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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.
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Tested with my lvl 50 Blaster (and his lvl 33 and 41 versions still on the test server). No impact at all. At any of these levels, when your health (even with the new increase) drops to 50% the next hit = faceplant and you better be running or popping greens. I think this is one of those ideas that "looks good on paper" but in reality, doesn't work.
I like the idea behind defiance, and I appreciate the name change from desperation. It's not too heroic to always be "desperate" when you are close to death. 
After working with this on test, I find certain aspects of the current implementation to be distracting: I don't want to start focussing on how I can exploit my life meter to gain more damage. I don't want to study a 3rd status bar to gauge how much damage I can start inflicting. Also, in comics, its hard to imagine a blaster-type consciously allowing himself to get beat up in order to increase his damage.
Consequently here are two suggestions I think would improve defiance:
1.) Make defiance kick in starting at 99% instead of 40%. I.E. every time a blaster gets hit he gets more "defiant." Of course at 99%, the effect would be negligible compared to 1%, with some form of increasing gradation in between. This would push defiance into the background. Its always available, even if hardly noticeable at first. No need to attempt to go from 41% health to 40% health or other such silliness for it to kick in. It's always available to you in some form when you are hurting.
2.) Completely remove the defiance slider. If you implement my suggestion for #1, the slider becomes redundant. If defiance is always directly proportional to one's health, blasters can gauge their defiance from the health bar alone. Again, this makes defiance still effective, yet less distracting and clunky.
Hope this helps. Thanks for creating these types of threads. Its great to know that the devs are reading our feedback.
Well I tested Defiance repeatedly on Test Server with my Blaster, my highest character on CoH. Here are my thoughts:
1. Defiance is helpful in the lower levels 1-25 and then completely useless after level 30. Even with the increased hitpoints (which I think is greater improvement than Defiance) Blasters are still subject to multiple strikes if aggro is lost in a team and Defiance does not have time to activate. In addition, there seems to be a slight delay before Defiance kicks in when my health plummets down to 40%. Blasters need Defiance to activate immediately the nanosecond health reaches 40% level because it's usually the very next shot that is the one that will either stop the villain or the villain stops you, permanently.
2. I think that the tactical scenarios that Statesman suggested is ludicrous given how Blasters MUST play in CoH. When my Blaster health reaches 40%, I am running for the elevator or popping a Respite. In an intense firefight (the ones that Statesman absolutely wants to encourage through the new defensive, tanker and controller nerfs) a Blaster absolutely cannot depend on surviving the next hit. The attacks are too random and being two-shotted or three-shotted happens the majority of the time. To ask a healer not to heal and try to depend on Defiance is bad tactics. Why?
---- A. Blasters still can MISS. I miss all too often, even with Aim+Buildup. Defiance should have an accuracy boost to ensure that Defiance is really an enhancement to help Blaster survivability. I'd rather guarantee a hit than to have a non-existent damage boost that never lands because of the percentage miss probabilities built into the game.
---- B. The Damage Stacking Delay. I absolutely hate this feature in the game. When a Blaster faces multiple opponents, especially in large teams, sometimes a wave of attacks/damage hits the Blaster. The game registers a "hit" but the Blaster is already hightailing it around the corner, over the fence. The attacks then trail him until they catch up. Sometimes this takes several seconds. Blasters are at a disadvantage to really assess at what level their health is at in real time, hence not know if the situation calls for utilizing Defiance or taking a Respite. The gameplay feedback and damage delay renders Defiance almost useless as something to depend on in real battle.
---- C. The overall defensive nerfs in Issue 5 makes it absolutely insane to be able to depend on your team to manage aggro for a you as a Blaster from now on. If a Tanker taunt is limited to 5, a Controller is limited to only 10 for lockdown, and a Defender's debuffs on villain accuracy is limited to 10, the risk is too great for an arbitrary and capricious reward. Before Issue 5 you can depend on a Tanker to be able to jump in after a "pull" by the Blaster or a lockdown by the Controller. Now, with the "needed challenge" posited by the Issue 5 and Statesman, a Blaster is on his own. And a smart Blaster never, ever (!) aggros more than he can handle on his own. Anything else is bad Blaster tactics.
