Vigilance change considerations!

Sorry Luminara, I missed this repsonse.

I admit that my original post was very general, and also that it is quite true that defenders can 'act' like a controller. Its not always that clear-cut. For instance, when does a controller begin his ability to pre-empt status effects?
My current defender that I am leveling will not get his FIRST real controll until level 28 (Tesla Cage), which is an effect shared with Blasters, who, I might add, would get this power much sooner.

So, I guess, what I would say is this. If you compare each AT across the board at level 50 with all their powers accessible, you do not see as much disparity as you would during the seperate phases of their individual careers.
I have seen Psyonico's videos of his Emp/Nrg/Psy Defender and they are quite impressive, but this does not mean (to me) that a level 30 Empathy Defender is ALSO in-balance. Just my personal feelings about Defenders as an AT.

I vaguely recall PK suggesting something based on giving Defenders a recharge boost. I know that I was one of the first to suggest giving Defenders a "supportfiance" type inherent, though I always championed the primary and the secondary increasing different values (my initial suggestion involved +dam for primary powers and +buff/debuff for secondary powers) to encourage mixing the activation of both primary and secondary powers for greatest effect.

My latest suggestion would be for primary powers to increase recharge and for secondary powers to increase endurance reduction, both at roughly 33% (re: a single even level SO) when "fully chained" (re: full animation time consumed by a either primary or secondary powers), based upon the activation time of the power (just like the Defiance +dam for Blasters which, iirc, is normalized for ~40% +dam when "fully chained"). Blasting would increase endurance sustainability (re: mitigation the cost of blasting in the first place) whereas using your primary would get your blasts and long recharge buffs back faster. It would address the issue of Defender endurance costs while soloing and allow team based Defenders that use activated powers to use those activated powers a bit more often (re: closing the gap a bit with Controllers).

Level 1.

But that's not quite suggestive of an imbalance, because some defenders can also preempt status effects at level 1, and because status effects don't actually begin to become problematic until the late teens and early twenties.

So in actual game play, it's not who has what at the beginning, but who has what and how well the player is using it once the "training session" (meaning, the first ~20 levels) is over.

Oh, believe me, I've been down that road. Hitting 28 with Electron Girl was a huge thing because it meant I wasn't going to have to spend a significant portion of my time waiting for status effects to end so I could finish fights. I know exactly how good it feels to get to that point.

But objectively, I also have to acknowledge that it's only one out of seventy two possible defender combinations, and furthermore, only nine of those seventy two combinations are "suffering" by having to wait until level 28 for reliable control options of their own. That's 12.5% of all defenders. One out of every eight, and that's if we presume that all primaries and secondaries are equally represented. Given the vocalized popularity of powersets such as Dark, Rad and Storm, all of which have status effect mitigation tools much sooner than level 28, it's very possible that the actual number of defenders getting shafted on the status effect situation is even lower.

This goes back to the point I made earlier, that buffing defenders is never going to be a simple "Give defenders X" solution, that a unilateral change which applies to everyone won't solve the problems for all defenders, because the AT itself is so incredibly diverse. You have a small percentage experiencing issues with status effects, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with damage output, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with protecting teams, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with endurance management... every one of those seventy two defenders is different, in a way that no AT other than controllers can even approach with their different powerset combinations.

What if that level 30 Emp is Emp/Dark, with stacking -ToHit and a mag 2 Stun? Or an Emp/Ice with a Hold available very early and a second one available later? Or an Emp/Sonic who can utilize that reliable KB power to mitigate status effects and damage? Or Emp/Psi? What about a level 30 Rad/Sonic? Or a level 30 TA/Dark? Or a level 30 Storm/Ice? Or a level 30 Dark/Archery? Are these defenders really struggling when faced with status effects, in the same way that an Emp/Elec, Emp/Archery or Emp/Energy might be?

Do you see the enormous difference in potential between the extremes? It's that difference that makes balancing defenders, against other ATs and in regard to the content, such a difficult thing. You don't see that in other ATs because they're relatively standardized. Even controllers are more standardized than defenders, they at least have primaries which generally follow a pattern. Defenders are all over the place, covering the entire range of strength in this game.

Scrappers, blasters, tanks and controllers, and even Kheldians, can generally be measured for performance because within each individual AT, they generally perform equally with most of the pri/sec combinations. Defenders, however, can perform at both extremes (tankmage and "hate soloing because it takes an hour to clear a short mission"), and there is no single performance metric which can be used to balance this AT against the others because of that wildly fluctuating difference in capability within the AT.

Heck, we, defender players, have been having this same debate for years now and we still can't agree on one single buff which would improve the AT across the board. We can't even agree on what needs to be improved because the differences between defender pri/sec combinations are so dramatic in so many cases.

I'm not knocking anyone's ideas, or trying to belittle anyone for proposing solutions, I'm just saying that it's time to stop pretending that the defender AT is a one size fits all thing and trying to create balanced solutions for it with that mindset. Defenders represent the very essence of this game, diversity, in all of our myriad combinations, and our problems cannot be solved with a one size fits all answer. I suspect that we won't truly find a balance solution without a complete overhaul of the pri/sec combination system to allow bonuses to be granted for specific combinations, which could then be used to address the problems that the most troubled combinations face... but if that is the case, it'll be a long time coming, if ever.

