Defenders are Obsolete.

Oh, this rubbish again? You do realize that if we could do this that it would be like the prenerf Regen Scrappers again, right? Imagine a bunch of people running around with regen similar to Regen's panic button, 24/7; more defense than a SR scrapper; endless endurance, full mez protection, and the ability to more or less use their Tier 9 Nuke as a part of their standard attack chain? Because that's what a self-buffing Empath can pull off.

^ This and lately after a few issue back I welcome to many ppl.

Not to mention that leave DEbuffing defenders behind.

Not sure what you are getting at here.

I do see people playing defenders whereas your observations say otherwise. Heck, I am planning on starting a new one come I16 so some one will be leveling a defender then.

And I don't notice this "very low population" you are referring too.

And "1% a lvl everyone 2-4 hours" (assuming to mean 1/10 of 1 bub of XP per 2 to 4 hours), really? I got 3 defs at 50 (including an emp), started a 4th, and planning a 5th come I16, I have never seen such a low XP rate. Just what are you fighting and powers (and slotting) you are using?

To (sort of) play Devil's Advocate, Fire Blast would be kind of silly for Defenders to have. Defenders have a buff on their blasts to their secondary effects. You know, Sonic's -res, Rad's -def, Dark's -to-hit, etc. So anyone really gunning for Fire Blast will always look at a Fire Blast Corruptor and go "Why the heck am I playing this AT when the other is better?" The same thing will go for when Corruptors get Archery and Going Rogue comes out. Why play an /Archery Defender when you can get the same to-hit buff secondary effect on a more damage Corruptor? Psi Blast will still be good for Defenders if moved over because it will have the -recharge increased still.

On the turn of that comment, if Defenders did have Thermal, they would be producing bigger green numbers, offering a higher +res from the shields, higher buff and debuff values for their Tier 7-9. Sure, if you couple it with Fire Blast, you'll have the equilibrium on the Corruptor because the lack of a debuffing secondary effect. For me, however, I dislike having those types of obvious couples, my closest being a Storm/Ice Defender, to which I've only started recently. I like the challenge of coming up with the RP reason for some fairly drastic different power sets, like my Dark/Elec defender. So having a Thermal/Sonic, Thermal/Rad, etc. will be more potent than the just damage dealing secondary of Fire Blast.

Sure, if you are considering that the enhanced buff/debuff values and getting some things at level 12 instead of 20, or 32 instead of 38 not worth it, that's your own deal. However, I'm also aware that there are people that do prefer to get their buff/debuffs earlier than some of their blasts. Also, so people prefer to have the larger buff/debuff values and that is their particular pull. Naturally, you being the player, you get to decide what is more important to you and how you go about things.

As far as lower damage mod, lower HP, lower damage cap, and lacks the double damage, those are just what Defenders have to sacrifice to get the better buff/debuff values. Otherwise, who'd want to play an AT that have equal HP, very slightly higher damage, very slightly higher damage cap, and can also deal double damage (however Defenders would be able to do that). We'd see the exact same stuff over in the Corruptor thread that Defenders would be taking over their job red side. Every AT must pay some price to get what they are better at. I don't want to play Average Joe AT who's only mediocre at everything, I want to be good at something. In order for me to be good at X, I must give up Y. That's simply how life works, including real life.

For giving up certain power sets, certain sets are getting nearly copy/pasted everywhere (Traps/AR for Defender, Archery/TA Corruptors, Rad/ Blasters), so it'll be only a matter of time until Corruptors get FF, Defenders get Thermal, and each AT have their own "heal" set (Pain and Empathy). I'll gladly take a Pain Defender over a Fire Blast Defender, so when we get to Thermal coming over, can I get Pain instead of Fire Blast?

