If I could self SB I'd drop Hasten and go with a SB/SS combo for my haste. Those slots would go into SB itself so I could have wikid endurance recovery.
I'd rather let Empaths have ClearMind, Fortitude and AdrenalineBoost as self targets. HealOther should just be HealOther and stay that way. I'd also nerf AB back to it's original 0.5 +rchg rather than the 1.0 +rchg it has now.
On yourself you'd get unlimited endurance, great regen, great +recharge, great defense, good accuracy and a little less than an SO worth of +dmg. You could even make a pretty decent solo build out of it with Fort, CM, AB all designed to be up and on yourself 100% of the time. Stacking those with Assault, Tactics and Maneuvers... and 6 slotting for damage...
+67% def, 343% damage (+228% if you're a Blaster), +62.5% ToHit, +50% haste, and your +regen/+recovery would be dependant on how you had AB and your RAs set up.
That's pretty much an SR Scrapper without the endurance problems and no Elude... also with ~300 less HP and a bit less damage. Considering the Devs have said they don't think SR is up to par... this really shouldn't be considered over-powered. Slot costs are also pretty steep if you want all that, AND a few slotted attacks, AND slots for your heals.
Blasters would need fixing though. Maybe we should give them access to Controller Primaries at 80% effectiveness eh?
Wrong thread...oops.
Every AT complains they are not needed at high levels. True, but in the case of defenders, I suspect a big reason why they cannot find teams might be because of people's misconceptions of their capabilities.
Naturally, all defenders are not created equal, but your entire post demonstrates my point completely. Something such as:
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I have a 49.9 Blaster. From about level 1 to level 50, I would have traded 7 Defenders for 1 Tanker in a second. Defenders made me safer, but Tankers made me safe.
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1 Tank > a hypothetical 2 FF + 2 empathy + rad + dark + storm + kinetics? In the same 8 person spawn of mobs?
Whatever works for you, I guess.
"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." -- Plato
Playing Gods (51106) - Heroic Lvl 5-20
What Rough Beast (255143) - Villainous Lvl 40-50
I'd also make that trade. Even if it was an Ice Tanker.
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I'd also make that trade. Even if it was an Ice Tanker.
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Ouch! Burned! The ultimate insult to Defenders everywhere! NO BUBBLES FOR YOU! 
My very first 50 is a emp/dark defender once I reached about level 40 I was told on several occasion that emps are just leachers. Thank gosh I had a Sg to help me get to level 50 or else I more than likely would of found it hard to reach and just quit playing my favorite toon. Emps can not solo if you go with a true Emp build. Which I did on mine I have four attacks and couldn't possibly solo a mission on my own. To be told one we are leachers and two we are not needed sucks. Kins and Dark Defenders get better healing abilitys and buffs then a true emp does. Something needs to be done to make us needed again. I haven't read the entire thread pretty long. But CM seems to be a likely fix make it easier for the higher level mobs to actually toggle shields off. I dont think I have seen a tanks shields drop from a higher level mob. I have on occasion seen a khelidan drop a shield or two but you have to have a warshade or peacebringer in your group. I never see a call for emp defenders on global. So the statement we aren't needed seems to be true. Even ab and ra or useless at higher levels because the ATs were given Conserve power to help with their end issues. I just want to be needed again. 
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AV fights are 99% about overcoming their (stupid high) health regeneration, not withstanding their damage. While a -regen Defender can help in that regard, a Blaster, Scrapper, or Controller would have a much bigger impact in the long run.
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Actually. this is untrue. My friend was running her 47 fire/kin against Marauder to see if she could solo him. Well, Marauder waxed her big time. So she sidekicked up my mid-20s D3 and we went against him as a duo. I put Twilight Grasp on autofire, did the rest of my schtick, and the two of us killed him painlessly in a few minutes.
EDIT: Even my own SG doesn't get what -Regen can do. We went after Infernal in an 8 man team last night. 6 of the team members went to clean up the Summoning Altar and the roomful of demons while the tank went after Infernal. I tagged along with the tank and TGed Infernal for him. The tank had almost killed Infernal by himself by the time the rest of the team got back and took off his last sliver of health. And who got the congratulations for it? Hint, not me... 
