[ QUOTE ]
But this same reasoning can also be used with Blasters too. Fire/Fire Blasters are notorious for their damage output, whereas Assault Rifle/Devices are notorious for their lack of overall damage. So when trying to balance Blasters, do you factor in Build Up? Aim? BU + Aim? What about those Blasters that don't get BU? Or those that don't take it?
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, the comparison that you make here is a very applicable one to FF's problems. Assault Rifle is the only Blaster Primary that does not get Aim. And Devices is the only Blaster Secondary that does not get Build Up. And those are not even significant damage boosts over the duration of an entire fight, I think it was calculated that this was a 10-12% boost to overall DPS, when applied to fully slotted attacks. A Rad Defender is able to get at least a 30% damage boost through most of the duration of a combat, more than likely even more since he can stack AM's damage boost on top of EF's resistance debuff.
I would actually compare it more to a Tanker or Scrapper's status protection powers. Defense sets have status protection powers because meleers are more likely to be attacked, and they need to keep their toggles up in order to survive melee damage. They aren't given a base 30% or 75% more resistance to damage just for being meleers, they need powers to give them that defense. If you were to take a defensive power providing about 30% of a Tanker or Scrapper's power away from him, or take away the status protection power, no one would say, "Well, Tankers are broken, because they don't have enough innate defense". They would obviously point out that that particular Tanker has 30% less damage mitigation than the other sets. (Or loses his toggles all the time, which is definately losing more than 30% of his damage mitigation)
Likewise, if someone were to take a Blaster's Burst or melee attacks away, and replace it with an ally targetted support powers, that set would rightly be called "broken". Blasters are balanced with having the ability to do a certain amount of damage in mind, and if you take that ability away, you break the balance.
And considering that this is ONE set that is causing all the trouble, it's rational to conclude that it is the set that is the cause of the problem. Because this isn't a game about base stats, this is a game about Powers.
Jade_Dragon , I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying an FF Defender is weak because they don't have a 30% damage buff? If so, I'm sure you realize the standard response would be to say FF isn't meant to be a damage buffing set.
Similarly, Mind Control has no pets. That doesn't mean Mind Control is broken.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
Statesman's view was laughably out of touch.
[/ QUOTE ]
A truer statement has never been made on these forums. Ever.
Statesman had the "executive's view" of the game and it's powersets. He was sitting up in la-la-land high on Cloud 9. I think Castle knows what he's doing.
I think he's also heard us and our desires now. He has PLENTY of ideas from all over the spectrum, from small changes to complete power changes. He has everything he needs. All that's left is to sit and wait and see what he does with what we've given him.
To all the rest of you:
These other conversations are sure interesting to watch happen, but I think the real conversation about FF power changes has long been over. But keep doing what you're doing, it is entertaining to watch and often times informative.
[ QUOTE ]
Jade_Dragon , I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying an FF Defender is weak because they don't have a 30% damage buff? If so, I'm sure you realize the standard response would be to say FF isn't meant to be a damage buffing set.
Similarly, Mind Control has no pets. That doesn't mean Mind Control is broken.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yet another apples-to-oranges comparison. Mind specializes in confusion to compensate for its lack of pets. All other defender primary sets (with the execption of Empathy) get some form of resistance debuff or damage boost that the Defender can use to increase damage output, and Empathy can at least do that for others.
For all that, FF should at least be better at something. Knockdown/knockback? Storm does at least as well in this department, if not better. Buffing/debuffing to make it harder for enemies to hit? In my experience, both Rad and Dark doe this better. Their -acc debuffs trump FF's +def every time. Control? Dark and Trick Arrow both have better means of pure control.
And herding? I still say tanks do it better. While putting out better damage thatn most FF defenders.
I really don't think that FF needs a way to up the damage of an individual or group. But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.
=^..^=. o O (Nothing to see. Just a cat.)
(_ _)~
*Recipient of a Sentai Sage thumbs up of approval.
..v
(==)b
[ QUOTE ]
But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.
[/ QUOTE ]
And it does. The only thing that can compete with PFF is a Stone Tanker in Granite.
