Turbo_Ski

Really depends on the support set. For Cold, nothing is more important than +Recharge because of all the long recharge powers in the set and the fact that Sleet can be easily double stacked for a nice overlap of -60% res.

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Base line damage modifier is 1.0 for a specific damaging power.

Defenders damage modifier for base damage on a specific damage power is .65
Corruptors are .75.
Blasters (I think) are 1.25.

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blaster damage modifier is 1.125. I'm just proposing raising the defender modifier to 0.656, which is about a 0.9% increase not a 9% like you keep misreading. that might seem small and minor to you but with damage buffs and -res debuffs that small shift varies things quite a bit.

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So if the base damage for a power is 10 hp then a defender with that power would do 6.5 a corrupter would do 7.5 and a blaster would do 12.5.

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This is wrong. To get base damage you find the power's damage scalar, the AT's damage modifier, and the level modifier and multiply them together.

For instance, X-ray beam on a lvl 50 corruptor would have these values:
DS = 1
ATmod = 0.75
LVLmod = 55.6102
Base damage = DS * ATmod * LVLmod = 1 * 0.75 * 55.6102 = 41.70765

If you wanted to find defender base damage for the same power just switch the ATmod out for 0.65, like so:
BASE damage = 1 * 0.65 * 55.6102 = 36.14663

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Now what do you precisely mean by this? Do you mean you moved the defender base modifier up to .9 and the corrupter up to .95? That certainly seemed to be what you meant. If it was then thats a *large* jump in damage.

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what you quoted was referring to the damage buff values from Accelerated Mutation and the -resist debuff values from enervating field. Damage buffs are done first and applied directly from base damage just like enhancements. -Resist debuff increases however effect the final damage, meaning they have to be calculated last.

Here are the basic formulas:
Buffed Damage = BASE damage * [ 1 + ( Dmg buff + Dmg enhancement ) ]
Final Damage = Buffed Damage * [ 1 - ( Purple Patch * Res Debuff ) ]

When scourge crits, it will immediately hit for the same Final Damage as the attack that proced it, basically doing double final damage. 17.52% is the overall damage increase that scourge does over time no matter the situation, this was found by creating a large table that measured the number of attacks required to kill a foe with X life using Y damage before scourge is taken into account. Then I did a separate table that was identical until it hit 50% and increased the damage by 2.5% for every 1% below 50% of X life until it caps at 100% dmg buff at 10% or less life at which it remains 100% dmg buff til 0% life. Both tables shoot out the final number of attacks required and you simply do [ 1 - ( ScourgeTotalAttacks / StandardTotalAttacks ) ] to get 0.1752, which is always independent from the amount of life, the damage buffs, the -res debuffs, and the base damage of the attack.
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Also since this is all about *soloing* ability why are you touching the team based powers at all?

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It's not about solo ability here, it's about balancing the defender average support numbers in a support set to be be about X% greater than the average corruptor support numbers. Also to maintain a X% avg damage advantage for corruptor over defenders.

Using the sonic example from earlier, we want defenders to have 19.35% avg. increase in their Sonic primary over a corruptor's sonic secondary. On the reverse side though, Corruptors would maintain a 19.35% avg increase in their damage over what defenders do individually with their attacks combined with their -res/+dmg powers while in a team.

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By this standard defenders are just fine.

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Just throwing this out there:

(De)buff sets haven't been given the mathematical once-over since release, making them one of the /very/ few groups of powers that haven't been rebalanced in relation to each other since release. And, while (de)buff sets in general work well, there are some sets that really could do with tweaking.

Again, just throwing it out there.

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Exactly. Radiation Emition is about the only support set that is pretty well balanced going back and forth between ATs and remain consistent like all the damage and self-protection sets do when they get proliferated. The rest of support sets have powers that are either way off in value (EX: Liquefy and Fulcrum Shift), have their numerical advantage made meaningless (EX: Knockback and controls) and/or completely identical on both ATs (EX: Sleet, Speed Boost, and Siphon Speed).

