Defenders vs Controller Disparity.
By
Adelie,
Posted on: 2009-07-20 04:50 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Wow!
I seen some great how to help the Defender replies, once more wow!
I love the idea of changing their inherent, where more players in the group the primary is boosted, less players their secondary is boosted.
I like the idea of having the damage output of the defender upped to the same level of corruptors. Frankly, for all the frailties imposed on the defender, should they not do more damage than the Tanker?
Another interesting concept is to allow Defenders to affect themselves, this would be good when soloing, but perhaps a bit not-so-good when in groups cause the defender may be too much offender minded instead of being a support class. On the other hand, I see no sense in forcing players to play in a certain manner.
As Gecko mentioned in his post, he showed the various classes damage modifiers, and showed tankers with an 80%, while defenders were at a lower percentage. I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role. Also I have a very hard time buying the concept of a villain that prefers to make others look better then her, by boosting them and not herself, that sounds actually heroic to me.
I would weaken Mastermind's own attacks to be tanker base, they have their pets for the real damage.
The other classes are fine, I would bump up the damage of Scrapers and Stalkers a bit too.
Hugs
Stormy
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Just out of curiosity....
If fire control didn't have imps, and illusion didn't have phantom army, would we be having this discussion?
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I seriously doubt it.
Spines/ D A lvl 50 Scrap, stone/wm lvl 50 tank, Kat/reg lvl 50 Scrap
Grav/Kin lvl 50 Cont, Fire/Enegry lvl 50 Blast
Warshade lvl 50, PB lvl 39, nightwidow lvl 50, crab lvl 42
plant/thorns lvl 50 dom, ice/fire lvl 40 dom, grav/nrg lvl 41 dom
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I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role.
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I don't think you understand what you're saying. First off Corruptors aren't anywhere close to being like blasters, nor should they be. Secondly, you're completely ignoring the scourge inherent and the damage buffs and -res debuffs in support sets.
An appropriate buff to defender damage would be to raise it from 0.65 to 0.70. Pushing the envelope would be raising corruptor from 0.75 to 0.80 and defender from 0.65 to 0.75. Raising defender damage to 1.0 and corruptor to 1.125 is utter madness.
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I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role.
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I don't think you understand what you're saying. First off Corruptors aren't anywhere close to being like blasters, nor should they be. Secondly, you're completely ignoring the scourge inherent and the damage buffs and -res debuffs in support sets.
An appropriate buff to defender damage would be to raise it from 0.65 to 0.70. Pushing the envelope would be raising corruptor from 0.75 to 0.80 and defender from 0.65 to 0.75. Raising defender damage to 1.0 and corruptor to 1.125 is utter madness.
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I think Corruptors and Defenders are close enough as-is that I'd hate to see a Defender damage buff without an accompanying Corruptor one. 0.7 and 0.8 would be somewhat more reasonable than having them only be 0.05 away from eachother.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role.
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I don't think you understand what you're saying. First off Corruptors aren't anywhere close to being like blasters, nor should they be. Secondly, you're completely ignoring the scourge inherent and the damage buffs and -res debuffs in support sets.
An appropriate buff to defender damage would be to raise it from 0.65 to 0.70. Pushing the envelope would be raising corruptor from 0.75 to 0.80 and defender from 0.65 to 0.75. Raising defender damage to 1.0 and corruptor to 1.125 is utter madness.
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I think Corruptors and Defenders are close enough as-is that I'd hate to see a Defender damage buff without an accompanying Corruptor one. 0.7 and 0.8 would be somewhat more reasonable than having them only be 0.05 away from eachother.
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the support advantage of defender is about 10% less than the damage advantage of corruptors. Unless of course you look at a broken set like sonic blast.
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I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role.
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I don't think you understand what you're saying. First off Corruptors aren't anywhere close to being like blasters, nor should they be. Secondly, you're completely ignoring the scourge inherent and the damage buffs and -res debuffs in support sets.
An appropriate buff to defender damage would be to raise it from 0.65 to 0.70. Pushing the envelope would be raising corruptor from 0.75 to 0.80 and defender from 0.65 to 0.75. Raising defender damage to 1.0 and corruptor to 1.125 is utter madness.
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Why should these classes have inferior damage to the Tanker?