PK
[ QUOTE ]
These other conversations are sure interesting to watch happen, but I think the real conversation about FF power changes has long been over.
[/ QUOTE ]
Can't be over. No one has pointed out that FF doesn't heal and Repulsion Bomb needs to be changed to something like Radiant Aura or FF will forever be the suxor.
I suppose now we'll enter a consolidation phase?
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.
[/ QUOTE ]
And it does. The only thing that can compete with PFF is a Stone Tanker in Granite.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, if you're solo, it's GREAT! Doesn't help a team though... As far as your little "Provoke+PFF" trick goes... when you're in PFF you can't Provoke. When you can Provoke, you don't have the protection of PFF. Sure you can do it, but it's not reliable on a team and it's not safe.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If Defenders are supposed do 65% of the damage a Blaster does, that 65% should be based upon the true amount of damage a blaster does, not simply the base damage.
[/ QUOTE ]
The problem is that that presumes the archetype damage modifiers are "right." We can work the other way around: when blasters were 1.0 and defenders were 0.65, the devs discovered that blasters were broken, because their levelling was much slower than defenders (and everyone else). So they gave blasters more damage. The original 1/0.65 ratio was in effect proven to be incorrect, which prompted the change in the first place.
However, the 0.65 number itself hasn't been "proven wrong" yet because the devs haven't seen numbers which suggest the number is too low for defenders to function. It may or may not be but what they see so far suggests its not.
I consider the 1/0.65 number to be a first guess at what the blaster/defender ratio should be, not a conceptual decision on what they ought to be. Moreover, its not specifically saying what the ratio of total damage should be, but rather what the ratio in damage should be when given identical powers.
You say "not all defenders get damage buffs" and that's true. But you can't argue for a damage modifier increase based on the defender primary with the *lowest* damage buffs available, without simultaneously implying that the ones with the very high damage buffs need to have them taken away. Because if the damage ratio argument is valid, its valid in both directions. If FF defenders can use it to compare themselves to blasters, for example, the blasters and turn around and use the identical balance argument on rads, darks, and kins. That makes it a very dangerous argument to employ, because it ultimately creates a lot of collateral damage.
I happen to consider the damage boosting (and other) effects of rads and kins to be, in not balanced with the defensive benefit of FF, then presumed to be balanced for the sake of inter-archetype balancing. Meaning, when I compare "defenders" to "blasters" I assume FF defenders and Kin defenders should be considered equal representatives. Because if they are not, then there is an intra-archetype balance problem to solve that has nothing to do with blasters.
Having made that assumption, I then realize its really hard to compare an FF defender to a blaster, because the blaster has nothing to compare even remotely to an FF defender. But its at least not crazy to compare the offensive power of a kin or a rad to a blaster, so I compare them so see how the archetypes compare, using Blaster-ish criteria.
I then use Kins and Rads as a form of "pivot point" around which both archetypes are balanced. If the "offensive" defenders can be balanced against blasters (which is itself a subject of massive debate), then they can go back to defenders as "representatives" of the archetype balance model, and then the defenders can be balanced among themselves using more Defender-ish criteria.
Doing anything else is probably going to stall. You really can't compare a Fire blaster to an FF defender in a meaningful way directly, because there isn't a convenient way to normalize the benefits of the two around something you can quantitatively compare. Basically, you can't compare apples and oranges, but sometimes you can compare apples to apple juice and oranges to orange juice, and then you're left with the simpler problem of comparing apple juice to orange juice.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's why I think you're reading way too deeply into the dilemma. By and large most of the Defender and Blaster powersets have not changed much since release. And most of the Corruptor sets are the same as well.
Someone sat down and hammered out AT modifiers and the final decision was to have Blasters at scale 1, Corruptors at scale .75, and Defenders at .65. Now I could be wrong, cause I simply don't remember that far back, but weren't these modifiers different at one point, like before we had Corruptors? it's neither here nor there, just a question for my own edification.
