Turbo_Ski

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On the other hand, guess who gets first pick when the Giant Monsters come to town?

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-Res/-Def >>> -Regen on GMs

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That's part of the problem. They take so freaking long to get their 'core' defensive powers. Made a rad/rad, and it was soo painful trying to get the two toggle debuffs. When I was running a rad/rad defender the set was a joy to play. Corrupters to me take too long to get the fun powers.

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Defenders take too long to get their good blasts and when they do get them they don't make up for the wait to get them because defender base damage is so pitifully low. Not really the case with offensive support powers being secondaries on Corruptors.

[/ QUOTE ]It takes all kinds to make the world go round, Turbo. Some people find the support powers more fun, others find the blasts more fun. No one's fun is more "right" than anyone else's in this case.

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Apparently you missed the part where Madam admitted to not ever playing a corruptor at all then claiming defenders are better in a topic comparing damage/support capabilities between defenders and corruptors and controllers. If you haven't played one of each of those well past lvl 20 then you really don't have a leg to stand on in this topic.

Regen debuffs are incredibly minor unless you're dealing with something like Honoree which likes to hit 100% res cap with his unstoppable, making -Res and +Dmg completely useless for the smashing and lethal damage types. Pretty much regen shines versus over the top god mode powers on npcs, but not much on anything else compared to -Res and +Dmg. Which makes Tar Patch the only offensive power in Dark

As for Sonic it is specialized almost entirely in +/- Res to the point they made the Tier 9 use a crap ton of variety to attempt to make up for it. Also keep in mind Liquefy has an ungodly long recharge attached to it which makes it actually worse than Tar Patch because it can't be used as regularly. Also Sonic like FF suffers when the team is already at resistance caps prior to be included since they'll only bring -30% AoE res compared to -30% AoE res + variety of uncapped buffs/debuffs that sets like Cold, Rad, and TA bring to the table.

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25 radius DN, 25 radius Tar Patch, 70 range cone fear, pet that debuffs and heals. Not to veer this topic off track, but ,,,"pretty undesirable set"???? DARK?? Uhm... yeah, ok....

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When the team is soft capped for -ToHit/+Def and plenty well off on -dmg/+res prior to adding the dark, then yeah Dark is really undesirable than say Rad or Cold or TA.

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That's part of the problem. They take so freaking long to get their 'core' defensive powers. Made a rad/rad, and it was soo painful trying to get the two toggle debuffs. When I was running a rad/rad defender the set was a joy to play. Corrupters to me take too long to get the fun powers.

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Defenders take too long to get their good blasts and when they do get them they don't make up for the wait to get them because defender base damage is so pitifully low. Not really the case with offensive support powers being secondaries on Corruptors.

a solo Rad/Rad build and team Rad/Rad build are like 95% identical. It really only comes down to did you pick up Mutation or Fallout or any leadership powers or if you went for more solo friendly pool/epic/blast powers.

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Sonic, FF, and Dark seem to be all incredibly rare on defenders it seems these days. I think the reason is because all three of those sets are too specialized which makes them unfavorable compared to variety sets like Cold, Empathy, and Rad when teams start stacking support. Kin doesn't suffer this because it's on the opposite end of the spectrum where Offensive buffs can function as a defense by killing faster.


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Say what?! Granted, I haven't played blueside in a while, but how does Dark Miasma even begin to be described as "rare" and specialized? The only thing it doesn't bring to the table is defense debuffing.

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1 Offensive power and 8 defensive powers. It's incredibly specialized in purely damage mitigation above everything else just like FF and in some respects Sonic because of the ally-dependence of that set's powers. It's a pretty undesirable set when safety of the team is more than well covered by other support sets in the team.

btw only reason people make Fire/Dark Corruptors and the like is because the benefit of getting a -Res AoE at lvl 2 is incredible for secondary set since most sets have to wait until the late teens or late thirties to acquire such a power. Tar Patch however ends up being inferior in ability compared to the powers that do come later in other sets though such as fulcrum shift and Freezing rain/Sleet. It's instant gratification versus waiting for something better later, not really an issue for defenders because it's a primary power for them.

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Personally, I love playing defenders. Even so, I can't stand playing corrupters for long. I play one for maybe half hour, then that's all I can stand.

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Then you really haven't played corruptors at all if you haven't even played past lvl 10 on one.

Sonic, FF, and Dark seem to be all incredibly rare on defenders it seems these days. I think the reason is because all three of those sets are too specialized which makes them unfavorable compared to variety sets like Cold, Empathy, and Rad when teams start stacking support. Kin doesn't suffer this because it's on the opposite end of the spectrum where Offensive buffs can function as a defense by killing faster.