Stormy
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I would weaken Mastermind's own attacks to be tanker base, they have their pets for the real damage.
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Masterminds already do less damage than Tankers, in fact they do less damage than Defenders. They have 0.55 damage scale, just like Controllers.
Corruptors, Defenders, Controllers and Masterminds are able to boost their base damage with offensive buffs or debuffs that are found in their Buff/Debuff Sets. Thus, they have lower base damage overall than Scrappers, Tankers, Blasters, Stalkers and Dominators, which have no such self buffing capability. They do have Aim and Build Up, but these are short duration compared to what the buffers are capable of. Plus, Defenders and Corruptors get Aim TOO.
Brutes are kind of a special case, because they have low starting base damage, but Fury gives them a similar type of offensive boost as a Buff/Debuff power.
I agree with Dispari that it would probably be better to boost both Corruptors and Defenders, to 0.70 and 0.80 respectively. Since base damage of Blasters has been raised to 1.125, and Dominators now do more damage too, there is room for the other two ranged ATs to get a damage boost.
Don't forget, however, that Scourge does on the average of a 10% boost, with up to 20% against Bosses and AVs. Defenders could have as much as 5% more base damage than a Corruptor, and still be tied with Corruptors for the amount of damage done. (Although that would not be acceptable unless Corruptors got the same strength buffs and debuffs, or similarly varied their buffs according to their or the Defender Inherent)
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Why should these classes have inferior damage to the Tanker?
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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.
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the support advantage of defender is about 10% less than the damage advantage of corruptors. Unless of course you look at a broken set like sonic blast.
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Again, don't forget Scourge, unless you plan to give Defenders an Inherent which does about the same additional damage as Scourge.
qr
lower controller damage cap to 300%. It is currently too high in conjunction with containment.
This will have minimal impact on the vast majority of solo controllers while ensuring that their team damage is not infringing upon defenders in high buff scenarios.
I'd also find a way to make defender buff/debuff scale up relative to the number of teammates so that it is clearly better in teams that all the other support AT's. Basically a small scaling powerboost effect.
Whatever extra damage corrs do outside of their buff/debuff:damage ratio would quickly disappear relative to defenders if their buff/debuff increased in strength as teams size did.
If Defs are intended to be the "team" AT then make that intention a clear reality.
I also have a solution to address their solo'ing woes a bit, but admittedly it could result in some whines from people that can't grasp the idea of varying performance relative to team size. (which in such a casual game, might be a lot)
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lower controller damage cap to 300%. It is currently too high in conjunction with containment.
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Or, give Defenders a Critical that can break their damage cap.
Or, change Containment to a damage boost so it won't break the damage cap.
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I also have a solution to address their solo'ing woes a bit, but admittedly it could result in some whines from people that can't grasp the idea of varying performance relative to team size. (which in such a casual game, might be a lot)
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My guess is that you would suggest decreasing damage boost in reverse proportion to the team-based End boost. Or whatever boost you replace it with. So solo you get a damage boost, but on a team it goes away.
I have thought the same, myself, but to quote Positron "A buff given under one condition could be considered a penalty under the opposite condition." So it could be argued this would discourage Defenders from teaming, since they can do just as well solo, and will lose their damage on a team.
I'm afraid good ideas must be weighted against the people who will insist you are just calling for nerfs. Plus, there's the fact that Controllers aren't really all that out of line, now that Blasters, Stalkers and Dominators have all gotten strong damage buffs.
The devs are continuing to change the game, which unfortunately changes the balance for those ATs that they have not yet gotten around to changing. Whether that is their intention or not.
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the support advantage of defender is about 10% less than the damage advantage of corruptors. Unless of course you look at a broken set like sonic blast.
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Again, don't forget Scourge, unless you plan to give Defenders an Inherent which does about the same additional damage as Scourge.
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I really don't see where that 10% figure comes from, other than a completely made up number that has no factual basis in reality.
