Having spent time collecting debt on Test after the Defiance adjustments were made, I won't try to use it again. Even with the adjustments, I still find it considerably more effective and logical to do as I've always done when my blaster's health dips into the red: heal, be healed, or get out of range.
So when does it start and when does it end? I certainly hope it doesnt end at 5% still. That is what? 25 hp at level 50? level 50 villains hit harder than that. If I am that low I have the villains full attention usually.
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This my update.
Defiance doesn't do anything for me. For the extra damage to be mesaurable....it needs to save me a shot. This is not happing. There are three reasons for this.
1. The significant protion of the buff starts too late. Just running around you'll get an SO out of it on avg. This is based point 2.
2. Between 40% and 30% health is decision time for the Blaster. Fight or heal up. Below 30% the next hit from a minon or LT can kill you. A dead blaster doesn't make damage.
3. A Blaster finishes a fight long before defiance can help or is never hit in the first place.
I'm done with defiance.
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Same here, and given the other broad, sweeping changes to controllers, tankers, defense and so forth, I'm not surprised to see so few of my SG have logged on in over a week. I'm spending a lot more time with another game now, same as my brother-in-law who was having fun with his controllers until I5 hit the test server. My wife eyes the cancel subscription button more often these days. Sad to say, we've all been big fans of CoH but have become pretty jaded, have lost enough faith that the devs understand what their players want and how we play the game that we've also lost our sense of attachment to our characters.
I've worked with Defiance on the test server, and as so many others before me have said, it isn't useful for my main lvl 50 Assault/Devices, the character I still like playing most though he can't progress further. Defiance won't solve any of the problems high level blasters are having, especially with watering down the few defenses we have and making changes to controllers and tankers that make it more difficult to keep aggro off of blasters in the first place.
Just my two cents worth, and I'm sure its been suggested before, but how about making defiance a linear bonus to damage and accuracy, say +10% damage for each 5% health reduction, and +1% accuracy for each 5% health reduction. This lets you see the effects of the ability earlier on, but scaling up reasonably.
Also, I agree this doesn't really deal with the big blaster problem, mez protection, in the mid to late game. How about this (the following is a JOKE people):
New power pool for blasters/defenders/controllers, available at lvl 26: The Break-Free Caddy
This summonable, high level pet does no damage, takes none, and draws no aggro. Instead, he follows the fearless hero, with an extra 2 rows of Break Free only inspirations added to the inspiration tray, ready to serve up a cold brew or a mez breaker in the blink of an eye.
Ok this is a ton of info to read through and I scanned through some of them but my eyes hurt now so i will just post.
Ok alot of people feel that defiance is not the answer for blasters. Has anyone brought up that if they adjusted some of the blaster secondaries that maybe they wouldnt need to even add Defiance. I mean alot of the blaster secondaries are lacking in major ways. I have played several blaster as have friends of mine and all in all only about half at most of the powers in a blasters secondary are ever taken. The rest of the slots seem to be used to get Power Pool powers etc...
Basically I think that if they fixed/replace/changed the blaster secondaries to be a bit more useful, that would go a long way to addressing blaster issues. Rather than adding some buggy mechanic that doesn't help much and is just left over from failed ideas for tankers.
You could replace some of the melee attacks or some of the other less useful powers in the secondaries with some minor defensive powers or single target debuffs/utilitarian powers.
Example, Fire Manipulation
1) Ring of Fire (as is)
2) Fire resistance (Auto): 10-20% resistance to fire/cold, slottable
3) Fire Sword Circle (as it is)
4) Focused Flame (Click): Similar to Buildup, Power boost etc... for its duration (10-15 secs) the blaster ignores up to 20% of a targets damage resistance. Usefull for those fire resistant targets.
5) Build Up (As is)
6) Blazing Aura: add a slight low mag chance to disorientate as the targets catches fire and panics. This will help blasters a bit when faced foes in melee range. Or alternately add a slight accuracy debuff as the heat blinds those in melee range.
7) Consume (as is)
8) Conflagration (Click, ranged location drop, AoE) Basically larger AoE burn patch droppable from a range.
9) Flame Form: (Click) basically the Fire blaster turns into fire, very minor fire damage aura. Blaster can not be harmed by any attack save cold damage (Phase shift, but can be hurt by cold damage, they might have to do this will high levels of resist instead of phasing, not sure). Last about 10-15 secs and the blaster can not attack during this time. It would provide panic button for blasters allowing them a few seconds to run or use a few insperations. Should not be perma but a fast activating panic button.
