Defenders vs Controller Disparity.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Why should these classes have inferior damage to the Tanker?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because, as previously stated, Tankers do not get damage buff powers such as Enervating Field or Siphon Power.

This is the way it currently is. Base damage modifiers are as follows: (for simplicity, I am posting the higher of melee or ranged damage)

Blasters 1.125
Scrappers 1.125
Dominators 1.05
Stalkers 1.00
Tankers 0.80
Brutes 0.75
Corruptors 0.75
Defenders 0.65
Controllers 0.55
Masterminds 0.55

Note that ALL ATs with Buff/Debuff sets are at the bottom of this list, and have a damage mod less than 0.76. All of the ATs at the top of this list do not have access to Buff/Debuff sets, and most have a damage scale of at least 1.0. (Only Brutes and Tankers are lower) This was not always true, Stalkers and Doms used to have a damage scale of 0.9 and 0.75 respectively, but the recent changes have brought them more in line with the other damage dealing ATs.

The fact is, Defenders and Corruptors do NOT have less damage than a Tanker. With a mere 20% boost to damage, a Defender would have the equivalent of 0.78 damage, and a Corruptor (adjusted for the Corr's lower buffing strength) would have 0.86. Most Rads and Kins are able to produce much more of a buff than 20%, and that's probably about what a Dark or TA would produce. So Defenders on average have a little less damage than a Tanker (in the area of around 2% less) while Corruptors do more than a Tanker, but less than a Dominator.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mmm that is why my Storm/Dark Defender does so poorly, her dark powers are an ACC debuff, which is ineffectual against anything higher than a LT. The Hurricane from the storm side, is what really keeps me alive, but again it does little to increase my damage or reduce their resistance or damage. On the other hand my icestorm does reduce resistance but not significantly and the creatueds tipically ignores the slow and moves out pretty quickly to render the debuff to a marginal useful level.

But I can see how the damage on a Kin be increased, or the resistance of a target against a rad have the damage improvement effect mentioned above. Sadly not all Defender build choices have the unusual combat benefits as Kin and Rads get. Perhaps the Developers should look at the damage nurf penalty for Defenders in a case by case basis, such as Energy and Dark Defenders should get a base damage increase since they really do not have leveraging debuffs to be used as part of the attack. Also a flag system could be implemented where the damage nurf is varied by primaries, that is a 10% damage nurf for Stormies, Force Fields, while perhaps a 35% damage debuf for Kins and Rads. Sonics for instance could have a damage nurf of 20% since they tend to fall in between the no debuff and the total debuff classes. Only a suggestion to make this part not so much "on or off" and allow for the natural game variety with out over due punishment.

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
Mmm that is why my Storm/Dark Defender does so poorly, her dark powers are an ACC debuff, which is ineffectual against anything higher than a LT.

[/ QUOTE ]

What?

[ QUOTE ]
icestorm does reduce resistance but not significantly

[/ QUOTE ]
In addition to UberGuy's quote and some other gems, please tell me you were being sarcastic?

Didn't read the whole thread so I appologize if what I'm about to write has been said.

IMO, the whole problem with Defenders is the perception of identity. What is a Defender supposed to do? Let me expand by breaking down the general purpose of each AT:

Tanker purpose - Draw and hold the attention of the baddies, staying on your feet so the rest of the team is in less danger. If you do good damage it's a bonus to solo'ing, but you're survivability will let you win most fights even if you're low damage.

Blaster - Make large BOOMS so the baddies fall down. Doing it fast is a bonus since you don't have much inherent defense.

Scrapper - Flip out and kill stuff, mostly in close range. Can't do that if you're dazed, or weak to incoming damage so you get "enough" damage mitigation to win the fight most of the time. A few too many hits puts you down much quicker than most Tankers, so you do more damage than most Tankers.

Controllers - In charge of keeping the baddies out of the fight all together. Hold them, daze them, sleep them, whatever, all the while doing decent, but compounding damage that adds up quickly. If need be you've got ways to make the baddies weaker and yourself/your team stronger.

Defenders - You defend your team by making the baddies weaker, making your teammates stronger, and dealing damage. While playing solo, you're AT identity is lost as evidenced by your inherent doing nothing for you, and on teams your damage is considered "extra", not necessary, often causing you to get "type-cast" into your primary only, which you share most options for with Controllers.

When we look at Controller vs Defender purely by identity, the Controller will come out to appear as a better on teams since they can effect more baddies and just as many team members. Their abilites to effectively remove baddies from the fight puts them in direct competion with Tankers and Defenders. Solo, these same abilities make playing much safer and often just as fast, if not faster than Tankers and Defenders.

