Scientist

My most memorable moments were with my Main, a rad/rad defender named kSpace. One was probably around I3 or I4, as I was slowly working my way to 50. I was about 35th level in a fairly tough mission with a team, and we were destroying things in our path, which I was accustomed to on that character, and I had the tank send me a tell asking me how many 50s I had. I replied "None, this is my highest level character." He didn't believe me without quite a bit of persuasion, which I took more as a compliment to my playing ability and powerset then as a lack of faith in my truthfulness.

You learned quite a bit about the game playing a debuffing defender, which foes mezzed, how to use line of sight to clump up mobs, and so on. Though not how hard Vahzilock hit, till I tried running a scrapper through them. "Boy, I thought scrappers were supposed to be really tough. . . " I recall back around 5th level in Kings Row I had to do some persuading to get a scrapper to jump into a spawn I'd debuffed, she wasn't convinced she could survive it, now I knew why.

Same character, I was playing on a team with friends, and we'd done about 3 floors of a multifloor Crey lab map without a death. I had to go afk for about 3 minutes, and when I came back, everyone was either dead or near dead. I rushed up to the next floor and managed to turn the fight around, between debuffs, EMP and my rez. After that, if I had to go afk, the team waited. . .

Finally, I ran into another rad defender who was planning to drop Radiation Infection because "he didn't think it did anything." I convinced him otherwise by pulling an entire spawn to me and standing in the middle of it while chatting with him.

The first thing our group ran into that stopped us cold was the Respec trial, which was pretty darned hard when it first came out. We finally made it through so I could respec and put a bunch of Tohit Debuffs into Radiation Infection, which made most of the rest of the game easy from that point on, especially since it worked at full strength even on AVs then.

So not a single story, but a series of them on How my Main Spoiled me for a Lot of Other Characters. Since then I've always loved characters who could really change the dynamic of a team and a fight. The only melee I really enjoy playing is a tank, because a good one can really improve how a team functions.

Venom Grenade + Suppression + Bile Spray + Frost Breath, with a high enough recharge build, gives a full AoE attack chain plus 35% AoE resist debuffing. They all work at range since they are all targeted or cone, and this plays to the strength of a Crabs best base defenses. You need a heck of a End Recovery IO build to keep that chain up for long though.

With less recharge, or if you want an AoE chain below 40th level, add in Frag Grenade (if you don't mind knockback, just use it at the end of your chain) and/or Heavy Burst.

Only a few blaster or corruptor powersets can rival or exceed the AoE a Crab can put out, and with much less safety. Plus you boost team defense and team offense (AoE resist debuffs). I've seen blasters and scrappers turned down for teams, I've never seen a Crab turned down unless the last slot was being saved for a tank.

I did the Sutter TF recently for the first time, and while we had a good time with it, I was thinking if we'd tried it with a team in the 20s, it might have been impossibly difficult. Just the groups of Warwalkers could be rough on a minimally slotted tank, let alone trying to deal with multiple AVs and air attacks and the teleporting thing. One of the lvl 50s on the team with us had to be persuaded to come along by a friend, because he had been on 2 tries of it previously that failed. Our team had 5 defenders, all of us who regularly played with each other, and we still had easily 15 deaths in the air attack mission. I was also only able to find the exit from the hospital area because I followed someone else, and had to be teleported out of the first ship because I couldn't find the exit.

I think it could be made a bit more reasonable for newer/lower level players to run by making a few tweaks, as have been suggested in this thread.

There was a dev comment long ago when people were discussing threat modifiers that debuffs actually have a pretty high modifier. Like Radiation Infection is something like 80% of Fireball. Unfortunately I don't have specific numbers or a link to it, but I remember people were surprised the modifier was that high. That plus your AoE damage may have pulled the trick.

Plus, as a note, there is some "spawn AI" which can cause part of a spawn to go after anyone on a team if someone on a team generates aggro. Thats how that one guy in the spawn can come running around the corner to hit your invisible squishy (note that mobs don't use perception once they have aggro) who hasn't even seen the spawn yet after the scrapper runs in and triggers the spawn. I doubt this is the explanation for all three of them running at you, but its helpful to know.

I can understand what you are going through, I had a friend quit several years ago as well, he had some other reasons but part of it was playing with PUGs that ruined what he considered most important, his sense of immersion in the game.

One suggestion I have is that you (and/or some of his other friends that you know) try to pick up some other friends to play with. Your friend who is thinking of quitting may be ok with joining a team with someone you guys vouch for, so thats a way to expand his circle of acceptable teammates.

Then, you guys make your team of friends and have the whole team join a Trial. A particular team is often assigned a particular task, so you don't have to interact that much with the rest of the "PUG" apart from following some League leader directions. If one of you leads the Trial, you can even just regard the second or third team as pets, since you will be giving all the directions.

I agree the new Trials aren't the best places to make friends, though, in some ways they remind me of teams for Rikti raids; thrown together quickly, you do what you are there for, and everyone goes their separate ways after. The friends I made in the game tended to be from tough missions or TFs, where some of the team quit and the few that were left actually had to work out tactics and stuck it out to succeed. Fortunately it sounds like you guys do a mix of play, and as long as *some* of you try playing with strangers to add a few more friends you can build that group up.

You could also try going to your servers forum and asking about sgs that like to play casually and chat a lot, it sounds like that may be a way to meet some compatible folks.