Not perfect and the numbers could use some adjusting im sure. Just some Ideas.
Also, some people enjoy playing Blappers as my suggestion gets rid of a few of the melee attacks. Well I would suggest replace Defiance with the Blaster Innate ability "Point Blank"
Point Blank
Basically increased damage for blaster blasting something in melee range. Risk vs reward. If your blaster is willing to risk the melee hits he may take he gets an increase to his damage output for a point blank shot.
Just a few Ideas I thought i would throw out. Feel free to comment or tear them apart.
I think the problem with defiance is the bar needs to be going up as the life bar goes down. Getting low on life is one thing, but having to wait a fraction of a second to build up the force to retaliate is another. That being said, defiance should be risky, because unlike scrapper crits defiance is partly controllable by the user (in the form of hp management) and can be exploited. There has to be a big risk for a big reward, and I think they've got that part down at least.
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Wow! I just got done reading everybodys post. So thats 75 against, 6 for (guessing on numbers, but it seems right). 
Other than those 6 people really liking Defiance, Positron's post that "We're changing it a bit", That's alot of negative feedback. I've played quite a few of MMORPGs, and I have to say, "I love that the dev's let us know what/how changes are going to happen before they occur and allow us to give feedback." So here is my feedback:
My lvl 34 blaster is a Inferno-ohlic. I love that power. It either activates and kills everything or I get killed before it does. Now that's my own fault, and I don't mind. But after attempting it on the Test server, there was NO CHANGE due to Defiance.
I completely, wholeheartly, all the way, agree that Blaster's needed some change, but Defiance does not fit the bill. Give it a Def bonus, or a mez bonus, or even a endurance regeneration bonus, anything other than more damage.
I have Damage, its called my Primary Power Set. I have Damage support, it's called my Secondary Power Set.
With I5 changes, Defense/resist is being diminished on tankers, thats what they do best. Hold times/amount of holdings are being reduced on Controllers, its what they do best. Then why are Blasters getting an increase (its a small one) on damage dealing, if that's what they do best? I just do not see the logic in reducing what certain ATs do best, and beefing up others ideal skills. 
Nearly every blaster complains about debt, that's why I see so few of them beyond level 30ish. Now that may be just my Server (Justice btw), but if you have an AT that is rarely played in later levels, perhaps you (the Devs) can find out why, instead of giving us more damage dealing. If/when a Dev responds I will have numbers to show how lame/not cool/non-helpful Defiance is. Just got Hero log 
I say the heck with Defiance give blasters some sort of Ranged Defense. The further you are from whoever is shooting at you the better your defense is. Cap it at 50% for extreme range and 0% for melee.
[color=gold][b][size=5]♪ Sometimes you feel like a Tank, Sometimes you don't! ♪[/size][/color][/b]
[url=http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=114726][color=black][b][size=5]Moon [color=red]Hazard [color=black]Zone![/size][/color][/color][/color][/b][/url]
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We're making some tweaks with Defiance in the upcoming patch.
It is not getting a major overhaul though. Just tweaking the defiance so it starts to kick in earlier. The overall buffs posted earlier are staying about the same (getting only slightly better), but you will be receiving a damage buff earlier in your health bar now.
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I have tested this with high levels and low levels. I wish I could see the benefit the development team seems to see in this "solution". At low levels, playing with an orange health bar is only marginally survivable... moreso if you can manage to keep at ranged combat with your mobs (as the ranged attacks of low level foes are far inferior to their melee attacks).
At high level, however, NOTHING has changed. I still get perma-mezzed, I still get one-shot defeats by bosses, I still run out of break-frees, and I am still out-classed at ranged combat by ALL foes... minions included. A Carnie Strongman can hurl a boulder (which will follow you around corners, mind you) farther than many of my ranged attacks AND do as much damage to me as I can to them.
Where is my Range = Defense? Where is my advantage in Ranged combat? In the endgame, blasters will rarely survive long enough to reap the advantages of Defiance. You know it, and Statesman knows it.
Please quit trying to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge.
Edit: changed "I wish we could see the benefit " to "I wish I could see the benefit "
while(!sleep()){sheep++}
I've played a bit with Defiance using both a lvl 45 ice/energy and a lvl 4 "sonic attacks"/energy. I will say that it added some motivation for me to hit another mob when normally I'd be resting.