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Every AT complains they are not needed at high levels. True, but in the case of defenders, I suspect a big reason why they cannot find teams might be because of people's misconceptions of their capabilities.
Naturally, all defenders are not created equal, but your entire post demonstrates my point completely. Something such as:
[ QUOTE ]
I have a 49.9 Blaster. From about level 1 to level 50, I would have traded 7 Defenders for 1 Tanker in a second. Defenders made me safer, but Tankers made me safe.
[/ QUOTE ]
1 Tank > a hypothetical 2 FF + 2 empathy + rad + dark + storm + kinetics? In the same 8 person spawn of mobs?
Whatever works for you, I guess.
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I'd throw the tanker to the wolves and take 7 of any defenders (except bubblers, sorry guys), preferably some rads and darks, AS LONG as they had actually taken and slotted their secondaries! A defender without slotted blasts is handicapped.
[ QUOTE ]
I'd throw the tanker to the wolves and take 7 of any defenders (except bubblers, sorry guys), preferably some rads and darks, AS LONG as they had actually taken and slotted their secondaries! A defender without slotted blasts is handicapped.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've heard this mentioned a few times. Are there really that many Defenders without slotted Secondaries out there? Seriously, the thought would never occur to me. Despite the few 'True/Pure Healer/Emp' people I see on the boards and on Broadcast, and admittedly despite some people that seem to think that every Defender should not only bring their Primary Buffs/DeBuffs but also the Teleport, Stealth and Leadership Pools to the table I just never saw the point of not having any proper offence.
On the other hand, I can see about... oh... one argument against majorly slotting the Secondaries if you're a Dark/Storm/Kinetics Defender -- you can already boost your damage with your Primary, getting you in Blaster range while soloing. On a team, you might end up being too busy Buffing and Debuffing to get off more than one or two attacks with any regularity -- I usually run 2-5 toggles when on a team and I don't want to risk any of those dropping at a crucial moment, so blasting away is not always an option. But this, of course, concerns the mid-level game. Things will be different in the 40s I guess.
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
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Actually. this is untrue. My friend was running her 47 fire/kin against Marauder to see if she could solo him. Well, Marauder waxed her big time. So she sidekicked up my mid-20s D3 and we went against him as a duo. I put Twilight Grasp on autofire, did the rest of my schtick, and the two of us killed him painlessly in a few minutes.
[/ QUOTE ]
Transfusion does -regen too. Fire/Kin should be able to solo him without too much trouble. Your Controller friend just isn't creative enough.
Usually it's more of a pecerption problem than anything else. A friend of mine who is one fine healer got booted from a team because he didn't have the powers that the tank needed to be effective.
The TANK.
That he had to heal every five seconds to keep alive.
And they booted HIM from the team.
And kept the tank that needed a certain set of powers to keep him alive.
So it's not always a matter of the defender not being useful so much as people being stupid.
Doesn't invalidate the point. In the second example omitted from the quote, a tanker and I took down Infernal by ourselves staying in the green the whole time. A controller might be able to do the same thing with rad or kin, but a blaster, scrapper or another tanker ain't gonna.
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Kins and Dark Defenders get better healing abilitys and buffs then a true emp does.
[/ QUOTE ]
In my 43 levels of being a dark defender, I've never buffed anyone. Silly me!
Regarding healing, that comparison only holds true for the actual heal numbers of Twilight Grasp and Transfusion compared to Healing Aura. Take into account that most of us dark/kin folks dedicate at least two slots to accuracy, and none have Heal Other or Absorb Pain ... there's really no need for an empathy defender to have "heal envy" of us. Feel free to have "no need to heal" envy of us dark defenders though!
I won't even touch that "true empath" comment. Nope. Not me.
<runs and hides>
I made a thread in the Scrapper forums, altough I should have put one in both the Blaster and the Tanker too where I asked if people could tell the difference between certain powers. You can find it here. The results were fairly straight on.