Also in the case of FF and Sonic, both sets have powers that are either highly situational and/or require teammates/pets to even be functional.

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You know it would be very simple for them to fix defender damage, just reduce sonic blast's debuffs and increase base defender damage all around. Since nothing remotely like that has happened it can only be assumed the devs want defenders to have ultra crappy damage for anything that isn't sonic blast or the rain powers in Ice Blast.

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Well, if Going Rogue allows Corrupters to come blue side, I guess that may just happen indirectly.

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I suspect Defender number to drop dramatically after Corruptors are available Blue Side.

Maybe then the Devs will finally take a look at the AT...

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heck, I would delete and reroll all my defenders except TA/A when that happens (assuming TA/A isn't proliferated before that). Corr and troller damage trumps the primary benefits defenders get, only except is sonic blast which honestly is overpowered when compared to its alternatives for defenders.

You know it would be very simple for them to fix defender damage, just reduce sonic blast's debuffs and increase base defender damage all around. Since nothing remotely like that has happened it can only be assumed the devs want defenders to have ultra crappy damage for anything that isn't sonic blast or the rain powers in Ice Blast.

Frankly I find Corruptor or Controller duos far more satisfying than defender duos. Both ATs have plenty of numbers backing their buffs, debuffs, and heals to easily keep each other up but don't have to trade damage loss because of their ineherents (Scourge and Containment).

That said, I personally find double Fire/Sonic Controllers and double Ice/Pain Corruptors highly entertaining.

No point in arguing over this with someone that thinks that Sleet and Freezing Rain are different when they 100% identical in all aspects except their name.

From my Cold guide, keep in mind this formula assumes you're going to put the min/max caps in their place towards the end. Min is always -300%, max cap varies depending on the foe in some cases it's 100% and in others it's only 90%.

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Resistance debuffs are resisted by the total resistance buff of the target. They are also subject to the Purple Patch modifiers. This applies to each individual damage resistance, so you might have the full effect on Fire resist because they have 0% but you might have Lethal resist be 30% and it will shave off 30% of your debuff. Formula for this is below.

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RESISTANCE FORMULA

RES_FINAL = ( RES_BASE + RES_BUFF ) - ( RES_DEBUFF * PURPLE_PATCH * ( 1 - ( RES_BASE + RES_BUFF )) +/- [additional debuff/buffs]

Purple Patch chart
Enemy base resistance values

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Sleet for both defenders and corruptors has the same -30% res debuff and can slot the -20% res Achille's Heel proc for even more fun, so we'll use them in this example calculation. Let's say we're fighting a +4 Ghost Widow and we'll assume we got a lucky proc off of a single instance of sleet. We'll say we're attacking with Negative damage for this calculation as well.

[u]Given values[u]
Purple Patch Modifier: 0.48
Sleet: 0.30
Achilles Heel: 0.20
GW's negative resistance: 0.30
No Res buffs other than base.

RES_FINAL = ( RES BASE + RES BUFF ) - ( RES DEBUFF * PURPLEPATCH * ( 1 - ( RES BASE + RES BUFF ) ) ) - ( RES DEBUFF * PURPLEPATCH * ( 1 - ( RES BASE + RES BUFF ) ) )
RES_FINAL = ( 0.30 + 0.0 ) - ( .30 * 0.48 * ( 1 - ( 0.30 + 0.0 ) ) ) - ( 0.2 * 0.48 * ( 1 - ( 0.30 + 0.0 ) ) )
RES_FINAL = ( 0.30 ) - ( 0.1008 ) - ( 0.0672 )
RES_FINAL = 0.132
+4 Ghost Widow is left with only 13.2% res to negative instead of 30%

Now what if we we're double stacking sleet but without the proc?
RES_FINAL = ( 0.30 ) - ( 0.1008 ) - ( 0.1008 )
RES_FINAL = 0.0984
+4 Ghost Widow is left with only 9.84% res to negative instead of 30%

Of course since Ghost Widow has zero resistance to fire/energy/cold she is suffers -14.4% for each instance of Sleet ( -28.8% when double stacked )

Now the damage calculations are easy here since Resistance only looks at the final damage of a power. An attack that does 100 damage against 30% resistant dmg type will only deal 70 damage and when it's a -30% res value it's final damage will be 130 damage. This is a lot better than +dmg buffs in the long run too since +Dmg buffs only effect the base damage of a power and not the value after enhancements.

DMG_FINAL = DMG_BUFFED * ( 1 - RES_FINAL )
If RES_FINAL is negative you'll get a higher value and if positive you get a lower value.

