Defender Tier 9s need Balance

You fail at reading comprehension. My point was that it gets an inordinate amount of publicity for performance in a narrow band of the game, which isn't really special since pretty much every set does well in that same band and outside of it, it doesn't fare any better or worse. It just has obnoxious publicity.

Going from 400% damage to 800% guaranteed on virtually all possible targets isn't wonky? I like Catwhoorg's option, granted, the numbers he puts in just changes the definition of the damage dealt ("Well it's not out of line, it's still just 400% damage!").

When did I say it was only "super-strong" for Controllers? Did I? No? Hey, I didn't!

Missing my point again. Good lord.
I used Melt Armor to point out that it was a bad argument to suggest FS is overpowered because it wasn't on the list of APP choices. I didn't say the incarnation available was good or bad, just that it was there (and in contrast, a power like Gale isn't on the list of options either so it must be overpowered similarly--perhaps trade Gale with Heat Loss in my example?).

Okay. It doesn't really reinforce your point but go for it.

As opposed to what? What is this "line" that makes something overpowered? Do we have measured examples that makes Kinetics cause

According to the above you're apparently not interested in disagreement.

I haven't shouted it down as far as I can tell. I'm caustic in my presentation but I also haven't denied the possibility. I just haven't been offered any argumentation in the other direction beyond "BECAUSE". Perhaps you could enhance his argument? Of course, admittedly, saying it was in his "distorted opinions" is a tad hostile but it makes more of an impact than saying "Perhaps you're overhyping the supposed problem you're seeing?"

I did define it. It's the point at which I get inspirations faster than I need to use them (this varies with AT and build BTW) and I didn't say that I no longer want one when I can get along with out one. I said that there's a difference between needing one and wanting one. To extend that further there's a difference between wanting one and getting meaningful benefit from one.

And you highlight my point (this is after all a thread about defenders). Why would I want a defender if the additional buff is meaningless? Why wouldn't I pick up a Corruptor for that team spot for increased damage and scourge? Why wouldn't I pick up a Controller who not only gives me adequate buffs but also several extra hard and soft controls? Why would I pick a defender when their inherent increases the chances that they will be sloppy about applying those buffs so that they can get an endurance discount?

You and I are in the same global channel on Justice. The folks there are highly skilled and heavily IO'd. My armored toons are occasionally at the HARD cap for defense and frequently damage capped on the teams that run in that channel. With the exception of my FF/dark/dark, and a certain spooky toon, I can't remember a time in the last 3 months that there was any other defenders on any of those teams. Controllers yes, Corruptors yes, Masterminds yes, extra defenders no.

Lastly those set bonuses allow my blasters, scrappers, tanks, and controllers to solo at speed with out defender buffs. What they don't do is allow my buffing defenders to solo at speed. Not even close to speed.

Because it's not meaningless. So long as it can still significantly increase your performance, as all the examples I gave show instances of, it's worth adding. Again, I don't know why you're even bringing inspirations into this picture. I don't care how many inspirations you're getting. If you're going to claim that your rate of inspiration receipt replaces the functionality of the buffs a Defender can provide you, I'm going to want some evidence to back that up. My point is that a Defender can still make you faster and more effective at pushing you through content, because Defenders can provide sustained benefts that inspirations cannot. The edge case we see often is +def, but only FF is saddled severely with being a one trick pony in regards to that particular benefit.

Stop moving the goal posts. My sub-conversation with you here is about your comment regarding IOs and how they obviate the need for Defenders. The only reasonable way to read that assertion is that it obviates the need for their buffs and debuffs. If it does that for Defenders, it sure as hell does it for Controllers and Corruptors too. At that point your claim is that the buffs and debuffs of all these ATs are made pointless by IOs. This is the claim I am calling bogus.

Um, dude, I know what you're talking about, and you need to pay more attention. I have two Defenders I bring on those TFs - our resident catgurl is not the one known for playing Darks. So do two other people in that channel - in particular, they frequently bring Cold Domination Defenders. There's a new one of those now that Quat made for PvP, so that's at least four of us in there that bring Defenders. People don't always bring Defenders because we don't always play Defenders. We have other characters we like to play and earn merits on, so unless we have a stable of nothing but Defenders, other stuff that can buff and debuff is going to make an appearance. I like to play villains a lot lately, so I show up with Corruptors more often, but mostly I've been showing up on melees because I want to fund their purples using their own playtime.

In any case, that's a distraction from what I'm replying to. You keep crossing over into this debate about Defenders vs. Corruptors and Controllers. I'm talking about what you said regarding IOs. Nothing else.

Well, first of all, so what? What has that got to do with your claims regarding IOs replacing Defenders? Second of all, I've seen some Colds and Kinetics on the wall in Cimerora who might want a word with you. But ultimately, I don't really know why you think this is a problem worth mention. People understand that any support build (build, not AT) is typically a weak soloist. IOs can't fix that. They can help, but they're not going to reverse it. Why is this worth mention?