Is there a good way to check for Gauntlet in the debuff? Does that appear anywhere in Real Numbers? If its just the regular debuff threat modifier anyone else gets, then obviously anyone else debuffing, attacking, etc. in the team can peel that aggro off pretty easily. That wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I'd check with folks here to see if anyone could confirm it or not.

Out of curiosity, are these buffs disabled like most other temp powers during the Incarnate Trials? Or do they persist, since they are "click" type buffs?

I have yet to see a team stick together in that, but I also tend to have a tougher time finding my way through maps then many people do, so maybe there is some team chunk ahead of me.

What I've had some success with is finding a tank or scrapper and following them, letting them run in first, and providing support and additional firepower. But then again, I tend to take superspeed to stack with a stealth IO on pretty much every support character who doesn't have some kind of stealth to stack with the IO (steamy mist, etc.), so I'm mainly worried about the actual fights at the glowies.

Another suggestion is to get the Eye of the Magus accolade, for extra resist/defense for 2 minutes at a time. Accolades are not disabled in the trials, and with some decent recharge in your build or Hasten it is likely to be recharged for your next Lambda pass even if you are doing them back to back. That phase of Lambda is the only part of either trial where I think you really need the help as a squishy.

Finally, as already suggested, insps are your friend. More specifically, plan to burn most of your tray on this part, but if you play strategically you don't need any before or after this, and you can always restock between Trials, or if you hit a hospital in one.

I was wondering if anyone knows whether a no-damage debuff from a tank, such as Darkest Night or Quicksand, carries any Gauntlet type multiplier to the aggro generated. There was a post by a dev long ago that indicated that debuffs in general have a surprisingly high threat multiplier, such that a toggle debuff is close to something like a Fireball for aggro generated, but clearly that wouldn't be enough by itself to hold aggro against other debuffs, damage, etc.

I'm curious from the viewpoint of whether in a scenario like Apex would hanging a toggle debuff on the AV be enough to hold their attention while using PbAoEs and Taunt to try to gather in ambush spawns, which tend to be the real threat to others on the team.

I have both maxed out Rad and Cold defenders, and I would say overall they are close enough that the difference is situational. The Rad is a bit better at debuffing whole spawns on a fast team, since its AoE -resist is up for every spawn no matter how fast you move, you don't have to worry about tohit checks on its main debuffs, and you don't have to spend a lot of time chasing people trying to recast shields. It also works great with a cheaper (i.e. less recharge) build, as its easier to get to perma-Hasten thanks to AM. In fact its pretty darned good on SOs, which I think is one reason for its popularity on end game TFs.

The Cold is a bit better when you get to one or two hard targets, as it has a wider variety of debuffs it can then apply. If you pair /sonic with the cold (in the case of a defender) I'd give even more of the edge to Cold, since it can stack higher with the -damage from Cold. It has the downside of needing a more expensive build with higher recharge to keep its debuffs fairly perma. Its also got the edge with some of the newer content like the Apex TF where everyone is scattered around, and shields protect much better then debuffs. But thats a point in favor of a buff, not the "best debuff set".

If you want to be sure, go find a level 50 minion in Peregrine Island or Grandville, and see if it is white or blue con to you.

Just a note, increased range in a cone attack doesn't actually widen the cone, it makes it longer. A longer cone with the same angle does have more width at the base, but you have to stand back further to make use of that width. Thats not a big problem for a Crab, since they have other cone attacks (especially with some Patron pools), but be aware of it.

Otherwise, might be worth looking at http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/ to compare them directly. Looks like Frag Grenade has faster casting time (1.67s vs 2.67s) and slightly higher damage (factor of 1.17 vs 1.09). I agree the knockback can be annoying, though, I tend to save it for the end of my attack chain where it hopefully kills whatever it knocks back.

I didn't find knockback from the bots to be a huge issue, once in awhile something gets knocked back out of a flame patch but its not usually too long before they melt regardless, and its not like your pets can't shoot at them any more since they are all ranged (in theory, sigh). Plus "hard" targets like AVs, which are the only thing that survive long enough to worry much about tactics, don't get knocked back anyway. I went with Mace Mastery, the AoE Immob is handy to keep critters from scattering around and as a good way to draw the alpha on yourself instead of the pets, and obviously Scorpion Shield makes it a lot easier to cap some defenses. It also includes energy defense, which is a pretty common attack at high levels.

One of the advantages I see of traps over dark is much more ability to "front load" effects for a particularly unpleasant fight. You spend your animations laying traps before the foes ever show up, then all that damage (trip mines) and debuffs (poison trap, acid mortar, etc.) get concentrated when your chosen foe or foes show up. In addition to helping do things like solo hard targets, its also handy for an increasing number of end game scenarios where ambushes show up, often from predictable directions. Things like Triage and FF generator are also handy for Mothership raids, where buffing teammates and nonteammates are important relative to debuffing foes.

One other thing you may want to be aware of, if you don't have high level villians you've done it on already, is that you can do ANY of the patron arcs and it unlocks all the Patron pools. Thus if you prefer one of the other arcs because of the stories, or the foes, or the badge, feel free.

And the only defender I'm not doing this on is my rad, since I like the epic sleep and Dominate in the Psi pool too much and the rad debuffs achieve much (though not all) of the same protection.