Ive been testing this now for 3 days, and in those 3 days, I have noticed only 2 times when I was lucky enough for defiance to make a difference.
First test tune. lvl 8 sonic energy
Second test tune lvl 44 energy/energy
On the lvl 8 hero, I have been defeated 14 times, and the defiance bar barely moves, or moves at varying degrees. Even with a sliver of health it has not moved above 30% for me, so either the toon isn't very defiant, or something is amiss.
out of these 14 defeats, Defiance has made a difference twice, and always at the last minute, so its a timing issue more than anything.
On the lvl 44, I have not been defeated but one time and defiance still never moved above 30%. Clearly more room for testing on the 44.
Here is a suggestion that may make defiance a little more useful. A blaster starts with 100% health and zero defiance.
Why not increase defiance one for one as blasters lose their health points? that way 50% health is 50% defiance. If you think thats to high, maybe add half a defiance point and half an endurance point.
I make the endurance recommendation because the only times Defiance really seems to kick in, I'm out of end. Food for thought.
When I read about Defiance I thought, "AWESOME!" I remembered several frustrating fights where it came down to a single shot, that I missed, and thus allowed the enemy to take me out. If I'd been doing more damage on the previous hits then I would have won.
Awesome.
So I logged on and tried it out. At level 50 I found that the monsters and AV's could still take me out with two or three hits, (as a Fire/ Fire Blaster), so being able to hurt them more didn't help much, (ok, not at all since I couldn't even use Rise of the Pheonix to carry on the fight - not enough health upon rising to survive a blow). As for the rest, well, even when I stood around and begged 'em to hit me, they just seemed incapable of dragging my health in range before I got bored and roasted 'em. (Lots of misses on their part...)
So I thought, "ok, maybe it would be more useful at low levels" and made an Archer/Tech Blaster just for the heck of it. I ran around and took on mobs of 3 yellow minions and even a large mob with Orange Lt's in it without too much trouble. However, defiance didn't really help as much as I'd hoped because I kept missing those crucial shots.
Which doesn't surprise me at all. I know full well that my characters miss more often when I have some short-term boost in effect, either Defiance or Aim or one of those yellow inspiration things.
I think the idea is cool, and could be useful in certain situations, but it is not something blasters should seek to actually make use of because it will not save them. Oh it might work out just perfectly, you hit the baddie for massive game-ending damage just before he takes you out... but I think more likely you'll put off some healing for the damage boost and not quite finish off the bad guys before they get you.
I also noticed a new measuring bar for this power that began to fill up a little then decrease when I fired off a power. I presume that is meant to prevent abuse of the power and that's probably a good thing. However, as a low level blaster that very thing seemed to make Defiance even less worthwhile than it was 'cause I was losing health badly, hitting those two minions, them hitting me, but I wasn't doing "uber damage" to take them out... just an extra point or two, then the slider went back to zero, started growing again, and before you know it I was dead.
Sooo I'm of the opinion that this sounds good, might even be useful now and again, and since I don't think I had to trade anything away to get it, I can't really complain about it. But make me Lord of the Battlefield it will not.... I feel like I've been begging my parents for a car for months and months and months and finally was given the keys to a 1983 Volvo Station Wagon, (or whatever) - yeah, it's a car... no, it's not really what I had hoped to get, but I'm glad to have it and will probably grow quite fond of it later.
I tested 2 blasters , lvl 24 and 35, in some regular solo missions and found defiance to be useless. I have geared my play to keep my health in the green and avoid the "defiance" situations. I use Stealth and Invisibility to set up best case scenarios for my solo missions and stay ranged in a team situation. Defiance needs an overhaul as suggested before this post before I will consider it a "boost" for Blasters.
Pinnacle
MaxEnergee lvl 35 eng/eng Blaster
I'm posting here for those that have tested. Defiance, is a group related ability. In other words, my testing of defiance has been with my defender. Basically, what I saw was with just a little defender support I could turn a blaster (or group of blasters) into an awsome damage machine. Remember, soloing testing isn't the only testing...you need to test defiance in the context of a team as well to truly see how powerful this is.
I feel Defiance is a step in the right direction, however it could use some work.
Here's some suggestions
1. It needs to kick in sooner, I'd say about when your Health is about 50-65%
or
2. It should always be working, when you're at 90% you get a litlte Defiance boost, when you're in the Red, your defiance bar is full.
or
3. In addition to bolstering damage, your attacks should also become more accurate. I'm not asking for an ACC buff as high as the Damage buff, but it should still be a fair amount. In the comic books when a chracter is hitting harder as they get weaker, they CONCENTRATE their attacks, so they're not just hitting harder, they're hitting more accurately.