Interesting clarification (and alteration of emphasis) on what you said. Your post I quoted does indeed speak of their extra publicity, but you also downplay the sets ability. I disagree with your downplaying. Kins (not just Fire/Kin controllers) are very good at a broad band of the game and in many cases actually are "better" than many other sets (better defined as reward/time). Dramatically better? Overpoweringly better? Insignificantly better? Its debatable, but I would say "noticeably better", at the least.

No, I don't have dev datamining to back that up. Go ahead and ask me for it, someone always feels the need about here to ask for information they know I can't possibly provide. Conclude that I am speaking from my experience, as I conclude you speak from yours. You must be saying, in general, teams without a Kin are just as effective as ones without. While they can be (and in some cases they could be more effective), most teams would benefit siginificantly more from one Kin.

I do not agree that obnoxious publicity is the real problem. Where there is smoke, there is fire; I think there is at least something smoldering with Kinetics.

So, it is wonky to go from 400% of controller damage to 800% of controller damage, but going from 200% blaster damage to 500% blaster damage is thumbs up! FS on a blaster is normal and well within bounds, containment on a controller is bad and a problem. Your disconnect boggles my mind.

Containment will generally only take a controller from 200% to 400%, and many controller "attacks" won't even have +100% damage from slotting (instead having some emphasis placed on Hold duration or Immob duration, giving some other power, for instance FS, even more effect than containment). FS doubling the damage of the pet(s) is unaffected by containment (although pet damage output is not supreme, its still a factor). Heck, Hot Feet doesn't fully benefit from containment, but it sure does from FS (and Transference/Speed Boost, so you have the end to run it). FS Lotus Drops or Spin doesn't even need to crit to blow away containment.

Allow me to show you:
Unless some non-controller AT gets containment that I do not know about, you are pretty clearly stating that Kinetics (which includes FS) is not a problem, except when combined with controllers. Additionally, I wasn't actually directly attacking you with this statment (I have seen you play, and awful is on the opposite end of my opinion of you), merely the supposition that awful Kins are the ones who feel Fulcrum Shift must be overpowered.

No, I got your point. I just enjoy any excuse to bash on APP Melt Armor. Consider it an unnecessary tangent due to my personal bias and disappointment at what APP Melt Armor could be vs. what it is.

Actually, I am fascinated by disagreement. It amazes me that people feel FS + Fire Control might be overpowered, while blithely ignoring FS + Fire Blaster. Understand, my first level 50 defender was a Kin. I am constantly amazed at what it brings to a team (and I include the whole Kin package, not just FS, SS/SB/ID/SP/Trans/Trans, hell, I even have Repel), even without containment its amazing.

I have a Fire/Rad controller who happens to run with a Fire/Kin controller from time to time, and FS is great and amazing there, but I wouldn't say its better on the controllers than it is on a Fire/Fire blaster or a Kat/Fire scrapper or a Fire/Mace tanker. I have seen, used, and been a recipient of FS thousands of times on every AT. Its a big deal almost everytime its used (even if you only get 3 or 4 buffs from enemies) and can be so even more now that the game allows us to feed it without a big team.

What is the line? I don't know; its subjective anyway. Its also not my call. Its fun to discuss it though.

Calling an issue a "dead horse" always implies conversation should cease. Maybe you need to better understand what the words you type mean and imply, instead of accusing others of being bad at comprehension. OTOH, its just a game forum and we are discussing one simple power that can be replaced / ignored anyway, so, I guess you can be unclear, caustic, and amusing all day long; I find it entertaining.

While I agree with your general premise that Kinetics has some balance built in to offset its strong offensive contribution to a team, it is my opinion that you oversell its weaknesses. Also, its weaknesses are almost always rendered irrelevant on a team.

I certainly cannot agree with your statement that without FS its a two-trick pony. So many people under utilize kinetics though, I can see why people feel that way (and in many cases it will play out that way in game since it is underutilized so often).

Ok, lets put all that aside then and go back to set bonuses replacing buffs.

Lets start with basics. The first question I have to ask you is as long as you have been playing this game have you never on any of your damage heavy toons gone into what I tend to refer to as cascade inspiration success?

I do it all the time. It's the point at which you pop inspirations and kill 4+ player even con mobs in less than 30ish seconds so that your inspirations carry you through and into the next spawn. A trick I learned a long time ago in Dark Astoria when I was farming salvage there. My AoE heavy blasters can do this with out even a shred of built in mitigation and pre +hit point and endurance accolades. As long as you have enough health to survive the alpha and enough recovery to sustain your attack chain you can combine blues, yellows, excess greens, and even awakens into purples. All I use when I'm doing this is a couple purples to start, any oranges that drop, and all the reds that drop. I eat the occasional green when things get sticky.

12% defense from set bonuses lets me do the same thing but only use one purple insp to start or I can bump my difficulty to +1 and +2 mobs and keep on with 2 purples to start. Other set bonuses let me increase my global damage and global recharge so that my damage stays up where it needs to be.

