Defender/Controller Theorizing

I've been chewing on the question of the defender/controller disparity - whether it exists mechanically or just psychologically, what form it takes, etc. I have a theory.

First let me define some terms.
- Mitigation is any effect which reduces or compensates for incoming damage to the team. If it helps the team survive and it's not damage to enemies, it's mitigation.
- Damage is any effect which directly inflicts damage on enemies. If it creates an orange number, it's damage.
- Force multiplication is any effect which increases the rate of outgoing damage from the team. If it makes orange numbers bigger, or makes them come up faster, it's force multiplication.

Now, the theory:

A Defender can be built which exceeds any Controller in any two of mitigation, damage output, and force multiplication. However, that Defender will lag behind its nearest competing Controller in the remaining category.

In other words, no matter what's important to you, you can do it almost as well on a Controller and not have to make the sacrifices you would have to make to be better on a Defender.

I'm not at all sure this is true, though. I'd like to see if the forumgoers could provide some counterexamples.

To be perfectly clear, I am not trolling, I don't have hate for either AT, and I have no dog in this fight. I'm just trying to see if I've laid my finger on anything interesting.

I think the problem is defenders can't out mitigate controllers. Even if you take the king of easy mode mitigation, FF, a controller can take FF with lower numbers, but has at least one AoE control that's up often and then you add in a hold and whatever other tools they have and the difference in FF def numbers really comes across as minor. The amount of defenders that could really stand toe-to-toe with controllers for controls is on the low side.

One thing that comes to my mind is this.

Take a controller out and try to defeat a spawn using only your primary set.

Then take a Defender out and try the same using only your blasts.

The controller will be complete and fully capable of soloing, while the Defender will be in serious need of His Primary in order to compete.

Here's my thing: MOST CONTROLLERS SUCK AT CONTROLLING*. Which means they are basically gimp defenders. Might as well get the better buff/debuff numbers and the extra attacks.

*I realize not all controllers suck, but the good ones are a minority.

That may be your experience, but it's certainly not by design. If there is any disparity in the level of team support provided between controllers and defenders that can be attributed to AT-design-encouraged playstyle, it is that controllers are led to believe that their primary is worth using, so they spend time using it and not ther secondary; while defenders are led to believe (not entirely wrongly) that their secondary is useless, and so they focus on applying their primary.

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:
- Kin/Son defender (superior damage and force multiplication) vs Fire/Kin controller
- FF/Dark defender (superior mitigation) vs Earth/FF controller
- Rad/Son defender (superior damage and mitigation) vs Fire/Rad controller

And here's a more refined version of the challenge:
For any defender support and blast set pairing, if that support set is available to controllers, then there exists a controller control set to match with that support set whose resulting performance is comparable in at least two of three categories and superior in the remaining.

That is, for any A/B defender, there's a C/A controller with more evenly distributed strengths.

Again, I would be keenly interested in being proven wrong.

I don't disagree with any of that (well, except for noting that the difference between 40% and 45% defense is actually rather large, though it also rarely matters in most play), but I'm also not sure how it relates to my point. If Earth/ is more than enough to make up the mitigation gap in FF/ versus /FF, then another, more damaging primary might be just sufficient.

It's also worth noting that until recently, leveraging the superior maximum damage potential of AoE required some extra work when solo, while Earth's pet supplies some pretty good ST DPS. It will be interesting to see how I16's team size increase option affects that - a tough, AoE-centric build such as FF/Dark might become a more attractive soloer for those who know what they're doing. That's more detail-oriented than this level of analysis supports, though.

I spend a lot of time on both a Fire/TA controller and a TA/A defender. I've had moments on both of them where I thought "hmm, this situation would be better with my other TA."

When it comes to damage, an abstract comparison of potential DPS doesn't tell the whole story.

Pets are kind of an x factor. Sometimes they're a lifesaver in occupying some agro... and other times a nuisance in drawing it. You can't reliably put them on a single target and there are many encounters where they either can't be brought to bear or are a liability for one reason or another. On the other hand, "fire and forget" damage that continues to work while you do other things is very handy.

Whether the steady slow burn of controller dps or the burst capability of a blast set attack chain is "better" is really kind of subjective and depends on the situation. How does one factor in the utility of something like a snipe or the tradeoffs involved in milking the damage out of a power like hot feet?

Another factor besides "what kind of build is theoretically possible", especially in the mid levels, is "what are you likely to get from them on a team".