The advantage is that you get a wide variety of powers to choose from but the numbers aren't overally amazing unless you're teamed compared to other ATs (exception being double mire warshades, but that requires dwarf form). You're not going to underperform with a human-only build like they used to before their base damage was buffed, but you're not going to be matching the capabilities of a tanker or blaster either.

man our weekly "healer" threads aren't what they used to be.

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It doesn't have to be empathy but you do want some form of healing along with buff/debuff against level 54 boss spawns. Otherwise, the few hits that do get through are going to wear people down.


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yeah, FF and Cold totally needs heals in order to protect a team. /sarcasm

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Numbers make my head hurt.

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Well FF is the only set that is completely unworkable in cross AT balance of this nature in it's current state unless you dramatically shift the damage components of Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb in weird ways for defenders. Personally I would add a lingering -Res component to repulsion bombin addition to it's current effects, probably about -20% to -25% off the top of my head. Thematically one could say you cracked their armor with the impact or something.

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So how will you balance blasters into this now that you increased defender base damage by around 38% and corrupter damage by around 26%?

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Wrong, defender base is only increased by 0.9% in my calculations and corruptor base is completely left alone. Blaster damage remains unrivaled here and defenders will still do less than corruptors in damage.

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I noticed the "balancing" example you used with Sonic Resonance only reduces the capabilities of the two less popular powers. For that matter you actually increased the strength of Sonic Disruption. O_o


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Sonic Cage and Sonic Repulsion's increases really have no significant advantage over the corruptor version in actual use, not the case with clarity and the rest of the powers. Sonic Disruption requires a teammate to even be able to use and applies it's benefit to the entire team not just the defender/corruptor, it also makes up for the shortcomings of the Sonic Resonance set (overuse of ally dependent powers and specializing in -Res but not being the best at it).

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For me this fails the "laugh-out-loud" test. It all buff and no downside. A huge buff at that. Defenders are already very powerful in teams this is an increase to both their solo ability *and* teaming ability. Even more so for corrupters.

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You seem to be lost. Corruptor and Defender solo damage isn't increased by buffing Disruption and only Defenders gain a base damage increase here and only by 0.9%. Also a +4.5%/+2% tweak upward on Disruption field isn't game-breaking in the slightest, if you really think so then perhaps you should be complaining about Freezing rain that does -35% and can double stack itself easily currently.

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And how about Mind Over Body (Psychic), Charged Armor (Elec) or Temp Invulnerability (Power)? Are all those a waste of power choice? I´m not seeing anyone say anytyhing about these.

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I would say it's not as appealing as the alternatives for a Rad/* defender. For a set like TA, though it would be a lot more valuable.

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in fact, if anything, most likely you'll have nerfed the living crap out of the two Defender blast sets which do deliver decent levels of damage. Oh, and for good measure, you'll likely have nerfed the snot out of Corruptor rain powers, too.


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I would trade lower -Res values on defender Sonic blast and reduced damage on rains (for both corr and defenders) for higher defender base damage all around any day.

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Therein lies the problem. If you raise Defender base damage by any appreciable amount, then you have to do something for Corruptors too.

It's not a step that will be taken lightly.

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let's see here, with the most consistent set being rad/rad for both defender and corruptor at the moment. It makes a good example for damage scaling (assuming they adjust the gross omissions in support increases in other Defender primaries eventually).

with defender/corruptor getting .25/.20 +dmg and .30/.225 -res damage bonuses against a 5000 hp target, it will take 86/82 attacks of X-Ray Beam (without scourge factored in yet) to kill the foe. that's a 4.3% damage advantage for corruptors before factoring in the 17.52% final damage increase over time that scourge will provide to that. The average overall support advantage for Rad for defenders is 20.35%. In order to reach a balance here the defender base damage would need to be increased by 0.9% to balance the support and damage shift. That would leave the defender at an avg 20% support advantage over the corruptor and the corruptor at an avg 20% damage advantage over the defender.

