The Unrealized Power of the Defender

Originally Posted by Star_Seer

In CoH you can have your cake and eat it too.

Originally Posted by EnigmaBlack

Until then, as much as I love my first AT... Vigilance still sucks...

Originally Posted by Jabbrwock

I don't think even most of the folks who love Defenders as they stand would dispute that one. The hard part is finding a replacement that will benefit all of the Defender primaries, given that they are about the most diverse collection of power sets assembled under a single set type label. Some heal, some don't. Some buff, some don't. Some debuff, some don't. Some control, some don't. Some damage, some don't. It's so eclectic that it's hard to find a common theme for an inherent to buff. This is likely a common request is to instead just throw more damage at the problem - Defenders do have damaging blasts in their secondary, and if it's not their primary specialization, at least it's something consistently present in all of their secondaries. They may not need more damage, but it's something you can give them in their inherent that won't be amazingly complicated, completely useless, or hugely benefit some primaries over others.

Originally Posted by EnigmaBlack

While defenders do so many different things, two things hold true; you can't defend when you're mezzed or face planted.

Originally Posted by EnigmaBlack

While defenders do so many different things, two things hold true; you can't defend when you're mezzed or face planted. Although people will scream and cry I'd say as an inherent, give Defenders mez resistance, much lower than AM, but still significant. I'd also suggest that their hit points be upped across the board.

Originally Posted by Tabik

Wouldn't this be of greater benefit to Rad/ defenders than any other kind then (as they would be able to stack the inherent mez resist with AM)? I like the idea, but I don't see how it can be executed fairly and evenly.

I do agree with an HP boost though. While perhaps not too much of a help overall, I don't see how it hurts either. If I'm not mistaken, defenders are tied with controllers for lowest base HP (excluding Khelds, I forget where they fall), so a slight boost could be given without doing much harm I think.

Originally Posted by Garent

Mez resistance has less of an impact the more of it you have..

Originally Posted by Tabik

I wonder if you'd mind elaborating on this, because I don't understand. I'm not trying to rebut your point, I just don't get it.

Originally Posted by Firewasp

The Deflection shield was at only 15%. This was a level 20 Defender. This 15% is the unslotted base. So I look at his info. He trained only two of his PRIMARY powers???

Originally Posted by Rush_Bolt

Defenders (as well as Controllers and Corruptors) are force multipliers.

When you bring a Blaster onto a team, you get a Blaster's damage output. Just for argument's sake, let's say that output is 50. They also bring a small amount of force multiplication where they improve the overall performance of a team by (again, for argument's sake) 20%.

Now, the Defender will bring less total damage output (say, 35) but brings a much higher multiplying effect due to the debuffs and buffs. Let's put that around 50%.

So what happens when you get a team of 8 Blasters?
(50 x 8) x (20% x 8) =
(400) x (1.6) = 640

And what of the Defenders?
(35 x 8) x (50% x 8) =
(280) x (4) = 1120


So while Defenders solo, or just in small numbers, may seem rather meh, when you bring like-and-like (in this case, more force multipliers) together, they make for a very potent combination.

Originally Posted by Not_Rhino

Your logic is flawed in many aspects. Defenders are 60% of Blaster damage, so a 30 would be a more proper number, and you aren't taking into consideration that a team of Defenders will spend anywhere from 20 to 50% of their time buffing and debuffing, while a Blaster is going to spend 90 to 100% of their time blowing **** up.

Originally Posted by Firewasp

LOL

B) When I was teaming with my FF defender, I wasn't just standing around for 4 minutes waiting to recast the shields. I was also playing healer and sometimes even stopped a wipe from happening. Like if everyone's health was very low due to an ambush, I would use team teleport to get everyone to a safe location to heal.

Originally Posted by New Dawn

People are entitled to a pacifistic toon come hero in my eyes

Originally Posted by Firewasp

My time on CoX has been limited to only two and a half years, but I have played computer games since they were invented in the early 70’s, online games starting when they were invented in 1983. It was a game called, “P-51”. A dogfight simulator between two players over a modem or it could be played between two computers via a null modem adapter. This was a 4 pin serial cable with wires 2 and 3 swapped. Your opponent’s plane showed up as a white dot on a black screen. The bigger the dot became, the closer they were to your plane. This doesn’t seem like much for graphics, but it was pretty amazing 26 years ago. Our computer club held tournaments for six months. The tourneys ended when I figured out how to win the game in just 2 minutes, instead of 45 to an hour.

You see that has been my hobby for the last 27 years. To figure put what a program will do beyond what it says it can do. In 1999 my brother gave me Asheron’s Call as a Christmas present. It was one of only 3 mmorpgs at the time. It had a level cap of 126 (4 billion xp) and an expansion came out for it a few years later that increased the cap to 275 (trillions of xp). So now when I play games like CoX and WoW and see a level cap of 50 and 80, I realized why so many players had many 50’s and 80’s. It was because this was a low level. It took me two years on Asherons Call to get my archer to level 165 (16 billion xp). Since every 10 levels your “power” is increased by 4 times, you can understand what the power of a 165 was like. Let alone a 275.