There was a thread about quantifying Scourge a while back. In a "best-case" scenario (which isn't the absolute best-case, because not everyone is fighting AVs or GMs - mobs with a huge number of hit points, so that at less than 10% health doubling every hit still isn't overkill) Scourge was providing roughly a 15% boost in damage, with a larger effect on weaker hits because you end up with less overkill damage. Against minions it frequently had no effect whatsoever (due to the overkill factor - it kicked in late enough that the base damage of the attack killed them without Scourge), and iirc was around 5-10% against Lieutenants. So against the huge majority of PvE content, it's a 10% boost or less.
Corruptors have a few outlier powers - usually using pseudopets that weren't already created weaker for Controllers - that have the same debuff numbers as Defenders (they also have a few outlier powers that do more than Blaster damage because it was created as a copy, and then Scourge was added on top). But for the most part, they're doing 75-80% of the strength of a Defender's buffs or debuffs, and doing a base of 15% more damage (with a 10% Scourge buff it's roughly 26% more damage). So, 25% weaker buffs and debuffs, and 25% more damage. So where is this mythical 10% disparity? That's not even taking into account the higher mez modifiers for Defenders (take a look, they have Dominator base mez durations) which help them out in survival - after all, if you're going to talk about Controllers getting to leverage better survivability due to their controls helping then what about Fearsome Stare, Choking Cloud, EMP, Freeze Ray, BFR, Cosmic Burst, Dark Pit, Thunder Clap, Siren's Song, Screech, Stunning Shot, Will Domination, the secondary effects on most of the nukes being holds or stun, and probably more powers that I forgot? They all help Defenders more than Corruptors. Or are those conveniently ignored when talking about Corruptors because they don't support the "wah wah wah my Defender needs a buff" point of view and only valid when comparing to Controllers?
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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There was a thread about quantifying Scourge a while back. In a "best-case" scenario [...] Scourge was providing roughly a 15% boost in damage, [...] Against minions it frequently had no effect whatsoever
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Starsman's estimate for the average Scourge effect in that thread is as follows:
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Minions average +7% damage.
Lts average +11% damage
Bosses average +17.7% damage
EB average +19.7% damage
AV average +20.3% damage
GM average +20.7% damage
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He reported no boost against minions ONLY for attacks of more than 12 second recharge and 2.12 base damage. Due to the nature of his testing, that meant he was comparing to using ONLY that attack. Such would be totally irrelevant in actual gameplay. Given that if you are aware of Scourge and can anticipate it you can usually choose to use your weakest attacks to "finish off" the foe, I would say Starsman's estimates are probably as close to actual gameplay value as you can get with a raw analysis.
So, as I said previously, about 10% average, up to 20% against Bosses and AVs.
This doesn't address the difference between Defender and Corruptor buff/debuff levels, but that is not as simple as Defender = 100%, Corruptor = 75%. In fact, it is 100%/80% for To Hit Buff/Debuffs, Dam Buff/Buffs, and Def and Res Debuffs. It is 100%/75% for Def Buffs, and Res Buffs. So really only the buffers are at 75% of a Defender, the Debuffers are at 80%. This is the same for a Controller.
It has also been calculated (I don't have those numbers myself, but would assume it's accurate) that Controllers and Corruptors have 88% of the healing of a Defender.
So, 10%, I think that's stretching it a bit, but it is not 75% of the buff/debuffs for a Corruptor. I personally would put it somewhere between 78% and 80%. Also, 0.65 compared to 0.75 is not 10% more damage, but 15.4% more damage, or counting the 10% more damage from Scourge, around 27% more damage. 0.70 compared to 0.75 would be 7% more damage, or 17.8% more with Scourge. Of course, raising both to 0.7 and 0.8 would bring the ratio between them closer to 10% as well.
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lower controller damage cap to 300%. It is currently too high in conjunction with containment.
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Or, give Defenders a Critical that can break their damage cap.
Or, change Containment to a damage boost so it won't break the damage cap.
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I personally think we have enough "critical" effects in the game and don't need to hamfist another AT with that.
The problem with a damage boost is that it is global, so it would benefit the controller until it expired, regardless of containment status and regardless of target.
ie I could contain a minion and get the benefit against a boss that is running wild.
If you toss out an aoe control you are bound to mez something at which point actually controlling targets is devalued.
The current mechanic of actually requiring a controlled target to gain benefit is fine. It is just too good in conjunction with their damage cap.
