, I'm not doing this again." and deleted the character. I think I was in my early 20's.

I was playing like a Blaster because the primary power set was built that way, my secondary was present but not something I was totally focused on.

As for Controllers, they really suck as "healers". They're really only meant to heal as a Defender support if things get really ugly. Controller Endurance makes it impossible to play as a Defender replacement as you'll be standing there waiting for your Endurance to come back while people are dieing. I've done it before when we didn't have a Defender on the team. Not to mention Controller Heals, Buffs, and DeBuffs are considerably weaker than their Defender counterparts.

Now Masterminds I think are actually better at it than Corrupters but people always look to Corruters because well, people hate Masterminds. Having played 7 of them and love them personally I have noticed that I'm rarely in a team with other Masterminds because if we get invited at all there's normally only one to avoid cluttering the mission with pets. While I do understand the need not to block door ways I do find it's easier to push them out of the way than the other 7 players on the team who tend to block door ways more than pets do. Plus if pets can't be pushed which is rare, any good MM knows how to use the GoTo command to move them out of the way and then put them back on follow when it's clear. Anyway because nearly all MM powers are made to support pets and also other players they don't have many attacks to focus on like a Corrupter. I'm much more likely to heal with a Mastermind than any other character though I still try to build for DeBuff more than heal.

Was playing my Demon/Pain Mastermind yesterday and had my Nullify Pain on auto during the Siege and Nightstar fight in BAF I was mainly resumming pets over and over again and as often as I could hitting my World of Pain buff, my T2 ReBirth, my T2 Pyro Judgment, and an AOE Fear power from the intimidation power poll that I don't think is actually doing anything but I hit it anyway. And of course I always have Soothing Aura running. I'd like to do more as I've got 3 whip powers and 3 Soul Master attacks I'm not using at this point but my main focus is the damn pets which Siege kills ways too easily. I don't know why, Nightstar almost never kills my pets but Siege slaughters them.

I think these two stories here have got to be the best stories I have ever heard. I have some similar stories that didn't always end so well.

The first story being when someone told me to "just heal" I stopped using all my other powers and even turned Shadow Fall off. This was on a similar team where no one was really taking any DMG because of my buffs and DeBuffs. I just put my 1 heal on auto attack and people suddenly started dieing because I was only using my heal. Of course when I pointed this out that was one of the many times I got kicked from team for not being Empathy. The leader said "You weren't healing you were just auto attacking" I said "That auto attack was my only heal." He responded "Then do a respec and get mode heals." To which I said "There are no other heals I can get, that's it." and that's when he went "BS I know Empathy has more heals than that." and I finally said. "I'm not even an Empath, didn't you read my search comment when you invited me?"

The other story is that usually whenever I see someone broadcasting "Healer looking for team" I send them a tell saying "Not all Defenders are Healers. I don't mind if you personally have a healer build but could you please refer to yourself as a Defender not a healer. It gives people a false impression about the rest of us who aren't healers when you call yourself that." I've send this same tell to ALLOT of people who were all very cool about it but there was this one person in particular who was so freaking rude that I never did this again after that. The response was something to the effect of "I'll call myself whatever I want. I'm not making you look bad, not having any heals is making you look bad." This is a severely edited quote because in the original message every other word was a curse word and I don't want to get banned for repeating it. There was more too. I didn't even reply to the message and got several more tells insulting me for what I horrible healer I was with more cuss words also insults to me and finally a tell asking me to stop harassing him when I has only sent the one message and he sent about 6 long messages to ME harassing ME and was complaining about me harassing him. I sent him the first reply I had ever sent him at that point which said "First you don't know what a Healer is and now you don't know what harassment is. You're the one harassing me, I sent you one message and haven't messaged you again sense then but I've got 6 tells from you." The /ignore function was available in the game at that time, it hadn't been added till about 3 years later. But I did send in a petition about rude behavior.

As it turns out though in one of his or her rants explaining why they were a healer the person had said that he/she was a nurse in real life. I just recall thinking that this person has a horrible bed side manner for a nurse considering that one comment I sent to them made them go into 6 tells of cussing at me. I actually died a couple times because they wouldn't shut up and I got distracted trying to read the messages.