Since the powersets by and large haven't changed much you can't really use them as reasons why this original balance shouldn't be maintained. Blasters were always fragile, Defenders always had buffs and debuffs, and the modifiers were set accordingly. Since then we've had a number of changes to the game. GDN made a lot of buffs and debuffs significantly less powerful, and ED along with changes to HOs cut all AT's damage output by as much as 66%. And to top it all off, critters were given more hit points, stronger attacks, a multitude of mez abilities, and an improved AI that makes them marginally smarter and less likely to herd together like sheep.
In return all ATs got "inherent" abilities. Tankers got Gauntlet to improve aggro control, Blasters, Corruptors, Controllers, Dominators, Masterminds, Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Kheldians all got some kind of damage buff, and Defenders got Vigilance for an endurance discount while teaming. That's 9 out of 11 that all got an inherent damage buff.
Controllers, who used to be the weakest AT hero-side (at least until they got their pet) were now doing double damage and were no longer squishy from 1-32. But what did Defenders get? They got reductions in their buffs and debuffs in GDN, they got 50% reduction in damage due to ED, and an inherent ability that rewards you for being a bad Defender. Defenders, who were once only marginally weaker than Blasters, were now suddenly the absolute weakest AT in the game in terms of damage potential.
And though datamining is useful, like all statistics what you get out depends upon what you put in. And even so, numbers can only tell you so much. Datamining said that Blasters were slower at leveling than Defenders. But did it tell us why? We can assume it's because they die more often and have more debt. But do they die more often because they are genuinely more "fragile" than other ATs or because of the reckless nature in which many Blasters are played? Is it due to them trying to get the most out of the old version of Defiance, which had entire fleets of Blasters running around with 10% health and not wanting to be healed? Is it because Blasters, who are very effective soloists, would often attempt fighting things much higher than they should? Or maybe it's from the overabundance of foe status effects leading to "death by permamez"? We were never told EXACTLY what the datamining revealed, other than "blasters are the slowest at leveling". I had asked many times for additional information in the proposed Defiance thread. I never got an answer. If Castle knows the exact reason, he's not sharing it. And without knowing the exact reason as to why Blasters are leveling more slowly than other ATs you simply can't assume it's because they aren't doing enough damage, even if that's how the he chose to address the issue.
I also have to wonder what datamining would reveal if you compared the leveling speed of Blasters, Corruptors, and Defenders only while soloing, as well as comparing their respective difficulty settings when doing so.
The evolution of the game has forced most Defenders to be team players only. In that role, many are well protected from death, earn nice amounts of XP, and provide valuable assistance to the team. When you're on a team with Tanks, Blasters, Scrappers, and Controllers, the last thing a Defender needs to worry about is contributing damage -- focus on your buffs and debuffs, blast a little in between if you have the opportunity, and have fun.
So of course Defenders are going to look all rosy and wonderful in datamining, because the game has forced them into a single role, one at which they just happen to excel.
The picture starts to fall apart when a Defender tries play something other than the team buffer/debuffer, and I outlined this in my previous post. Despite all their buffs and debuffs Defenders do not have the damage potential nor endurance capacity to efficiently solo.
Ironically, of all the Defenders I have, the one that is best at soloing (and this is not to say she's actually fun to solo, merely less painful than others) is my Empathy/Sonic. Regeneration and Healing Auras take care of damage mitigation while Recovery Aura and Sonic's inherent resistance debuffs boost damage output and allows her to keep attacking long after other Defenders would have run dry. And her only pool powers besides travel is Hasten. She doesn't even have Stamina.
On the flip side the most difficult Defender soloist I have is a Storm/Electricity. While Storm has some of the most effective powers in the game, they come at a very high end cost. With no self heal, very situational debuffs, and very expensive toggles, she simply cannot do enough damage fast enough to defeat foes without dying or running out of endurance. And this is with 3-slotted Stamina and all attacks slotted 1 accy/3 damage/1 end redux. If she uses her debuffs she survives, but runs out of endurance before she can defeat the entire spawn. If she doesn't use her debuffs she barely has enough endurance to defeat the spawn, but will take massive amounts of damage and frequently die.
Most of my other Defenders are somewhere in between.