Another way to tackle the issue is to only give half containment. So instead of 10+10 you get 10+5. As an active controller player this worries me because in the pve mechanic testbed of pvp this is exactly what has been done.
I'm not fond of the latter because I think it hits all controllers rather than just reeling in some of the outliers.
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I also have a solution to address their solo'ing woes a bit, but admittedly it could result in some whines from people that can't grasp the idea of varying performance relative to team size. (which in such a casual game, might be a lot)
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My guess is that you would suggest decreasing damage boost in reverse proportion to the team-based End boost. Or whatever boost you replace it with. So solo you get a damage boost, but on a team it goes away.
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Close it would have nothing to do with vigilance though. I actually like vigilance. It would be in proportion to team members and scale inversely to the "powerboost effect" I mentioned earlier.
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I have thought the same, myself, but to quote Positron "A buff given under one condition could be considered a penalty under the opposite condition." So it could be argued this would discourage Defenders from teaming, since they can do just as well solo, and will lose their damage on a team.
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Exactly. Although Castle proposed something even more radical with regard to Dom's and it isn't exactly non-existent in the game already I mean PB's don't exactly say they are "nerfed" while solo.
My idea is that they would do a bit better than the do now while solo and a bit better than they do now while teamed. Numerically it would be a straight buff, but I'm fully aware how people would construe it, which is why I didn't go into detail on it.
It is the only solution I've seen that actually targets the fixes they require without making them too good where they don't need it.
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I'm afraid good ideas must be weighted against the people who will insist you are just calling for nerfs. Plus, there's the fact that Controllers aren't really all that out of line, now that Blasters, Stalkers and Dominators have all gotten strong damage buffs.
The devs are continuing to change the game, which unfortunately changes the balance for those ATs that they have not yet gotten around to changing. Whether that is their intention or not.
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Meh, I'm of the belief that if it is a good idea it should be pursued regardless of the peanut gallery. Opposition didn't stop them when they changed blasters, stalkers, doms, pvp, ED, GDN, AE, etc. And in some of those cases the opposition actually brought up relevant points.
If a few people (even a few thousand) scarred them off of making changes then we'd still be in i4.
As for Controllers, they remain the most powerful AT in the game, by a large margin. It is only realistic to expect that at some point they will take another swing at their knees. Defenders are also very powerful and the tweaking they require is very small. They really don't require any more damage while teamed and they really don't require any more buff/debuff while solo.
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There was a thread about quantifying Scourge a while back. In a "best-case" scenario [...] Scourge was providing roughly a 15% boost in damage, [...] Against minions it frequently had no effect whatsoever
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Starsman's estimate for the average Scourge effect in that thread is as follows:
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Minions average +7% damage.
Lts average +11% damage
Bosses average +17.7% damage
EB average +19.7% damage
AV average +20.3% damage
GM average +20.7% damage
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He reported no boost against minions ONLY for attacks of more than 12 second recharge and 2.12 base damage. Due to the nature of his testing, that meant he was comparing to using ONLY that attack.
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Didn't it also get mentioned that he was talking about unslotted attacks, which means that anything less than 1.95 scale was completely useless to use for a slotted attack given that the comparison was between damage of the attack to mob hit point levels. I ignored anything under the 1.64 mark for that reason alone - I don't play my characters unslotted, and at +2 it's effectively 1.6 for 100% slotting (or 95% with a 5% average boost from buffs).
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This doesn't address the difference between Defender and Corruptor buff/debuff levels, but that is not as simple as Defender = 100%, Corruptor = 75%. In fact, it is 100%/80% for To Hit Buff/Debuffs, Dam Buff/Buffs, and Def and Res Debuffs. It is 100%/75% for Def Buffs, and Res Buffs. So really only the buffers are at 75% of a Defender, the Debuffers are at 80%. This is the same for a Controller.
It has also been calculated (I don't have those numbers myself, but would assume it's accurate) that Controllers and Corruptors have 88% of the healing of a Defender.
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Ranged_ResDmg is 1.00 vs 0.75 (75%), there isn't a seperate modifier for buffing or debuffing resistance (the Ranged_Res_Boolean is for mez protections) and if you'd just look at Enervating Field (-30% vs -22.5%) or Increase Density (25% vs 18.75%) you'd see that it works out that way; the healing wasn't anything I ever paid attention to but the modifier is 88%. So the tohit/damage/mez protection external buffs are 80%, healing is roughly 90% for some reason, and any other meaningful buff or debuff is 75%.
