The Unrealized Power of the Defender

A defender that doesn't use his secondary hasn't learned anything about this game regarding defenders and what they stand for. I'd be annoyed to have such a person on the team with me but I wouldn't boot him if he's honestly trying to do his job with the tools available. While you think you are doing a fantastic job with your FF/Dark, I can tell you that there are better FF/Darks out there, even the ones that took team tp.

To categorize defender playstyle "the way they are meant to be played" as whole to be more or less pacifist is just completely wrong. I can give you more than a handful of defender combos that can/will be played aggressively by people with any resemblance of skill. In fact, any AT can be played aggressively by someone that knows what they are doing.

Your experiences with other MMOs hardly matter here. This is COH/V, not anything else. The tank/healer/DPS schema works in the game, but it's hardly the crux. I think once you start teaming with better teams and more capable people you will find out the real unrealized power of the defender.

Buffing comprehensively and playing other elements of the FF set should leave you with an enormous amount of free time. Non-blasting defenders, outside of PvP, are slackin' (imo). Defenders are force multipliers (mostly) and their secondary adds to the base force to be multiplied. Playing a defender with the same role-rigidity you learned in WoW is really selling the CoH game designers short.

To the OP:

I just don't think Defenders (or any CoX AT) can be pigeonholed so easily. For example, my dark/traps and my Sonic/Sonic play completely differently. Some combos lend themselves to buff boting, others demand more active combat, and still others are hybrid. That's what nice about CoX. The true power of the defender is the diversity of the class and the variety of force multiplying powers they can bring to a team.

Players in CoH have spent years unlearning the Everquest Cleric mentality of healbot boredom.

Your call to arms (such as it is) for Defenders to devolve to the role of buffbot/healbot is, unfortunately, an act of ignorance, as previous posters so aptly described for you.

There is a huge amount of hubris and arrogance in your remarks, that you hold the key to Defender nirvana, when in fact, your points about restricting powers, adhering to rules, and knowing your (limited) role, are a poke in the eye of Defender efforts since launch to move past the healer mentality and educate fellow players about what the Archetype is capable of.

You are a product of previous gaming methodologies that do not apply here. My sincerest suggestion is to abandon your revelations, realize you don't know everything you think you do about the Defender archetype, and relearn from scratch with some humility at the hands of some seasoned veterans who have moved the AT forward (some great suggestions about some SGs have already been made, though my personal recommendation is RO).

Best of luck.

While I'm finding Defenders to be my 2nd favorite AT hero side (sorry guys...I think my sig gives away my favorite AT)...I cry when I see a high lvl Defender with 1 or 2 blasts, and nothing but support powers.

I understand it in the lower levels. You're trying to get your primary powers and pool powers.

But to not attack? I've played alot of different Defender Primaries. I may not have gotten them all to 50, but I've played almost all of them (only low levels on Trick Arrow & Traps, with 20-30's on all the others not listed in my sig)...and there is more to just playing the Defender than using the Primary.

Ran with a Defender, who was Force Field/Archery who just had Snap Shot and Rain of Arrow. *Sigh* At least he had ROA I guess.

And I've been on plenty of teams, that my defender really didn't even need to use many of their primary powers, so had lots of time to blast, instead of just standing around.

And face it, just having 1-2 attacks isn't much, when those times come around (which can be quite often in higher levels).

So grab those attacks. They are useful! They help speed things up!

On the subject of Forcefield Defenders, I did what the OP did. For about a month. Then I learned not to do it anymore because it was boring and I could contribute a lot more by flinging Energy Blasts at the foes. Death is the ultimate debuff, after all. My Defender's role has varied a bit, both as the game changed and as my playing style changed. Right now, she's balanced. Mostly single target attacks, it's Energy Blast, after all, and apart from the three big bubbles, the knockback powers, with Psi Epic. She's an allrounder, can blast, can hold and can single handedly grant 44.5% Defense Buff to anyone staying in the Dispersion Bubble. 44.5% is very close to the magic 45%, and this can be done on SOs. I wouldn't dream of playing her passive anymore. 44.5% Defense and damage is greater than 44.5% Defense alone.

Actually, here's a fun suggestion: Make a Trick Archery Defender or a Storm Summoner. I would have said Kinetics, but they're all over the place, so go for something a bit less common. These Defenders are the direct opposites of Forcefields. Trick Archers have all the debuffs you could want and a well played Storm is a marvel to behold. It's also extremely difficult to make a good Storm, but you seem up to the challenge. I made a decent Trick Archer. Solo it's not so hot, but it's beastly on a team. She can pinch in on most needed roles, although she much prefers to stay airborne and rain arrows. But a passive Defender wouldn't have tanked AV Shadowhunter and lived. Easily her crowning moment of awesome. "You got AV aggro!" "I know." Well, she can do it for exactly 120 seconds, but it was enough to prevent him from getting to squishies while the Tanker could recover.

The true power of the Defender AT comes from those who don't care about its limitations. If you decide that Defenders can't do damage in advance, then you'll find they can't. If, however, you decide that Defenders can handle any situations that come up and build for it, you'll be surprised. Defenders are a toolbox of many awesome tools. Use them all and be amazed.

Not everybody plays the same way as you do. I dont care what other people think i should slot or shouldnt i do as i want and in what ways i want to help the people im with. Alot of times i see defenders who do not cast a single blast or attack and that isnt how many people would seem fair either. Its up the the player on how they wish to roll with their toon. On my 50s i dont spend 100+million on slotting them up i just buy regular enhancements and they get me through just as well and some dont feel that is right lol. One person cannot say what should and shouldnt happen to another player because their opinion is bias based on their own play style. I would of been happy to have the force field on ya and smile.

Explosive Blast is every bit as controllable as Energy Torrent. They both knock back away from the caster (Repulsion Bomb isn't knockback at all against anything not heavily knockback prone).

The difference is in the casting time, the recharge time, the % knockback chance, and the number of targets you can hit.

The casting time for Energy Torrent makes it a bit better as a purely defensive power, because you can get it out very quickly and it has a slightly higher % knockback (60 vs 50). That said, a lot of people think with FF already having plenty of knockback powers that Energy Blast is a bit redundant for its knockback.

IMO, if you're going to take one AOE power from Energy Blast, you may as well take both for the extra damage because the knockback is likely covered better in forcefield (assuming you took those powers).

I've always noticed that when people explain why defenders are awesome, it's always a long drawn out explanation, almost like it has to be explained to that extent, when a Scrapper can go "scrappers rule!!!" and get a cheering swarm of fans. Just being observant......bah what do I know, I've never even used a defender before, but their inherent could be better I hear.