Anyway... as for the game being "Free" I suspect most of the PL noobs will be taking advantage of that as most of the content I'm use to having access to you still have to pay for. And they are adding a new PAID server. Or possibly considering the name, making Freedom the paid server. (And if Freedom becomes a paid server that means allot of people playing for free will suddenly go bye bye as they won't have access to the server anymore.) If it's a new server then I'll be slowly moving all my characters off of Freedom. I've wanted off Freedom for a while but can't afford server transfers for all my 50's. The paid game will be giving free server transfers each month so it just be a matter of waiting for each free transfer till all my 50's are on the new server.

I may hesitate to move for a while because I'm not sure how this going to effect the Freedom Server population. When server transfers first came out I thought people would move away from Freedom for less lag but instead it turned out to be the opposite where people from all the other servers were transferring to Freedom because it's the most populated server and their old servers have been described as "ghost towns". I personally just wanna get away from the PL noobs.

But a Tank is actually an AT. They're literally called Tankers. Though "Brutes" often take their jobs in which case they're filling the role of the "meat shield" but the tank is quite literally the job of the Tanker.

It's not like there's an Archetype called "Healer" just archetypes who can heal. In that respect everyone is like a Brute. You may call a Brute a "Tank" but Brutes are not "Tanks"

Actually Brutes are like some weird mix of Brute and Scrapper. They have high HP like a Tanker though lower than a Tanker still higher than everyone else in the game. But they also do DMG and fight more like a Scrapper. My Dual Blades/Willpower Brute and Scrapper almost have the exact same build except that their Patrons are different as the Scrapper gets the same Patron powers as a Stalker. I'm also getting different Incarnate powers for each of them so it's less like playing the same character with a different inherent power.

You made up a word and I like it, jackassery, how do we get this added in to the Dictionary so it can be a real word?

On a more serious note yes I have been on several teams with Empaths who has similar binds only shorter and more to the point. "If you're not being healed it means you're being an idiot and running out of range. I'm not going to chase you and risk letting someone who is actually with the team die because of you being stupid."

The three signs of a good Empathy Defender.

1. They actually use powers other than heals.

2. They heal the people who actually stay close enough to get healed and ignore the idiots who run off on their own.

3. The word "Healer" is seen as a derogatory term and will not be tolerated.

The three signs of an idiot.

1. They think Defenders only heal and do nothing else.

2. They run away from the Defender and wander why they never get healed.

3. They name their Empathy Defender "Healer" and make life harder for the rest of us to be taken seriously.

Oh I understand the value. As I've I've said I've teamed with several good Traps users who have figured out how to get the best use out of the powers despite the flaws. But as I've said, I'm admittedly bad with Traps.

That being said even the best Traps user can't get any good use out of them during a Lambda because, like I said, he jumps away. Just about the only way you could use Traps well in a Lambda would be not to set them where Marauder is currently standing and instead run off and set them where he's going to be Jumping to. Marauder always follows the same jumping pattern so if you can predict where he's going to be before he gets there you can have him jump into your traps instead of away from them.

Seeker Drones actually follow, they're not stationary summons. This means, I actually use them all the time. Even if you summon them outside of combat they'll follow you into combat. Plus on a robot mastermind you actually get 6 of them because each Protector Bot summons 2 of their own. The ones summoned by bots though will have different effects than the ones you summon yourself based on how the Protector Bots are slotted.

*Checking my character sheet* I do have plans to slot Rebirth for my Traps/Dual Pistols Defender however I have not actually unlocked my Destiny slot yet. I do believe that Judgment was just unlocked the same day I started this topic. I'll unlock Destiny next time I play that character whenever that will be.

When I feel like my attack chain is getting in the way I end up putting it on auto. This is very rare that this ever happens though. Most of the time if I need to go AFK I'll inform the team and select a target to auto follow/heal off of till I get back. Usually picking the team Blaster or other squishy to keep close to for most of my healing. Plus making him or her a little less squishy with Shadow Fall and Maneuvers buffing them.

I actually haven't had Leadership on my Dark that long. I picked it up as a replacement to Fitness when that set became inherent. I like the added team buffs as a way of making him even more useful as if he wasn't bad @$$ enough already. I freaking love my DDD.