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Also, 0.65 compared to 0.75 is not 10% more damage, but 15.4% more damage, or counting the 10% more damage from Scourge, around 27% more damage. 0.70 compared to 0.75 would be 7% more damage, or 17.8% more with Scourge. Of course, raising both to 0.7 and 0.8 would bring the ratio between them closer to 10% as well.
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Since I never claimed a 10% difference in offensive performance and you reached the same numbers I did, okay, but so? I did truncate instead of round, though - didn't even pay attention to the thousandths place. 
It's not a drastic difference in performance between the two, and it's in favor of the Defender until you factor in Scourge's effect on damage - even using the 80% numbers, that's a 20% difference compared to 15% for base damage.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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lower controller damage cap to 300%. It is currently too high in conjunction with containment.
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Or, give Defenders a Critical that can break their damage cap.
Or, change Containment to a damage boost so it won't break the damage cap.
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In general, I don't like intertwining base damage with the damage cap. Fundamentally speaking, the base damage elements of an archetype are supposed to express their intrinsic damage potential, and the damage cap is supposed to express their intrinsic ability to be buffed. Saying "lower the cap because they have containment/criticals" is tantamount to saying "they're designed to do a lot of damage, so make them unable to benefit from teams assistence." That may not be the direct intent, but its what the game change ultimately says in terms of the design.
If containment was delivering too much damage, it makes more sense to simply lower containment damage. There's no law that says containment must do the same amount of damage that the primary damage components of the attack do. Reducing containment to, say, 50% of primary damage would mean a fully buffed controller ends up dealing the same amount of damage that a controller with full containment and 300% damage cap would do. But it would also lower the damage of controllers below the cap.
Alternatively, if you wanted to play deeper games with containment, my original counterproposal to containment when it first came out was to make containment ~150% of primary damage but be unbuffable (i.e. Ignores Strengths and Enhancements). The original stated intent of containment was to boost lower level damage of controllers and improve soloability. A high-order containment that wasn't buffable would proportionately benefit lower level controllers more than high level ones, which I thought was the original point of containment.
At this point though, I'm not sure if such a dramatic change is justifiable. I'm not even sure if that original intent is still operative.
In any event, the real reason you don't want to travel down this road is that if controllers are knocked down to 300% because their *maximally buffed* damage intrudes on defender territory, it opens the door to blasters asking for defender damage caps to be lowered equally severely, because teams of buffed defenders intrude on their offensive territory. While I'm sure someone can nitpick the differences in situations**, that would ignore how game design precident actually works.
** And its not an argument they are guaranteed to win either: while blasters have no intrinsic archetypal design right to buff each other - the weakness most likely to be nitpicked - they are intended to be the best damage dealers in teams. To simultaneously satisfy the defender right to be the best buffers and blaster rights to be the best buffed damage dealers, the "optimal" offensive damage team should be four defenders and four blasters: eight defenders should *not* outperform that combination or else the defender archetypal requirements would be superceding the blaster ones. And that requirement places very severe limits on the relationship between the defender damage cap and the blaster one. In effect, four defenders should saturate a defender but not a blaster in the vast majority of powerset combinations with offensive buffs. On paper, to satisfy this requirement defenders should have had about a 250%-300% damage cap relative to a blaster cap of 400%-500%.
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I wasn't sure which to count, honestly. nukes are a 3-minute base recharge, except Rain of Arrows.
I didn't count anything that did no damage. If it did damage, I put it in, with a few strange things like Creepers (which is not at all hard to perma), Voltaic Sentinel, and Phantom Army.
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Stalagmites - 90 second recharge, ~7.6 base damage at level 50.
Flash Freeze - 90 second recharge, 6.12 base damage at level 50.
Flash Fire - 90 second recharge, 9.18 base damage at level 50.
Shall I go on? These are not powers which anyone in their right mind would consider AoE attacks.