Or you can take these ideas and mix them up in any way you desire that creates a better system.
This is an interesting idea. I can see that because blasters are the damage dealers how to increase a blasters surviviablity that you would increase there damage. I read Statesmans views on this and how living down at 40% would be a possible tactic. I appreciate the extra HP addeded as well but even with that increase some attacks can take a 1/3 chunk out of our life and if you try to live down at 40% HP that can mean your dead very quick. As a blaster with hover and stealth I prefer distance and defense and keeping my heath in the green. And while I appreciate HP can fluctate rapidly especially in a difficult fight and while my health is down I might provide that extra power but hopefully only for one shot before I got healed or I backed off. Playing this game for awhile I have seen a lot of people that don't know when its time to retreat and get out and just keep fighting. I'm sure this ability will help that group set. But I for one know when to bug out and recover. So over all I appreciate the extra HP over this new ability although I am sure it will come in handy I will never intentionally live at low HP.
First off, I would like to say that I like the idea of defiance. I believe with some tweaking it could be a great addition to the blaster AT and would actually like to see something similar added to each AT.
As many have stated the effect could probably kick in a little earlier, say at 60% hp. I would also like to see a blaster become more defiant to status effects as his hp's drop, as this is how I die on live.
Mez=death for my blaster and now that my defense values have been lowered even more that means I will be getting mezzed more.
As this an addition to the game and an improvement most of us will like it.
Can we please get a red name on here? It seems most blasters like the idea, but not the way it currents works. Many Blasters find it useless, and the visual cues seem to be off and subtle at best. General suggestions being definace kicking in earlier and acc buff of some kind.
I too think it's a great idea and has a very comicie feel to it. However, I too do think it needs to kick in earlier.
I'd suggest it being inversly related to the blasters health. at 95% health, 5% defiance buff. I also think the total amount of damage buff should be lower, so that a accuracy buff can be added to it.
So those final, desperate, shots really count when you need them to. A every increasing bonus to damage and accuracy would be very handy, while also being off set by the drain system already in place.
[ QUOTE ]
Here is a suggestion that may make defiance a little more useful. A blaster starts with 100% health and zero defiance.
Why not increase defiance one for one as blasters lose their health points? that way 50% health is 50% defiance. If you think thats to high, maybe add half a defiance point and half an endurance point.
[/ QUOTE ]
I like this idea a lot, and I will support it. It really adds up to the same thing, Devs, but it gives Blasters a boost just for taking hits. I don't see a problem with this at all. Maybe a slight acc boost when the blaster gets lower in hp (maybe use the original defiance structure for accuracy) would help as well.
Here's my report from test, I'll preface it by asking that if the devs have done internal testing with defiance could they provide information as to builds, levels, missions, and so on? So far, as the following report indicates, I'm disappointed.
Feedback on defiance from the perspective of a level 50 energy/energy/fire blaster I copied to the test server specifically to take a look at it. This character has all 4 pyre mastery powers, and fire shield is 6-slotted with 1 resistance/endurance reduction hammi-o and 5 resistance single-origin enhancements.
I firstly found that the health and defiance bars seemed very laggy in their responses, sometimes being almost half a minute to respond. This made testing much more difficult as one might imagine.
My first test was versus 4 level 49 minions. I got their attention and then stood in the middle of them with fire shield running while they beat me down. I fought back normally, and defeated them with 60% health reporting since they were largely doing smashing type damage and that being a type fire shield provided resistance to. Next there was a group of 3 minions and 2 lieutenants. In this group I got knocked so that my health bar was in the yellow, I did not see defiance kick in. Then one of them got a stunning hit on me that went past the clear mind the defender was keeping on me, and dropped my fire shield. Two hits later (about 3 seconds) and I was face down on the ground.
The second test was later in that same mission, we cleared the mission of all of the bad guys except for Marauder the AV at the end. We decided to give him a try and buffed up to attack. Marauder repeatedly knocked me into yellow and red health ranges and I was paying very close attention to the defiance meter while we battled. Again, it was very slow to respond, never going above approximately 40% before the empathy defender healed me back up which caused it to immediately vanish. Its worth noting that with fire shield running that one of his hits was capable of taking me from full health to 20-30% health. He also occasionally detoggled me with stunning attacks that stacked beyond the protection afforded by clear mind from the defender. Fortunately the defender was watching me, and that in turn meant she could keep me (mostly) alive.