But it doesn't cost us anything to talk about the problems and suggest solutions, so keep the ideas and threads coming. There's a lot of fresh meat on the development team these days, and you never know when someone's going to peek in our corner of the forums and see something that sparks an idea that leads to a universal solution.

While I agree with most of this paragraph in principle, there are degrees you mention that I disagree with.

Status effects are an issue for more defenders than you represent; while I do not agree that defenders need more help with status effects, its also more prevalent than your post would lead one to believe.

Low damage output affects all defenders, even Kins (although Siphon Power is nice very early, it pales a bit by the late teens) and Stormies will have issues until the 30s and after that they merely become acceptable (vs. normal content, sure vs. one hard target, Rad may shine, but on a fast moving team those toggle debuffs rarely get the whole spawn and often don't even get applied at all). When teams want to fight all +3s and +4s, this might be alleviated somewhat.

I am not sure what defenders have issues protecting teams.

I do believe that massive AoE output solo and on small teams is an area they do not cover, actually. Only the smallest percentage of defenders can even begin to broach excellent single target output, and normally that is only applicable vs. boss level targets and higher; most missions solo and on small teams will have zero to two mobs like that. Defenders do not cover the entire range of the game as far as damage output is concerned. They are low enough in that department that a buff would not be problematic.

Blaster balance is just as or even more problematic to compare, actually.

No defender is a tankmage. Soloing GMs and soloing normal content is vastly different. Even Rad/Sonics are going to go through standard missions at a pace many brutes, scrappers, blasters, dominators, masterminds, stalkers and some tankers would find glacial. On a team, many players of defenders do not even bother blasting because they think the damage output is meaningless (while they are wrong, I have come to believe that perception is held by the majority of the population).

Mostly because "we" have been terrifed that a damage buff would make Stormies overpowered. It wouldn't and "we" should have realized that sooner.

I feel just the opposite. Its time "we" stop pretending that a damage and HP buff would make defenders overpowered. Simply stated, a damage increase and a HP increase will make all defenders more playable to more people and will NOT make any defenders overpowered.

I've been gone from this thread for stress relief reasons so please forgive my overdue response. And I don't think your paraphrases altered my meanings at all so there's no reason at all to be sorry.

As to the controllers, actually I would argue that the change to/addition of containment had absolutely no affect on their perceived role. I most certainly agree with you that it had a huge impact on their perceived value, but their role--being mitigation/multiplication--did not change in anyone's eyes that I know of. They fill only one role. When people look at their team makeup and think they need damage, they never look for a controller. When they need aggro control they never look for a controller. The role of the controller has been static since it's inception. This is true, to the best of my knowledge, for all the ATs and for the most part I feel that's as it should be.

Similarly with defiance, the value of the blaster changed but not their role. I submit that no change to any inherent could possibly change the role of an AT. The AT's role is determined by four things: Primary powers, secondary powers, hit points and damage scale. Those are in descending order of relevance to the role, mind you. Even if the blaster damage scale was tiny little bitty, they'd still fill the same role. They'd do a crappy job of it, but it would still be the same role.

Right now the problem is not who is best at what role. It's hands down obvious who is best at what role when each specific role is looked at on its own. The problem is that the capabilities of the defender are split between two roles, each of which is also filled by another AT, and therefore they are not capable of successfully competing with those other ATs. Changing the ability of the defender to fulfill either of those two roles or even both of those roles will not change that they are the schizophrenics of the game. Defenders have MPD: Multiple Powertype Disorder. Until they are devoted to filling a single role or roles that are not in competition with other AT roles, they will continue to suffer from the same problems regardless of how good they are at their roles.

Obviously those are just my thoughts and my predictions, but it's good to get them down so later on people can either tell me why I was wrong or more thoroughly understand how to prevent the problem in the future.

Robin

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

Every AT had role bleed. Controllers and tankers manage aggro. Controllers and Defenders Buff/Debuff. Tankers and scrappers manage aggro. Scrappers and Blasters deal damage. Hell, tankers often complain that their problem is that they do not have multiple roles (although I think their damage is meaningful on teams, so I would argue that damage is a role they perform decently, if not outstandingly).

Defenders buff/debuff. They have a damage role, their only problem is that they do it poorly. I think people would be fine perceiving them as Buff/Debuff and Blast the snot out of enemies, much like people think of Controllers as aggro control and buff/debuff and people think of blasters as blast the snot out of enemies with some control.

Having multiple roles is not the problem, its the solution.

There is a huge difference between role bleed and having your powers split between two completely different roles. Tanker/Scrapper secondary power sets all help them fill their primary roles. Same with controllers and blasters. Not so with defenders.

In any field, the only way multiple roles helps is by allowing less competent people to act as "jacks-of-all-trades". Even then they wind up sending people to specialists when greater depth of ability or knowledge is called for. Filling more roles will never make the AT feel more needed, it will only make it feel more desperate.