With my Dark/Dark, already doing that. With the Traps not so much as I've already admitted to not being good with them.

Anyway... now days this happens more often than no but 7 years ago it was rare. As long as the leader isn't being an idiot and kicking me off the team for blasting and not healing it's pretty well noticed and appreciated that we aren't taking DMG because of my ToHit DeBuffs.

I think part of the reason this is now more than when I first started is a combination of villains lacking any sort of Empathy set when it first came out. Remember Pain is still a relatively new power set that didn't exist for at least the first 4-5 years of Villains. The other part of it is just me having better enhancements than I did 7 years ago. SOs were great unless we had to fight an Arch-Villain then I was pretty much useless because they could resist my DeBuffs. Not entirely useless because they were hitting us less when I had DeBuffs on them than when I was dead but it wasn't enough of a noticeable difference for anyone to really care. Slowly working or replacing allot of SOs with HOs and eventually even Arch-Villains can't resist my DeBuffs. Makes for much more noticeable a difference when I'm there or not there.

Typically Empathy isn't even needed with me around. I've actually had a couple Empaths who don't really bother with their other powers quit teams on me because "I'm bored, someone take DMG already." This has always seemed rare though. Most Empaths have been able to find other things they can do besides heal.

And of course my DeBuffs are getting even better now because of Incarnate powers. I'm pretty sure Giant Monsters are the only ones who can still resist me but it's been a while sense I've fought any with him.

I think there was another similar post in here about Empaths, I can't really find it right now but I just really wanted to say I Empathy Defenders like and whoever the other posters. You're absolutely right. This game does not have any "Healer" Archetype just Defenders and Corrupter who also get stuck with that same title. And this game does not have any "Healing" power set.

I had mentioned Empathy in my original post as "this topic really isn't for you but you're welcome to join in anyway." note I never called it a "Healing" power set. I was just acknowledging that out of all the power sets in the game Empathy is the closest to being a healing set. It has the most heal powers of any power set and non of them require enemy targets to use.

That being said I also acknowledge the fact that non every power in Empathy is a heal and thus refuse to call them "healers" even when said Empath has some variation of the word "Heal" in their character's name I refuse to call them by name. The best Empathy Defenders I've ever teamed with don't even heal at all. With their buffs applied they don't need to.

Best example I can think of for this is one particular Empathy Defender who was wasting time healing my tanker but I kept dieing anyway because said Defender refused to use Clear Mind. This was back when toggle dropping was still a serious problem. Clear Mind is one of my favorite powers because that buff gave me the resistance I needed against toggle dropping holds. I kept dieing because the Defender was healing and not using Clear Mind. As long as I could keep my Toggles on I wouldn't even take DMG and healing would of been entirely unnecessary.

So yeah I know the befits of a good Buffing Empath and I love Empaths who Buff the team, Use their secondary for DeBuffs, and heal in an emergency allot more than the Healing Empaths who ignore all their other powers. Empathy is just the closest thing to a healer without actually being one. There are no healers in this game until the developers actually come out with a power set that is JUST heals.

I also have a Demon/Pain Mastermind and skipped allot of the "Healing" powers except for the auras because I didn't want to be a "healer" but for being the Villain version of Empathy Pain isn't even that great of a Healing set to begin with. The Buffs don't even seem to compare with their Empathy counterparts.

The healing triangle doesn't move from where it is summoned and in a Keyes trial standing still isn't an option. You have to keep moving to avoid the pulses as much as possible. This alone actually makes most traps pretty useless. Though I'm admittedly not great with them. My strategy has always been pull or don't use them at all. I've seen others do great things with traps but I can't figure out how anyone manages to summon trip mines in the middle of a mob without using the pull technique or how to get any use out of Time Bomb at all when it normally ends up exploding before anything can be pulled into it and having the same interruption problem when trying to summon in the middle of a mob.

Like I said, I made the Traps Defender on a whim but I have been really liking the uses for traps in the BAF trial. No pulling needed, they run into the traps anyway and I don't have to summon mid combat. I can have the traps set up as a horde of Resistance come running and then watch them get stuck by me as I shoot them with Cryo ammunition to slow them down even more.