Let me say this again: A GOOD Blaster always knows the end result of a firefight before it begins. That's why we make such good soloers. The margin for error is so high, good Blasters do not randomly aggro a mob without having a good idea that he is going to survive. Therefore, Defiance is so random with the accuracy issues and the damage delay, no Blaster is going to aggro to the point of hitting below 40% to utilize Defiance.
3. The Defiance graphic needs to provide clarity in feedback. The third line beneath the endurance bar is barely noticeable. Also, I have no idea what the percentages mean when Defiance bar starts to go up. It's very unintuitive. There should be a clear signal that Defiance is "activated" like Scrapper criticals in the game. It should say "Defiance!" in the gamescreen.
Suggestions:
1. Add accuracy bonus to Defiance. The whole point is to damage the villain that is causing us grief, if we miss, what help is Defiance?
2. Make Defiance kick in at 60%, alittle higher health bar would make a difference and encourage Blasters to actually utilize the gameplay mechanic.
3. I'd rather have criticals/bullseyes or earlier control.
Conclusion: Defiance is not a gameplay enhancement for Blasters. It is a semi-interestinng wrinkle to play around with but would never be a tactical factor in how good Blasters play. Defiance is merely artificial coloring added to the Blaster mix that gives it a little shine but is ultimately worthless for the nutritional care and feeding of our Blasters.
Sounds fun. Thematically this seems more like a Scrapper power than a Blaster Power. I know that Blasters need something like this and Scrappers don't. I'm just saying that it feels like it is in the wrong archtype. Don't change it on that account though.
My two influence:
Defiance is conceptually very wrong for a blaster. To infringe on a trademark, who is the first to jump in and get damaged and fight extra hard in the process, Wolverine or Cyclops?
Frankly, I like defiance, but it should be the Scrapper inherent power. Blasters should get the criticals.
I realize balancing defiance with the defender secondaries in the scrapper set would be a headache, but it just fits so much better thematically with scrappers than with blasters.
If thats not an option, I suggest making epic powers, which aid defense, available at an earlier level rather than defiance. More choices = more fun. Let blasters decide if they want to trade offense for some marginal increase in defense.
Its simply not realistic for me to bring two characters up beyond level 40 as a working adult. And yet, I'm forced to do so if I ever want defenses of any significant ability (and coolness might I add) on my blaster alts.
For RP purposes, character design purposes, drop the epic mastery level requirement to 20 or something like that.
Okay I played with Defiance on two occasions, before the lagg and disconnects threatened to drive me crazy.
the first was with a new Archery blaster I made.
I was doing the first mission, and just ran the character down. The problem I see, is riding by the seat of your pants doesn't work that well. All to often a blaster will either see to much aggro, or two little for Defiance to take effect. This is because...
Too much = Death in 1 to 2 volleys
Too little = not enough damage to get your Defiance up to a reasonable number.
I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it is severely hindered by the fact that Blasters are basically Bastards. We hit the target when he is down, and without aid. While the target is rolling in pain, we kick them in their 'nads and laugh at them. Then we leave them in the hallway so their wails for mercy draw out their friends. We choose to fight on our terms. Defiance means we let the enemy beat us up, which basically means we let the enemy dictate the battle, which often equals a Blaster Faceplant.
Sure enough, I was riding by the seat of my pants, keeping defiance high, and I got smoked by two even conned minions.
Second is the inherant flaw with the system.
I did this with my level 21 AR/Dev Blaster. I flew up to the top of the map, and just turned off fly. Upon being splatted upon the earth, you could have heard the defiance bar smack the top. I think I gave mine a concussion. So, fully defianced up, all one has to do is ubernuke, which makes street missions supereasy, and superdeadly at the same time.
Sure, blasters live by the seat of their pants. Sure, definace helps at time, and provides extra damage. But what hurts defiance is the fact that you must keep taking damage to retain it, which most blasters try to avoid.
For blasters, Incoming Damage = Bad, Outgoing Damage = Good.
I am not a fan of defiance. At best, it is not helpful, at worst, it is deadly. I got myself killed fighting a warhulk when he knocked me down into 10% health/defiance range, boosting my damage and killing us both in blazing explosion.
