I haven't read this entire thread, just selected parts of it, so I don't know if someone might have brought up this thought already. But before I do that, thanks to _Castle_ for spending his time addressing Defender issues.
Ok, that said, I smell a double standard grinding we Defenders down.
On the one hand, we have Controllers, who are supposed to be better than us at controlling, so their version of our powers are better than ours.
On the other hand, we have Blasters, who are supposed to be better than us at blasting, so their version of our powers are better than ours. This is especially true since our buff/debuff powers were found to be too good even with 75% of blaster power, so we got further nerfed some time back.
Well, once you grind away the blasterish and controllerish parts of our AT, you have -- well, a bit of healing, certain buffs, and certain debuffs. Oh, and we have an intrinsic that helps us use our powers, gimped or not, on those occasions that disaster occurs.
Hardly a surprise that people like Empaths and Rad so much. They do buffs, debuffs, and heals -- they're not gimped too bad!
I love/loved playing my Storm/Elec to 50, and genuinely enjoyed the experience. But I hate game "balance" by feel because this kind of double standard garbage pops up.
Set a numerical standard and follow it. Evaluate the quality of the standard sometimes. What I mean is have values for power properties, add them up, and when a power set is done being totaled up, the sum value of a power at a given level should be within a certain threshhold. If later on, you see that an "advantage" is too weak or two strong, you rerate that power aspect and recalcuate, then make changes.
To pull an example out of my ***, let's take a simple power and rate it. Say, charged bolt. CB has certain properties: base damage, energy damage type, ranged attack, END drain/recovery, and a very average recharge rate.
Now, rate each of these on their stand-alone usefulness. A 1 is a "barely useful and a 10 is an "awesome".
The brawl index is 2.78 (for blasters -- comparable to power bolt & ice bolt), which is average for a level 1 power, so it gets a value of 5 on a 1-10 scale. That would be a 5 * .67 = 3 for defenders because of their relatively low damage. Energy type is common and reasonably commonly resisted (not as much as S/L, but common enough) so we'll give that a value of 4. It's a ranged attack with a bit below average range, so we'll give that a 5. It has an average recharge rate, so minus 5 there (a lower recharge rate might give a lower negative value), then it has this crappy END drain, which is virtually unresistable, but has no significant combat effect past very occasional transfer of a modicum of END to the user. So, if the drain is moderately useful (value 5) but happens 10% of the time, then the value is 5 * .1 = .5 -- rounded to 1 in this case to keep us in integers for ease of use. Defenders get 25% more energy, so 5*1.25*.1=.625 -- still a 1 for Defenders. The END cost for using the power is standard, so we'll call that a minus 5, since it balances the usefulness of the power. However, the END cost is about 25% higher for defenders, so the value is -5*1.25 or -6.25 for defenders.
So, the value for CB is 5 (standard damage) + 4 (energy type usefulness) + 5 (ranged attack, weak range), - 5 (standard recharge rate), + 1 (crappy END effect), - 5 (END cost) for a total value of 5 for a blaster. It's Defender value is a 2.
Now, you might argue that, for example, my value for the energy type damage might be too low. Great! This is all about judgment calls, but the point is, that using a number as a reference for making these judgment calls (a) gives you a point of argument and (b) illustrates how changing the power may or may not put it within an acceptable threshhold. If the threshhold for the power is 4.5-5.5 for blasters but 2.5-3.5 for defenders, then clearly, the above system suggests that some buffing is in order for defenders who use that power because they're missing their threshhold.
At the end of the day, the numbers become a tool for basing your judgment arguments around, which means there's a "feel" factor involved, but you're kept honest. Plus, if you later discover that the END drain for charged bolts is massively powerful in certain tactics, you can up its value and recalibrate (well, nerf). Devs and players can make their cases about balance around certain variables ("we thought that the herding component we didn't anticipate in Invincability had a balance value of 5, and it turns out it's a 9.5 in our opinion, so we're change the AI to put the value back in line") lets people understand the rationale, whether they agree or disagree.
Hmm... sorry, this turned into a rant a little while ago. Well, it's something for game designers and communities to consider if we like.