I haven't said this before, but I think it might explain better what I'm talking about. Keep in mind that I'm not suggesting this. I don't know if it would be a good idea or not and I'm pretty certain it would be unreasonably difficult for the devs.

Tankers and Scrappers have the same primary/secondary sets, just reversed. They do have, as you said, role-bleed. Unless you are desperate, however, you don't call for a scrapper to do the tankers work or vice versa. A tank is just better at tanking and a scrap is just better at scrapping. Controllers have the defender primary as their secondaries. If the defender had the controller primary as their secondary, the two ATs would then fall into the same category. As it stands, the defender can't compete with the controller for mitigation/multiplication or with the blaster for damage. If the defender had controls as their secondary then they'd be back on an even playing field with the controller and wouldn't have half their powers made moot by a blaster. People wouldn't call in a controller to do a defender's work unless they were desperate, just like they don't call in a scrapper to do a tanker's work unless they're desperate.

Again: I am not suggesting that. I'm not saying I would be opposed to it, just that I haven't given it any thought except as a method of elaboration for my point.

Robin

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

Tanker secondary powers only help them fulfill their primary role because they have an Inherent that causes them to do that. If they were forced to draw aggro based on the damage they do (and had no Taunt) then they would be very crippled at their primary role.

Which is why I've said that Defenders need an Inherent that, while not reducing their ability to deal damage as a secondary role (similar to Tankers) also allows them to utilize their Primary better. Currently, Vigilance does not support this in any way.

Also I would argue that is not the Stormies that there is the concern about becoming overpowered with a damage boost, but the Rads. (possibly Rad/Sonics) However, except for the difference in buff/debuff strength, there would be no difference between a Defender with a 75% damage base, and a Corruptor, currently with a 75% damage base. Either would perform the same in comparison to a Blaster, at least until debuffs began to be applied. And quite frankly, I think most Blasters have NOTHING to be concerned about in regards to the damage level of a Corruptor. At best, a Corruptor may be able to beat a Blaster in ranged and AoE damage for short periods of time after his debuffs have had time to stack. He will never be able to beat the Blaster in melee damage, and the Blaster will likely have done enough burst damage to finish off the foes before the Corruptor can even get started.

It is not Blasters that need to fear a Defender damage boost, it is Corruptors.

I disagree on a factual basis. No matter which AT does damage, it gets the attention of the target. Gauntlet serves only to amplify and extend that fact for tankers and spread that effect around to the immediately surrounding foes. It does not create that effect and therefore can't be said to be why the secondary benefits them in their primary.

I fully agree with you in that Vigilance doesn't do squat for defenders to make their secondary set benefit their primary role. That's because the only way the secondary set can possibly benefit their primary role is by the secondary effects of the secondary powers. Those effects, like -def, -res, etc., are the exact same ones held by blasters. The exception there is -acc of dark which blasters don't yet have. Any inherent which would benefit the secondary set would benefit only the secondary role. Any inherent which would benefit the primary set would benefit only the primary role. Because they suffer from this role-split all of their benefits are split. All other ATs (except arguably the corruptor but I'm here to talk about heroes) have a direct synergy between primary and secondary power sets which focus them towards their primary role. The primary and secondary sets of the defender have only a very weak and indirect synergy for their primary role and this is made even less significant by making them try to fill two roles in order to make full use of their powers.

If you're not certain I'm correct in that, please ask yourself how many times you've heard it suggested that any active defenders (i.e. not FF or Son) just defend by using only buffs or heals or whatever? Contrast that with how many times you've ever heard a tank be told to not attack and only taunt, or a controller to only control and not buff. I've heard controllers be told to only buff (and practically screamed at the team to get a defender if they want a buffer) but I've never once heard them told to not buff. There are no other ATs that are commonly told to forgo the use of half their powers in order to be more useful to the team.

I agree with this part, too. I'm not suggesting defenders should get such a damage boost, only that it would never interfere with blasters. It would be the height of foolishness to give defs anywhere near a big enough boost to make them compete with blasters. In order to make their damage side significant enough to compensate for having half of their powers be inapplicable to their primary role, however, it would have to boosted high enough to compete with blasters. One must remember that there are two, mutually exclusive, actions going on: dps and buffs/debuffs. No character can activate two powers at the same time. While they're using a buff power they're not firing off a blast, and vice versa. Toggles detract from the ability to use those blasts by draining endurance, so either defenders are fighting against time (do I use this activation time to blast or to buff?) or they're fighting against endurance (do I blast or keep this toggle going?).

It's my contention that as long as this fact continues, there is no possible change to the inherent that will make the AT any more popular.

And that's really my point. It's a popularity contest. Defenders are horribly (IMO) underrepresented in the hero population because the people who like to play support would rather play controllers and people who like to blast would rather play blasters. The only people who would prefer defenders are those who specifically want to do both (very, very few) or who care more about concept than ease of soloing or getting on teams.

Again, I'm not saying defenders are weak or wimpy. I think defs rock. If I didn't I wouldn't be here trying to help figure out how to improve them. I'm just saying that they are underrepresented and therefore are obviously less popular than other ATs. I don't think they'll ever be called "defenders" and get a full 20% share of the blue-side, but I'd sure be happy to see them at least around 15-18%.