In my experience as a team leader, if I recruit a mid 30s defender, I'm about 90% likely to get someone who will provide significant team support. Yes, once in awhile you get the rad who didn't take Rad Infection, or the bubbler who doesn't bubble, but most defender players are playing defenders because they have some intent to help a team. They build that way, at least on one build, and they've probably learned to do it since leveling a defender is so much faster on a team.

If I recruit a controller, I'd estimate about a 50% chance of getting someone who will support the team with their secondary, 30% chance of someone who mainly uses their primary (which may also keep the team alive, but may not provide as much multiplication factor) and 20% chance of someone who will play like they are solo. I think thats a combination of (1) its usually easier/faster to solo on a controller then a defender, so they may have developed a solo build or playstyle, (2) they may have slotted up their primary powers before their secondary, which is understandable if you aren't a number cruncher and realise the power of buffs/debuffs, and (3) they rolled a controller because they want to control, if they'd wanted a defender they'd have rolled a defender.

So I don't blame a controller for not necessarily being as good a team support or force multiplier in practice, its a completely valid build and playstyle choice, but I do keep it in mind when building a team.

Particularly since a 6 hour STF, where the /storm controller I was counting on for -resist debuffing didn't have their Freezing Rain slotted for recharge, and the /kin controller didn't have Siphon Power or keep SB applied, sigh. . .

I note that these are excellent reasons why one would choose a defender over a controller as a teammate. They're clearly better team support, both by mechanics and by inclination. Unfortunately, the same design decisions that push Defenders firmly into the team support role also make them undesirable to actually play if team support isn't an end you are willing to sacrifice for.

I'm not saying that dedicated team support isn't a niche that some want to fill, and clearly Defenders fill that niche admirably. What I am saying is that low Defender population is a natural consequence of human nature and the design of Defenders. It's not that Defenders have a perception problem in the sense that they are misunderstood; it's that they are accurately perceived as the most altruistic AT. If low Defender population is actually a problem to be solved, and I'm not saying it necessarily is, then greater team support will make the problem worse rather than better.

At some point it'd be interesting to do an exhaustive analysis of how all possible Defender and Controller primary/secondary combos compare. I would but math is hard.

I honestly don't know whether Controllers or Defenders solo faster, on average. I do think it's possible that as they mature, the difference in performance between solo and teamed grows smaller for Controllers and larger for Defenders. Many other ATs become more self-sufficient as they mature, and while Defenders do as well, the widening gap between solo and teamed performance might lead to the perception of bad soloability (regardless of whether this is actual or not).

I'm not looking at defender population as a practical problem, though. I think someone has already said it better, but I'll stumble toward it anyway: is extreme support specialist, at the expense of other attributes, a role that many people will ever want to play? If the answer is what I think it might be, then it's quite possible that the Defender AT needs no changes because it is already well suited to a niche that is naturally small.

Mitigation will always be higher for a Controller than a Defender, because the Controller has a mitigation tool Defenders don't have: Control powers. While a Defender might have a control power (Choking Cloud, just as an example) it will be inferior to a Controller's dedicated Control powers.

While your analysis is a good subject for discussion, there is another way to look at it. There are three types of powers in this game, offensive powers, defensive powers, and status effect powers. As you put it, offensive powers deal damage or multiply the force of that damage, while defensive powers mitigate damage, or multiply the magnitude of that mitigation. For instance, a +Def buff mitigates damage, but a -Res debuff on a foe hitting an ally protected by that +Def multiplies the mitigation of the +Def by the reduction in damage from the -Res.

Status effect powers also mitigate damage, while also controlling the location of the foe, thus giving the opportunity for greater damage. These three types translate into the five types of Power Sets the devs define, Melee, Ranged, Defense, Buff-Debuff, and Control. In its simplest form, Melee is damage in melee, Ranged is damage at range, Defense is personal damage mitigation, Buff/Debuff is either damage mitigation or force multiplication (greater damage) and Control is status effect.

Each AT in the game has two of these five types as a major capability, with lesser capabilities with the other. For instance, a Tanker is Defense/Melee, with a little bit of Ranged, and Control, mixed in with his Primary and Secondary powers. A Defender, obviously, is Buff-Debuff/Ranged, and a Controller is Control/Buff-Debuff. No surprise there.

It's the lesser capabilities that are the problem. A Defender doesn't lack control powers completely, some of his Primary offers "soft" control powers instead of or in addition to buffs and debuffs. And a Controller doesn't lack damage, some of HIS Primary applies damage to the foes that it holds. The problem is that with Containment providing the Controller with more damage, does that damage exceed what the Defender is capable of?