But the FF Defender is somewhat unique as far as Defenders go. With 4/9 powers that are extremely team-unfriendly, the FFer doesn't really have much Defending to do other than running a toggle and recasting shields every 4 minutes. This leaves them with not much else to do but blast. And this causes a few problems. First off, since FF is proactive instead of reactive, most teammates will never fully appreciate how effective your buffs really are. They often assume they just have a really good team, or a really good tank, or a really good healer, etc. Since you have nothing else to bring to the party as a Defender, you're oftentimes seen as a slacker -- a Defender who is doing nothing but blasting. And then the team leader thinks to himself, hey, all this guy is doing is blasting, not defending, and hell, since we're doing so well why do we him at all? I can replace him with a real Blaster and we'll be even better...
And don't tell me it doesn't happen, cause it's happened to me many times. Strike 1.
The flip side of this same coin is another downside to FF -- since you don't have any useful Defender abilities other than your 3 bubbles there isn't much else for you to do but blast. And even though your bubbles are very effective at protecting the team, you often don't FEEL very like a very good Defender. If the team gets into trouble there is nothing you can do to protect them other than what you've already given them. There is nothing left for you to "pull out of your hat" like other Defenders and Controllers can, so you keep blasting. Fighting an AV? Where other Defenders would start spamming their heals and debuffs, you, um, blast... since again, there is nothing else you can do. It very quickly makes you feel inferior to other Defenders, even though your abilities are oftentimes significantly superior. Strike 2.
And on to blasting. We have already established that the Defender is by far the absolute worst damage-dealing AT in the game (though Stalkers are a close 2nd, but that's a debate for another place and time). After being nerfed to hell and back by GDN, ED, and a sub-par inherent, my Grandma can do more damage with her walker. And while most Defenders are often too busy Defending to be blasting, the FFer is again the odd man out. And again, you are both seen as and feel sub-par because of it. Even fully slotted your attacks do pitiful amounts of damage, especially if you're fighting foes that are +3, +4, or even higher, which your bubbles very often allow a team to do. I often resort to only attacking foes that are already low on health or nearly dead, as some twisted way of feeling like I'm being useful while attacking, cause I know that if I choose a target with full health it can easily take a dozen or more consecutive attacks for me to defeat him. And that's not a good feeling. That's a very un-fun feeling. A very unsatisfying feeling. Strike 3.
There are really two very separate issues here, one is with Defenders themselves -- the imbalance of the AT damage modifier, their inability to effectively solo, and the ineffectiveness of Vigilance.
The other is with the Force Field set with its bevy of powers that can't be used on teams, its complete lack of debuffs in an environment where debuffs are often *required* to defeat foes, and its absolute binary nature -- shields on, shields off, shields on, shields off -- and nothing in between. And these issue are only magnified by the problems with the Defender AT itself.
If Defenders had a much higher (or even truly proportional) damage modifier and an inherent that always provided you with a meaningful endurance discount regardless of your powerset or team size, you'd be better able to solo enjoyably, which in turn makes all those previously unusable powers much more appealing. More damage means you'll defeat foes faster, and more endurance means less downtime and an overall improved soloing pace leading to a much more rewarding experience.
And things look just as good from a team perspective. Since most Defenders on teams spend the majority of their time Defending instead of blasting, the increased damage won't significantly alter game play or balance. An improved Vigilance allows all Defenders to be more effective, not just the reactive ones. And unique sets like FF will no longer feel inferior. Not only will your blasts do more damage and convey a much stronger feeling of positive contribution, but now that you're an able soloist you probably have powers like Repulsion Bomb, Detention Field, and/or Repulsion Field, which although cannot be used 99% of the time on a team, are excellent "oh crap" powers that can help turn the tide of a battle going badly. The FFer feels better because they are contributing more than just bubbles and a trivial amount of damage, and teammates can see how useful an FFer can be when the chips are down and the **** is about to hit the fan. Everyone goes home happy.
