So, any hope that they could tone down the end drain from Sappers while they are at it? 
Save the drama for yo' mama.
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I can't remember if its the Nullifiers or the Spec Ops but Long Bow DO have a detoggle. As per Geko and _Castle_ its Mag100 and lasts 1/4 of a second. Its there completely to detogggle. According to olther red names though it is being modified to something that isnt so horribly offensive.
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Wouldn't surprise me, got my granite knocked off a couple of times. Some hold that punched through granite armors protection and made me fly for like half a sec, and fly + granite armor = no granite. 
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So, any hope that they could tone down the end drain from Sappers while they are at it?
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Its not the end drain or the toggle droppers thats even all that bad, I've been taking on these guys lvl 40+ before I even had Unstoppable, the fact is...when I pop unstoppable (a non-toggle defensive power) I expect to be just that...unstoppable for 3 minutes, now when I pop this thing and run into a mob even with all my toggles on, and they did this thing where it drops my unstoppable and I gain the negative effects off of it (1/16 hp and no end) then all my toggles drop and im dead. Its not fair and it is downright cheep, whatever this attack is...that can drop a non-toggled buff is down right cheap, and even if it this non-toggled buff did get dropped, it wouldnt suck quite so bad if I didnt lose all my end and hp from the negative effect of it dropping. Its something similar to a brute jumping into a mob and popping nova (but you dont get any dmg) its suicide... I would understand if these longbow nullifiers had this mystery attack (which has been stated) and it does knock all non-toggled buffs THEN the spec-ops hits you with the EMP grenade and saps all your end so your toggles drop and everything shoots the crap out of you...thats fine, because its not cheep, its a well put together team with a good attack strategy that we would have to find a way to overcome. But what I experienced was down right cheep and needs to be looked into.
The EMP grenade seems to be the only potential toggle dropper for my Brute. Usually not, though. Usually I get a tick of End during the time that the EMP effect was dropping my End.
Other than that, I've never noticed any toggle dropping with my level 40 Brute.
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Longbow Nullifiers do not have any such power. They do not have any attacks that remove buffs or any detoggle effects.
High level Longbow Spec Ops have EMP Grenade that drains a lot of Endurance which might have been what you experienced. They've killed me by draining my remaining Endurance which turned off Granite Armor. They're minions though so they're easily killed and should be dealt with immediately.
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click here please
4) The Sonic Concussion power blows through anyones Hold protection, but it only lasts 1/4 of a second. It is working as designed, however, I'll pass this to geko to see if it is too strong of an effect.
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So, any hope that they could tone down the end drain from Sappers while they are at it?
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Its not the end drain or the toggle droppers thats even all that bad, I've been taking on these guys lvl 40+ before I even had Unstoppable, the fact is...when I pop unstoppable (a non-toggle defensive power) I expect to be just that...unstoppable for 3 minutes, now when I pop this thing and run into a mob even with all my toggles on, and they did this thing where it drops my unstoppable and I gain the negative effects off of it (1/16 hp and no end) then all my toggles drop and im dead. Its not fair and it is downright cheep, whatever this attack is...that can drop a non-toggled buff is down right cheap, and even if it this non-toggled buff did get dropped, it wouldnt suck quite so bad if I didnt lose all my end and hp from the negative effect of it dropping. Its something similar to a brute jumping into a mob and popping nova (but you dont get any dmg) its suicide... I would understand if these longbow nullifiers had this mystery attack (which has been stated) and it does knock all non-toggled buffs THEN the spec-ops hits you with the EMP grenade and saps all your end so your toggles drop and everything shoots the crap out of you...thats fine, because its not cheep, its a well put together team with a good attack strategy that we would have to find a way to overcome. But what I experienced was down right cheep and needs to be looked into.
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Their is a Longbow charicter type , i belive it is the Nullifier, that has a Sonic Damage resistance DeBuff, that is an AoE Toggle in itself, you were most likely hit with that and thus rendering the effects you cain from unstopable useless. and a Spec Ops hit you with stun granade draining your end.