It was helpful to my level five blaster but useless to my 3 post-40 blasters.
My vote is to take it out entirely. I would rather have nothing.
-AZ
Defiance has to have alternative ways to charge, and needs to have alternative effects. The idea is a good one, but it is not developed well enough. This thread covers the critical weakness of defiance...no blaster in his or her right mind will voluntarily stay at low health. Asking us to do this is contrary not only to intuition, but also to core game mechanics. This game rewards defense, who cares if it takes me longer to kill (err...arrest). Im going to chain hold that boss, sap its endurence, and leave it on an ice patch...my damage attacks come after all that and take a backseat to making sure im doing everything in my power to prevent an attack from hitting me. Otherwise im pushing up daisies.
If i do get into the red, the incentive i will need to stay in combat is no where near what you are providing. Why risk 70, 80, 90, 100k of debt? I can run away, rest and be back in the fight with full health in under 30 seconds. Then i can correct whatever mistake i made that got me in the red, and finish the fight. If not, ill run away again and not come back.
There has to be more incentive for me to stick around. Let me give some examples.
It should have some sort of timer for damage taken over time. If im in a fight and im getting wailed on but getting healed, or popping insp, my meter should charge. Not to the point where i will eventually end up getting the 500% boost, but cap out at a smaller boost. Stick it on a timer so i cant just sit in combat and take damage and get the boost, have it reset every 20 seconds or so. Im sure you guys can institute abuse-prevention safeguards.
Add other effects! ACC boost. a full meter of defiance should have 100% accuracy. Cant you just see it? Cyclops is getting creamed, thrown around the room, broken arm, his uniform all torn to shreds, when suddenly, something inside of him snaps and WHAAAAM he unleashes every bit of power he has in his soul and some he didnt know he had...Sabertooth looks around and that crater in the ground a hundred yards behind him that used to be a pre-school. "Good thing i wasnt standing over there" he says as he drops an arrowhead truck on cyclops head. As defiance meter increases, acc should increase with it.
Hold resistance. I look at defiance more as like a blinding rage, you know your going down, you're injured, bloody, and not likely to survive so you are going to take everything with you as you go down. No way a blaster should be held\blind etc in this situation, and if one is, the effect should end.
With defiance comes the explosion. A blaster should be given an inherent ability that expels the stored defiance in all directions causing a high degree of knockdown, knockback, mez, or some other similar type effect (think Nova without the damage). Have it drop the blaster to 1 hp and prevent defiance regen\use for 5 seconds. Something like this is what is going to keep me in combat at low health.
Regardless i think the point is getting across. The way defiance is now, is that there is not enough incentive for me to use it. Id rather live and dish out lesser damage, than risk death to dish out more.
Thanks,
Nerf Blaster Controllers!!!!
Defiance is too little too late.
It is a great idea that doesn't involve giving Blaster's defense, but it need some tweaking. It will also probably not be a total solution to Blaster woes.
I would recommend having Defiance start to kick in at 60% health remaining and scale damage logrithmically to the present cap. It should also add a major accuracy buff.
The current problems with Blasters are that they only have 3 states of health. Full, hit once, and defeated. Since Defiance doesn't kick in at Hit Once, it doesn't help much.
Want to see more tilesets?
Well in regards to Defiance, I would think that almost all blasters agree that added dmg wont help the blaster survive an encounter once the blaster is at 30% health, some people have suggested accuracy as a substitute, which may help get in 1 last shot on a target , and then you'd better hope its the only target attacking you. I see the main problem as being that blasters need to have some kind of reverse aggro effect once they are hurt or some kind of fear effect would be helpful...Now , in games where Wizards and elves (blah blah) etc, are the mainstay, i understand the concept of going after the spellcasters first, this isnt supposed to be that game, I want to be a Superhero... And completely dislike the comparisons. What we need is an effect that reduces the amount of aggro we are getting. I understand the whole " last ditch" idea behind defiance but the reality is its not really useful at all, and I dont agree with the whole everyone got nerfed so we have it good, idea... Blasters have had it really bad for along time now and need a fix that works ... NOW!!! not try this bs etc..evalute etc.. if u arent going to increase defense, etc then give us an alternate way of dealing with the aggro we get... Such as i suggested above or something u can think off
Why in the HELL would you use this as a TACTIC?!?!?! It should only be used as a bonus ability in the course of your life as a blaster. I tried it out and loved it. It is an extra UMMPPHH in the average course of heroing as a blaster.