Now this is not to say that improving the Force Field powers themselves is not also a good idea the devs should seriously explore. Powers should be just as useful on teams as they are solo. With the greater emphasis and structure geared towards teaming, there simply should be NO powers in ANY set in ANY AT that is counterproductive to team play. Any power that works well on a team will also work well solo. The converse is unfortunately is not the case.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.
[/ QUOTE ]
And it does. The only thing that can compete with PFF is a Stone Tanker in Granite.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, if you're solo, it's GREAT! Doesn't help a team though... As far as your little "Provoke+PFF" trick goes... when you're in PFF you can't Provoke. When you can Provoke, you don't have the protection of PFF. Sure you can do it, but it's not reliable on a team and it's not safe.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you can see that a live Defender is more useful to their team than a dead one. And that you can hit Provoke and then raise PFF.
So what's the next step PK? This is your thread after all.
Mystic_Poobah
[ QUOTE ]
Any power that works well on a team will also work well solo.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not really true. AoEs in particular are far less effective soloing than on teams.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
And that you can hit Provoke and then raise PFF.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!
EDIT: I already stated my opinion. Most people have already laid out their "visions" for changes to the set. Those changes have already been consolidated, and not that many were added after the fact. Castle has presumably read it all, so all that's left to do is wait and argue with each other over what sucks the most about FF.
[ QUOTE ]
So what's the next step PK? This is your thread after all.
[/ QUOTE ]
Pie fight? 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But this same reasoning can also be used with Blasters too. Fire/Fire Blasters are notorious for their damage output, whereas Assault Rifle/Devices are notorious for their lack of overall damage. So when trying to balance Blasters, do you factor in Build Up? Aim? BU + Aim? What about those Blasters that don't get BU? Or those that don't take it?
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, the comparison that you make here is a very applicable one to FF's problems. Assault Rifle is the only Blaster Primary that does not get Aim. And Devices is the only Blaster Secondary that does not get Build Up. And those are not even significant damage boosts over the duration of an entire fight, I think it was calculated that this was a 10-12% boost to overall DPS, when applied to fully slotted attacks. A Rad Defender is able to get at least a 30% damage boost through most of the duration of a combat, more than likely even more since he can stack AM's damage boost on top of EF's resistance debuff.
I would actually compare it more to a Tanker or Scrapper's status protection powers. Defense sets have status protection powers because meleers are more likely to be attacked, and they need to keep their toggles up in order to survive melee damage. They aren't given a base 30% or 75% more resistance to damage just for being meleers, they need powers to give them that defense. If you were to take a defensive power providing about 30% of a Tanker or Scrapper's power away from him, or take away the status protection power, no one would say, "Well, Tankers are broken, because they don't have enough innate defense". They would obviously point out that that particular Tanker has 30% less damage mitigation than the other sets. (Or loses his toggles all the time, which is definately losing more than 30% of his damage mitigation)
Likewise, if someone were to take a Blaster's Burst or melee attacks away, and replace it with an ally targetted support powers, that set would rightly be called "broken". Blasters are balanced with having the ability to do a certain amount of damage in mind, and if you take that ability away, you break the balance.
And considering that this is ONE set that is causing all the trouble, it's rational to conclude that it is the set that is the cause of the problem. Because this isn't a game about base stats, this is a game about Powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually that's contrary to what the devs have previously told us, most recently in Defiance discussions.
They don't take secondary power effects into consideration when balancing powers because not everyone gets the same effects. They also don't take Build Up and Aim into consideration, because as you've pointed out, not everyone has access to them, and not everyone who has access necessarily takes them.
And the only time they take outside buffs into consideration is when balancing recharge times on powers they don't want to be permable.
There is a reason why nearly every power in every set of any given AT has the exact same damage/end and damage/sec ratio. It's balance, plain and simple. Any discrepancies or exceptions you might find are simply done for flavor; and sometimes just to give a set that's perhaps not quite tangy enough a bit of a boost.
So no, the fact that a Rad Defender can increase their damage by up to 30% in no way as any bearing on Defender base stats because not all Defenders are Rad.