In this game once you use a clickable power that's it it is up for it's durration. there is no power that can remove a clickable self buff or a buff applied from a teammate. Their are however powers that can debuff you over the buff you have recived.
the only powers that can be detoggled or have their buffs removed are toggles. In PvE they can be done in 2 ways. A complete loss of endurance, or by being held, sleept, or stunned. If the later over powers any Mez Rez you may have you will succum to the effect. In PvP you have the same cases as i just mentioned as well as some melee attacks have a chance to drop 1 or more toggles
in the case of the Longbow the nulifiers have a power currently that has a Mag 100 stun that lasts 1 second. This stun does overpower all Brute or stalker Mez resistance powers which have resistance upto Mag 10 depending on AT. The result is your stunned briefly and all your toggles drop.
And as mentioned by a red name here on the boards, I belive Posi, Longbow are worth more XP than normal because of their added difficulty.
So the moral of all this, before you think of running head first into a fight to SMASH after hitting your Oh Crap I'm gonna Die now Power, think a little about what you are going to hit first.
oh and Unstopable only gives you +50% dmg rez. so with that Dmg rez Debuff that has a i belive -25% dmg rez, please correct me if i'm wrong, with Conns that are I'm assuming +3 +4 to your level. with a mob spawned for a 8 man team, the mobs alpha strike can and will kill you very quickly.
also unstopable drops you to %10 of your max HP not 1/16th, and it allways has. My roommate has 2 lvl 50 invuln tankers, he never lets me forget that
V-Tronix - Angry Angels
V-Tron Elec/EM - V-Tron X EM/EA
To Build a Better Hero #53098 [Newly edited and looking for Feedback] - Renegade Robots: V-Tron's Task Force # - A Summer Song and A Winters Tail #104106
In a warburg mission, the very first spawn in a 2-man team (brute + stalker) had 3 nullifiers and 3 spec-ops. Probably more than one spawn, but that doesn't really matter when they're all in the same room.
I had never faced nullifiers at 40 before, so I say, 'take out the spec ops'. Wasn't I surprised at hitting them, then dying nearly instantly.
We tried twice more, before deciding that soloing longbow was a lot more profitable. There's really not much you can do in situations like that (pulling wasn't really an option). Other than trying a bigger, more balanced group... with all the potential problems that might bring (more LTs in the mix, wardens when we hit critical mass).
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Other than that, I've never noticed any toggle dropping with my level 40 Brute.
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Gotta agree here... playing a 40 Stone/DA, and he cuts through Longbow like butter. I can't remember ever being detoggled by them, save for moments when I've run out of end - and that's usually due as much to continuous, uninteruppted smashing as it is Spec-Ops EMPing.
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Ahaha . . .Castle just posted in the COV general forum . . .the nullifiers have a mag 100 hold that lasts 1/4 of a second. There's your toggle drop 
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Geez. I hate that.
(The concept of a hold itself is fine. I hate the holds, though, where you don't even KNOW you've been held and after you start getting whomped on, you realize for some reason all your toggles have been down. It's a lot better to see yourself get held for a second, just so you know what happened.)
Heheh, this is another reason I love EA and Overload...Hit Overload, run into mass of longbow, commense laughing. Can't drain end or stun something you can't hit muah ha ha! Erm...sorry 
I do know your pain tho...first time I got caught with an end drain grenade I lost my toggles, was immediately knocked down 2 times consecutively and died before I could even hit a respite. The Overload retribution I laid out was swift and merciless after I got back from the frickin hospital. 
Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.
Try teaming with a stalker or two. You'd be suprised at how effective we are in later levels for removing "problem" mobs before they can cause the relentless gods of SMASH a problem.
I pretty much get stuck on nullifier/Specops detail in any given longbow group due to my heavy mez protection (Kuji-In-Rin), and the ability to utterly annihilate at least one of them as soon as the battle begins (AS).
See? We DO have a team function!
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Try teaming with a stalker or two. You'd be suprised at how effective we are in later levels for removing "problem" mobs before they can cause the relentless gods of SMASH a problem.
I pretty much get stuck on nullifier/Specops detail in any given longbow group due to my heavy mez protection (Kuji-In-Rin), and the ability to utterly annihilate at least one of them as soon as the battle begins (AS).