Unfortunately, I don't feel like it addresses the core issue of why I lose a fight. I lose fights not (usually) because my tactics are bad, or because I underestimated my enemy, or because I'm not doing enough damage, but because I missed too many times.
I'd rather see Defiance be an Accuracy bonus that scales up a little more quickly than the current implementation.
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When a Blasters health drops below 40%, they will begin to see an increase in their damage output. A small increase at first, but the lower their health gets, the bigger the increase becomes.
This thread is for you to provide feedback to the Devs on the above issues. You are allowed to post ONCE in this thread. Make it count! If you post more than one time - the extra posts will be removed.
If a dev responds this count will be reset.
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ive tried it out, at best its a one shot use (especially if you have the health power like i do), at worst its 2-9 points more damage on an azttack (or so ive seen at my levels against a 14th level gordvord in the hollows)
to use it effectively you have to be near death, a place all good blasters try to avoid, and most ive seen (including me) will have already ran by then.
its just not enough oomph behind it.... perhaps giving us a crit at low levels is good, like auto crit, we are still at risk of course.
Defiance is ok but what i really think would help it is if it didnt wear off so fast after being healed (instantly).
For example: something smacks you to 30% HP and you start to defy your enemies but a healer heals you back to full health. Instead of instantly loosing your buff it should slowly wear off over the course of 5 seconds.
First off, I want to state that I am cautiously optimistic about the changes being wrought in I5. Secondly as to defiance, as it stands now I really dont feel all that strongly for or against it.
In terms of the mechanics and gameplay aspects, however, I feel as if Defiance is a bit counter-intuitive.
On the one hand we have blasters, who are relatively squishy aggro-magnets who do everything in their power to avoid taking damage(focusing on defense) or mitigate damage(focus on resistance). Most blasters I know would rather pop a respite and an enrage than recieve a damage buff as they start taking hits. The reason being, we know we aren't gonna last long when we start taking hits, and we'd rather get the damage buff before the enemy gets a chance to strike back(hence Build Up, Aim).
On the other hand, team-wise, defenders and tanks usually keep on eye on the well being of the blasters(assuming we're not playing "loose cannon"). When my blaster starts to take hits , I can usually rely on the tank to throw some taunting the way of the Mobs that are aggro'd to me, or the defender to throw me a heal(or defense buff), or both. With the mechanics of defiance, this will require precise communication between blasters, tanks and defenders(I.e. do you want the heal or the damage buff?), which isn't a terrible or unreasonable thing, but many of us have old habits that are hard to break. My defender for one will most likely continue to throw o2 boost to the blaster first if s/he starts taking heat. Why? Because it's been the logical thing to do, and a good way to insure team success(and minimize faceplants).
In truth, I feel the whole issue of giving blasters more firepower is unecessary. I've heard it argued that damage doesn't scale at higher levels, but I have trouble buying that arguement. I can still one shot orange minions with my snipe(build up + aim, natch), provided they aren't resistant to energy damage. Of course our damage can't scale to AV's, as they have scads of HP. Where I find blasters lacking in the end-game is mez protection. If I had a dime for every time I've been stunned by malta minions, I wouldn't be worried about subscription fees for a while .
Anywhoo, that's it my 2 cents to the devs. Not that I don't appreciate the thought of giving us blasters a little something extra, I just wonder if it's really what we needed.
Cheers
Who wants ginger snaps?
I had some time to test it out (level 40 Blaster). For reasons posted over and over in this thread, the buff really needs to start kicking in sooner. I couldn't even tell if you (the Devs) have changed it since my first test.
I went into a mission and let one minion pummel me down. It seemed like it took forever to get that Defiance bar to move. I defeated that minion at around 25% health. I then went around and started attacking other spawns while hovering just under "green". So, yeah, kinda exploitable... until I faceplanted on the 2nd or 3rd group (yay!). As a Blaster, playing with half your Health is just asking for debt (as we already knew.. but it's the test server.. so, meh). When things go bad for a Blaster, it goes bad REALLY quickly. Halving your Health is like cranking up the difficulty another notch or two. Furthermore, for the increased risk I was getting about a 0% buff half the time (just from 1 slotted Health).
Then I started playing for real. I could go a whole mission without seeing a buff to damage. On the other hand I might get a 160% buff right before I faceplant (yay!). Honestly, I'm more likely to never see a Defiance buff. I did get into the red when I was up against a Boss. Guess what happend. Right, the shot missed and I faceplanted (yay!).