Agree.
Higher-level enemies inflect too much damage too quickly. A blaster may survive the first hit or two to get to the buff at 40%, but one more hit will end the fight.
Without significant other benefits, Defiance is not worth the risk, especially when the damage cap can be hit with aim + buildup + a few hundred influence for red inspirations.
For Defiance to be viable I hope the Devs would consider a bigger damage buff sooner, significant accuracy buff, reduced recharge time on attacks and reduced activation time on attacks. Consider starting the buffs at 50% HP with straight line scaling so that the damage cap is reached at 15% HP, 100% accuracy buff at 15% HP, base recharge time halved at 15% HP and activation time halved at 15% HP and auto conserve power.
Would this be overpowered? Maybe, but Defiance as it is doesnt have the any power applied yet.
This is a repeat of my post from the consolidated post with an extra bit at the end.
Have been playing FE (35 Fire / Devices) in missions against Freaks (heroic difficulty).
The Freaks hit for about 70 upto 180 damage.
I have 940 hits (Nice)
So I'm at 30% of my hits (282) remaining facing 3 Hurt Freaks do I
a) Take a green
b) Trust that my defiance bonus will kill them? (+80% and thats to the base damage and not the modified by all my SO's)
They're pretty much going to hit me as my invisiblty defence (thanks for making Devices less useful) and hasten defence have gone.
Its down to luck that I will hit all three and put them down. Its fortunate that Debt is only halved in missions.
A better name for this power is "Desperation" or "Do you feel lucky".
Not tried it in a team but the choice is going to be even worse.
What actually happened was that I killed 2 but the Champion (not my selected target) stepped up and stunned me for a lot of damage and then I watched as he pounded me dead as I staggered away (had used my break frees escaping tesla cages).
As I try to keep my Blasters Health in the Green as it just disappears too fast this is only really going to be useful when I'm out of green and theres no-one to heal me. So I prefer my name for it.
I'm a bit concerned that Defiance is now officially set
Defiance news item seems to imply that its a done deal and there's not much point posting about it . Hope I'm wrong and they are willing to listen but if its what I got its still better than nothing for when I run out of healing (and great for Sniper Street hunting)
10 Level 50 Heroes
3 Level 50 Villians
I don't object to a power that gives a blaster bonuses. But it seems to me that the point of teaming up is to support each other, using your strengths to reduce the weaknesses of others. And having your weakness offset by the strengths of others. Defiance doesn't do that. It encourages people NOT to offset the weakness of the blaster, which is exactly the opposite of what should be encouraged. So I don't like it in teams. I don't want to have to tell defenders to heal me or bubble me or protect me. They should do that automatically.
I will not use it intentionally. If a fight goes badly, it may be nice bonus to turn things around, but not to lead off.
Solo, it is really nice at the lower levels. I might occasionally use it at higher levels, but not often. In a team, I won't use it. I'll either be mezzed and in deperate need of help or I'll be running away or the fight or the fight will already be effectively over by the time I hit 40% health.
I already perform better solo than teamed. I can manage a 1 hero sized spawn, but a 2 hero sized spawn is sometimes beyond what I can kill, so I die. Please, give me a reason to team up, not a reason to solo.
---------------
Okay, let me get to a few more specific suggestions (assuming desperation is going to stay as some semblance of what it is).
I don't like the defiance bar. It clutters up my window and looks ugly. It seems to show very small bonuses. If you keep the bar, please consider making it logarithmic. Then it will look like more progress is being made. But frankly, since you've already announced the buff percentages, the bar isn't that important. It's not that difficult to remember the simple doubling 40, 80, 160, 320, 500. There's only 6 states. You don't need a bar for that. Rather, please consider a color-based defiance meter. Change the color of my health to reflect the extra damage I'm doing. Or put the defiance meter in my health bar. If I'm using defiance, the right side will be empty anyway. Of just do away with defiance indication totally. It's not like we get indicators of everything.
