Defenders vs Controller Disparity.

Your numbers are off (I'm going by my spreadsheet)

+4 con minions have a 70% chance to hit without any modifications
A 31.3% ToHit Debuff, with the purple patch, brings them down to around 49%
Without the purple patch (acting just like defense in the case of minions, it'd be less effective against higher-ranked mobs due to their innate debuff resistance), it would be 26%, so a little over twice as effective.

The point remains, though.
I do agree it'd be too powerful when you start stacking things.

I just like pointing things out.

Let's back up. Comparing hypothetical non-scaling debuffs to the current scaling debuffs won't get us anywhere, because we don't agree on the assumption that scaling debuffs are balanced as they are. You see the vast difference as horrible brokenness, I see the vast difference as a badly needed fix.

So let's get more concrete with this hypothetical. Apples to apples.

Let's say debuffs no longer scale down against +4s. Two AE 54 boss farm teams are recruiting. On team A, there is an ice tanker, two rad defenders, a kinetic, and four blaster/scrapper/whatevers, so, barring any slip-ups, the entire +4 boss farm's aggro is trained on one target they're too debuffed to kill, with plenty of SB and Fulcrum Shift to go around, plus a little extra gravy from AM and defense and resistance debuffs. On team B, there is a granite tanker, two empaths, a kinetic, and four blaster/scrapper/whatevers, so, barring any slip-ups, the entire +4 boss farm's aggro is trained on one target who's too buffed to kill, with plenty of SB and Fulcrum Shift to go around, plus a little extra gravy from Fort, RAs and AB.

Is team A more or less broken than team B? Will it clear the farm in 1 fewer minute? 1 more minute? With fewer deaths? With more deaths? ... Too close to call?

(With apologies for using AE 54 boss farms for the thought experiment. It's purely for experimental convenience, as a simpler model for more civilized activities.)

Wait Tar Patch debuffs damage? i'm guessing you meant Twilight Grasp instead of Tar Patch even though they're very different in mechanics, one being a dropped autohit AoE patch and the other a ST ranged debuff that requires a tohit roll.

According to RedTomax: TG -12.5% + DN -37.5 = -50% damage before any rank or level modifiers.

So the change being proposed is that Defender debuffs would ignore both level and rank scaling while retaining current values? i agree that it appears a bit overpowered with current debuff values. On the other hand current mechanics make things like tohit debuffs almost useless against AV rank enemies and damage resistance resists damage debuffs. Would adjusting the values for debuff reductions due to rank and level scaling for Defenders to make debuffs somewhat better against higher rank/level enemies be reasonable?

No, AVs are designed to be hard. They were toughened up in Issue 3 because they were too trivial, removing or reducing the purple patch restrictions for defenders only would only reverse those changes and wouldn't help defenders solo any easier since the issue isn't support values but base damage.

No, I mean Tar Patch. Damage debuffs are resisted by damage resistance. Any resistance debuffs therefore directly buff any damage debuffs you have.

-37.5% * 1.3 =~ -50%

Ah, hmm. i keep forgetting about those quirks of the engine. So that means that TG makes it even better.

Woah. Maybe this won't make me so lazy about putting on DN (rather than FS - TP - AoE - AoE ...)

Now if only it would make resistance less marginalized, what with sonic and thermal buffs being near-extinct, most kins skipping ID, most stormies and dark defenders not slotting their stealth auras for resistance, etc. Since resistance = damage debuff resistance. Sure, damage debuffs aren't very common in either PvE or PvP, but with red and blue ink men, yeesh! It's nice to have some resistance in those special cases.

MrQuizzles:

I'd leave the ice tanker in. I have serious doubts about rad defenders surviving alphas from level 54 bosses, even with tohit reduced to 11%. The team would have to be lightning quick with the damage debuffs, and with heals from time to time. Even if the defenders survive the alphas, the ice tanker is good for the experimental model, since he'll contribute the same crowd control as the granite tanker does, keeping the bosses close together, slowed and range debuffed, for happy AoE blaster/scrapper/whatevers.

Also, how many minutes faster does the debuff-driven team clear the farm than the tank-and-heal team? Since brokenness implies a discrepancy in rewards, and I hope to gosh nobody's suggesting that Castle nerfs granite and empathy to bring them down to the current level of debuffers and mezzers against level 54 bosses. :yikes:

Re: Debuffs having higher base values than buffs

There are incongruities between buffs and debuffs that make straight number comparisons problematic. Some favoring buffs: having to reapply every spawn vs. having to reapply every 4 minutes, aggro vs. aggro free and usable between fights, mob resistances, and sometimes tohit checks. Some favoring debuffs: usefulness soloing vs. only useful on teams, covering all damage and defense types vs. covering them piece by piece, and sometimes stackability. So with all the incongruities, the -31.25% tohit on Radiation Infection may or may not be out of whack compared to the +15%+5%=+20% defense from cold shields and Arctic Fog.