If your set on Defiance my suggestion is:
100% Health: 0% <--- little risk unless something goes terribly wrong (ex. held)
60% Health: 10% <--- little risk unless something goes moderately wrong (ex. stunned, slept, etc.)
50% Health: 30% <--- entering high risk Vs. large numbers
40% Health: 100% <---entering high risk Vs. Bosses or Lt.s
30% Health: 250%
20% Health: 375% <---entering high risk Vs. minions
10% Health: 500% <---extreme high risk Vs. fluffy bunnies
5% Health: 1k%* <---Might as well faceplant if you do anything other than heal...yay!
*I'm kidding about the 1k%, but it might as well be for how much good it would do.
High risk means "the next shot could kill you". I based these "levels of risk" on experience rather than rigorous testing. I admit I could be off a bit. I welcome others to give more serious feedback. Also note, most of my experience playing my Blaster has been solo on the Rugged setting. Just recently I stepped up to Invincible, but I might step back down.
I can understand why the numbers I listed above aren't what we see implemented. It really could be pretty exploitable based off my testing. However, as it is now, it's pretty non-existent. I'm not sure you can even balance this power based on Worth Vs. Exploitability.
I don't know, it really is counter-intuitive. It could go live as is and it wouldn't make much of a difference, but keep an eye on the spike in Blaster deaths when you data-mine. However, I have faith in the Devs and think that y'all could come up with something more useful for Blasters. Crits, while random (and unexploitable), are much more useful IMO.
...or you could always change the AT name to Gamblers.
I love CoH and will keep playing it, but this design change is a "head-scratcher".
I have to agree that this ability seems only useful at low levels. I'm not even going to bother trying to test it. Sorry devs, you lose this round.
Well, day one after I5 is live. Although Defiance sounds great on paper, in practice, it's reacting to slow.
By the time there is any use from defiance, a blaster is one to two hits from death. I got down to 1/4th life before I even saw defiance bar move.
I'd suggest a re-evaluation when defiance kicks in, and how fast it scales up to damage taken. When Defiance was suggested, I envisioned myself balancing damage taken with defence. As it stands now, I can't "juggle" how to use defiance. It kicks in too late when my health is too low.
My energy/fire blaster appears to dish out less damage initially then he did before, and the defiance bar that should supposedly rise as my blasters health drops barely rises at all.
This, in effect, causes my blaster to do way less damage than my controller who has only to hold and attack for double damage.
I think some tweaking on Defiance is in order, or raise the damage output of the blasters again.
In other words, defiance is not really worth the damage cap unless the rate at which it rises as we lose health increases.
I died too quickly every time before it was effective, and so still have not experienced the worthiness of Defiance.
Level 15 Energy/fire blaster against even conned mobs should not die so quickly in one on one, and if my health does drop that quickly, then defiance needs to rise just as quickly...
I've been playing a blaster since beta and I'm really not impressed with Defiance. We're the squishiest archetype because we can't slap down holds or have pets hold aggro for us. So, why is it that we're at our best when we're one or two hits from death? It just doesn't seem like a worth while archetype power.
What I would like to see is the defiance bar increase each time we take/deal damage and have our damage ramp up as this fills. When we stop taking or dealing damage it will decay. I think the decay would have to be pretty quick though so that we aren't able to hit that 500% damage cap very quickly. Just my thoughts..
Oh, as a blaster I can say I definately notice the additional HP! Yay!
Regards,
Captain Head Explody
Why am I not surprised to see people actually complaining about this bonus damage Blasters were given without anything having been taken away? Keep in mind Blasters also got a nice health bonus as well, so being below 50% isn't quite as dangerous as it used to be.
True, Defiance isn't something you're going to want to use intentionally all the time. It would be far too powerful if you could do that. As described, it's supposed to be a last-ditch adrenaline-rush sort of thing -- a chance to pull your bacon out of the fire at the last minute.
I don't use it on purpose, but it has saved my life more than once, and I am very glad to have it. My sincere thanks to the developers for a clever idea that has been well-implemented.
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I don't use it on purpose, but it has saved my life more than once, and I am very glad to have it. My sincere thanks to the developers for a clever idea that has been well-implemented.
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You may not now, but eventually you will find yourself so tempted to stand and try to get that killing shot in rather than running.
I am down to my last sliver of HP against two +2 Outcast Lt's. I had one of them immobilized, backing up with the other in tow, defiance bar was pegged, and I just got him down to the red.... do I run? No... I peg the one Lt., killing him, meanwhile the other Lt. shoots me dead at range.