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Huh, you know? Based on a few posts about buffing them harder if they ask for them not to, next time a Cold Dom buffs me when I ask them not to on purpose (which is usually never, only toon of mine right now that gets almost no benefit is my softcapped /SR Scrapper), I'm going to quit moving and start shouting something to the effect of "Help! The Cold Dom froze me in place! I can't move!"

Even if I get kicked, it'd be worth it.

Though speaking of kicking, if someone was giving people buffs on purpose they didn't ask for and I was the leader, I'd kick them. A team that's getting along and cooperating is worth much more than a malicious buffer, no matter how good they are.

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Don't be surprised if the rest of the team quits because you just kicked the person providing them with large Def buffs and -Def/-Res debuffs.

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Sorry but detention field is a bad power no matter how you use it since burning the mob down immediately or ignoring it in Nemesis Lt. case, is always going to be a better, faster, and safer option and it doesn't require any power choice or slots to make it work. As for keeping stuff away from towers and the reactor, AoE damage and -Res debuffs do that job perfectly fine and more efficiently.

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Lol. You can't even comprehend why the power is used on the Towers.

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I know exactly why they use it on the towers (Negates the buff) but it doesn't change the fact that the power is utterly useless for the other 99.99% of the game. Can you really say the same thing about Benumb, Infrigidate, Sleet, Heat Loss, and Snow Storm?

wow, this thread is hilariously bad.

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I don't think it needs to be slotted for endmod. It causes you to recover more end than you use if you hit even one enemy with it.

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Really depends on personal slotting, but 1 endmod just about any situation you need heat loss in, such as fighting Carnie Ring Mistresses and the like.

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If you're playing any game, imo, and only going for the numbers, you're doing something wrong. Play the game for fun, that's what it's there for and play the power sets you enjoy.

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Sorry but the numbers matter a lot. There are reasons why you almost never saw Ice Armor tanks until its mechanics were fixed, same goes for Trick Arrow and Dark Miasma.

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My vid card got old and bad a few years back and I had to switch to lower settings to play at all for a week. not a fun week.

If I had to play like that all the time I would rather not play.

If in basic gameplay I cannot accept buffs and fully contribute to my teams I would rather not play.

Memory is cheap, a decent card is pretty cheap. make it work. or play something that your computer can support... like minesweeper...

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A decent card is cheep? By who's standard of cheep? My monthly income is about $685 for instance. Rent costs 192 a month, phone/net is 70 a month on average, food is about 150 a month usually. Right now though I've had to cut various things since I'm paying as much for my new tower (old pc tower died horribly) each month as I am paying for rent.

Entertainment right now takes about $40 of my $50 dollar disposable income per month. So, how do you think I'm gonna be able to afford a couple hundred for a better graphics card then I have? I have one I'm happy with, the radion x1600. By your definitions I'm guessing that's old, out dated, and in need of replacement. So, explain to me where I'm going to find the money for that 'cheep' graphics card you mentioned,

Don't assume everyone has two to three hundred dollars laying around they can spend on a graphics card.

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a x1600 card is completely fine for running this game, so if you're having problems running it either lower the graphics some more, upgrade your memory, or clean up whatever is hogging all your ram in the background.

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Fact is, they are two different sets, with different purposes. FF will always be the "King of mitigation", and Cold has mediocre defense, with some nice debuffs.

Trying to "prove" one is better than the other just smacks of kindergarten playground pettiness.

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Mediocre defense? Ice Shields and FF bubbles provide the EXACT same defense, the only difference lies in Fog and dispersion which is only 7-8%. However Cold brings also brings a lot of Fire/Cold/Energy/Slow resistance, tons of -recharge/-spd, capped +recovery, and an auto-hit rain power that does knockdown, -Res, -Def, and Slows and can double stack on top of itself fairly easily. That's not even mentioning the usefulness of the -Special and -dmg in Benumb on hard targets.

Let's put it this way, there is only one power I would consider skippable on team build for Cold dom and that's Frostwork. FF has 4 totally skippable powers in Detention Field, Repulsion Field, PFF, and Force bubble, none of those being REGULARLY useful like 8/9 of Cold powers are.

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Whenever someone specifically asks to not receive a buff, I make it a point to keep that buff on them all the time.

You want to RP your costume? don't team with people you don't know. No one is going to be admiring your costume but yourself during combat anyway.

Your system can't handle it? don't team period or adjust your graphic settings to make it bearable or here is an idea upgrade you memory or graphics card to something that isn't 5 or 6 years old.

Ignorant of it's benefits? Thank you for proving that you need the buff to even hope to function on the team.

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This seems unnecessarily malicious, kind of like you take pleasure in annoying teammates?