What I got out of it and was happy to see my own personal feelings reflected the majority of the Scrapper community who responded was that people don't distinguish between Controller and Defender powers. They're just happy to have any Buff/DeBuff along for the ride. At 80% efficiency (those powers that actually aren't 100%) over the course of normal play most people aren't able to discern a Controller from a Defender Buff.
However, what most people said was that they could tell the difference between a Controller Heal and a Defender Heal. Too bad it's powers like Clear Mind, Fortitude, AB, RA, SB, AM, EF, RI, Fulcrum Shift, and the like that people need in the 40+ game.
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TG's animation time got considerably sped up. AND it works on foes that die during its animation. If the kineticists target drops, they get no love. TG lowers damage, accuracy and regen. Having used both, TG is considerably easier, and considerably better IMO.
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TG used to have the same animation as Bitter Ice Blast (I think), which was four seconds. It was replaced with the same animation as Soul Drain, which is three seconds.
I've used both, too. Each has different drawbacks.
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How much was the kinetics controller outhealing you by? Is your TG 6 slotted for heals? Couldnt have been much, given how massive TG's heal is.
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About 100-150 points or so, actually. I had two accuracies slotted, but I don't think that replacing them with heals would've closed the gap that much.
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Wow, that seems strange. I beat my kinetics controller friend by a decent chunk with my TG and he has an extra heal in there (last I checked). Weirder things have happened.
You sure about that 3 second animation? It really felt more like 1.5 to 2 or so. I noticed it a lot when they dropped the animation time, and I cant imagine myself noticing a 1 second drop. Maybe its just the placebo effect kicking in heh.
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I've heard this mentioned a few times. Are there really that many Defenders without slotted Secondaries out there? Despite the few 'True/Pure Healer/Emp' people I see on the boards and on Broadcast, and admittedly despite some people that seem to think that every Defender should not only bring their Primary Buffs/DeBuffs but also the Teleport, Stealth and Leadership Pools to the table I just never saw the point of not having any proper offence.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not really. But I will submit that there are probably defenders out there that slot their secondaries very lightly, just like there are defenders (ie Bubblers) out there that slot their primaries lightly.
It basically just comes down to the utility of the powers in the set. Some primary sets have a large number of very useful powers so defenders heavily slot their primary at the expense of their secondary. Conversely other defender sets have a large number of powers with limited utility in the primary so defenders lightly slot their primary and heavily slot their secondary.
BTW softwarerenderer, thanks for the vote of confidence. I did have fun, I was just suprised by my reaction. An it got me wondering if such reactions are what contribute to this feeling of not being needed. Anyway thanks and see ya on Protector.
Synergy Lvl 50 Def FF/Electric/Psy - Protector
Cimarron - Protector Mascot
My DA Page
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Doesn't invalidate the point. In the second example omitted from the quote, a tanker and I took down Infernal by ourselves staying in the green the whole time. A controller might be able to do the same thing with rad or kin, but a blaster, scrapper or another tanker ain't gonna.
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I bet they could.
Your Tanker is already nigh invulnerable. They don't need your heals. Any form of additional damage will destroy an AV. Personally, my Scrapper has defeated I4 Infernal alone in less than 3.5 minutes.
-Regen is really good. I can probably solo a Hive Monster (Quarry) with it... but you're not really impressing me with your examples.
We defenders really should get a tweak here ... and a boost there ...
Mostly because we:
1.) Have not yet cried doom.
2.) Are way more polite than the folks in the Scrapper and Tanker forums.
2.a) Haven't personally insulted the dev team, issued threats. etc. etc.. The worst I've seen is comments along the lines of, "The devs overestimated the use of knockback and repel in general game play".
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Your Tanker is already nigh invulnerable. They don't need your heals. Any form of additional damage will destroy an AV.
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As to tanker nigh invulnerability, I've had to teleport too many tanker corpses (and other corpses from post-tanker-death team wipes) since release to wholly buy that line of argument.