Robin

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

I disagree. The blast sets of defenders actually are quite handy at helping to mitigate damage, more people just need to understand that they should be using them. I think a damage increase would encourage that behavior.

The standard argument that people use to say that controllers are better than defenders actually is exactly that they can accomplish multiple tasks. They control aggro, buff/debuff, and even do respectable damage is the usual line of reasoning.

I understand what you are saying, I am simply disagreeing with your premise that blasting is not interesting enough of a secondary role to make people want to play defenders. I think it is, but I think it needs more OOMPH to attract those people. If I felt more defender damage would be a balance concern, then I might have to look elsewhere for a change (simply making the attacks more end efficient, for example would solve my personal minor gripes). But since I think the damage can be buffed without causing a problem, I'd rather not change the focus of the AT as it currently stands.

Well, I just like to switch it up now and again. Next time I will use Dark defenders and after that I might use TA.

Agreed. That is why I would boost corruptors as well.

It is not the damage that attracts and most importantly holds Aggro, but the Threat rating, which is higher for Tankers than any other AT. Tankers in addition have Gauntlet, which as you said spreads the effect around, and their Taunt and taunt auras, which additionally build aggro and multiply the aggro that they have. The end result of this is that a Tanker appears to deal greater damage, from a standpoint of drawing aggro, than he actually does.

It could be argued that a Tanker would be better served with a Secondary that produces effects that tend to draw great amounts of aggro, such as knockback, debuffs, and soft holds. In any case, if it were not for Gauntlet, and the multiplying effect of the Threat rating, the Tanker would never be able to pull aggro off of a Blaster or Scrapper. As long as the damage role of the Tanker is secondary, by definition a Tanker should never be able to hold aggro by damage alone. He will never have as much as the so-called damage dealers.

Aggro, like Endurance Drain, is an on or off thing, either you are drawing enough aggro, or you are not. The amount of damage becomes irrelevant, if you aren't doing enough to hold aggro. On the other hand, the Taunt multiplier is relevant as long as you continue to apply it to even a moderate amount of damage.

Well, again, this is also true of Tankers. Not all Tankers have secondary effects in their powers that benefit their primary role. Some do, a Super Strength Tanker can do knockdown, which will draw additional aggro as I mentioned above. An Energy Melee Tanker can stun his foes, which will cause him to survive longer, as if he had more defense. But a Fire Melee Tanker has no secondary effect that he can use to increase his aggro holding abilities. The additional DoT is too minor to pull aggro off of a Scrapper or Blaster. It is only his Inherent, Gauntlet, that makes his attacks equally as useful to another Tanker with a different Secondary.

In effect, all Tankers have the same secondary effect on their attacks, Gauntlet. This is above and beyond the secondary effect associated with their Melee "theme".

Granted. But Gauntlet is an Inherent that benefits only the Primary role. Gauntlet does not in any way increase the Tanker's damage. In fact, it and Vigilance (and Domination, now) are the only Inherents that do not increase damage. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) those three Inherents are the ones associated with the only ATs that have damage dealing in their Secondary.

And Controllers, in fact, have an Inherent that benefits NEITHER their Primary, NOR their Secondary role. Their Inherent does not in any way increase their ability to control, or to support the team. (Unless you are one of those who consider Overpower part of the Inherent. It does not operate the same way as Containment, though, so it might be considered a second Inherent)

You clearly were not here before Gauntlet, when Tankers had to take Provoke from the Power Pool in order to be useful to the team, and were criticised when they did not act as a "taunt bot" and forgo their attacks for constant taunting.

Tankers do not have to have their damage boosted high enough to compete with Scrappers to make their damage side significant enough to compensate for having half thier powers be inapplicable to their primary role. In fact, if Tankers did not have a higher Threat rating, they WOULD have to have their damage boosted to be as high as Scrappers, so they could pull aggro off of them. It is a good thing that they don't have to.

The other counter to your argument is Dominators, who DID have their damage boosted, because half their powers were inapplicable to their primary role as crowd control. Positron explicitly stated that he was making Dominators "have two primary roles", with both control and damage dealing having equal weight. However, do Dominators, under the new system, do as much damage as Blasters? They have 5% more damage with their melee attacks, and 15.5% less damage with their ranged attacks. They also lack the ranged AoE and Tier 9 of a Blaster, and have single target holds that deal damage instead. So overall I think that while a Dominator might be able to "blap" as well as a Blaster, the Blaster still does more damage.

And a Dominator, like a Blaster, does not have a Primary (or Secondary, for a Corruptor) that has the potential to boost their damage. So the Dominator needs a very high base damage. A Defender does not have a very high base damage, and does not need a very high base damage in order to fulfill even a dual role, as a Dominator does, to deal damage.

This is true for Controllers and even Blasters as well. A Controller can't buff the team and hold foes at the same time. A Corruptor can't deal damage (his primary role, mind you) and support the team at the same time. A Mastermind can't direct his troops, use his own attacks, and use his Secondary at the same time. Or so people keep telling me. No, you can't do those things at the same time, obviously. There is always a need to keep choosing whether an offensive power or a defensive one is the right one to use at any given moment. On the other hand, I have never had any trouble laying down debuffs, buffing my allies, and using heal powers, while at the same time using blasts, control powers, or henchmen commands.