My point is that inherent buffs like Defiance and Scourge should be considered when balancing damage between Blasters, Corruptors and Defenders because ALL Blasters get Defiance, and ALL Corruptors get Scourge. It's not optional. You can't turn it off. And you can't "not take it". These abilities give Blasters and Corruptors a significant increase in damage without any penalty.
If you have any doubts about just how much of a difference there is between the solo-ability of a Defender versus a Corruptor, simple roll up one of each with the same sets (hell, go Rad/Rad just for sh*ts and giggles), take the same powers, slot them the same way, and go solo. The proof, as they say, is in the puddin'.
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!
[/ QUOTE ]
You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you. 
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!
[/ QUOTE ]
You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, the videos which show that you had to use an outside power pool to make up for a failure in the primary? Sure!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!
[/ QUOTE ]
You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, the videos which show that you had to use an outside power pool to make up for a failure in the primary? Sure!
[/ QUOTE ]
What failure is that? It's not a failure to heal yourself. Even Tankers have been known to take a heal or two, you know. Some even take the Medicine pool. 
And no, I was refering to the video where I Provoked the AV _and_ the batch of Rikti off camera.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!
[/ QUOTE ]
You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, the videos which show that you had to use an outside power pool to make up for a failure in the primary? Sure!
[/ QUOTE ]
What failure is that? It's not a failure to heal yourself. Even Tankers have been know to take a heal or two, you know. Some even take the Medicine pool.
[/ QUOTE ]
But no other primaries have to rely on Medicine to do what other primaries can already do. Sure FF can do things that other primaries simply CAN'T do, but the truth is that FF is really an "unstable" set. It's either working to full capacity or not working at all. As others have said, it's purely binary. You either have the shields on or not. You either use the OTHER powers or you don't. There is almost no middle ground in between. And that's not good.
The experts of the set know to take and use ALL the powers and know how to use them to the greatest effect. The newbies know to take the "big three" and don't know what else to do. The "mediocre" players gets nothing more from the set than a newbie does. All other primaries have more of a "gradual scale" to their "usefulness/easiness to learn". FF doesn't, you either know it all or you know nothing, there is really little ground in the middle for those that want to slowly step into the set. It's not a learning curve, it's a learning CLIFF.
Probably the best metaphor that I can give for this is that every other primary is composed of Skittles. They have all sorts of colors that bring all sorts of different flavors. ForceFields is Reese's Pieces, it's got about 3 different candy coatings, but when you bite into them, they're all peanut butter.
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Jade_Dragon , I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying an FF Defender is weak because they don't have a 30% damage buff? If so, I'm sure you realize the standard response would be to say FF isn't meant to be a damage buffing set.
Similarly, Mind Control has no pets. That doesn't mean Mind Control is broken.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yet another apples-to-oranges comparison. Mind specializes in confusion to compensate for its lack of pets. All other defender primary sets (with the execption of Empathy) get some form of resistance debuff or damage boost that the Defender can use to increase damage output, and Empathy can at least do that for others.
For all that, FF should at least be better at something. Knockdown/knockback? Storm does at least as well in this department, if not better. Buffing/debuffing to make it harder for enemies to hit? In my experience, both Rad and Dark doe this better. Their -acc debuffs trump FF's +def every time. Control? Dark and Trick Arrow both have better means of pure control.
And herding? I still say tanks do it better. While putting out better damage thatn most FF defenders.
I really don't think that FF needs a way to up the damage of an individual or group. But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.
[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with most of your post, but with one exception. The FF Defender is the MASTER at one thing and one thing only, bar none, and that's +def. No other Defender set can even come close to the amount of damage mitigation a fully slotted FF Defender can hand out. Period. With fully slotted bubbles + Maneuvers you can easily hit the 45% defense cap.
Remember that debuffs quickly lose their effectiveness against higher level and higher class foes. So although you might get a 35% tohit debuff against even level minions, you're going to get around half of that against a +2 boss.
Buffs never lose their effectiveness based upon level or rank, and for this reason are far superior mitigation tools than debuffs. This is not to say debuffs are bad, it's just that buffs are better.