It's then just a case of tweaking the other sets to be balanced by increasing/lowering +dmg/-res power to narrow the damage gap while increasing/lowering defensive buffs/debuffs to meet an equillibrium with the scourge advantage. Below is an example of how I would change sonic resonance for defenders to balance it with corruptors and the 0.9% defender base damage increase.

Defender
Sonic Siphon = 0.30
Sonic Barrier = 0.20
Sonic Haven = 0.20
Sonic Cage v 5.96 -> 4.99 (or just ignore)
Disruption Field ^ 0.30 -> 0.345
Sonic Dispersion = 0.15
Sonic Repulsion v 6.23 -> 4.99 (or just ignore)
Clarity = 13
Liquefy = 0.357
avg support advantage = 19.33% over corruptor

Corruptor
Sonic Siphon = 0.225
Sonic Barrier = 0.15
Sonic Haven = 0.15
Sonic Cage = 4.99
Disruption Field ^ 0.225 -> 0.245
Sonic Dispersion ^ 0.113 -> 0.12
Sonic Repulsion = 4.99
Clarity = 10.4
Liquefy = 0.25
avg damage advantage (with scourge) = 19.38% over defender

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in fact, if anything, most likely you'll have nerfed the living crap out of the two Defender blast sets which do deliver decent levels of damage. Oh, and for good measure, you'll likely have nerfed the snot out of Corruptor rain powers, too.


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I would trade lower -Res values on defender Sonic blast and reduced damage on rains (for both corr and defenders) for higher defender base damage all around any day.

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This change really irritates the hell out of me. Bliz goes and pretty much hands crap out to players, makes leveling a complete joke, and then expects me filter through the inept masses to find the few worthy of bringing along to my raids? Thanks but no thanks.

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But you've been doing that since classic because leveling in WoW has always been silly easy. The changes are just to encourage more long-time players to make alts and to ease the 1-60 transition even more which many long-time players find boring by this point. Weeding through idiots occurs naturally regardless of the lvling speed because people will naturally get there even they die a thousand times every level.

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If we assume that Corruptors' damage scalar advantage is cancelled out by Defenders' buff/debuff scalar advantage, then we're left with one inescapable conclusion:

Scourge > Vigilance

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If the buff/debuff scalar was consistent and equal to the corr damage scalar, this would be true. However end up with half of entire sets being filled with powers that have the same numbers for both corrs and defenders. Then on the opposite end, you have a wildly unbalanced sonic blast for defenders because the debuffs are so high and Ice storm and blizzard using blaster damage values, making overpowered amongst the rest of the defender blasts by comparison. Which is the major difference between defenders and controllers/corruptors, Defender numbers are an absolute random mess of numbers where as controller/corruptors have values are much more consistent and well balanced.

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And because the devs are leery of the balance implications of stacked buff/debuff teams, we'll probably never see a significant buff to Defenders as a whole AT.

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no, it's more of the fact it would be too much work to make support powers consistent when going from primary to secondary like damage and self protection sets do. just like how it would be too much work to make rain powers not use blaster damage.

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Of all the reasons I can think of for going cross country, this isn't high on the list. Although a drunken debate between Positron and myself would be comedy gold, HBO has shown interest.

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You know it's kind of funny that Blizzcon is going to be shown on pay per view this year and they are giving in-game rewards for those who either watch or attend the con. They truly know how to milk every dime out of people.

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Yet another reason I am not playing World of Walking

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They give standard land mounts at lvl 20, epic land mounts at lvl 40, and standard flying at lvl 60 in the next patch. down from 40/60/70.

I would say go with Dark if you plan on being in melee that much. Damage procs should also be saved mainly for short recharge click powers since in toggles they only have a chance to proc every 10 seconds. Anyway your main concern with procs on a rad/rad is slotting as many achille's heel procs as you can in your rad blasts first and foremost.

