Defender Debate

To be honest, I have rolled controllers on numerous occasions, and I really dislike them. Defenders are much more my choice of "support" role, at least on hero-side.

Both tankers and defenders are marginalized by PVE being too easy.

Their buffs are much stronger, but it's overkill because the secondary versions of those powers are plenty.

Forget about making Defenders better, just nerf controller secondaries - set them to, say, 50% of Def numbers.

I think it's more or less a fair trade that Defenders don't solo very well in return for being able to make a team varying kinds of invincible.

Although it doesn't make soloing a Kin/Rad any less frustrating. And entertaining.

What server are you playing on where Defenders are not wanted?? I don't think I have been on a team in the past 2-3 years that didn't want or have at least one defender on it.

I'll make this short because it's been talked about to death. After 5 plus years in this game it had become painfully apparent to me that the developers don't really care about Defenders. Defenders started out with medium damage, then it was scaled back to low to match Controllers (which end up out damaging defenders). The difference between a Controller and a defenders buff/debuff is negligible. And after creating inherent powers for the other archetypes; an inherent with no soloing incentive was thrown together. Some may even say the defender inherent actually rewards poor "defendering".

I mainly play Scrappers now; all around awesomeness. I used to love playing defenders, now unless I have a specific concept character in mind I just roll a Controller.

There are three classes of AT in the game now.

Class I: Generalists. Generalists solo well and can also contribute to teams. Class I is: Brute, Controller, Corruptor, Dominator, Mastermind, Scrapper.

Class II: Specialists. Specialists are much stronger in one aspect than any other AT in the game. They are therefore weaker in some other aspect than most comparable ATs. This makes them more difficult to solo, but excellent on teams that cover their weakness. Class II is: Blaster, Defender, Tanker (the "Holy Trinity" of standard MMO design).

Class III: Soloists. Soloists are excellent alone, but the qualities which make them excellent soloers are at best deprecated and at worst actively problematic on teams. Class III is: Stalker.

Defenders, as a class II AT, are by design always going to be inferior alone. There is no balanced way to improve their solo performance, other than getting rid of them and bringing Corruptors heroside. And they're still better than Stalkers, who cannot be made useful on teams at all.

And that's my poke at the hornets' nest for today...

At lower levels, defenders get their buff/debuff powers faster than corruptors or controllers. Want Speed Boost at level 12 or Fulcrum Shift at level 32? You're only getting that from a defender. So at lower levels defenders not only have stronger buffs they simply have more buffs than same-level characters in other ATs. But of course once you get into the 40s, the whole power progression issue is moot.

With Going Rogue coming, defenders might find themselves caught between other ATs. If you want maximum survivability it seems like a controller's combination of controls, pets, plus (admittedly weaker) buff/debuff will bring more to the table than a defender offers. If you want a combination of buff/debuff + damage a corruptor offers higher base damage, a higher damage cap, and Scourge.

Of course in situations that are more extreme than is common in current high level content, the extra strong buffs of a defender will be more significant. The devs have said that Going Rogue will offer a compelling new end game that will make current high level content "seem like a piece of cake" so perhaps that's what will help defenders to really shine vs. controllers/corruptors.

I would love to see Vigilance completely redone, other than that I am happy with my defenders.

It would be a rare team that would be unhappy to see a Defender or two on it. Even at lvl 50.

They aren't the easiest AT to solo, but they will pretty much always be able to find a place on a team.