As I've said before, FF suffers not because it's a bad set that's sub-par, it's because it's a one trick pony set full of powers that cannot be reliably used on teams in an AT that has been forcibly relegated to team-only play.
FF excels at what it does. But it only does one thing, and while that might have been appropriate in the game of 3.5 years ago, in today's game it's not enough.
[ QUOTE ]
All other primaries have more of a "gradual scale" to their "usefulness/easiness to learn".
[/ QUOTE ]
You could put it that way. I'd say that withs sets like Rad, you're doing the same thing at level 50 that you were doing at level 5. It's BORING.
I perfectly understand that many folks don't want to spend time learning skills in a computer game. They just want to mash buttons, collect the badge, and log off. Nothing wrong with that. Those folks can choose almost any set in the game to play. For folks who enjoy a bit more of a challenge, there's not too many sets out there that offer that.
As to FF being "all peanut butter inside", it's not. The set is what you make of it. Because it's not just mindless button mashing you have the chance for your skill and creativity to affect what the powers do.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
Ok, you two need to settle down before I call a moderator and have you both sent to the naughty forum.
If you're just going to sling insults back and forth, take it to PMs.
[ QUOTE ]
Ok, you two need to settle down before I call a moderator and have you both sent to the naughty forum.
If you're just going to sling insults back and forth, take it to PMs.
[/ QUOTE ]
I didn't know we were insulting each other. I thought we were discussing our views on FF.
Edit:
Using candy metaphors.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
I agree... I haven't seen one insult yet...
By the way, where's CDN_Guardian? Did he fall asleep?
[ QUOTE ]
I agree... I haven't seen one insult yet...
By the way, where's CDN_Guardian? Did he fall asleep?
[/ QUOTE ]
I think he's out stunning AVs with Force Bolt. 
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
All other primaries have more of a "gradual scale" to their "usefulness/easiness to learn".
[/ QUOTE ]
You could put it that way. I'd say that withs sets like Rad, you're doing the same thing at level 50 that you were doing at level 5. It's BORING.
I perfectly understand that many folks don't want to spend time learning skills in a computer game. They just want to mash buttons, collect the badge, and log off. Nothing wrong with that. Those folks can choose almost any set in the game to play. For folks who enjoy a bit more of a challenge, there's not too many sets out there that offer that.
As to FF being "all peanut butter inside", it's not. The set is what you make of it. Because it's not just mindless button mashing you have the chance for your skill and creativity to affect what the powers do.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is beautiful from a didactic perspective. Your two posts make exactly opposite claims about FF - one indirectly claims it does the same thing from level 4 to 50, the other cites it as one of the FEW powersets that actually develop new tools over level.
This is why I love this game - the same powerset can be seen/played in such drastically different ways by different players.
Of course, magicj seems pretty alone in his view here. Most of us indeed think FF is a one-trick pony that does the same thing from lvl 4 to 50. I met a FF defender yesterday that had specced out his buff bubbles. It was just too boring to use them. I advised him to reroll as a blaster, his objection was that blasters do not get Dark Blast. A perfectly viable point of view, but it still made his toon completely worthless to the team (he wasn't nearly as good at using FF as magicj claims to be).
[ QUOTE ]
one indirectly claims it does the same thing from level 4 to 50
[/ QUOTE ]
Um, that was Rad I was refering to.
[ QUOTE ]
I met a FF defender yesterday that had specced out his buff bubbles. [...] (he wasn't nearly as good at using FF as magicj claims to be).
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, I deleted my FF Defender. I don't think FF is a great Defender set anymore than anyone else does. I just see the reasons why having more to do with the Defender AT than with FF. Just to refresh your memory, here are the flaws I see with the AT that are related to FF.