Most Buff/Debuff sets provide you with ample duration after each use to allow you to use other powers. Toggle powers, as you said, can be established, and as long you manage your Endurance wisely, can be used throughout the combat. Dropped and targetted debuffs can be fired into a group, to lay down a battle area, and then attacks can be fired into that same area. Yes, Defenders, Corruptors, and Controllers must take the time to prepare the combat, using their buff/debuff powers, and then engage in combat. This takes more time than a meleer, or a dedicated ranged fighter such as a Blaster or Dominator.

But it is not impossible.

Well, those who want to do both can play a Controller, because Controllers do plenty of damage, despite the fact that neither their primary role nor their secondary role is damage. But that is the issue, is the lack of popularity because people naturally dislike hybrids, and gravitate towards specialists? Or is it because the specialists are SO MUCH BETTER than the hybrid that there's no reason to even consider it in the first place?

And with both Dominators and Blasters getting a damage boost recently, I don't think that would be overpowered either. I am in complete agreement.

Thanks Luminara excellent responses
As far as the Diversity of Defenders, I have to admit that this is the CORE reason I am so interested in the AT. Every AT I have played was very enjoyable, but as you hinted at, more 'cookie-cutter' in its implementation and typical approaches to weaknesses.

I honestly dont want to see Defenders get the 'Controller' Treatment and be given a significant DPS increase to quiet many of the cries from the community. I would not turn it down either, but I am holding out for a Powerset-by-Powerset review that approaches what each primary "NEEDS" in order to improve all their play aspects;

solo-play
small-team play
large-team play
low-level
mid-level

I think this would be good for the AT, even if it would not be a quick and easy fix.
Anything that is 'too general' will leave the disparity between powersets as they are.
This to me would be a missed opportunity and would continue to push players into the more versatile (read powerful) combinations.

Thanks for the excellent response Robin,

I can see your points clearly. And you are right about controllers and the change that their Inherent made.
Perhaps I should have stated this differently.
I seem to recall in the begining the choice between bringing a Defender vs. a Controller was more about preference. If you brought a Controller on your team, you 'Knew' you were gaining greater safety (whether you wish to call it mitigation, controll, etc...) but with a sacrifice of less damage. Your Blasters were usually quite happy with the addition of a controller. If you chose to add a Defender you 'knew' that you were getting some nice buffs which added survivability, but also that you were getting some damage as well.

Once Controllers got containment and defenders were reduced in their damage dealing abilities, the clear distinction was gone. So, what I should have said was that the Controller and Blasters inherents improved their 'performance' but not necessarily their 'role' on a team. By the shear magnitude of the Controller change, they did however muscle past Defenders (with a few exceptions) in the 'role' of team support.

Does that sound more accurate ?

I say, nerf the buff/debuff, nerf the damage, boost the controls. that way, controllers won't steal defenders job and everyone is happy (except controllers but who cares XD)

This is only the main idea and sure it needs to be balanced but I think controllers secondary is too awesome. I mean, blasters have some kind of control and melee in their secondary but nothing compared to controllers or scrappers. tankers have melee but not as powerful as scrappers. defenders have blasts but it sucks compared to blasters ...

While I certainly wouldn't have said this myself (I play a lot of controllers), I'm very glad someone did. Don't tell anyone I said so, but I agree. Defenders' powers are right-on in every way (except for the inherent which sucks no matter how you look at it because it doesn't benefit builds remotely equally). It's the ease with which they are replaced that makes them less desirable. For the most part I prefer to "manage from the bottom", meaning pick the least played AT and change it to make it more desirable, but I think your suggestion certainly has merit.

Robin

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

Maybe it's the way this was said or maybe my mind is just working differently this morning, but this made me think about when I started switching over to controllers from defenders. It was about the time of containment. As you say, it didn't change their role but it did change how they were perceived sufficiently to make them acceptable alternatives to other ATs. Unfortunately the main AT for which they became an acceptable alternative was Defender.

I still don't know that I believe a change to the defender inherent will make the AT more desirable, but I will now be much more open minded to options people voice. Thanks for keeping at this, Spark. I always appreciate calm, mature reasoning.

Robin

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

Thanks for your support Robin

Its funny you mentioned changing from Defenders to Controllers, cause thats exactly what I did back in the beginning, even before containment.

Its also why you dont hear my voice amongst the many asking for more DMG. Although I would welcome it as an improvement, I really dont want to see happen to "Blasters" what has happened to "Defenders". If you could play a character that could deal 'near-blaster' level damage, but with much greater safety (Defender primaries), we would begin to see a player-base move from Blasting to Defenders. They would feel the effects and you would see "Loyal" Blaster fans chanting 'Nerf Defenders' continuously.

No Thanks

That paragraph was a direct response to a statement regarding the availability of powers which mitigate status effects before level 28. You can count them yourself, there are a total of nine (9) powerset combinations which do not offer "meaningful" status effect mitigation prior to level 28 (and three of those, */Energy, do offer potential status effect mitigation). The remaining sixty three (63) combinations do offer some means of preventing or avoiding status effects prior to level 28.