I'd argue that the problem is not just with Defenders, but also Controllers. A while back, Controllers felt that THEY were the ones that couldn't solo becuase their damage was so weak. At that point Defenders had a small solo advantage, but the problem of teaming was always there. Then came containment damage which took away the one thing that could have been argued to be in Defenders' favor... having a damaging secondary. Suddenly Controllers had a primary that could dish out hold/immob's/stuns/pets AND fair damage, plus having the support secondaries of Defenders. this tipped the balance squarely in favor of Controllers.

So how do we fix it, if we decide that it needs fixing?

I think that the first thing that needs to be recognized is that Defenders are a support AT. I'm sorry, but that seems to be the design. As such, we should not assume great soloability. Still, soloing should be possible, and right now it is.

Second, even though Defenders are support, that doesn't mean that the inherent should do NOTHING for us when solo. Why should we not be able to defend ourselves as ferociously as we do our team? Maybe an inherent accuracy bonus since we don't have to "watch" all of our teammates... Or a damage boost when solo, with similar explanation...? I don't know, but the inherent must be looked at.

Third, I think that Controller would need to be looked at. Their effectiveness seems to be higher on control/damage/supprt than almost any Defender combo. Something needs to be tweeked down.

There was a recent proposal, in another thread (I think) to have Vig. be a scaling Endurance Discount or Endurance Recovery boost.

i.e. the lower the blue bar gets, either the less End it takes to use their powers, OR the more End they recover with each tick.

Functionally, quite similar to what the Defender already has, while being viable in all situations a Defender would find themself in.

I'm not sure if that would really improve the Defender's lot in life, but I don't think it would overpower the AT...

...unless making Stamina truely optional would be considered overpowered?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
icestorm does reduce resistance but not significantly

[/ QUOTE ]
In addition to UberGuy's quote and some other gems, please tell me you were being sarcastic?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's nice to dream.

[ QUOTE ]
C) Defenders inherent is extremely bad and needs looking at again by the Devs. It has zero affect when solo. It has zero effect for some powersets such as a forcefield defender who keeps everyone at 100% heath. It is completely reliant upon your teammates and their (in)ability.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the few things I have always been displeased about is how the devs treat the defender AT. In many ways it always seemed like the AT was a last second addition. I know the inherent was made up without much thought.

In my best Kanye West impersonation "The devs don't care about defender people"

[ QUOTE ]
There was a recent proposal, in another thread (I think) to have Vig. be a scaling Endurance Discount or Endurance Recovery boost.

i.e. the lower the blue bar gets, either the less End it takes to use their powers, OR the more End they recover with each tick.

Functionally, quite similar to what the Defender already has, while being viable in all situations a Defender would find themself in.

I'm not sure if that would really improve the Defender's lot in life, but I don't think it would overpower the AT...

...unless making Stamina truely optional would be considered overpowered?

[/ QUOTE ]
It was my suggestion earlier in this thread (at the end of a "defenders are fine" post) of using the current endurance discount available but basing it off of the endurance bar (similar to defiance 1.0 being based off of hp); it would be useful solo or teamed, and would be the most useful when you need it the absolute most.

It also would encourage an active playstyle, since you're not likely to run out of endurance by blasting in between the buffs, debuffs, and heals. It also wouldn't change any sort of performance benchmark other than longevity - no increased buffs/debuffs for RO teams, no extra damage for the sake of extra damage unless you account for the easier time handling multiple AoEs in your attack chain.

I don't really see any downsides to it, since I don't think that making Stamina irrelevant counts as a problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I think when GR hits and Defenders suddenly get replaced with Corruptors, Defenders will get adjustments which will then make Corruptors the bottom of the heap, which will make the villain population cry "Devs hate villains!"

So, then they will buff Corruptors as well, but then Blasters will say something about their damage being too similar to Corruptors and Dominators while not providing much anything else to the team so Blasters will be buffed up again and all support classes will be nerfed down.

This is when the Scrappers will catch up and make calculations of how much DPS a Blaster can make and with how much investment in certain IO sets and then see that a Blaster will do more damage and survive better than a Scrapper.

This calls for Scrapper buffs, which will make Stalkers question their boss killing ability compared to Blasters and Scrappers, so they get buffed as well.

And Stalkers should under no circumstances be better than Brutes so they have to buff Brutes as well.