See? We DO have a team function!
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Being the Brute's bat boy? (the guy who hands the baseball bat to the guy at bat, not some strange Batman reference 
).
Sgt Liberty - 50 Martial Arts / Super Reflexes
Verdigris Eagle - 50 Archery / Energy Manipulation
Stormeye - 50 Storm Summoning / Electric Blast
LOL,
I don't have anything against stalkers. They stay out of my way in combat, they rarely take aggro from me and tend to kill the most annoying enemies in the spawn nice and early. OTOH, I don't try to rescue stalkers who AS a boss in the back and pick up a ton of aggro. But I play like a scrapper on speed rather than a tank. I like to kill and finish my kills.
So <3 for stalkers is cool.
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Ahaha . . .Castle just posted in the COV general forum . . .the nullifiers have a mag 100 hold that lasts 1/4 of a second. There's your toggle drop
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Geez. I hate that.
(The concept of a hold itself is fine. I hate the holds, though, where you don't even KNOW you've been held and after you start getting whomped on, you realize for some reason all your toggles have been down. It's a lot better to see yourself get held for a second, just so you know what happened.)
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Hold on a second.
Castle did NOT post in the COV forum that Nullifiers have a hold power. He said that another mob had such a power.
Also, so what? The original poster described having Unstoppable ended prematurely with all the negative results. A Hold power doesn't do that, since Unstoppable is not a toggle...it's a click.
One of three things is happening here:
1) Our original poster is mistaken. He clicked Unstoppable earlier than he thought and jumped into a group of badguys right before it wore off. It wore off normally and he got destroyed.
2) Our original poster was the victim of some hideous but not recreatable bug. Maybe some freakish server loop-lag-thingy cause Unstoppable to crash after 10 seconds for no good reason.
3)Nullifiers have some power the devs don't know about.
4)Longbow has some power that has some whacky bug in it that IS recreatable and hasn't been found.
Personally, I think (1) is the most likely. But who knows?
The two problems:
Q. Why did my toggles drop?
A. Because nullifiers have a mag 100 stun (according to castle), though I see Held. Either way, same effect. He stated this will be changed to a normal mag/duration.
Q. Why did I die so quickly?
A. Nullifiers at lvl 40+ have a sonic debuff that they launch, it's a placed AoE. People have said in game that it's a 25% resist debuff, but I don't know. This would take quite a bit of resist from unstoppable, which is why he died so fast.
Edit for clarification
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Some how I dont think this will be addressed anytime soon. The devs for this game rule compaired to other MMRPGs.
That being said unless its a huge bug that burns everyone at the same time they tend to put off the fix for it. I will give an example.
In CoH lvl 35+ CoT earth thorn casters. These things if you were not lucky enough to have this happen yourself would drop countless quick sand traps 2 ETCs could drop 12 of these on you. Now I dont care how much SS swift or speed boosts you have being stacked with 12 slows will distroy you.
This CoT thing was in the game for months and the devs were made aware with posts like yours. When did they fix this. Over the summer I think it was July maybe.
My suggestion is get LR,GW,BS, or any dev played toon to go fight some of these and when they got PWNED it will change.
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They were fairly quick to change the toggle-dropping on Ballistas due to player feedback.
The thing that needs to be guarded against is un-soloability. If the nullifiers are making typical high level missions impossible to solo (which it sounds like they are, considering that simple white Malta sappers push the limit), then a significant amount of content is being made exclusive to a certain style of player. That's not a great design philosophy for a casual game, especially where little or no other content is available.
-- Doc Q / Gideon Krieger
That doesn't really solve the problem, though, unless there's a stalker for each nullifier you encounter. I mean, killing them isn't the issue... it's getting the brute(s) to not faceplant when the nullifier uses its hold, since they're the ones with massive aggro.
An MM has little trouble with spec ops or nullifier, either, for that matter. Losing tactics and assault might be annoying,
Probably the safest choice is to have a well-slotted dom (/nrg sounds good) use their aoe holds on the group, and first take out all the problem troops (or try to). Granted, if the group is big and you're not particularly strong on firepower the dom might just end up faceplanting if the hold breaks.