In all honesty, as I've said and will always say, the AT you choose followed by the power sets you choose should work well with your play style. If you're like me and don't want a Fire Blast Defender (though I might make one... maybe), then don't do it. If you hate FF because you believe KB is a sin and the only real thing it offers is the shields, then that's your own bridge to cross. Play what you like, don't play what you don't. Other than Statesman and LR, I can't think of any TF or other challenge that requires a certain type of make up on team. A corruptor will offer a lot to the table, a defender will offer a lot to the table. They're not equal and it's up to you to decide which you like better and I strongly encourage you to play that. Some people might find they like the Defender version of their Corruptor and same with some people playing Defenders.

There's also crazy people like me who want to have one of each AT. My Cold/Ice Defender covers the Defender slot though, but I'm still enjoying my Kin/Sonic. Although that particular combo is the exception that proves the rule IMO.

You haven't read a Costume Contest thread, have you?

It's okay, my posts get skipped all the time.

its because we're offenders. We're all defenders but as offenders we are descriminated agianst...

What if you have -res debuffs? Those would take advantage of good damage.

well my concern is solo-play, defender solo play is terrible our AT power is 100% team needed, and now the population of CoX is soo low, i can onlyb play on the Freedom server, because thats the only one where i am guarunteed to actually find other people, i find this ridiculous

NOTICE: I WAS TIRED WHEN I WROTE THIS, IT MAY SEEM SLOPPY, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. PLEASE SEE TL: DR AT BOTTOM.


I don't seem to have trouble finding groups on my defender, and im on Liberty server. But yes, our population is dwindling but thats normal.

But yes, my concern is also solo-play. it is my #1 problem right now.

I like to propose a question to the community:

How much benefit do you get to "pimp out" say.. a blaster or a controller? quite alot right? decent survival buff, some defense and some resistance. and a boat load of recharge if you build them that way. Now ask yourself, how much benefit would I get "pimping out" a Defender? Could I solo AV's at a steady rate? could I handle the maximum difficulty with little to zero problems?

When you compare the defender to other ATs you notice that the defender is the hardest archetype to get to a point where increasing the difficulty won't make the game too difficult. A scrapper can bump his difficulty to +2 almost immediately, so can tankers, controllers and the occasional blaster. Defenders can't do it. Archetypes aren't suppose to be balanced around the difficulty increase(and they shouldn't be, but they give us an idea of how easy it is to solo with other archetypes) but you notice that it's very difficult to play a Defender better than the average Joe.

Can you honestly say that your purpled out FF/Dark Defender can out play the same FF/Dark defender that is relying on SO's? No. And thats a problem. Once again it shows that there is no learning curve to most of our primaries thus there is no reward for playing your defender "Forever and Ever" such as myself. Unlike a scrapper who, after playing "forever and ever" has purple IO sets or even none at all but has the stat totals and all the goodies that improve his effectiveness in a group.

Sorry if my composer is off, I just thought of all this and it's late. So I'll make a TL: DR version:

1. IO sets do not give the Defender enough of a boost to make it worth the time and energy spent obtaining those IO's for the bonus, unlike other Archetypes who change their complete build for optimization and to synergize with the IO sets they complete (Fire/Kin | Illusion/Rad | Spines/Dark | Stone/SS | etc.

2. As te number of players on servers go down, the difficulty of playing a Defender increases, as finding teams becomes tougher.

3. An example of the Defender's ability to solo can be gauged agianst other Archetypes simply by seeing how much extra skill is required once you raise the difficulty. A scrapper can boost his difficulty by +1 and see littel to no change in his pattern of play. But a Defender can have a difficult time with just a few more mobs. Certain Primaries are effected differently but as a whole the defender has much more trouble as the difficulty goes up comapred to almost every other AT.

4. Sleepy Time.

Excuses.

Because that's what they're missing? Most likely, yes, they do get a lot of benefit when you build for their weaknesses.

For the most part, yes. If you are going to maximize the performance of ANY toon, it's going to pull off some amusing things. The current maximum difficulty has never been hard. If you're talking maximum i16 difficulty...things could be more interesting but still doable.

Not really. They have the potential to do it right away, just like everyone else. Unfortunately, to do it, they also burn more endurance than everyone else, so it just appears that they can't pull it off as well. Perhaps if Vigilance monitored your own health.