It should be like this:

Defender:
Buff-Debuff: High
Damage: Moderate
Control: Low

Controller:
Control: High
Buff-Debuff: Moderate
Damage: Low.

It is more like this:

Controller:
Control: High
Buff-Debuff: Moderate
Damage: Moderate

There is no arguing this is imbalanced. The Controller has the same amount of damage, almost as much Buff-Debuff, and MUCH more Control. So if you want to argue this you must either claim that:

1) Controllers don't do as much damage as Defenders. (Note: not that Controllers don't do MORE, just that they can do as much)

or

2) Defenders are as good at controlling as Controllers are at buffing and debuffing.

The claim is usually that a Controller's specialization with single target damage, and the Defender's with AoE, puts their damage in balance, or even for some Controllers, makes it worse. The problem with this is that the Controller is more soloable, because it has more single target damage, while the Defender's reliance on AoE makes him more reliant on a team. Particularly without the defenses or control powers to back up that damage. (As with a Kin) At least a Corruptor does enough damage to make that significant, and it has an Inherent that supports soloing as well. The Defender is only marginally better than the Controller at AoE, and then only if you are not talking about the Controller outliers that are capable of great AoE damage.

Alternately, the claim can be made that Dark or Force Field Defenders are capable of using control powers that are close to as effective as Controllers. But Defender controls are, as mentioned above, "soft" controls, usually knockback, slow, or fear. These are only partial damage mitigation. The holds that are available are obviously inferior to Controller holds, both because they are not in a Control set, and because the Defender's AT modifier with those powers is lower as well.

In short, as you said, while you may be able to make a Defender which is better at control than the others, he will usually give up some other attribute, such as damage, for Dark. Or if you make a Controller that is going to have lower damage, he will usually have greater damage mitigation through controls. The idea that a Defender and a Controller should both do the same damage, because they are both support classes, ignores the fact that Defenders and Controllers are already balanced around control. You cannot just compare damage mitigation to offense and say the two are balanced, the control aspect has to come into the comparison as well.

I was under the impression that I was already encouraging the categorization of control as a form of mitigation when comparing controller and defender performance, and in fact I believe this to be the case. I should have been more clear, I suppose.

I do think your observation that when Defenders outdamage Controllers they tend to do so via AoE is interesting. It's another way that the difference in performance solo and on teams increases for Defenders and decreases for Controllers as the two ATs go up in level.

One of these days people are going to start smacking me for sounding like a broken record, but I think the real problem is that the comparison is valid in the first place. One can quite validly compare defenders to controllers and defenders to blasters. If you look at either comparison based only the common sets the results are obvious: defenders are better than controllers and worse than blasters.

But when you take into account the whole of the ATs, the comparisons are just as valid and obvious, but now they become laughable. Blasters are actually damage dealers. Controllers are mitigators/mulitpliers: it's not their place to do direct damage so they're only mediocre at it, but when it comes to mitigation in any form they rock hard. Defenders are mitigators/multipliers/damage dealers: Both their primaries and secondaries are split between those three, with much more damage in the secondary and much less in the primary. So think about it: you can still compare defenders to blasters, but the defender is obviously inferior in damage. You can still compare defenders to controllers but taking into account the mitigation/multiplication of the controller primary the controllers win out in this field by quite some distance.

There is, in my opinion, no possible way to fix this by nudging numbers around or modifying the inherent. The only way to change it is to make it so they simply aren't comparable. That would mean changing the defender's secondary to something that would fundamentally alter their role in the team. At the same time, this could be used as an opportunity to give them the boost they need for soloing. Creating some melee offense/defense combo sets for their secondaries would do this quite well, and in my opinion is the only thing that would (this is because I haven't thought of anything else and no one else has pointed out any other options).

Do I think that's remotely likely? Of course not. It would take a huge amount of effort and resources for the devs to accomplish something like that. Do I think it's possible? Absolutely. They did something similar with the Dominator secondaries (ranged/melee as opposed to melee/defense) and all the powers already exist and are seen together in all four of the melee ATs (tanks/scraps/brutes/stalkers).

Unless/until someone else chimes in on this concept, however, I think this is going to be the last time I bring it up. I don't want to get smacked.

Robin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

It's an odd thought, but Defenders would be a lot handier if they came in pairs. In fact, two half-Defenders would do as well or better together than one whole-Defender does alone. After all, consider the Mastermind, and the amazing all-VEAT teams when they were first made available...