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Ahaha . . .Castle just posted in the COV general forum . . .the nullifiers have a mag 100 hold that lasts 1/4 of a second. There's your toggle drop
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Geez. I hate that.
(The concept of a hold itself is fine. I hate the holds, though, where you don't even KNOW you've been held and after you start getting whomped on, you realize for some reason all your toggles have been down. It's a lot better to see yourself get held for a second, just so you know what happened.)
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Hold on a second.
Castle did NOT post in the COV forum that Nullifiers have a hold power. He said that another mob had such a power.
Also, so what? The original poster described having Unstoppable ended prematurely with all the negative results. A Hold power doesn't do that, since Unstoppable is not a toggle...it's a click.
One of three things is happening here:
1) Our original poster is mistaken. He clicked Unstoppable earlier than he thought and jumped into a group of badguys right before it wore off. It wore off normally and he got destroyed.
2) Our original poster was the victim of some hideous but not recreatable bug. Maybe some freakish server loop-lag-thingy cause Unstoppable to crash after 10 seconds for no good reason.
3)Nullifiers have some power the devs don't know about.
4)Longbow has some power that has some whacky bug in it that IS recreatable and hasn't been found.
Personally, I think (1) is the most likely. But who knows?
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there you go, hit the nail on the head there, thats exactly what im getting at. But I know Unstoppable has a activation time of 3 mins, and I only just poped it on before I agroed the mob, so max time it was on was maybe 10 seconds, and Im being generous there.
That is a good possibility though, some form of bug/lag mixed together to give me some ill effect, it was during that day that we kept getting buttloads of "lost connection to mapserver".
Either way, it sucks.
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The two problems:
Q. Why did my toggles drop?
A. Because nullifiers have a mag 100 stun (according to castle), though I see Held. Either way, same effect. He stated this will be changed to a normal mag/duration.
Q. Why did I die so quickly?
A. Nullifiers at lvl 40+ have a sonic debuff that they launch, it's a placed AoE. People have said in game that it's a 25% resist debuff, but I don't know. This would take quite a bit of resist from unstoppable, which is why he died so fast.
Edit for clarification
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Two problems:
1) Castle didn't say Nullifiers had such a power. He said another Longbow mob did.
2) The power doesn't explain what happened. The original post says that Unstoppable crashed early. Holds and Stuns will not cause that.
If you're now saying that all that happened was that you jumped into a big group of Longbow and got Alpha-striked even though you were running Unstoppable....
....duh! Unstoppable gives (for a Brute) base 60% or so resists. It doesn't make you immune to damage. Jump into a big enough and high enough level group and you'll get killed just as fast as without out it.
I fondly remember the Cavern of Transcendence trial with my Tanker. We'd aggro'd the Wall too early and it ended up spawning a BILLION swarms. They destroyed us. At one point after a rez I jumped in to fight them with all my toggles running, Unstoppable clicked, and a healthy heap of inspirations. I was dropped instantly by the alpha strike because 10% of a BILLION is ... well...er... you get the idea.
Rather I should say:
Castle said the sonic concussion device is a mag 100 stun/hold.
From personal experience, I know it's the nullifiers that do it to me. It's the spec ops that drain end.
What I think happened to the original poster:
Longbow nullifier launched the sonic -res grenade thingie, taking significant resistance away from his brute. His end was drained by the spec ops, which would account for the toggle drop. Which would of course remove the resistance he had from his toggles. Everyone shot him with the alpha, taking away most of his health. He was then shot by another minion/lut, and died.
The concussion grenade actually wouldn't have needed to be used lol.
Anywho, that's what I think happened.
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Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.
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Either you haven't fought 40+ longbow or you've been really lucky. You're comment leaves me thinking it's the 1st possibility, because anyone who has had to fight the 40+ understands. 39 longbow...sissies. 40+ longbow...sick.
Another detail of note, Overload recharges a tad faster than what you think, especially with hasten working for you.
Come back when you know a little more about what yer saying.
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Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.
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Either you haven't fought 40+ longbow or you've been really lucky. You're comment leaves me thinking it's the 1st possibility, because anyone who has had to fight the 40+ understands. 39 longbow...sissies. 40+ longbow...sick.