IIRC resistance powers granting resistance to damage debuffs only apply to the damage types they resist. Which means my Dark/Ice Defender, even with Mind Over Body, has no significant resistance to having her cold damage debuffed. However, it will help against damage debuffs for teammates who use smashing, lethal, negative, energy and especially psy damage.

The problem with the Defender is that the devs have departed greatly from the original concept of the Defender and as a result, the AT is kinda lost in space.

Let me explain:

At one time the Defender was supposed to be a kind off trade-off between a Tanker and a Blaster. That is why the Defender secondaries aligned with those of the Blaster. The Defender Primary was made with debuffs and other survivability powers to make up for the excellent resistances and defensive bonuses Tankers receive. In fact originally, the Defenders had more hit points than the Blasters and Controllers. With the Developers need to force team play over solo play in the game, the Defender was the primary AT targeted into submission, and frankly their primary power set, kinda set them up for it. The first thing that went away for the Defedners was their extra hit points. The next thing was the degradation of their secondary power set to be inferior in base damage to those of a tanker; and the final struck against Defenders was the introduction of Spammed Status Effects and their having absolutely no defense against it. Ergo the birth of a totally team dependent AT concept.

I would like to mention, there are exceptions such as the Kin, Rad, and Sonic whose powers do effectively debuff the enemy sufficiently to make their damage significant, but on the other hand the other Defender AT build's does not have this pseudo damage enhancement capability, and are severely punished by the community and devs who decide what enhancements the Defender should have solely on the exceptional builds and circumstances.

What I would like to see happen for the Defender, and other so called "support classes" should also be reviewed from a solo-ability perspective, and not be punished cause they help "others" in a group; Is for Defenders to return to their hybrid concept as originally intended. So yes, while a Kin Defender may match a the killing ability of a Blaster once debuffs have been applied, many of the other Defender builds will not be Blaster class damage at any time, and should have definetely more damage ability than a tanker, regardless of build to include Empaths. With the advent of Spammed Status Effects, the Defender is at a severe disadvantage when compared to other Hero ATs, in fact a Controller can go Psi Epic and get Status Effect protections; sadly that courtesy was not afforded to the Defenders, why I ask myself? But since I am proposing we return to the tank/blaster Hybrid; the Defedner does get a damage resistance power choice thru the epics, perhaps those "armor" types could be enhanced to also provide Status Effect Protection, perhaps a MAG 4 level, which is less than half than the 12 the Tanker receives. Also I would like to see the return of the added base hit points for Defenders to be in between those of a tanker and a blaster.

I believe a simple reduction of the penalty employed against Defenders's damage of 0.6 to 0.9 (Tankers get a 0.8) would solve the damage issue, and adding the MAG 4 Status effect resist to the Epic armors, would do quite a great of difference to the Defender, and I would expect those to be minor code changes.

In a way, the greatest challenge by Champions On Line, is that there are no classes, and therefore there are no built in deficiencies. By allowing all ATs in the game to Solo efficiently would go a long way in preventing players from CoX leaving to Champions On LIne or DC Heroes.

Hugs

Stormy

I think I give up. Hell Veats get great mitigation, Status prtoection, and scale 1 damage.

Why not defenders and corruptors too? Damage mods - .9 for defedners, 1 for corruptors. Let both get mez protection from epics! Woo Hooo! Throw in scrapper level hitpoints FTW!!!!!

FYI, Defender ranged damage, which is the damage scale used by the vast majority of Defenders the vast majority of the time, is 0.65.

No offense, but that is a fairly ridiculous suggestion. Defenders getting a 0.9 damage scale is far more likely.

Nice F.U.D. to wrap up your post.

Seriously, we're talking about people who want to leave so much that not being able to solo their Defender fast enough is the straw that breaks their back. I don't think there's any great loss there, to either the community at large or those players.

I agree being able to solo regardless of AT choice is a great idea, however i think things have gone too far in this game to change perceptions of what each AT 'should' be. People are so set into this view of the defender as the buffer, the support toon, who cannot deal too much damage.

There is of course a genuine issue if defenders start doing too much damage in a vacuum, since they also have access to the best buffs and debuffs in the game - which would make playing a blaster less desirable in many players logic.

I think there is a serious fear that defenders are some kind of tankmage in waiting and that is what keeps them gimped while solo in many cases. Tbh, lets face it, the way buffs and debuffs work in this game, however poor a defender may or may not be solo, you put 8 of them on a team and there is very little that compares. 8 scrappers, tanks, blasters, brutes, Warshades, Stalkers or PBs arent in the same league.

Buffs and debuffs > all in this game. Thats the blessing and curse of the defender and what keeps them where they are in terms of solo damage output.