Taking that paragraph out of context, as you did, may make it appear as if I'm downplaying the deleterious nature of status effects, but in context, which I have restored, you are incorrect.

Low damage output is not a problem for all defenders. Low damage output is a problem for some defenders, and those cases tend to be a result of having a primary which does not offer a way to improve damage output and a secondary without Aim or -Res. Defenders with primaries which do improve damage output (seven, out of nine existing primaries) consistently show solid performance, and when paired with secondaries with Aim (excluding Kinetics, since the damage cap can potentially render Aim's buff useless) or -Res perform very well.

Realistically, low damage output tends to be a problem for builds like Emp/Dark or FF/Psi, builds which are in the distinct minority because they offer neither +Damage nor -Resistance. The majority of builds offer at least one of those options, and many of those builds can offer both.

Defenders which are Slept, Held or Stunned, or out of endurance, or who have no additional methods of improving team survivability beyond what they do initially (ex: FF/Archery which has bubbled everyone but does not have Repel, Force Bubble or Repulsion Field and is waiting for Repulsion Bomb to recharge; TA/A which has already applied all debuffs/controls and has nothing recharged or which will stack to further improve team survivability).

They do, but as with all other things related to being a defender, it's dependent on the pri/sec combination. Some defenders can put out amazing AoE damage, some have such poor AoE damage output that it could be referred to as "not worth bothering with". /Dark, /Archery and /Rad are all considered excellent defender AoE damage secondaries, with good reason.

For the sake of argument, let's presume that all */Sonic defenders can meet that criteria. That's nine of the seventy two combinations decided. What other combinations can deal impressive single-target damage?

All */Archery except FF/ and Emp/.
All */Energy except FF/ and Emp/.
All */Ice except FF/ and Emp/.

Without going any further down the list of secondaries, we've already reached a total of thirty combinations which can deliver solid single-target damage through a combination of +Damage, -Resistance and having sufficient number of attacks and/or sufficiently powerful attacks to deal significant damage. Thirty out of seventy two does not, by any stretch, represent "the smallest percentage", and as I said, that's not even a complete list. The total number of defender combinations which can deal acceptable single-target damage is higher than thirty.

Now, had you said "only the smallest percentage of defenders can even begin to touch excellent single-target output within a set span of time", you would be correct. This is one of the prices we pay for having the best Damage buffs and Resistance debuffs in the game, we are expected to use them to improve our own damage output. This is part of the basic design of the AT, we are given powerful tools which we can and should use.

I've noticed a trend in threads like this one. Those who continually insist that all defenders need a buff to improve damage output generally play FF/* or Emp/*, or deliberately avoid addressing the use of +Dam/-Res in order to make their position appear stronger because they don't want to "waste time" using their tools to improve their damage output, they want blaster level damage output out of the box and they don't care if it would make some defenders ridiculously overpowered, they care only about their own convenience. I'm not implying that you, StratoNexus, are approaching this discussion from that position, merely that it tends to be a common factor in these threads.

We have defenders who can solo AVs and GMs, we have defenders who can solo team-sized spawns, we have defenders who claim to struggle when soloing three +0 minions (ridiculous as it sounds). I'd say that covers the entire range of damage output. Or is there some exotic range of which I'm unaware that defenders are incapable of playing in?

Again, some defenders have low damage output. Not all. That is why a unilateral damage buff is not appropriate. Buffing the entire AT means buffing the highest as well as the lowest. We already have defenders soloing AVs and GMs, do you really think the developers want defenders out there trying to solo two AVs or GMs at once, or soloing an AV/GM in half the time?

You want to address one outlier case with no regard to what happens to the other outlier case. If that position were reversed, if the developers were saying that the extreme top end of defenders were "too powerful" and instituting an AT-wide damage reduction, would you consider that reasonable? Of course you wouldn't. And your position that the entire AT should have its damage buffed is no more reasonable.

No, it really isn't. Blasters don't have a very wide spread of differentiation in their abilities, they deal damage above and beyond all else. Damage is a constant, it's the same thing from one blaster to the next. Some blasters have some extra tricks up their sleeves, some blasters have higher damage output than others, but they tend to be very similar despite the variety of powersets available. A Fire blaster might defeat foes a little more quickly than an Ice blaster, an Ice blaster might defeat foes a little more safely than an Electrical blaster, etc., but that's their focus, they "kill stuff".

Defenders don't have that focus. Every defender primary is very different from every other defender primary. The defender secondaries are more streamlined, but how they function on concert with the primaries makes each combination unique (ex: an FF/Dark is not at all like a TA/Dark, which itself is not anything like a Kin/Dark, and so on). Every defender combination does something different. Blasters just shoot and hit things, and with the exception of /Devices, how they do it doesn't change much from one combination to the next.

I quantify any character capable of soloing AVs or GMs to be a tankmage. There are many such builds in this game, and yes, there are defender tankmage builds.