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Of all the reasons I can think of for going cross country, this isn't high on the list. Although a drunken debate between Positron and myself would be comedy gold, HBO has shown interest.

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You know it's kind of funny that Blizzcon is going to be shown on pay per view this year and they are giving in-game rewards for those who either watch or attend the con. They truly know how to milk every dime out of people.

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I've also seen these called "Pool Boy" builds.

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and now my mind has gone to a dirty place...

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The Infinity crowd was TOO small last year! I know, I know, I live in Cali so it's a piece of cake for me. But we only filled a table and a half!!!! And that was when Ex sat with us cuz she said she liked Infinity!!! So please more Infinity folks COME TO HERO CON!! It really was a surprisingly good time.

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I don't know might be fewer people overall. Seems the game's population has died out quite a bit since the last con. Sad I know.

No point in trying to argue with these two "believer" types, logic and facts mean nothing against their belief that they are right.

I'm going to have to assume that you two can't read very well because you're reading stuff that isn't even remotely in my posts.

Apparently you're first off going off and claiming that I'm trying steer people away from defenders when no where at any point in time while on these boards have I ever done so. People however move to what is optimal and Corruptors are superior to Defenders in their current state and let's not toss [censored] around here, their playstyles are identical. They just reversed the primary and secondary and left defender damage numbers in the dirt and support sets completely inconsistent going from primary to secondary and back.

You also seem to think that your personal preference has any relevance on a topic about AT balance issues and that we would even care about whether you find support sets more "fun" than ranged damage sets. Fun is subjective, some people find mass murder fun, that certainly doesn't mean that mass murder is healthy for Society. Just like laws up hold order in society, numbers up hold order in game balancing. What's "Fun" has nothing to do with it.

Anyone who has played both a defender and a corruptor to 50 knows that defender damage is completely out of whack and the support number advantage they supposed to have is utter garbage. You don't need to crunch numbers to know this, it's obvious from playing both ATs. Of course, you've admitted to having not actually played a corruptor to 50, so as I said before you really don't have a leg to stand on here. Defenders aren't "fine as is", they need to be tuned to have better base damage and the support numbers need to be more consistent, no more of this bullcrap with over half of entire sets like Kinetics have identical numbers on defenders, controllers, and corruptors.

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I think you fail to realize the number of Corruptor builds that can solo an AV

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I think YOU fail to realize HOW MUCH I DON'T CARE ABOUT SOLOING ARCHVILLAINS. Seriously, I don't care who or what can solo an archvillain. I don't care about optimizing my build to solo them. I don't care about fighting an AV with anything less then a team.

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then you probably shouldn't bring up anecdotes about your defender soloing EBs and compare it to corruptors.

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People may switch all their characters to Corruptors, never play Defenders again. However, I don't particularly care about the numbers, I enjoy playing all of my characters, including all my Defenders as Defenders. I'll continue to make Defenders and play CoH with them. They are fun to play to me, I'm an asset to my team, and that's all that matters to me.

You guys are welcome to argue numbers all you want, but the Defender forums aren't exactly the place to go "Oh cool, Defenders. Well, you should fall in love with Corruptors because they are so much better." This is what most of the threads I've looked into come to. "Why do a Cold Dom/Ice? Play a Ice/Cold Dom." My response is, some people just prefer the play style and feel of the Defender. I'm one of these. The numbers can be whatever you want, and heck, you can not invite me to a team because I'm a defender when Rogue comes out. That's your own problem, I do my job well and do it well regardless of if I'm a Defender or Corruptor.

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If you don't really want to discuss about AT balance because you find mediocre defender damage numbers "Fun", then you really have no place in such a discussion. Also you really need to stop jumping to conclusions that everyone is trying to steer people away from defenders everytime someone makes a negative comment about the AT.

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Ok Fulmens, let me try explaining this one more time. I'll use small words so everyone can understand me this time.