Declaring that nukes are disadvantaged by their 3-minute recharge timer as if to draw some sort of equivalence between a nuke and a power like Stalagmites strikes me as a good way to undermine your own argument -- which, frankly, was based on a silly methodology; you cannot compare Archeypes' AoE damage potential simply by counting up the number of AoE powers which happen to deal damage, no matter how insignificant, no matter how long their recharge.
That said, I do not disagree with the general premise which apparently spawned your argument. You can craft a Controller, even one with a normally low-damage build, to deliver decent AoE damage over time -- primarily due to procs, a larger variety of which tend to be available for use in powers which feature control effects.
Take Frostbite, for instance -- on its own, its potential to deliver AoE damage over time is deceptively high, even despite the low base damage on the power (9.18 base damage at level 50), because it has a short timer and a large radius. Add to those facts Containment and the ability to slot three damage procs, and the power becomes quite a nice little tool to whittle down larger spawns. It's still no world beater, and it's often dangerous use to haphazardly in team play, but it can be made into a decent attack power.
Defenders still likely win out in AoE damage output, but when you throw IOs into the mix, the party gets a little more confusing.
Apart from the AoE matter, Controllers generally solo better than Defenders do. From level 1 to about level 22 or so, the Controller is advantaged because the AT damage scalars only normalize gradually, and so a 1st-level Controller is basically getting the equivalent of two low-tier, 1st-level Blaster attacks every time he receives a containment bonus on a single-target control power. That advantage gradually fades to nothing as you head into the twenties, and some people here will tell you that the journey from 1-20 is insignificant in the grand scheme -- but there is a Controller advantage there.
Perhaps far more significant when it comes to what I like to call typical solo-play damage output is the advantage Controllers enjoy from roughly level 34 to leve 50, due to slotted pets. At least when we're discussing solo mission play, where it's presumed that single-target damae is generally most important, it's clear that Controllers are typically more efficient for the bulk of the game.
That still doesn't mean that most Controllers ae tearing up the solo charts, because on the whole they aren't. Trust me, trying to solo minions and lieuts when your best attack is a low-damage, 9-second DoT (Chilblain) surely doesn't feel fast, even with the intrepid and buggy Jack Frost at your side. Some things just look a whole lot better on paper than they do in-game. Single-target, long-duration DoT powers make for a good example -- good against hard targets, bad for almost any so-called normal solo play.
On the whole, I'd say Controllers are better off. They offer comparable if not exactly equivalent buff/debuff support, potentially more team protection in the form of controls, and they tend on the whole to solo more safely and more efficiently through the bulk of the level range.
Regardless, there appears to be a disconnect in these discussions with respect to what each AT, as a whole, is actually capable of doing. Any comparison that, for instance, dismisses /Sonic Defenders as outliers and then places disproportionate weight on (Fire/Plant/Illusion)/Kin Controllers is at best misleading. The same goes for the opposite tactic.
When it comes to soloing quickly, neither AT in the general case even touches a Scrapper or a Brute or a Stalker or even a Tanker. It's easy to lose sight of context, here, and I say that with all due humility, because after a year or two of playing primarily buff/debuff builds, I myself had literally lost all sense of context, even though my first few characters were Scrappers and Blasters. It's a revelation to come back to some of these characters every once in awhile, if only as a reminder that what we're fighting over here -- apart from the Fire/Kins of the world -- is the right for a better seat on the short bus.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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the support advantage of defender is about 10% less than the damage advantage of corruptors. Unless of course you look at a broken set like sonic blast.
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Again, don't forget Scourge, unless you plan to give Defenders an Inherent which does about the same additional damage as Scourge.
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I wasn't forgetting scourge, the support numbers are just completely screwed up all over the place for support sets.
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Exactly. Although Castle proposed something even more radical with regard to Dom's and it isn't exactly non-existent in the game already I mean PB's don't exactly say they are "nerfed" while solo.
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I believe Castle's Dom proposal is what led Positron to say that, although my memory could be faulty. That idea never came to pass, though, and in fact the Dom solution was to remove the "penalty" that the boost to damage gave during Domination became when you weren't in Domination.
The PB example is kind of the point, though. Normally you are given a bonus on a team or during special circumstances. (Such as Fury or Domination) You usually do not have a bonus taken away from you on a team or under those circumstances. (Part of the problem is that if the circumstances require you to have that capability, and you lose it, then you are gimped. I.e., if Defenders were to lose healing ability when their teammates were injured that would be BAD)
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Defenders are also very powerful and the tweaking they require is very small. They really don't require any more damage while teamed and they really don't require any more buff/debuff while solo.