Then we have a bunch of damage toons running around pwning content while the support toons are left in the dust because they are not needed. Also Tankers.

Then hits the date 21st December 2012 and THE WORLD DIES!

Well, how about this, just off the top of my head:

Give Defenders an inherent ability to ignore a chunk of the enemy's damage mitigation. That way the Defender's damage per second potential of their secondary blasts can still be left at a low level, but they have a guarantee (which no other class would have) of getting damage through.

This could be implemented in a minor way by saying 5% of all Defender attack damage is unresistable. Or this could be implemented from a more wrath-of-god viewpoint by saying 5% of the damage of the Defender's attack is converted into a mitigation-scheme-agnostic max-health-reduction for 120 seconds, (like how the Vanguard's Curse of Weariness power reduces max end). These numbers are certainly tunable; they could even be tied into the Defender's current Vigilance bonus.

Certainly this kind of mechanic doesn't sound all that 'defendery' in story terms, but on the other hand guardian angels have been known to go avenging from time to time.

The real difference is not damage, or AoE damage.

It's endurance efficiency.

A controller with containment is getting nearly twice the DPE as the defender. This is lessened in the blast sets that have AIM (namely every set but Dark Blast and Psychic Blast), and also lessened by the sets that either have some endurance recovery or offensive boost.

Most sets have these, and in fact both Empathy and Force Fields (the two most common primaries stated when talking about lack of damage) have either an endurance recovery power or an offensive boost (RA and Repulsion Bomb or whatever its called). However, in the case of Empathy, it just doesn't have anything that can be used most of the time. You can basically only use a very gimpy heal for most of the time solo, and for a little bit of the time you can't run out of endurance. Even with RA, the set just doesn't have anything that is useful on an every other mob basis.

Force Fields, on the other hand, give you plenty of defensive boosts for solo content (I'm talking about the knockback tools mostly, and Dispersion Bubble only to a small extent for the mez protection). It's only effective offensive boost comes in the form of a damage power with slight stun and knockdown (off the top of my head). Even though it is nice, it just doesn't give the set enough of a boost to overcome the amount of endurance needed to defeat a target. Sets with either +damage or -resistance gain much more because they make the defender more efficient.

For this reason, the main offenders of the "low damage" stereotype are Empathy, Force Fields, DB, and PB. When combined together you tend to get a character that uses a large amount of endurance to defeat a target, compared to other sets. Any plan that tries to rebalance defenders must do so with these sets in mind.

My solution would involve either giving the sets a flat endurance discount (see Claws for scrappers), or gives the blast sets an optional Aim power. If you take the latter solution, I would probably say to give a choice between Aim and another power, and taking one would lock you out of the other. Prime spots for this are either the snipe, or Dark Pit and Scramble Thoughts. You could also give Life Drain in the Dark Blast set a damage bonus, so that it is more equal to the melee attack Siphon Life (which was recently upped in damage).

With AR coming in I16, I foresee it also being highly endurance inefficient. That say may also get a flat endurance discount, or an optional Aim power for either the snipe or Beanbag.

I don't really want to see much changed in the primary sets, because both Empathy and Forcefields excel in a teaming environment. I could see giving Vigiliance a bonus for soloing, which would also help the other sets.

Any wide-scale defender rebalancing is less necessary if you follow some of those suggestions. I believe it would take much less work to simply up the efficiency of these powersets than to raise damage or try to balance the endurance efficiency of all sets (and probably lower the -resistance in Sonic, change Radiation to standarized values for its single target blasts, increase the effectiveness of Voltaic Sentinel in Electric, etc).

TLDR version:

It's not defenders, it's Empathy/DB, Empathy/PB, Forcefields/DB, and Forcefields/PB. Fix THEM.

I propose that Vigilance offers a Mezz resistance and a End Discount effect whilst the team is up the creek without a paddle. Something along the lines of having 2 different effects dependent on how the team is. Solo the closer to low health you are not only do you have a end discount but you become more resistant to Control effects.

Controllers look alright to me.

Edit: Normal Inherent in PvP.

Baby steps, I'd say. First make the changes that need to be made whether defenders are underpowered or not.

Like making defenders the best at regen buffs & debuffs, recharge buffs & debuffs, recovery buffs & debuffs, endurance drain in PvE, and buff/debuff power boost effects. Like making sniper blasts worthwhile. Like not so heavily penalizing control powers for being outside a control set. Like having damage+debuff, damage+heal, and damage+endmod combination HOs and IOs. Like eliminating the downtime when reapplying unstackable buffs and debuffs.