Not really. Think about that trial has been around for what? 3 weeks now? Less than a month. Pulses are irritating yes but I've been annoyed with stupid people who think Defenders are Healers for 7 years. 4 months of grinding a Defender to 50 makes that a higher level of annoyance than the annoying pulses. And I really I thought I was done dealing with stupid people like that too because it's been a long time sense the last time I got yelled at for not healing.

For the same reasons listed above about the Triangle Beacon, I didn't have Acid Mortars.

To give you an idea of how I've actually built my Traps/Dual Pistols Defender. I have 2 separate builds for him. Build 1 which is the build I started out with leveling up that I made for me to be able to solo only has Web Grenade, Force Field Generator, and Seeker Drones. I only get these 3 powers because they're the only powers that aren't stationary and can actually follow me around. I just rely on my Dual Pistols for DeBuffs which works surprisingly well. (Not so much in the lower levels but it's like any toon, the lower levels always suck.) Build 2 is were all my Traps are. I started working on this at level 10 and still have quite a few Dual Pistols attacks just not as many as on my other build. My traps build has everything except for the Trip Mines and Time Bombs because they're interruptible. They still use END even when interrupted and it irritates me allot so I respected out of them.

That being said I only use my Traps build for BAF. I have tried both build in all 3 trials but I find stationary abilities to be completely useless when you can't remain stationary while fighting. BAF is the exception because you don't need to move in that one and I find the traps are allot more useful during the escape than just simply shooting at them. Of course I use them on the courts when fighting the AVs but I find them slightly less useful there though still somewhat helpful when we're remaining on the courts and not running all over the map like in a Lambda fighting Marauder. It's pointless to summon a trap during a Marauder fight when he's just going to jump across the map 2 sec. later anyway so I just shoot him.

So why doesn't taunt have any effect on the pulses? I was told it was because of the lack of DMG but you seem to have a different idea about that. I wouldn't really be surprised if I had been misinformed given how many people on these trials don't have a clue what they're doing.

Anti-Matter wasn't even around at the time. We were just clearing the bunkers and I was trying to help break into the bunkers when I was ordered to stop attacking.

As said above and in the first post, I had gotten mad at someone else earlier in the trial for attacking him, he wasn't even out when I was told not to attack, we were only breaking into bunkers.

I had talked about two separate Defenders and I don't think I had been very clear on which one was in the trial.

Dark/Dark is my 7 year old Defender who I mentioned because of similar incidence at that time.

Traps/Dual Pistol is the more recent incident that occurred in the trial.

Hope that clears up the confusion for everyone.

Oh and... cats hate me. (might have something to do with the fact that cats eat birds and my dad is Mallardman.)

It is possible to have a good character for Keyes without being a healer.

You're not suppose to attack Anti-matter till the end because they more DMG he takes the stronger the pulses get. I think the trick is that if you're going to hit him, hit him with something that has 0 Damage.

There are a few good DeBuff powers that could still be used on Anti-matter without casing him to loose any health. He has a strong resistance to DeBuffs though so even if anyone was willing to try this it probably wouldn't have much of an effect if any at all.

Whatever the case it's always a shame whenever anyone underestimates a good DeBuffer. I'm always amazed with my own Defenders whenever they manage to solo what should be an overpowering enemy for a Defender because I have them slotted really well for DeBuff not really for DMG, it might take me forever to kill anything solo but I can do it when it's necessary. I'm especially amazed with my Traps/Dual Pistols Defender because I made him on a whim and think of him as being inferior to my Dark/Dark just because I freaking hate Traps. (Except during the escape in BAF trials then I freaking love Traps.) My Dual Pistols though are surprisingly well slotted for Slow DeBuffs. I've got him mainly slotted for Cryo Ammunition which works really really well. Every time I hit someone they get slowed so they can't attack as often which helps to keep me and anyone else alive longer. Though this is not good against Anti-matter because non of my DeBuffs will work without some DMG but like I said before, he wasn't even present at the time I was attacking and I don't see the big deal in shooting the War Works if it helps to slow them down.