This premise is already faulty; it's also your conclusion. One or the other, not both.

What's the situation? Soloing an AV? Well, I don't really take Stone Armor/Ice Melee on a Tank and expect it to ever be the top dog in that situation. Some are just better and when you purposely choose the ones bad at your apparent definition of what is "baseline peformance," you are of course going to find another piece of 'evidence' in your favor. Regardless of whether or not said 'evidence' is truly valid.

What? You're saying that Scrappers that "can bump his difficulty to +2 almost immediately" require a lot of training to play successfully? Then on same token, your argument is that there is no learning curve to Defenders...but then refuse to accept that they can do the things you claim they are incapable of. Your definition of 'learning curve' seems a little questionable.

And yeah, if you set an egg timer for 240 seconds to keep up buffs, then no, your Force Fields/Dark doesn't require a whole lot to master to appear "good".

Now if you introduce Force Bubble herding to the equation...

::

It's still all on the player.

I am curious how much better are the buffs/blasts...exactly. This might sway me one way or the other.

Also yes... as a defender I have often been turned down if I was not a specific type of defender (kinetics or rad for example) on MANY a TF.

Indigo, leader of the City of Gaymers

cute way to start your counter points.

Thats the problem, other classes gain more benefits from the IO sets bonuses because their primary/secondary actually benefit from stats such as "+3.13 Def to X" or "+Recharge", Our primaries for the most part don't see these as a major help. Sure, some primaries do enjoy the benefit from +Recharge or +Accuracy but there are no IO Set bonuses that improve our primaries such as "+Defense on Buff skills" or "+Tohit Debuff" The clossest thing we get is the "+Heal" that affects all of our heals but, as we all know, not all Defenders are healers. This leaves a FF or even a Sonic Defender with a ton of influence sinked into his build not seeing a huge difference in his over-all role compared to a Scrapper who did the same thing.

Of course any difficulty change is doable but your evading the question. How much harder is it for a Defender after he raises his difficulty to +2 compared to a scrapper that does the same? Note that it doesn't matter about the performance at +2 difficulty as that is very difficult to balance around but it gives us an idea of how much extra effort a Defender puts into soloing compared to other classes even on Heroic.

You agree with me that Vigilance is worthless solo, although, Tanker's ability is also useless solo, but Tankers are capable of soloing fairly easily. They solo Slower, but they can solo safely and with little difficulty.

And yes, the Defender does infact have that problem of "increasing difficulty to a point where things aren't too difficult". But since you don't agree, then please enlighten me as to which one you think it is. Dominator? no, they've been buffed. Corruptor? Possibly, although they actually have an inheritant that actually helps them, also a slightly enhanced damage modifier.

If your going to say "no it isn't" then please say which one it really is.


Any situation to be honest. Soloing, Team play, etc. Cetain primaries have it easier, Rad, Kin at times and others. But for you to even ask "Whats the Situation" is simply playing dumb. You could have asked yourself "what about soloing, or on a small/large team". So your evading a question.

No, you have it backwards and I must apologize if i made it seem that way. Here is how it works:

A scrapper can bump his difficulty almost immediately after he starts playing, certain powersets doing better than others, but as a whole, the scrapper class and even the tanker and occasional controller and blaster can bump their difficulty almost immediately with very little difference in DPS, kill rate, deaths, and so on. The Defender can do the same thing....
Although he/she will see:
1) a reduction in DPS almost immediately, as the Defender has zero form of mitigation from levels 1-10 for the most part, having to rely on primary abilities to either heal, run away and rest, weaken our enemies so they can't kill us in 3-5 seconds or fix our endurance problem. While we're using our Priamries to keep us alive, we aren't dealing damage, thus everything goes slower. The controller has the Same mitigation as we do from their secondaries, as well as Holds, Immobs, etc, in the form of DoTs. Scrappers and Tankers have toggles so they only have to turn them on once then leave them alone. And the Blaster already has a complete attack chain for the most part and has Defiance as well as the Best Damage-To-Endurance ratio.