And there are defender builds capable of doing both. Furthermore, a tankmage is not required to solo normal content, and none of the defender builds are incapable of soloing normal content. Not a single one. Any defender who claims to be incapable of soloing normal content is either deliberately or unintentionally playing with a build that they designed to be extremely limited (such as only having the tier 1 attack).

You have access to data mining which proves this? Or have conducted a scientific survey obtaining mission completion times at specific difficulty levels with various brute, scrapper, blaster, dominator, mastermind, stalker, tank and defender builds? Or is that just an opinion with no evidence to support it? Because I can easily counter that opinion with my own, based on my own experience playing defenders, blasters, tanks, scrappers and masterminds.

Again, I'd like to see some legitimate evidence of this "majority opinion", because it's not reflected in any of my four years of play experience on teams. To date, I have only met one defender who did not take or use his blasts, and again, that's in four years of playing this game, across three servers. That doesn't seem to support your assertion that the majority of defenders believe their damage output is meaningless or don't bother to blast.

*snort*

You appear to be a bit stuck on the Kins and Storms thing, like you believe they're at the top of the heap.

They aren't.

How does an increase in HP help a defender with 1200% Regen and a 25% self-heal which can recharge in 3s?

How does a damage buff help a Rad/Sonic?

As I said, solutions which don't address the problems aren't solutions, and every defender combination has a different problem, so unilateral solutions aren't going to fix anything for every defender. It it really were as simple as that, I have no doubt that Castle would've done it years ago. He's not blind to the general dislike of Vigilance or the various complaints about defender issues.

I've sworn off of defenders at least three times, because I was frustrated for one reason or another, but each time I found myself making defenders again simply because there are so many different things that you can do with them, and so many different ways that they can be played, they're just too interesting and have too much potential to walk away from. Every time I make a scrapper, or a blaster, or a tank, or a controller, it's essentially the same thing I made before, it just has some different graphics. But I can make twenty different defenders and they're all completely different from one another, in every way.

>.>

<.<

Even though I do tend to play TA/* almost exclusively.

Yes, I'm hopeless. I love my Trick Arrows. I love them so much.

No, it wasn't. The paragraph before the one I quoted was a direct response to a statement regarding the availability of powers which mitigate status effects before level 28. The paragraph I quoted was a general summary of your position that defender diversity makes it difficult to find "the right" buff for defenders. If you had intended it to be linked more directly to the previous paragraph, you made a very bad choice of an opening sentence, which links the quoted paragraph with an entirely different point in an entirely different post.

I think you should reassess your opinion. You were quite clearly downplaying the deleterious nature of status effects vs the majority of defenders. You were not merely pointing out that many defenders have powers which aid them mitigating status attacks, you were flat out stating that, "You have a small percentage experiencing issues with status effects." No claims of removing context are accurate, you had moved on from your previous paragraph and were making a much more general point, and I think you went too far.

All that being said, I agree with your position that status effects are a deleterious, but manageable and appropriate weakness.

I disagree. Most defenders have a way to make their low damage tolerably better. While I find the level of damage for defenders quite enjoyable, I have come to believe that even with resistance debuffs or self damage buffs, defender damage is just too low for most people to find them an enjoyable AT.

I believe that most people are turned off from playing even Rad, Dark, TA, Storm, etc., because they feel their blasts are ineffectual. I do not believe for a minute that FF and Empathy are the exception, rather, they are the extreme low end as opposed to the moderate low end of all the others.

Keep in mind, I am not just talking about damage while soloing here. I am also not just talking about all defender teams. I am also not talking just about small to mid-size teams. I am also not just talking about large "balanced" teams. I want to talk about all scenarios, although I would give extra weight to the most typical scenarios, if I knew what they were. I currently give extra weight to small to mid-size teaming, because I believe that is the most common scenario, but I do not rule out the other scenarios in my evaluations. Defender damage needs to be perceived as valuable across more scenarios than it is, IMO.

I am also interested in seeing your datamining or scientific surveys which show "Defenders with primaries which do improve damage output (seven, out of nine existing primaries) consistently show solid performance, and when paired with secondaries with Aim (excluding Kinetics, since the damage cap can potentially render Aim's buff useless) or -Res perform very well."

You forgot dead (although with new Epic powers, even that won't stop some). I am going to believe you are joking with this paragraph, because the other option lowers my opinion of you dramatically.

Considered excellent by whom? Me? I have already decided I do not count. You? You probably think like me when it comes to defender blasting; WE DON'T COUNT. Unless, of course, many more people think like we do than I perceive.

But even I cannot argue that defenders have amazing AoE damage output. They are serviceable, useful to a team, and good. They are not amazing, maybe great in the best case scenarios, but not amazing (over time; they can have some nice AoE bursts in one spawn, but those involve at least one long recharge power, think Disruption Arrow, OSA, RoA, as I am sure you are aware).

How about no? Sonic Attack's potential single target damage is only realized against harder targets. I happen to believe that they represent a very small part of the game. The part of my post you quoted was quite clear, let me repost it here and add some bolding for clarity:
Are you being intellectually dishonest here? When discussing damage output for an AT in regards to their perceived performance vs. content, what metric would be used that doesn't include TIME? Choosing not to play a defender is probably being done by many people because it takes too much TIME to defeat foes or because they feel like their secondary is not helping their team defeat foes in less TIME. What on earth would I be talking about if not damage over a set period of TIME?