Defiance pegged once at 100% for an instant in that fight. A stun detoggled me and dropped me to the ground, it faded quickly and I got fire shield back up an instant before Marauder smacked me with a melee attack that knocked me 20-30 yards away and left me somewhere between 1-5% health. It also stunned me again, and before the empathy defender noticed due to some occasionally extreme lag in health bar updates Marauder ran up and clocked me to defeat. Fortunately I have Rise of the Phoenix and activated that to get back into the action immediately. I consumed a couple of Catch A Breaths and a couple of Respites and re-activated hover and fire shield.
We ended up losing after getting him to about 40%, she had faceplanted once and was revived by me via the medicine pool, and then faceplanted again a moment before I did and only about halfway through the recharge time on RotP. We left the mission and recruited a team.
In the mission I tried defiance twice more against larger groups and with now two defenders (the second was a FF defender) and an illusion/kinetics controller. Each time I tried I either wasnt getting hurt enough to activate it, or when the team intentionally agreed to allow me to try it and have the aggro necessary, I would invariably get stunned/detoggled and then faceplant. All without seeing the defiance meter register much more than a 5% or so.
The tanker in the group had the infamous warwolf herding mission from before it was changed to be a timed mission, so we decided to try that out. I tried on two other occasions to see if defiance would help. On both of those occasions the results were the same. The defiance meter would be slow to respond, and before it did I would typically get stunned by an attack which would drop hover (to stay out of melee range) and fire shield (without which it never took more than a couple of attacks at best to drop me from whatever health I had to defeated.) Once stunned/detoggled I would very quickly be face-down in defeat.
Final score: Defiance 5, Blaster 0. Defiance added less of a damage boost to me than simply chewing on rage inspirations would have or simply relying on the damage boost from fortitude from the empathy defender or from the kinetics defender. Trying to use defiance encouraged a style of play that was needlessly reckless and resulted in an overall sharp drop in my damage as while defeated I was clearly doing zero damage.
One teammate asked me if I felt any stronger. I responded that Nope, not really. They then asked me if I felt silly, a question I had to respond to with one word: Yep. Defiance as it is structured right now was nothing more than a new way for me justify taking Rise of the Phoenix as my level 49 power. Fortunately, since its test and Im level 50 I have twice the reason to not be concerned with debt, although I was amused to notice I was immediately awarded the fourth and fifth debt badges the instant I first logged into Test.
A suggestion, if you will...
Defiance doesn't seem to be working well for blasters. As good as it sounds in theory, It's not enough.
I have some low level blasters, and a couple of regular teammates that use them as their main. Honestly, in most cases, they faceplant too fast for it to be any good. Blasters aren't known for taking damage (moreso on the high end) and with the proposed defensive nerfs, even moreso, I'd wager.
Now, a suggestion to create a more "balanced" game environment (which seems to be the catchword of the week, as it were) why not give all AT's something like that?
Defiance would be much more pragmatic as a scrapper power. They are inclined to hit those kinds of limits being in the thick of it anyway. As a scrapper's main goal is damage dealing, it seems appropriate
For Blasters, the more damage they take, their defense rating could go up. This makes up for the nerfs, and additionally, fits most blasters style of play (keeping distance, and avoiding aggro)
Tanks could get more resistance as their hp gets lower, Not on par with Moment of Glory, but you get the idea. They're in the thick of it moreover than scrappers in many cases. This also reflects their "tankish" nature.
Controllers can get improved accuracy as their hp lowers, guaranteeing better holds. If you were a troller about to die, wouldn't you be putting all you could into making sure you can get away by keeping them from hitting you in the first place.
Defenders would be the tricky ones, and I don't really have a on target answer for that one, as some heal, some buff, and some debuff. what exactly would benefit them most is up for grabs, but I've given some suggestions for the others, perhaps that's a good starting point for you Dev's to come up with something brilliant ;-)
In any event, something for everyone that suits their AT, and gives them a personal flair that no other AT has...
Just a thought...
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
Ooops ... sorry already posted ... can't respond any more. Dang it.
Um, probably because most of the other threads got answered... I only hope this is because they're busy testing?
Thing is I can't believe the Dev's didn't realize this from the start. They either
A. Don't realize how fragile we are.
B. Don't give a damn and want us in face plant city instead of city of heroes.
Thanks folks.
I will agree with the hordes and suggest that defiance in it's present form is going to be of very little use to blasters. It is a very interesting and "comic-ish" approach to the blaster dilemma. I was very much taken aback with Statesman's suggested play style in conjunction with this new ability. I wonder how much actual research went into the aforementioned "best practices" strategy before it was keyed and committed to the forum? A bit irresponsible in my opinion.