Speaking of VEATs, I keep wondering why HEATs suck so much. I did a buff/stat comparison side-by-side and VEATs are pretty much superior to khelds in everything. My widow's BU is +80% damage, while my PB only gets +72% for some reason. My widow buffs more from powers like Maneuvers, and gets more out of powers like CJ. She has mez protection, and my PB doesn't unless she turns into a mutant rhino. Think it would go a long way into making khelds more playable if the little stats like those were adjusted, and they actually had mez protection in human form..

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Define efficiently.

I'll bet that your definition differs from mine and both yours and mine differ from the devs. All because "efficiently" is subjective and not objective.

It's the ability to turn into a mutant rhino that balances that out. It's the Kheldians' version of Domination. The human form is a bit weaker because of that. Not that there's anything wrong with playing a Human Form Kheldian, but you know unless you've got a team behind you you're going to be a bit weaker than everyone else. (Well, everyone except maybe a non-offense boosting Defender )

Kheldians make themselves stronger the more people are on their team, VEATs make everyone else stronger. They're opposites.

True. I firmly believe that all power sets, especially kinetics, should be balanced and tied in with the general strengthening of the Defender AT. Any single power which can increase the damage output of a whole team many times over is so overpowered and broken it's just plain ridiculous (I'm looking at you Fulcrum Shift). The damage boost it yields should be more than halved. As a compensation Siphon Speed could gain AoE slow to afford the set with a measure of defense. Speed Boost, Increase Density and Inertial Reduction should get their respective durations doubled to make the set less of a chore to play in teams.

Anyway, nothing of this has stopped Controllers from becoming tankmages. Passive personal defenses can easily be softcapped, but who needs defenses anyway when the enemies are not fighting back most of the time? Status Protection can be had, the damage output with containment is plain ludicrous (who could ever think that it would be balanced?) even without taking their secondaries into consideration. VEATs are no slouches either with great damage, superb defense and team support/utility to boot. My faceplant perfected blaster died a silent death seeing all the goodies the villains were given.

Ultimately though, the change needed for balance is so massive and the developer ability and willingness to do so, so lacking that I'll most likely jump ship once a certain other superhero MMO is released.

Oh, I see many/most Controllers outdamaging blasters. Among Blasters only Fire and Archery can even hope to compete with the likes of Plant and Fire Controllers. To rub it in, Controllers have vastly better survivability and team support rivaling Defenders.

My Defender would kill and die to get an inherent as good as Scourge! Don't even compare these two. Containment is vastly overpowered, I'm shocked developers ever could think it would be balanced.

Containment is only vastly overpowered when combined with kinetics. The rest of the time it's just about right. The real problem is that controllers have kinetics available to them as a secondary. That was probably the biggest, can't really be fixed now, developer mistake.

Coming to think of it, I haven't seen a non-Fire or Archery Blaster in the LGTF and ITF teams I've been on with my brute.


Compared to Vigilance, Scourge is indeed awesome. However, Containment sneers at Scourge at effectiveness.
However, Containment will shoot Vigilance's mother, seduce her sister, make babies, which Vigilance will have to raise due to Containment being busy breaking the game. And then those babies, no matter how much Vigilance loved them, will trick the house for themselves and let Containment move in while kicking Vigilance out.

I agree to a point. Giving Kinetics to Controllers was a huge mistake, but it can easily be fixed. If there is a will, there is a way.

As mentioned above, Fulcrum Shift is brokenly overpowered. The extreme level of offense in the set was probably designed to offset the weak defense. However, a Controller has powers that provide excellent defense. Consequently, they won't feel the achilles heel of the set and only reap the VAST benefits.

Kinetics must be adressed as a whole. The power of Fulcrum Shift should be significantly lowered. Simultaneously, other powers should be boosted. Siphon Speed could be changed from single target to AoE (slow/-recharge) while keeping its self effect as is. The duration of ally only buffs should be increased.

As a result, Kinetic Defenders would lose in offensive capability. As they should. But get some defense to compensate. Kinetic Controllers would not benefit as much as Defenders from the above Siphon Speed change.

The damage cap of all ATs should be lowered. Controllers (and Brutes I guess), mostly so.

With these changes, and buff to Defender inherent, we would have a much more level playingfield.

nevermind that controller and corruptor fulcrum shift are currently using defender values. Also Kinetics completely gets screwed going from corr/troller <-> defender even if fulcrum shift functioned as it was intended. The Transfusion and Transference powers are appropriately higher but heals and +end are rather meaningless upgrades in value when overhealing and overending are frequent. Siphon Power and Fulcrum shift are the only other powers that differ and have meaning (when the difference is there as it currently isn't for FS). Speed Boost and Siphon Speed are indentical on all ATs.