<ul type="square">[*]FF's lack of damage buffs highlights Defender's low damage.[*]FF's Knockback highlights their poorly designed cone attacks.[*]FF's remarkable ability to herd highlights the uselessness of Defender's nukes solo.[*]FF's low Defense for the FFer highlights Defender's lack of a Defensive shield in their Epics.[*]FF's strong ability to keep a team healthy highlights the poor design of Vigilence.[*] The common FF playstyle of shielding the team and then using your other powers means you spend the majority of your time using the flawed secondary.[/list]
This doesn't mean that FF couldn't use a tweak here or there. But this thread has been an extremely poor way to go about it right from the beginning. It's been little more than insults, ideas that don't even work with existing game mechanics, and "cry moer" in hopes the new Dev team will throw some +Pie your way just to shut you up. I can only hope no ideas from this thread ever see the light of day.
As for me claiming to be some sort of great player, I don't make that claim at all. Basically, that's a meaningless claim in a game this easy. I _do_ claim to have a lot of fun playing my FF toons. In fact, they're more fun than any other toon I've played so far.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage
I simultaneously agree with the points about general Defender flaws and disagree with the notion that all of the suggested tweaks here for FF are bad.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
[ QUOTE ]
The experts of the set know to take and use ALL the powers and know how to use them to the greatest effect. The newbies know to take the "big three" and don't know what else to do. The "mediocre" players gets nothing more from the set than a newbie does. All other primaries have more of a "gradual scale" to their "usefulness/easiness to learn". FF doesn't, you either know it all or you know nothing, there is really little ground in the middle for those that want to slowly step into the set. It's not a learning curve, it's a learning CLIFF.
[/ QUOTE ]
Quoted for containing more truth than most libraries.
[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately there seems to me to be two flaws that undercut the video's ability to demonstrate for the general argument: 1) without medicine's heal self power, the ff'er in the demo would have died quickly before 99% of the knockback quality could have been demonstrated, and 2) if any of the nemesis lts had been actively being killed, and vengeance went off, the ff'er would have died quickly again, so at most to pull off the results shown in the demo, any team supported by such an ff'er must remain pacifistic at all times which is incompatible with general CoH encounters.
[/ QUOTE ]
As to point 1, oh yeah, I'd have died real quick without Aid Self. But if you were a Rad or a Storm or a Sonic, would you even have the option of using Aid Self?
On point 2, I have to disagree. My Mind/FF/Stone farms basically the same mission. 7 Man unyielding Nemisis. Not only am I not paticularly concerned about Vengeance, I'm not particularly concerned about _stacking_ Vengeance. I will say, however, she kills only 1 group at a time, not 3 at a time.
As to the idea of team support, once you've come to the realization that you can survive a team wipe of that magnitude, it's not too far of a jump to realize you don't need a team. Once you've come to that understanding, the nature of playing FF changes drastically, even on teams.
Edit:
[ QUOTE ]
The nature of having a 'fire and forget' primary that leaves you a lot of time to play with your secondary likely shouldn't be thought of as anything other than a variant of powerset interaction design. It's not good or bad, it's just a different choice, and the FF implementation and the general secondary implementations available have proven to be far from ineffective with this variant in play.
[/ QUOTE ]
I wasn't questioning FF's playstyle. I was questioning the effectiveness of Defender secondaries. FF playstyle comes into the picture only because it allows you plenty of time to work with those secondaries.
As I see it, playing an FF Defender you have one of two choices. You can use your other FF powers along with your secondaries and greatly reduce the effectiveness of the secondary due to the scatter from Knockback. Or you can simply ignore the other FF powers and use your secondary by themselves.
In other ATs with FF, you're not forced to make this choice. The attacks all work with Knockback.
Clan_Jericho :
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what you thought you were proving.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nothing more than what the video shows. Staying alive using FF against 3 groups in a 7 man unyielding mission using Chaos control and Hibernation.
Not staying in PFF means I can also use other attacks. Had I wanted to, I could have beaten all three of those groups. Chaos control is a key part to being able to do that.
BurningChick:
[ QUOTE ]
but there's still room for Castle to surprise us -- like having the power amp up its damage against AVs, an area where FF is traditionally weak.
[/ QUOTE ]
Traditionally weak _other_ than the fact it provides the best team protection in the game, especially when combined with Manuevers.
That combo is just seriously sick, and is a perversion of gameplay mechanics. - Excelsio
The Infernal Challenge
Building a WarTroller
Troller Damage