Do you check teammate stats before buffing? Maybe a well-slotted Super Reflexes Scrapper really doesnt benefit from the Cold Shields significantly. Even a IO SR scrapper with Combat Jumping will get close to the cap with just Arctic Fog.

You're very disparaging about other players wanting to look the way they look in-game, yet you're quite into the way your own characters look judging by the links in your signature.

Its been brought up in about 4 threads on the front page of these forums today how Cold Shields have over-obtrusive graphics. Would you be in favour of toning them down?

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Def sets still receive the secondary resistance benefits. Also I think ice shields are fine the way they are and I love having them on any of my characters when on teams.

LOL @ the sig comment. There is a significant difference between caring about appearances in a mission and caring about appearances while offline.

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I'm working on a list right now on "people that hate/are irritated by/annoyed by me", "neutral/indifferent people" and "people that like/tolerate me".

So far, I have:

The Irritated Gang - Nethergoat, Bad_Influence, Angry_Citizen, Dumpleberry, Jetpack, Karl_Rove_Man, Quincy_Archer, bamawolfie, Sooner

The Neutrals: Laser_Judas, Zombie_Man, Fulmens, Turbo_Ski, Perfect_Pain

The Likies: Zekiran_Immortal... yeah, I think that's about it.

Am I missing anyone?

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Since when was I downgraded from Mortal Foe status?

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Everyone talks about Heat Loss as some amazing debuff (okay, it is). Please also remember that it essentially gives you and most of your team infinite end. 90 sec up, around 30 sec down, it's as good or better than RA and recharges way faster (360 base vs 500). Granted, it's easier to say "Gather for RA" than explain to your team how HL works and where they should position themselves...

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no one who has played a cold uses Heat Loss for it's debuff effects, it's all about the +recov/+end. This is why I scoff at any comment made by people who try and use it as a 2nd -Res aoe, it's never going to be practical for such a purpose unless they drastically change the recharge. Which they'll never do because the buff portion is too damn good.

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Not true. A number of custom critters have access to Build-Up, Aim, Targeting Drone, and other methods of giving significant to-hit buffs. Some also mad significant defense debuffs that can't be avoided, like Radiation toggles. In normal foes, you have a few mobs with higher to-hit values (such as Vanguard), loads of defense debuffs that can cascade that soft-capped defense (almost every enemy group, Romans in particular), auto-hit defense debuffs (Crey Radiologists, Scirroco, etc.), massive to-hit buffs (most notably stacked Vengeance Nemesis), non-positional attacks (Mind Control), non-typed attacks (not sure any exist outside of Hami and things that are supposed to hit you anyway, like burning building explosions), and, the rarest but biggest threat, auto-hit attacks (Rommy's Pet Mire Nictus). There's other threats to high defenses too, like Streak Breaker, but I doubt I can remember them all off the top of my head. In those instances, that's where Cold throws around its slows and end drains and FF knocks enemies on their back, stuns them, and keeps them at bay. Which method is better is a subject for debate that I don't feel like getting into.

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It really sounds like you haven't played both sets at all. Cold doesn't get it's mitigation from End Draining, it gets it from the combined efforts of Slows, +Def, +Res, -Res, -Def, knockdown, and proper use of benumb's -Dmg/-Special debuff.

When faced with an exotic variety of abilities the set with the most variety in buffs/debuffs is superior. For example, -Def debuffs cascading is negated by -Recharge debuffs, same goes for enemy toHit buffs. Another example is a FF vs Cold comparison against high Defense targets, FF has absolutely nothing increase chance to Tohit, however Cold has numerous -Def debuffs.

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As for the four specifically mentioned powers I quoted, the latter four are good for herding and controlling mob positioning and useful for keeping the not-softcapped FF Defender alive. They also have other, less seen uses such as covering someone using Rest, keeping foes away from the Terra Volta Reactor Core, keeping repair men away from Lord Recluse's towers, and things of that nature. Detention Field is the trickier power to use properly, but it's great for taking out support/annoying enemies from the fight, like Sky Raider Force Field Generators, Tsoo Sorcerers, and etc. Or taking out Nemesis LTs so they don't die first and buff the entire spawn. Or for dealing with foes that like murdering defense-based protection, like that auto-hit Nictus (and stopping the healing Nictus for that matter). Whether Detention Field lasts too long or not depends on both the team and the particular fight. Though, if you're steamrolling, you're not going to need most of your powers anyway regardless of what powerset you're playing.

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Sorry but detention field is a bad power no matter how you use it since burning the mob down immediately or ignoring it in Nemesis Lt. case, is always going to be a better, faster, and safer option and it doesn't require any power choice or slots to make it work. As for keeping stuff away from towers and the reactor, AoE damage and -Res debuffs do that job perfectly fine and more efficiently.