Other ideas to tweak or change defiance.
Have you considered basing defiance on endurance? The bonuses may have to be scaled down, but then it would help with AV and monster fights, where I am teamed and limited by endurance, rather than solo, when I am certainly not.
Or, I don't know. Mez resist of mag (missing HP %)/33%, so we can try to kill before we are killed rather than being helplessly chain mezzed to death. Defense would be nice, but I know we're not going to get that.
Gandhi 2 - Inf - lvl 50 AR/Dev Bla, Gazebo - Virt - lvl 50 Ice/SS Tank, Ms. Summers - Champ - lvl 50 MA/Inv Scr, Rachel Rosen - Lib - lvl 50 Ice/Emp Ctrl
Kiaransalee - Virt - lvl 50 Nec/Pois Mmd, Tierna - Vic - lvl 50 SS/Stone Bru
(and many <50s)
Boils down to this:
When my blaster is in the yellow or worse im running, hitting respites and phase shift - if take time to attack im eating floor. And since Defiance doesn't reduce debt or even properly award a player for using it (chance of a chance kinda thing) its useless.
I have just finished testing Defiance on my only blaster, a level 11 fire/fire blaster. On live I play the character very cautiously, so I changed that a bit to try Defiance out. My results were more debt than any character I've gotten to the same level by an order of magitude. Defiance just doesn't work. It's problems as I saw them:
1) Trigger level too low. By the time Defiance gets to the 40% trigger level, the blaster has usually decided whether he needs to run or can make it through the fight. With no defenses to mitigate incoming damage, the low health levels needed for Defiance are just not feasible to a blaster to stick around in a solo fight.
2) Accuracy. Defiance does nothing to boost accuracy. On several occassions tonight, I missed four or more times in a row in the Defiance mode. The damage boost is useless to a solo blaster if he can't hit.
3) Damage ramp-up too slow. The damage ramp up curve is too slow to make a difference. By the time the blaster has gotten to the hp levels where he gets a noticible damage boost, he has probably already lost the fight.
4) Defiance and recharge. The damage boost of Defiance is wasted if a blaster dies waiting for his attacks to recharge. This was a cause of a couple of my blasters deaths when being "Defiant".
5) Defiance causes recklessness. The Defiance ability promotes reckless solo and team behave on the part of the blaster who wants to eek the most damage out as possible. Many people already have an aversion of blasters that "shoot-first and die second". It can cause needless teammate debt, and at worse can be consider antisocial in some extremes. Defiance does nothing but promote the wrong kind of teaming behaviours.
6) AT synergy. Defiance does not mesh well with other ATs. It will cause tankers and controllers to loose aggro/control via a reckless Defiant blaster. It muddles the waters of healing defenders and controllers who don't know if they should even heal the blaster(s). It also confuses the issues of buffing defenders/controllers in the timing of their buff, i.e. should they give a blaster defensive buffs before or after or sometime during the Defiance period.
7) Blaster AT theme. Defiance does not fit thematically with the blasters I'm familiar with in the comic books. The only characters that I can point to off-hand that have a Defiance feature are a certain select group of "feral" themed scrappers. In comics and even other MMOs, what CoH is calling Defiance is usually called Beserking, and that has never in all the fiction I've read ever been associated with blaster. It has only been associated with melee warrior characters.
In conclusion, Defiance doesn't seem to work for blasters in the intended role. It is more fit for either scrappers or tanker who will be able to survive long enough in those low health areas than it is for a ranged class that has low defensive capabilities. As a feature it does nothing to address any of the "issues" raised by the community, and even tends to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of blasters being hot-headed suckers with no regard for teamwork or intelligent gameplay.
Unforntunately the changes for blaster can be considered good and bad. Good - more damage esp with defiance - Bad, defense bonus goes for stealth (do not know if this impact cloaking device) and haste - and when nova-ing cannot reclaing any endurance at all for 30 secs - this is a definite nerf even if RA is applied - so cannot phase shift if i start taking damage by drawing agro. This adds up dying more often and incurring more debt. Man, cant those developers leave anything alone - its hard enough to play blasters as it is, now they are taking what little defense we had away!