I'm not so sure that is a good thing for Blasters.
[ QUOTE ]
When a Blasters health drops below 40%, they will begin to see an increase in their damage output. A small increase at first, but the lower their health gets, the bigger the increase becomes.
This thread is for you to provide feedback to the Devs on the above issues. You are allowed to post ONCE in this thread. Make it count! If you post more than one time - the extra posts will be removed.
If a dev responds this count will be reset.
[/ QUOTE ]
After extensive testing of the Defiance abilitiy, I have to agree with everyone else. This power is very useful at lower levels but extremely ineffective starting at level 22. However,
here is a suggestion to make Defiance worth having.
The Defiance power should be changed to when you start taking damage your meter fills up the more damage you take, the faster your meter fills even if you heal yourself, your meter is still filling as long as you take damage. Howerver, once you stop taking damage your meter decreases. This would allow blasters to heal themselves and still take advantage of the Defiance.
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Why am I not surprised to see people actually complaining about this bonus damage Blasters were given without anything having been taken away? Keep in mind Blasters also got a nice health bonus as well, so being below 50% isn't quite as dangerous as it used to be.
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Because many are being told they're being given bonus damage but that bonus damage is too dangerous to access reliably.
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True, Defiance isn't something you're going to want to use intentionally all the time. It would be far too powerful if you could do that. As described, it's supposed to be a last-ditch adrenaline-rush sort of thing -- a chance to pull your bacon out of the fire at the last minute.
I don't use it on purpose, but it has saved my life more than once, and I am very glad to have it. My sincere thanks to the developers for a clever idea that has been well-implemented.
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At level 24 I have yet to use it more than once, and that was for about a 10% boost (the bar had climbed a little before dropping off due to being dead).
Essentially, if a blaster is receiving damage then things tend to go from bad to dead quickly, especially since, due to having low hp (even after being boosted), being 1 or 2 shotted is quite common. Bosses being the most dangerous where one can go from 100% to 0% HP fast enough that your second attack may be boosted, but not by nearly enough to save your hide. Even at 500%.
What it comes down to, for me, is luck. A blaster can luck out and get hit down to that golden 500% damage boost but that still doesn't help them much because (and I'm not sure how many times I've restated this in this post) once a blaster starts taking damage they will continue to do so. I'd rather not rely on luck to give me a huge boost instead of skill.
Defiance is too dangerous to be relied upon, and ideally you shouldn't see it used at all. For those less-than-ideal situations I'm finding that I'm usually too dead to use defiance.
Additionally, the interface really isn't clear. A bar with a number listed 0.0/1.0 as a standard state. For someone who doesn't read the board this numbering is useless. What does a 0.5 mean? What does a 1.0 mean? It's not intuitive.
So far it's looking like the ideal solution for me is to completely ignore the defiance bar and play like it isn't there. Occasionally I may see a bonus from it. But I'm to the point that I don't want to see the bar, don't want to think about it, and don't see the benefits from it.
Containment - Very visible bonus available quite often
Punchvoke - Constant effect
Scrapper Crit - Available roughly 10% of the time. Noticable when it happens
Defiance - Very rarely seen to it's full benefit, rarely seen to *any* benefit, survival so far hasn't been affected by this in any manner
Defender Inherent - doesn't exist. :P
I actually prefer scrappers to blasters, and as such have little vested interest in the tweaks made for them. However, when I downloaded the test patch and made an archer out of curiosity the first thing I noticed was the extra little bar labled defiance.
Soon after I found my way here and after reading scattered posts this one seemed the most reasonable to me.
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instead of when our health stays low...why not make it for damage taken over a period of time?
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I have played blasters before, and I've grouped with many good blasters as well. I admit, I am jealous of their damage output (not so say scrappers don't do damage). As a scrapper I see the slight damage decrease a more than acceptable tradeoff for being in the thick of things.
Even from full health blasters tend to die very quickly. More than once I've seen them one hit by a freakshow tank. To tell them they can do even more damage if they just stay as close to dead as possible seems laughable to me. No decent defender would leave a team member that low and health and any blaster attempting to will likely get themselves killed. If you are going to give them a dmg boost for getting beat up on please don't make it so suicidal. Blasters die enough without trying already.
While I don't necessarily see the need to a blaster damage increase, I also don't have any problems with it. I would like to see it done well, however. I don't look forward to having the blaster in my group die every other fight because he/she was trying to get that extra damage from defiance.