I do have a suggestion that is somewhat different from the others I've read. If it is a repeat of an idea, I apologize ahead of time. I would like to see the defiance bar fill up as we take damage, but quickly drain at a rate of, say, 10% per second. When the blaster reaches 1 hit point, the defiance bar will no longer fill, but the blaster will no longer take damage from incoming attacks. He/she has a last, defying action to heal, run, or perform a final parting shot. If the defiance bar empties while the blaster is at 1 hit point, then the hero is defeated.
While the idea is quite probably flawed, something along these lines would be far more useful than the present implementation.
while(!sleep()){sheep++}
I agree that Defiance could be a useful power, but it's been applied in the wrong manner. I don't have the exact quote handy, but Jack Emmert (Statesman) actually suggested that a blaster could run in and take the intial aggro and then fight the rest of the battle with Defiance active. Having played a fire blaster for 50 levels, there's one thing I know for sure and it's that no blaster wants to take any aggro, period. Aggro leads to death, which leads to debt, which leads to pissed off blasters. Not to mention irritated Defenders. It's a good suggestion, but it's not the right one to solve a blaster's woes.
I've been playing around with Defiance...and to be honest, I think this is a great addon. And that is all it is, an Addon. This is a gravy ability. Blasters were not having a problem before I5, what the problem was, overpowered defense sets made everyone else look like grade-school girls.
Now, blasters have more hit points and a built-in +dmg power that kicks in at 50% health. Not to mention Aim and/or Buildup powers. Plus the damage cap for blaster was raised.
Defiance is not a 'I WIN' ability. It's a desperation ability, I think a lot of people are not looking at it from this prospective.
It is a desperation thing, yes. And as such, I could see it being better for that as an "If you're at under 10% health, your attacks do 500% damage" or something.
I've been wandering around test as a 22 Blaster for a little while now, and the conclusion I've reached is the same as most others: either it's a final desperation thing that'll save your [censored] at the last minute or it's a full on game mechanic.
If it's the former, drop the power from our pool drop the addition to the UI and drop the big show and dance because - like crits for scraps - it's something that Just Happens when it needs to, which is how it's working now, very comic-book last-minute Cyclops-must-take-out-Dr-Doom-with-this-final-shot type stuff.
If it's the latter, it needs to kick in sooner. Blasters Die Quickly. We are like Pringles in this regard, once we're popped, we really can't stop, and by the time 'bow's at 40% health, I'm already searching my Insp-box for green candy, activating flight, and getting the hell out of dodge for a bit until a) A scrapper or Tank on my team is around to kick [censored], b) a controller or defender is around to dekick my [censored], or c) I'm far enough out of range to regenerate and regroup. and then kick [censored].
As coded, though, we - as a community - were wrong. This power isn't defiance, it is very much Desperation.
Soul of Virtue
I tried out Defiance for several hours with my 31 elec/fire blaster. I played solo only, and my blaster uses a lot of PBAoEs for damage (blapper), so cannot be considered your typical blaster. I found that the health bar and defiance bars do not react quickly on Test at the moment, and I felt that this made defiance much more difficult to work with. Perhaps it's my slow computer though.
Just playing regularly, I found that defiance saved my hide on a few occasions, typically when it got up to about 200% or higher boosts. It didn't seem to affect outcome when the boosts were less than that.
Trying to utilize defiance as a weapon I found to be essentially futile. (Remember that I was solo, in a team this might be quite different.) I heal too quickly (health) when street sweeping, so defiance rarely stayed in the useful 200%+ range. I tried a CoT door mission with Fire Thorn Casters, Behemoth Masters and Guides, both at unyielding and heroic. If I started a fight with 40% or less life I would invariably be defeated, even if I popped a bunch of luck beforehand. The majority of my defeats in these cases were one-shots by Behemoth Masters. My increased damage output wasn't sufficient to bring the bad guys down before they could get a single hit through my luck. Reducing the level to heroic did not make defiance noticeably easier to work with: the health levels are low enough that even con minions still pose just as much threat, and taking luck meant that the increased accuracy for the higher level villains wasn't particularly useful.
In summary, when I solo, this form of defiance will not change the way that I play, I usually take the chance at the end of those battles, but I may be defeated a little less often.
If there is in fact a bug with the defiance and health bars update, I will be sure to test it again when that is fixed. As suggested by others, an accuracy boost would also help significantly.
I have a question.