Defiance is an interesting ability.
With my own experience the only time I could actually actually, stay in the defiance levels for any length of time was in the 1-10 levels.
Playing with my level 20+ I found that defiance was either never used or that when it was activated I was already running or had already killed the mobs and the damage was catching up to me with defiance trailing behind.
I can't stress how much easier it makes the lower levels, literally allowing us to go through missions and one shot mobs with the second power in our primaries. The sonic set seems to make this even more of an issue.
As others have noted it seems as though it takes awhile for your health bar to register that your health is dropping. While some find this hurtfull I found that it gave me plenty of time to hit a respite. It does not however really let you use Defiance because you are constantly worried that the amount of hits you just took will kill you.
Defiance kicking in when you are so low on health is also an issue. This is a power that few blasters are going to see unless they are about to die. It really needs to start going up the moment a blaster starts losing health gradually, then ramp up sharply at the end.
Waiting to start adding damage until the blaster is at 40 is pointless with blasters who are familiar with soloing and find themselves safe in teams currently. The kinds of playstyles that successfull blasters use tend to keep them from losing a significant amount of HP. I am not sure how to stress this point enough. Waiting till 40% to start adding a damage bonus is not any help at all in the later levels.
A scrappers criticals are far more usefull than the current blaster defiance power when it comes to adding damage. With the increase in scrapper damage, criticals become even greater. Defiance, still seems like too little and far too late.
It would be far better for blasters if they got Mez Protection upon being damaged to 40% that slowly ramped up. Blasters need to move, if they can't then they may as well be dead.
Lvl 11 Fire / Fire Blaster
Tested in Sky against Lvl 10-12 both in Mission and Street use - Mission Setting: Rugged
Results... Defiance all but worthless. By the time it was actually making a difference I was so close to dead all it did was get in one good shot before I dropped.
Lvl 12 AR / Fire Blaster
Tested in Steel against Lvl 10-12 both in Mission and Street use. Mission Setting: Rugged.
Results... Same results. This time not so many deaths as this toon has Leadership and the Added Defense kept me alive much longer as limited as it is. Defiance? Due to adding Leadership pool, the toon was able to stay in the orange much longer and accumulated more Defiance. It's effects were better - but in each case the end result was the same - I merely hurt them more before I died.
Went back in ... and tried the missions again - this time ignoring if Defiance was available and playing as normal.
I did watch to see how often my Defiance meter kicked in... and in order to play as I normally would, defiance would not kick in. It's not that I don't get into the 40% level - I was in Yellow/Orange around 20% of my play ... the meter barely budged. When it did - the effect was not even as if I'd popped a Rage or the difference between my toggled Assault On/Off.
I'm sure the point here is for us to play normally and on the rare occasion that it kicks in - it's worth it. But from what I could tell - and btw - several times I died even before it could kick in - it's just a cool concept that provides nothing more than the 14 cup holders in a vehicle with seats for only 6 people ... it's nice but has no function.
Two Notes:
1) With the Defense Nerf I won't say I'm squishier ... because I'm flat out liquid. I had to play like a paranoid squirell trying to find a safe tree to hide in constantly in Steel and Sky. Not saying it didn't make it more interesting - but I suspect that living in perpetual fear and hiding out was not the games original intent for heroes.
2) Defiance - as a concept is kind of cool ... in actual use - it's a blow out. Has no real purpose aside from what was mentioned above... my attacks did get more powerful 1-3 shots before I died. I doubt that will impress anyone.
3) In the entire time I was playing - with both blasters I had several people come up to me while my toon(s) were in the yellow and red. Never once did any of the healers (yeah I checked) - offer a complimentary heal like I'm used to.
They never asked, they never commented, they just stood by and watch me die.
Bottom line... I am now in need of a big sign that says, "HELP!!! I DON'T WANT TO BE DEFIANT!!". This is going to really handicap Blasters, it's a seriously bad idea and should be scrapped in it's current form.
If it's adjusted to help us more - all it's going to do is make people angry we're over powered. A possible solution has been presented to increase our ACC and END, although instead of END I'd rather have my defense boosted.