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Agreed, although Controllers didn't really need any more damage while teamed either, but Containment was made to offer them the same benefit whether solo or not.
The problem is more one of outliers that do not follow the standards on which the AT is balanced. Defender damage was balanced around the idea that Defenders would be able to buff their damage, but not all Buff/Debuff sets can buff damage. Not all Buff/Debuff sets even buff damage equally. While some Scrapper or Blaster Primaries or Secondaries offer more damage than others, you do not have a situation where, for instance, a Scrapper Melee set drops half of its attacks and provides you with a bunch of defense powers. Yet this is exactly the way most Buff/Debuff sets operate, some offer more offensive capability, while others offer more defense.
The exacerbates the problem because there are some Defenders which have plenty of damage, and others that have to rely on only their base damage. Since buffs are what Defenders do best, this takes up some of the gap between Defenders and the other ATs that share Buff/Debuff sets. Even so, all ATs that share these sets share this problem, so you have a wide range or capabilities if you are trying to make a comparison.
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Didn't it also get mentioned that he was talking about unslotted attacks, which means that anything less than 1.95 scale was completely useless to use for a slotted attack given that the comparison was between damage of the attack to mob hit point levels.
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Not as far as I know.
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Enhancement: I can change this but by default I use 95% damage enhancement.
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If anything, the weaker attacks are the ones that give MORE Scourge, not less. The calculation was of the amount of damage that was "overkill". Note that Scourge itself does not become weaker or stronger as you slot attacks, it is a Critical, not a damage boost, and thus Scourge is boosted by Enhancement slotting. So the decrease in effectiveness is due to the increase in extraneous damage as the damage scale of the attack goes up.
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It's not a drastic difference in performance between the two, and it's in favor of the Defender until you factor in Scourge's effect on damage - even using the 80% numbers, that's a 20% difference compared to 15% for base damage.
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Saying "so-and-so isn't really different until you factor in Scourge" kind of misses the point. You can to an extent ignore Inherents when dealing with other ATs, but as Defenders do not have an Inherent which increases their damage, it is much more important to a valid comparison.
Given that the difference between Defenders and Corruptors is so small to begin with, I don't believe you can be that imprecise with your numbers. It's already been established that the difference is less than the standard 100%/75% ratio.
It should be noted, though, that even 5% base damage modifier difference is large enough to change from a clear advantage to the Corruptor, to a clear advantage to the Defender. (That is, the difference goes from 25% to ~15%, not the 20% we are aiming at) Which is why I suspect an Inherent bonus would be a better solution than a damage boost across the board. Although it is hard to argue that both Defenders and Corruptors would not benefit from a base damage of 0.7 and 0.8 respectively.
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There was a thread about quantifying Scourge a while back. In a "best-case" scenario [...] Scourge was providing roughly a 15% boost in damage, [...] Against minions it frequently had no effect whatsoever
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Starsman's estimate for the average Scourge effect in that thread is as follows:
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Minions average +7% damage.
Lts average +11% damage
Bosses average +17.7% damage
EB average +19.7% damage
AV average +20.3% damage
GM average +20.7% damage
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He reported no boost against minions ONLY for attacks of more than 12 second recharge and 2.12 base damage. Due to the nature of his testing, that meant he was comparing to using ONLY that attack. Such would be totally irrelevant in actual gameplay. Given that if you are aware of Scourge and can anticipate it you can usually choose to use your weakest attacks to "finish off" the foe, I would say Starsman's estimates are probably as close to actual gameplay value as you can get with a raw analysis.
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Actually, my final spit out number is a weighting of using a variety of attacks, even neutrino bolt. Linked a huge spreadsheet with averages for various attack types in the list.
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Anything an RO type defender team can do an RO style controller team can do too. I'd venture to say that the controllers do it faster, safer, and just as ridiculously as the defenders do.
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I have never run with RO (that I know of), so maybe they would agree with your statement.