2) Due to terrible Damage-to-Endurance we have to rest and wait more often than other classes for our endurance to recover. No matter what difficulty we're on. As we level our endurance problem is slowly fades away due to (Endo-Redux and the almighty Stamina) but the new problem lies within not having any resistance/defense and low HP. But I digress. In short: We defeat enemies slowly -and- have to pay a large endurance cost for it. I wouldn't mind one or the other but not both.

3) Our low HP and lack of any form of Mez control makes us dread fighting many many enemies. In the low levels we rarely ever see bad guys with mezzes but as the levels increase, it seems almost every villain group has something that will immediately shut us down. If you wish I'll make a list, because its quite large. Examples are Freakshow with their sleeps, stuns and their occasional Ressurect which really hurts our endurance. Council with their Grenades /w knockback and disorient, Cryo Bullets (which wouldn't be a problem but we have so few attacks), Tsoo with Hurricane (everybody has trouble with them though), their Spirits with their Disorient, Arachnos with Widows flooring our Recharge and Mu sapping our Endurance, Crabs with disorient etc. The list goes on. And it only gets worse as the Difficulty increases. Controllers can hold enemies that do that and have a Pet later in life that can absorb some of the hate. Blasters have Defiance and once agian just go for "I can out damage you" approach and naturally Scrappers and Tankers have mez protection. We have the occasional knockback from FF and /Energy. -tohit from Dark and Clear Mind.. oh wait we can't use that on ourselves. A simple stun is the equivalent to a hold. A sleep is another way of saying "Free hit on the Defender" which we really can't afford most of the time. Many of our Defenses (which there aren't many of in the first place) are reactive not Proactive and thats the core of the issue here.

So should FF, Sonic and Empathy feel repetitive?

Lets introduce FF herding into the equation since I haven't seen a FF or a Storm herd in a very long time.
Now you may have someone in your SG that can herd like a master. What other tricks can this FF/Storm do that other FF/Storms can't do or more clearly, what can they do that a new FF/Storm can't do? I am in -no- way questioning this FF/Stormer. I'm questioning how much time it took that FF/Stormer to learn to Herd and how effective herding actually is. How much time would it take a competent FF/Stormer to figure out that Force Bubble and Force Bolt/Hurricane is capable of knocking enemies into a wall indefinantly. I hate to admit it but a Kinetics can herd. We have Repel. any /Energy defender can herd. Infact, I'm both a Kin/Energy and you know what I do? I herd. So Force Field/Storm and Kinetics can herd. Don't Forget Storm and Kinetic Controllers too. Oh, and Sonics Resonance with Sonic Repulsion.

I'm sorry if i seem harsh but the way you put "Herding" is as if you thought this would be a magical ability that only an amazing FF was capable of.

To answer Gaymer:

Defenders have a damage multiplier of 0.6 and a buff multiplier of 1.0? I haven't seen the buff multipliers in awhile but i think it was either 1.0 or 1.2. I'm leaning on 1.0 though.

Corruptors have a damage multiplier of 0.7 and a buff multiplier of 0.75. While it seems like a downgrade numerically, the Corruptor has Scourge with is able to double his damage naturally. but you knew that already

Defender buffs are 25-33% better defending on what exactly is being buffed or debuffed. Corruptor blasts are 15% better at their base, but that doesn't count scourge.

Then you're probably not missing much. All Defenders bring a lot to a team, and a team that doesn't realise that is a bad team.

I often find myself feeling like Perry the Platypus. They are oblivious to the fact that it was the defender that keep the ball rolling.

I use to be defendocentric (TM). 90% of my intitial heroes were defenders. They buff, buff they debuff, they heal, they control, they rez, they pick off the stragglers and toss all those unneeded skittles to their teammates.

Some of us don't need the limelight, we just have a job to do and we do it.

Indigo, leader of the City of Gaymers