Over all, I'd rather have none of these changes and be allowed to proceed with things as they were. I dealt more than enough damage before, and had my defense at a reasonable level.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard for blasters. More health and Defiance? What good is more health when the blaster is held, sleeping or disoriented? Let me guess, the blaster gets in a last, good attack just before the stone prison (or whatever that earthy-crushy damaging attack is called) that he/she is in closes up and completely suffocates them. Is this the BEST the Devs can come up with? I've seen more dead Level 50 Blasters in PI on Test because these changes DO NOT HELP. Weak.
- Captain Amazing
Just finished playing with my level 50 blaster on the test server. Defiance, well to be blunt, doesn't seem to worth anything. By the time it's kicking in I'm dying and need to kick on phase shift or run away. Is this something for a low level blaster because it literally does nothing to improve my play.
Also, if this is some sort of PVP nugget, it's pyrite. In a match or a street fight, if a blaster is at the point where defiance is kicking in, he needs to be somewhere he can rest.
I really agree with what you said here.
From playing with defiance all I can see is that when I am within 1 shot of being killed I do more damage and therefore I do what again? Oh, thats right, die.
Definance needs to be 1/2 way when the health bar is in the yellow and needs to provide some kind of accuracy boost and protection from toggle dropping and mez.
The down side to this is that the dev's will assume that blasters will become the uba set but that is far from the case: my blaster is about to have 0 defence and a fancy brown bar when jumping into a room full of white con's that makes me hurt them more if I dont get single shotted or mez'ed and shot 2 times.
From playing a claw scrapper and then watching a spines scrapper I have come to the conclusion that they are better blasters than blasters. My eng/eng blaster set has a couple ranged attacks and a couple melee attacks - exactly the same as my claw scrapper! But, my claw scrapper has actual defence and resistances and has this double-whammy thing called a critical that cuts white con's in half!
The end result is that I can blast better as a scrapper and level up faster and have more fun as a scrapper than a blaster. Debt be gone!!
This defiance power is nice in theory but it is sorely lacking. The dev's still dont understand what makes a toon fun, and by increasing damage output but ignoring things such as accuracy, mez and number of people affected by AoE's, then what kind of 'fix' is this going to be?
Last night I was discussing this with a room full of blasters while we were resting up, and three of us had all had the same experience with Defiance: by the time it kicks in, it's too late to do any good.
If I have dropped below 40% health, it means that something has already gone horribly wrong. What it probably means is that we've had a pulling failure, and somehow someone has aggro'ed twice as many mobs as we can stand. But almost as often, what it means is that the mission difficulty or the hunting area is much harder than I thought, and I'm up against mobs that I can't hit, period.
In neither case is increasing my DMG by an extra 50%, 100%, or even 500% going to save me. Either there are more mobs than it is physically possible to kill even with one-shot kills, or I'm fighting something that I never hit, so the the damage I would have done if I could have hit it is moot.
I think out of hundreds of fights where I deliberately pushed the envelope, deliberately walked into fights where my chances of survival would be borderline so I could test Defiance, I think it saved me maybe twice. No, the real favor you did us blasters was increasing our hit points. This just complicates the code for no perceptible benefit.
(Now, if it buffed ACC as well as DMG, and if it kicked in at 50% health instead of 40%, it might be useful.)
[ QUOTE ]
(Now, if it buffed ACC as well as DMG, and if it kicked in at 50% health instead of 40%, it might be useful.)
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(Now, if it buffed ACC as well as DMG, and if it kicked in at 70% health instead of 40%, it might be useful.)
this is more like it
I like the idea of Defiance but I have a few issues with it.
First it updates far far too slowly. Repeated tests with my blaster have shown between 10 and 12 seconds for it to even start updating. If a blaster is down to less the 40% hp post level 30 they will need the extra damage very quickly in order for it to help out. It's quite easy for two minons for kill me from 30% hp in 5 or 6 seconds.
A second thought is that the hp range for activation needs to be broadened. Raise the starting effect to 75% hp or so and scale the damage buff. I'd suggest adding 10% damage in the 60 to 75% range and 20% between 40 to 60%. Leave the below 40% numbers the same.
Those two changes would make Defiance more useful to all blasters without being overpowering I think.