You actually wrote:
OK. I concede your point. If we discuss this with the primary metric that matters, I am correct.

Possibly. I have seen enough non-FF and non-Emp complaints to make me a doubter. I have also seen very few people argue for "blaster level damage output out of the box", I think that is a characterization you are using to smear people who wish for a damage increase.

Apparently, there is a range of damage that you are unaware of, because other ATs can reach it, while defenders can't. The ability to solo team size spawns is not solely linked to damage output, otherwise blasters would be better at it than they are. Other ATs can blow through those spawns faster than defenders, even the best defenders, which means there is a level of damage defenders just do not reach. This is that whole TIME factor again. Sure, a good defender player can fight off many of the same challenges that other ATs can, but the defender would go faster if their buff/debuffs were being used by those other ATs.

Keep in mind, I am not stating that defenders should have the same damage capability as the high damage ATs. I am merely stating that those other ATs have enough separation from defenders currently, that a 23% base damage increase to defenders will not cause people to ignore scrappers, brutes, dominators and blasters (although the new difficulty slider may make people percieve blasters differently). Yes, those ATs might lose some population to defenders, but any population shift to defenders will come from all ATs, not just the high damage ATs and I am advocating change because I want to see defender population increase (and with defenders being more awesome, perhaps that will help get new players interested and interested for longer).

I am sure there are already defenders who have soloed multiple AVs at once. Are defenders who solo GMs and AVs recieving out-of-balance in game rewards? You want to restrict the whole AT based on what happens in an outlier case that is a miniscule part of the game and that is not even causing a reward per time imbalance.

My position is that all defenders could use an increase in damage. My position is that a 23% increase in base damage will not make defenders overpowered. My position is that more people would play and have fun with defenders if they had a 23% base damage increase (and scrapper HPs), but it will not relegate the other ATs to also-rans that are ignored in favor of defenders.

This is really a side topic, but I disagree with your position. I believe blasters have much more variability in style and capability than you realize. If you wish to discuss this further, feel free to PM me or start a thread in the blaster forums, that way we do not clutter up this topic.

As you wish. I tend to relegate AV and GM soloing into the interesting, but not representative of the game pile. That type of play is done for fun and for bragging rights, but there are few balance concerns that surround it. It is important to keep in mind, but it is also important to recognize it as an outlier.

If you wish to continue to debate AV/GM soloing as a point against raising defender damage, you are going to have to explain to me precisely what a 23% base damage increase and scrapper level hitpoints are going to do to AV soloers that will be problematic.

Maybe there are people not as good at the game as you? Or do you feel their opinions do not matter? Perhaps we should not balance the game around guide-writing, veteran forumites?

I said:
Luminara responded with:
I want to make sure we are clear here. I am stating that many brutes, scrappers, blasters, dominators, masterminds, stalkers and some tankers will solo through missions at a much faster pace than a Rad/Sonic defender. You feel I need datamining and scientific surveys in order to defend that position.

Your experience leads you to beleive that Rad/Sonic defenders of various levels will solo through equivalent misisons at approximately the same speed? If so, perhaps our in-game experience and thinking are not as similar as I thought.

I did not say the majority of defenders. I said many. Please do not assume I am trying to misrepresent or hyperbolize (I think I made that word up, I hope its meaning is clear) my game experiences to prove my point. It is my game experiences (among other things) that have made me believe my point, just as yours seem to lead you to believe I am wrong.

I agree that the majority of defenders will blast. I also believe the majority blast ineffectively, due to poor slotting and sub-optimal choices on which blasts to take and use, but I wouldn't care about that, if I felt they were having fun. Many times I do think they are, but many times (too many times) I believe they are not. I do not have legitimate evidence, just my experience.

I will balance your experience vs. mine and decide that many defenders blast and many do not and of those that do, many aren't really sure why they do.

Actually, I like to mix up which defender primary I mention. Simply repeating Rads and TAs over and over gets boring. I like the snorting at Kins and Stormies though, very evocative. Sorry, I skipped out on mentioning Cold, TA, Dark, and Sonic in the post you were responding to, but I assume you have a general level of understanding of which defender sets can improve their own damage. You keep telling me you do and mentioning that 7 of 9 can. I will attempt to be more precise in the future, but I really find it a pain to type out when the meaning should be clear. I apologize for the confusion.


Are you serious? It helps vs. burst damage and would improve both the amount regnerated and healed. It will help over the course of a mission, because when they start fighting a new spawn at half, that half is larger and the mitigation you mention will be more effective to get it back to full.


It helps them defeat minions and Lts more readily. The most common types of enemies they will face.


I believe the real problems people have with all defenders are speed through missions (caused by slow killing, endurance issues, and difficulty remaining alive) and the contribution of their blast set on teams. Therefore, increasing base damage and HPs will address the primary issues I believe all defenders have.

Your belief in the vast diversity of defender issues because all defenders are different is simply your belief. Or do you have access to data mining or scientific surveys which prove your faith?