The Unrealized Power of the Defender

I can make it simple.

Defenders are awesome because where other heroes can only add to the force of the team, they can MULTIPLY the force of the team.

Simple enough?

I have read all your posts for the last 30 minutes. Long ago when CoH was a few weeks old I was playing a dark/dark defender. After playing with my team for several missions, we were outside a mission waiting for couple others to sell/train, etc.

One of the others asked me if I understood what a Defender's role was. Told them I wasn't really sure. They said that it was to help defend the team. That I wasn't designed to be a mini blaster. One told me that my dark blasts were actually debuffs to accuracy and that I should slot them for that. In other words, they told me what I have been saying all along.

If a EMP joined your team and no one was getting healed because the emp was too busy blasting away at the target, would you care to have them on your team?

If a TA/archer joined the team and all attacks were slotted for damage, would you want them?

If a tanker joined your team and they were always the first to die, would you believe that was actually a tank?

If a controller came aboard and did nothing but let their pets do damage while they stood that watching, would you like that?

This is all I am saying. Every member on a team has their specific role to play. This is what makes up a team. If a team is made up of 8 blasters and they are fighting +4's, that team will constantly fail. It would also fail if it were 8 scrappers.

I was in a team once with 7 Blasters and me - a claws/wp scrapper that had no choice but to play the tank. It worked, because 3 seconds after I jumped into a large group, the npcs were all dead. The Blasters needed someone with some sort of defense to take the alpha.

I have an 18 rad/pain corruptor. Only have 1 offensive power that is unslotted and not even on the power bar. Everything else is in the heals. This way the team does more DPS, then if I were to cast blasts. The TEAM does more DPS because they are alive.

How much DPS can you do if you are dead? How much could you do if you rarely died? There was another pain corruptor on the team today. Her heals are like 100. Mine were over 250. And I could cast them really fast. If I stopped healing and started casting my blast, the DPS of the entire team would drop.

Could you imagine doing a raid on WoW without healers? It can't be done. Teams without healers don't last long against purples. These healers must have enough slots in their heals to heal a player that took a hit of several hundred. Like the alpha tank.

If a Defender lowers the npc's defense by 50%, the teams DPS would go up. Not everyone in the army carries a gun. It has to be this way to do the best job.

Would you mind posting your global handle, Firewasp? As everyone has stated at length, you're pretty much a solid example of everything wrong with this game, and I (along with some others, I'm sure) would prefer never having to run into you during my gametime.

wow, keep rolling this drama down da hill!
:P

If the Defender or Tank board doesn't have the drama of the week, the Suggestions board is always there to help.

There hasn't been an anti-knockback thread over there in a good 20 or 30 seconds, at least!

Personally, I flatly refuse to play a character of any kind that is incapable of soloing.

My defender experience is limited to Rad/Sonic thus far for that exact reason.

If you have no attacks of your own and everyone else on the team drops, what are you going to do, hit 'em with Brawl? If you try you're going to drop just like everyone else.

A defender is designed to defend the team. No one should argue that statement too much.

But there's something that most people who play "pure" defenders never think about:

YOU are part of that team, as such, being able to defend yourself via attacks IS part of your job description.

I don't care if you only have one attack, USE IT!

Okay.

Say you're playing oh...a FF/Sonic Defender.

You have just put shields on everyone on your team, you are running all the leadership toggles and have Dispersion Bubble running.

What are you going to do for the next 4 minutes until your shields are needed again?

Stand there? Not on my team you aren't. If you're playing that character on a team I am leading and you have already buffed everyone as well as you can, you had damn well BETTER be yelling at something. And it would be much preferable if at least a couple of those attacks were slotted for damage (since you CAN'T enhance Sonic's secondary effect)

Since Sonic has a resistance debuff in it, you will be helping the team kill much faster by making the enemy more vulnerable to their attacks, while contributing some DPS as well.

Your FF/Dark that never once killed anything on the way to 50? I have only one way can describe such a character...."dead weight". Any team above level 35 does not need you standing around just in case someone actually takes damage to heal them with the Medicine pool, that team would be much better off with you immobilizing, stunning, and debuffing with your secondary than having you stand around "just in case"

Sorry if that bugs you, but I HATE the mentality of players who only take the first attack in their secondary, and then only because they have no choice in the matter.

If you have done your job as a defender to the best of your ability, do something else while you are waiting for your skills to be needed again.

If I played my Rad/Sonic like you play your defenders I would have been kicked from many teams on his road to 50. Rad/Sonic is one of the single best combinations you can find if your goal is to go AV or GM hunting. It debuffs with both primary AND secondary, making the big bad that much easier to kill.

Firing AM and putting toggles on something (and nothing else) is not being a defender, it's being a leech, plain and simple.

You have a Primary and a Secondary powerset, not a Primary and Unnecessary powerset.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quite that stringent about the matter, if I were I'd be no better than people like the OP :P In the case of your defender, if they're devoting all their endurance to buffing and debuffing, they're still DOING something - I'd like them to blast when feasible, but this theoretical defender is doing their part and not just "healing" or whatever. Kind of a strawman though, considering the main point of contention in this thread is, say, FF/Cold/Sonic types that just shield and do little else.

I'm just saying everyone gets damaging powers of some variety, and they should be worked into any given player's strategy somehow.

As for my "joke", that line wasn't directed at anyone but Brophog02, and it was specifically the line "Sooooo, you don't call out names on the Defender board, nowhere else?". I shouldn't have to explain that so thoroughly, but here we are.

Maybe I should just quit while I am ahead. No matter what I say.

If I say, "CoV is short for City of Villains", you would tell me that I was wrong. Flame on!

In RL I am an engineering designer. I recently invented a device that increases the air temperature from the vents of a heat pump by up to 50 degrees F. Energy consumption drops drastically and it works every time in minutes.


Your response might be, "Who cares. I like a cool house in the Winter!

I am what you would call, someone that thinks "outside" of the box. My IQ was tested at 166, but that was back in high school. If I tell you that decreasing the defense of a critter by 50% will increase your dps, you might want to try it before flaming it just to get your post count up.

And my global name IS Firewasp, but I do not only play CoH. I play 28 mmogs, so the chances you will see me online anymore are slim. You might catch me on Aion though. I am in a guild on CoH, but it is a private guild and base.

The only time I play CoX is when there is a new Archtype. I've played the bane and it is low dps compared to a scrapper. Tried a widow the other day. The power timers are extremely long which makes it too boring to play. Hit the npc, wait 4 seconds, hit them again, wait ... I may as well be playing a broadsword.

I know, this is a Defender board so I will stop. I would say that 30% of the replies here have been very good information for a Defender prospects, while 70% of the replies were nothing more than flamers. Squash any good idea people.

The combination you chose, Force Field/Dark Blast, is perhaps the worst possible combination. It provides no defense or resistance debuffs to the enemies,


As I stated in previous posts, he was made pre-ED. his 6 slotted shields netted 153% defense. Plus the 153% Dispersion Bubble. His 6 slotted Maneuvers was 153%. Tactics was 6 slotted with to-hit buffs for a total of 153%. To say he provided no defense would be incorrect. It was very rare for any damage to get through. If it did I was also trained in medicine. The character was in heavy demand.

On a very rare occasion I would throw out a blast, but as soon as I did I was killed. That is why it was very rare