I do however run theme teams pretty frequently. All one AT teams are very common. My SG generally does not design characters for our members (the only time we really did that was for our Rad/Ice defenders; our all Electric blast defenders team happened by accident, we just happened to have a bunch of people make some on the same server, and then invited others to join us once we realized it, which was months after some of the characters had been made).
So when we run an all scrapper event or an all controller event or an all defender event (etc.), it is not with a plan or design. We grab whatever we have of that AT and mix it up and go. We might try to have a kin, or maybe hope to have a bubbler or possibly would like 4 Fire blasters, but no one is really under any pressure, its just play what you want. Planned Fire control teams slaughter fast. Hell, accidental Fire control teams slaughter fast. But an Ill/Storm, Fire/Storm, Grav/Storm, Ill/Kin, Plant/FF, Ice/Sonic, Fire/Kin, and Earth/Emp team is only extremely good.
In my experience, throwing together random controllers, who all just want to play, does not become stupid amazing (its merely amazing). Too many tanks, too many people trying to do the same lockdown. In my experience, throwing together random defenders is always stupid amazing. Can you really have too many AoE blasts hitting a spawn, when recharge and endurance are a non-issue? Teams of all controllers use buffs/debuffs, then controls, then kill. Teams of all defenders use buffs/debuffs, then kill. One less step. Its like being on a team of psycho scrappers, only with some of the members buffing as needed in addition to killing.
On more balanced teams, we normally have a Tanker. At that point, almost all need for controls except as an emergency valve are gone. I'd rather have the (even if only slightly) higher buff/debuff values and AoE blasts. I'd never say no to a controller (play what you want), but they just do not bring any value over a defender.
YMMV.
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Yes my mileage does indeed vary.
I have been on all controller teams that "just happen" several times. I have been on an all defender team that "just happened" once.
My experience is that all defender teams are put together by design they rarely occur on their own.
My experience with the all controller teams that happened randomly as compared to the all defender team that happened randomly was that in every case the controllers out performed the defender team.
I will admit that the results may be skewed since these all happened to be random KHTFs pre-merits but of those the controller teams were the fastest and the safest. One of those controller teams put in my record PUG time on the KHTF (17:21) with no defeats which is why I remember it. The all defender team put in a rather poor showing of 38ish minutes with multiple defeats.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Didn't it also get mentioned that he was talking about unslotted attacks, which means that anything less than 1.95 scale was completely useless to use for a slotted attack given that the comparison was between damage of the attack to mob hit point levels. I ignored anything under the 1.64 mark for that reason alone - I don't play my characters unslotted, and at +2 it's effectively 1.6 for 100% slotting (or 95% with a 5% average boost from buffs).
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You were the last to post on that thread and I forgot to reply to you, even if i had half the stuff ready. Anyways, i got around to post a reply to those points there. The enhancement was dynamic based on level, lvl 25+ all were fully enhanced, lvl 10 and under unenhanced and in between there were 1-3DOs, depending on level.
Maybe the real issue is that controllers got blessed with an inherent that is overperforming within a team setting. Was not Containment originally meant to help controllers solo better? I doubt it was meant to make them the killing machines that some troller combos are demonstrating in game.
Anyway, after ready Arcannaville reply, i think that maybe reducing containment would be the solution. But again, i am nto even certain there is any issue between defenders and controllers. There are overperforming controllers but thats it imho. Not all controllers are beasts and some definetely solo slower than defenders and at any given level.
It is a very complex issue if it even exist. A can of worms maybe Castle would prefer not to touch at this point.
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
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Just out of curiosity....
If fire control didn't have imps, and illusion didn't have phantom army, would we be having this discussion?
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Fire Imps are hardly the bread-winner of a Fire/Kin. They're helpful surely, but their randomness and single-target nature with only one attack means they aren't the biggest contributors, especially now that SB doesn't make them attack any faster.
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Taking FS out of the equation, what is then? I also agree FS has needed a nerfbat for ages (so has rage) but given popularity it's unlikely.
Hotfeet is a terrific power, but imps are mobile, don't require close grouping, do terrific damage that scales well with -res debuffs. I might see the point that a solo f/k gets more damage out of hotfeet, but if any controllers want to run some hero-stats on large runs and see what the breakdown of damage is from their powers, I'd be very curious.