I. Enjoy. The. Buff. Sets. More. Then. The. Blasts.

Is that clear now? Ok, what does that mean? It means that to me the debuffs are the more important and fun powers. Oh, and I'll also point out your inacurate statement and why it's inaccruate.

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It takes around 5 of those hours to get to level 12, around 20 to 20, and so forth.

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That is only true if your on a large team that's steamrolling things. In fact, I've actually tried going from level 1 to level 12 in five hours. It didn't happen with normal game play. Not for me at least.

Oh, and another thing that makes corrupters for me less fun then defenders. By level 12 my old rad/rad defender felt unstoppable. Heck, when I tried soloing Atta I couldn't beat him. However after one hour he'd still not come close to taking me out either.

My rad/rad corrupter? Anything and everything is able to laugh at the to-hit debuff and smack me around. They've been able to since level 5. I spend more time running back to the mission then actually doing the mission most times.

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I think you fail to realize the number of Corruptor builds that can solo an AV (not an EB) is vastly greater than the number of Defender builds that can solo an AV. Defenders get screwed numerically in damage department where as corruptors don't get any where near the handicap in support, the primary and secondary trade is not balanced for the majority of builds. This would have been obvious if you even bothered to play both ATs to 50.

In fact rad/rad vs rad/rad is about the only build that is consistently balanced because it never hits any caps and the -res/+dmg values match perfectly with the damage increase. Trading 21% avg support percent increase for a 21% loss in damage compared to the corruptor.

Many other builds like Cold/Ice vs Ice/Cold aren't so lucky with a 21% avg support increase for a 29% damage loss. Even if Sleet was -35% res for defender like Freezing Rain is for Storm (it's 30% for both corr and def), it would still be a 26% damage loss. These calculations include scourge which is an average damage buff of 17.52% to corruptor final damage over time.

It's the worst for Kinetics actually with defender damage cap being 400% and Siphon Power and Fulcrum shift easily capping it and corruptors with a damage cap of 500% can easily reach 450% by themselves. Since Siphon Speed and Speed Boost are completely identical as is the majority of Fulcrum Shift, this makes Kin defenders trade a 10% support advantage for a 35% damage loss.

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Um. Cold is definitively more team oriented, since you can't use 1/3 of its powers on yourself.

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2/8 != 1/3, Frostworks isn't worth snot to be even considered, it's as pointless as Repel, Sonic Repulsion, and Repulsion Field. Anyway, the other 6/8th of the set more than makes up such powers, something Sonic and Thermal do not when you look at those sets overall.

1. Agreed

2. I agree, but I really don't see this much of an issue at the moment, expecially so if change #1 occurs

3. Hell no. A better idea would be either change Sonic Cage or Sonic Repulsion into a PPF type of power. Honestly though ST intangible powers should probably be changed to auto-cancel after so many actions have been negated against the target, so that if misused by players or npcs then at least it will eventually break if you keep beating on it instead of having to wait for the full duration.

4. Agreed, although psi damage is incredibly rare and when it does show up it's relatively low damage compared to elemental or physical attacks. It's not a major issue as overall power loss from Sonic Cage and Sonic Repulsion being in the set and the ally-dependences of Sonic Haven/Barrier, and Clarity


Main issue with Sonic and FF when compared other support sets is that the "Core" powers (EX: Sonic Siphon, Force Bolt, Liquify, etc.) generally aren't powerful and practical enough to make up for the inclusion of entirely optional fluff powers (Sonic Repulsion, Sonic Cage, Detention Field, Repulsion Field and Force Bubble). Kinetics however has enough impact overall to easily handle the inclusion of Inertial Reduction and Repel into the set both on a team and off a team, FF and Sonic especially lack that kind of balance.

Sleet: Achille's Heel -Res proc

Ice Storm: Positron: Chance for nrg dmg

honestly though I would only slot the -Res proc and save the other slots for dmg procs in non-rain powers.