Another detail of note, Overload recharges a tad faster than what you think, especially with hasten working for you.
Come back when you know a little more about what yer saying.
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haha, the last time i had to use overload to fight a spawn of 40+ longbow to stay alive there was a hero by the name of auora borials <sp> in the mob.
Funny thing is the team got wiped out except for me, then i died shortly after overload did.
V-Tronix - Angry Angels
V-Tron Elec/EM - V-Tron X EM/EA
To Build a Better Hero #53098 [Newly edited and looking for Feedback] - Renegade Robots: V-Tron's Task Force # - A Summer Song and A Winters Tail #104106
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Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.
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Either you haven't fought 40+ longbow or you've been really lucky. You're comment leaves me thinking it's the 1st possibility, because anyone who has had to fight the 40+ understands. 39 longbow...sissies. 40+ longbow...sick.
Another detail of note, Overload recharges a tad faster than what you think, especially with hasten working for you.
Come back when you know a little more about what yer saying.
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It would be nice if you read everything I said. I said that EA are probably the only ones with ANY tactic vs. 40+ longbow in groups. But still, that tactic is not a GOOD tactic. Relying on cooldowns for EVERY fight means something is very wrong.
As for the speed, I'm just working off numbers. Like all uber click powers, overload has a recharge of 1000 and a duration of 180s. With 3 recharge SOs, you drop that roughly to 50%. With recharge, you POTENTIALLY drop it further to ~360s. That's 6 minutes, no matter how you look at it.
But that 360s value is if you could run hasten non-stop. You can't. Hasten lasts 2 minutes and has a recharge of 450s. Slotted out, hastened, according to hero planner it drops to ~180s. So you have a downtime of 60s, per use (more, actually). So, supposing you pop it as soon as it's available, you will recharge 4 minutes of the 360, and the rest of the time you'll have to recharge unhastened. So the number of seconds is HIGHER than ~360s. Unless you can say that the herobuilder stats are wrong, and that the duration/refresh of said powers is something else.
I've fought a lot of longbow post-40. I did level 39 in one day by doing warburg missions at ruthless (that's 40-41). Solo, you shouldn't need your uber power, since you get only spec ops, not nullifiers.
In groups, though, yeah, probably overload is the ONLY brute tactic that's not insta-death. Doesn't make it a good tactic, since if the fight is too big to clear in 3 minutes, you better hope you have someplace to run when the crash hits and you lose all toggles. And running for someone who has all aggro isn't a good idea.
And after that you have 3ish minutes in which you might very well be hit and killed. If you're relying on overload to take the alpha strike, then you better run into spawns once every 6ish minutes. It's the best brutes have, but it's pretty far from great.
Like I said, I prefer not to group for +40 longbow missions, I can face spec ops (up to 3 in cluster) and finish my missions in 5-10 minutes. At least until they're nerfed.
This also extends to people who suggest using overload in pvp. Overload (and unstoppable for that matter) are last-ditch tactic; relying on it to fight means you have to wait outside fights AT LEAST as long as you spend with it on. If it's the ONLY way you can win a fight, then balance is off.
Well, consider that nullifiers only really show up if you ARE in a group. Spec ops are a problem solo, but they aren't quite as lethal as the nullifier's toggle-dropping, for some reason. Possibly the larger concentration of enemies in situations where nullifiers spawn.
Also, remember that there WERE longbow troops that could detoggle (Ballista and Wardens), and they lost that ability, so the devs -have- at some point considered toggle-dropping to be excessive. (besides the fact that, if it isn't proper for bosses and elite bosses to detoggle, why should LTs be doing it?)
Besides: as you might know, an issue in the tanker forums is how toggle-dropping kills tanks. So I'm not really sure what you're arguing here: that villains should suffer it because heroes have? Isn't that counterproductive?
As for all the groups you mentioned, I'm not that familiar with CoH. How exactly is each one so cheap? (If you mean that carnies can blast tankers with damage types they have no resistance or defense against, again, I don't consider that cheap.)
If you're talking about holds or attacks that can bypass ANY active resistance, then yeah, it's cheap, if not outright broken.