As to any additional form of damage, I would be highly surprised to find that a tanker and, say, a lone blaster took down one of the more serious AVs. It's possible that they could, but I would be surprised by it, and I would be inclined to say that it's not the norm.
EDIT: I'm assuming that by "heals" you mean "heals and defenses", since anyone with your experience would know the mantra "defenders do more than heal" by heart already. I'm just spelling it out for the peanut gallery.
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Personally, my Scrapper has defeated I4 Infernal alone in less than 3.5 minutes. -Regen is really good. I can probably solo a Hive Monster (Quarry) with it... but you're not really impressing me with your examples.
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And I am sure we all bow before your l33tness. However, impressing you is not my overall goal. My goal is to point out that a -regen defender could have made your already impressive 3.5 minutes far, far less than even that since you wouldn't be wasting damage on the regen rate.
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I'd also make that trade. Even if it was an Ice Tanker.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd rather have the seven defenders, especially if two of them are empathy. The rest can be any combination of rad, dark, kinetics, bubbles, and storm.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
Chickenchow, just so we're all clear here, you did the entire infernal mish solo, with this being a even level or + mish, and took down Inferno by yourself in 3.5 minutes, I have a regen as well, I'm quite interested how inferno and his posse managed not to overcome your regen rate, w/o anyone else there to provide crowd control or shotting down the portal of never ending behomoths. Also how you managed to get in that much dmg that quickly w/o being slowed down by his regen rate.
[ QUOTE ]
EDIT: Even my own SG doesn't get what -Regen can do. We went after Infernal in an 8 man team last night. 6 of the team members went to clean up the Summoning Altar and the roomful of demons while the tank went after Infernal. I tagged along with the tank and TGed Infernal for him. The tank had almost killed Infernal by himself by the time the rest of the team got back and took off his last sliver of health. And who got the congratulations for it? Hint, not me...
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I offered to sk up to help a DM/DA scrapper against Madame of Mystery, indicating that the big thing that makes her tough is her regen, and I have -regen in my attacks...but was turned down because "it probably wouldn't work anyway."
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
[ QUOTE ]
I'd throw the tanker to the wolves and take 7 of any defenders (except bubblers, sorry guys), preferably some rads and darks, AS LONG as they had actually taken and slotted their secondaries! A defender without slotted blasts is handicapped.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd so take a bubbler. The bubbles + debuffs mesh nicely. They give a margin that makes errors less dangerous.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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Transfusion does -regen too. Fire/Kin should be able to solo him without too much trouble. Your Controller friend just isn't creative enough.
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The -regen is handy, but so is the -dmg, -acc, -resist, and the ability to lock him down when he's vulnerable to control.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
I really felt my Emp/Psy was unwanted during the 40s, maybe staring around 39. At 39, everyone has had a chance to take and slot their last secondary - everyone is running full bore. At 41, it was far worse, as EPPs were available. My reaction was to take and slot my own EPP, and become more controller-like. So much so, in fact, I've been experimenting with a Mind/Emp with the notion that I could accomplish the same things only better levels 1 to 50.
I'd also like to be wanted for my strengths rather than others' weaknesses. But what are my strengths? Buffs/Debuffs are good, but a hard hold is the best damage debuff I can think of. Defense and Accuracy debuffs are part of some controller primaries. And other buffs/debuffs can be acquired through their secondary. Our blasts are no match for a controller's pets, so advantage Controller again. We need a real edge.
Rather than "nerf" controller secondaries (well, maybe a little...), it seems more logical and easier to just make villains tougher. I think it's great that the mission difficulties were increased, but folks are still out there soloing on insane levels. If adding a Defender means bumping the slider up a notch or two, a notch they can't do otherwise, now we have an edge. More resilient enemies make buffs/debuffs more desireable, more noticeable.
Other ideas I like for raising the profile of the Defender:
-- +1 Mag base status resistance for the AT
-- Boost base Hit Points closer to Medium
-- Slight increase to base damage
Improved survivability and better early soloing should make Defenders a more compelling choice than now. Oh, and about the recharge times on those Psi Blasts.....