Anyway back to the Defender. Last night I was in a mission with my level 17 scrapper. There were three others on the team. Two Defenders and one Controller. One of the Defenders cast a FF shield on me which is nice. The other Defender had no buffs for me being a dark Defender. As we were fighting, my health was going down pretty fast (we were fighting purples). I checked my defense stats to see what percentage my shield was. The Deflection shield was at only 15%. This was a level 20 Defender. This 15% is the unslotted base. So I look at his info. He trained only two of his PRIMARY powers??? Which were of course unslotted or not used at all. Most of the trained powers were the blasts. He should have rolled a Blaster that has these powers as a Primary. Which as you know are 20% more damaging then the Defender’s Secondary blasts.

When my FF/Dark Defender reached 50 (never killing a thing to get there as he was pure player support as he should be), I respec’ed him to kill stuff. He was horrible! New players see the Defender and think, why should I play a Blaster. The Defender has all the blasts that a Blaster has, but I can heal myself. This is a huge mistake as those blasts they are thinking of are 20% less damaging. For the most part a Defender’s blasts are not designed to do damage. They are debuffing blasts. Lowering the defense, accuracy, regeneration, etc.

Yes, you “can” play the Defender like a mini-Blaster, but why would you want to? Even if a Kinetics Defender casts Fulcrum Shift, Aim, Assault, Build up and even Power Build up, the Blaster will still do 20 to 25% more damage without FS.

Now there is an exception to this as the title states above. If you have a team of Defenders with certain Primaries and Leadership, the stacked buffs will bring damage to an extremely high level. This team of Defenders could fight +6’s with ease and wipe them out in a fraction of the time that even Blasters or Scrappers could do. Plus the team wouldn’t get a scratch. Their defense would make a Tanker drool. I once tried to organize 7 others to try this, but they all thought it was a joke from the start and the team broke away before we even started. I have spent hundreds of hours studying this and building an epic team of Defenders.

On World of Warcraft I came up with a similar approach. By grouping a mage, druid, priest, paladin and warlock, the buffs made us much more powerful. We started at Level 1 on a Monday evening after dinner. We played for 4 hours every evening Monday through Thursday, then 7 hours on Friday, all day on Saturday and half a day on Sunday. On that Sunday afternoon we were all level 60 (this was done before Burning Crusade). This experience was reported on the forums and 99% of the responders were so close minded, they said that it would never work and soloing was the fastest way to level.

The Defender can be the most powerful class on CoH (Corruptors on CoV). But you must play as Defender as a Defender. Its right there in the name. A Defender’s job is to defend (not to fight). To buff, debuff, protect and to heal for the rest of the team. Playing a Defender as a Blaster is like using a screwdriver as a hammer or chisel. It “can” be done, but why would you want to?

If there are any serious minded players out there that want to experience first hand just how much more powerful a Defender can be, just let me know and we’ll set up the team. But there are ground rules that must be followed. If the rules are ignored, it will surely fail and the team will break apart before level 10. That would be a waste of my time and yours. However if the rules are followed, you will witness a team with unprecedented power and speed like you have never seen before.

By the way, when I was on Asheron’s Call. My level 15 walked into a dungeon with level 40 creatures in it. Players would run up and see me sitting on the floor with a level 40 creature standing behind me and I was perfectly safe. These players were extremely confused and the event was posted on the forums for years, trying to figure out how I did it. After two years I explained it all which really shocked everyone. Especially the developers.

When I was level 80, the developers came out with a new creature that had such a high level of magic skill, that it would take over 50 players to kill it (half of the players died in the process). A few months later I showed my guild friends something very special. I cast some spells on that creature, then walked over to it. The creature tried in vain to kill me, but it was as helpless as a puppy. Told the others to approach me. They were hesitant at first, but finally walked over to it. Told one of them to hit the creature one time. One of them hit the creature with his axe and it died. The xp from this creature was over a million. The reason why was that the developers created it to have to be killed by 50 or more players and to spread the xp among all of them. I killed that creature for a couple months and made 165 very quickly. After that I was bored with the game and moved on. My character was so powerful that I resisted 97% of all magic and 99% of all melee damage. When I told others how I created my character I was told that it was just too extreme. That was my intention 

At the end of 165 levels and two years, that character showed a report of only 16 deaths. Over half of them were caused by lag. We went into a dungeon one night. I was level 32. The others were level 60 to 90 (no such thing as being sidekicked – I was still only 32). We were overwhelmed with level 124 - creatures. When everyone ended up at the lifestone from being killed, they started to realize that I was not among them. They asked where I was. Told them that I was still in the dungeon toying with the NPC’s. This is because I studied the artificial intelligence of the creatures and discovered their weaknesses.

See you in game!

Originally Posted by m3lon

I can't believe nobody was critical of his choice of video games.

I mean if gaining 10 levels makes a character twice as powerful, and a level 32 is owning characters in their 90's then it has to have remarkably poor balance.