Stateman suggested that we allow our blasters to be damaged so that they can get more damage? Isnt that using the Defiance system? After all, we are with I5 forbidden to have multiple pets (even though the power was slotted so that you could), Tough and Weave got nerfed because players were using it to get uber toons, the Inv tanker was seriously nerfed because players figured out how to really build them. Herding came about because of these "exploits." And now Statesman suggests we exploit Defiance? I thought exploiting was "bad?" Im a little unclear as to this good/bad thing.
What I expect is to see players, who seem to be more clever than the Devs, keep a blaster at 1% throughout a mission and toast everything in it. I dont know how you would go about it, but then the devs never planned on herding and farming either.
Then it will be nerfed in I6.
Whilst I am reticent to be negative, and thus my post ignored, I have to say that the players seem to be much smarter than the developers. Being a gm of a LARP at one time, I resorted to such "drastic measures" instead of admitting that the group as a whole was smarter than I. After this I came up with an idea. What I did was to take the top exploiter and use him to test my storylines, etc. before I ran them. Of course, the exploiters will not be on test testing it, because they will figure out how to exploit the new system and keep their mouths shut till I5 goes live, and then its Dreck/Chimera all over again.
But I ramble
I don't want to be a negative Nelly about the Defiance thing, but... ah, well, with both feet here I go.
The concept is okay, but in practice Defiance doesn't do anything for me. I'm thinking the original name "Desperation" was more apppropriate, because it really is a "take you with me" kind of power rather than something to rely on in everyday gaming.
As mentioned by other posters, Defiance encourages a reckless style of play that simply incurs more debt. If you hit that last guy then you're golden; if you miss him or if there's more than one baddie nearby then you're toast. It works better in teams than solo, because you have more of a chance to survive when you have a sliver of life left, but you tend to either be dead or running like hades. If I were to play normally, then Defiance would almost never be a factor. By the time I get down to that 5% health where it kicks in, it's time to stop gunnin' and start runnin'. I'm already dreading pick-up groups where the healers refuse to heal my Blasters so that Defiance can work.
I'm not sure why this feature was added when truly annoying bugs like the inability to buy inspirations on TFs wasn't fixed sooner. Personally, I'd much rather have that bug fixed than this weird QoL thingy. My Blasters really don't need more damage -- they need some mild resist to chain holds or suppression taken off their travel powers so they can go screaming out of a fight when necessary.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Defiance sounds cool, but I feel it was handeled completly wrong...the defiance guage is pointless, simply make it so that when you are in the appropriate health ranges, you constanly have the dammage buff from difiance...when your at a low enough health level for the defiance damage to be worth any notable damage, the guage empties too fast and your left with low health and normal damage.
Played on test over 4-5 days with a L32 AR/devices.
I spent the first couple of hours on Test NOT TRYING to activate Defiance in my play, but was taking notice of how it effected my damage & when/if it came into play. In almost all cases, I would hover at the 0.1 buff range for a couple of shots before my health rose out of it (by tactically disengaging or poping a green). Sometimes I would see the defiance bar spike on my way to death, usually with no attack available at that split second. In no cases did the extra damage from defiance enable me to take out an opponent when I was in the <10% health catagory before I disengaged & ran like hell or was face planted
Realizing that I just was not seeing what this power was really doing to affect my damage, I then spent the next two missions TRYING to see what defiance was really like.
Four bubbles of debt later.... I determined that if this is what defiance was useful for I never wanted to be in a position to use it!
Since then, I've ignored it totally and we get along fine.
Opinion:
If defiance goes live as is, it's not something I wil be considering in my gameplay at all. The presence of anything in my defiance bar is just another visual signal that it's time to get healed or get out of combat (or both)
If instead the deisre is to turn defiance into something that is actually an advantage for blasters, as opposed to just a bit of storytelling, I recomend the following:
1) Have the % increase to damage start at a higher blaster HP level & ramp up slower.
2) Include an accuracy bonus, starting later than the damage increase.
3) Change/fix the graphics on the defiance & health bars so they more accurately reflect what health percentage and damage bonus you are at & refresh quicker.
And in responce to Statesman's bizzare tactic/stratedy recomendations: WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU THINKING! (spoken as both a blaster & as a defender... and a tanker for that matter)
(Apologies in advance to any blasters who WANT to court death while I'm playing my defender - I take it personal when my teammates health bars start turning colours. Aside from which, you're much more usefull to me staying alive/conscious than taking a dirt nap.) 
I think Defiance should kick in a little earlier, with simple increments, 75 or 80% sounds to be the best, spread the damage increments based on health % out, but keep them the same. Simply put, id like a little boost sooner.
Like 80 - 50 - 30 - 15 and 5
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