Another 10% defense and then the addition of Ice epic or Force Epic gives me all the extras I need. Ice epic lets me stack smash and lethal defense on top of what I all ready have from the set bonuses, any pool powers, and the buff pet. It gets me to the point that 1 purple insp before I wade in soft caps me to smash and lethal and has me in the 30s to any thing else. 2 purples softcaps me to everything and lets me bump my difficulty to +4/x8.

With Force mastery all I have to do is walk into the spawn with PFF up. Once the alpha splashes I drop PFF and that extra 20-25% defense from set bonuses is more than enough to carry me through to the end of the spawn with out using any inspirations at all even against +4/x8.

It works the same way on a team even with out a buffing defender. The aggro will be split up so it doesn't matter if you are only getting half as many insps.

So yeah set bonuses can obviate the need for a buffer. Back in the days of SOs only and no combining insps you needed the defender. You never had enough of the right insps drop so you used what did drop to supplement the buffs. Now in the days of combining insps and set bonuses it' just the opposite. Buffs supplement your set bonuses and inspirations. Defender buff values are overkill. Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind values are high enough.

The two things highlighted in yellow say two separate things. With respect to the first one, look, we don't need a lot of things. When was the last time serious power gamers in this game needed a Tanker? Yet people still play them. Hell, they're fairly common on teams from people in our little power-gamer's channel. I am fully convinced that they will still be played even when we see Brutes in Paragon. Even among power gamers, there are plenty of people who play to take something and make it as good as it can be, not just always play the very best thing possible.

Buffs and debuffs are insanely more helpful to have on a team than a Tanker. They take something you can already do, and let you do it even faster. If you weren't already perfectly safe, they let you be even safer. Most of the players I hang with are addicted to speed in this game, and I don't just mean movement and attack rate. Whether they're mowing down mobs in missions, farming, or running TFs, they want to bump their DPS, their inf/hour, their drop rate, or their merits/hour. Buffs and debuffs bring all that. Nobody's IOs and inspiration rages are going to keep them at the speeds they can go by adding buffs and debuffs. If you're satisfied with what IOs and inspirations can do for you, that's fine. The rest of us will take the buffers and debuffers you don't seem to think you "need" to team with.

With respect to second yellow statement, that's a non-starter with me; I'm not part of that debate and it doesn't much interest me. I think it's silly to drag IOs into that debate - people have been debating how Controllers can replace Defenders long before I9 landed.

Except it wasn't. I overplay the whole "it's powerful!" then move immediately into saying "it's not anymore so than any other set!" It's that simple.

Damn straight.

I say nothing of the sort. My argument is that Kinetics doesn't add an egregious amount of support more than any other set available. I also then add undertones of the set doing one thing and doing that one thing really well.

Curiously, a lot of the "farming" builds I see on the Controller boards always seem to follow Fire/Storm|Kinetics|Cold (rarely admittedly, but that may be its relative age at the moment)|Radiation (this must be a TF build or something)/Fire with the occasional Plant/*, though mostly for soloing lowbie TFs.

Because Blasters live within that cap. They have no means of stepping past it. Similarly, Scrappers and Stalkers both have that same cap of 500% which they can surpass and double to 1000% damage. On a proc. Controllers don't have a proc, it's part of their attack chain to double damage 99% of the time.

I don't really have an opinion regarding Containment but when people start raging out about Kinetics, and specifically Fire/Kins, I tend to note that they're ignoring the whole double damage aspect of what is going on.

Well, I was just basing my opinion of his ability based on his original "T9" suggestions above. It's fallacious to expand my observations of him to all examples but hey.

And I honestly got bored of replying at this point. This thread has played out its amusement factor for the most part.

My writing tends to be laden with landmines of subtleties and multiple layers of implied meanings. And this particular stuff is just rapidly fired out with little concern, so you're just getting a soft breeze of how my writing can be. It's also been a long-held belief of mine that you shouldn't explicitly write "down" to your readers, just letting your natural habits show through to build a strong conversational tone in even the most dry of papers. Granted, I also think writing "up" to your readers is just as silly (I'm looking at you, virtually every modern philosophy book in existence..."I got your point 300 pages ago, why have you not moved on?!").

Of course, if you're a UniqueDragon, you might want to better yourself (or not, his utterings are still epic).

I knew this thread had potential.

While I think Kins are close to egregious, I do not feel terribly strongly about it.

Aye, you want to start with something that does damage, that way FS/SP has something to buff. Fulcrum Shifted Wormhole is not going to get you XP. While other buff sets can do it, and do it well, Kin is just a bit better, in most circumstances, and I am not just talking about farming (which is really just running a mission and defeating the bad guys, except with mind-numbing repetition).

That being said, you do not need to start with the highest damage to truly perform well. Fulcrum Shifted Energy Blasters and /Electric defenders can mow through enemies darn quick too (you do want some AoEs though, which is why Plant and Fire are the only control sets that really qualify for this type of mob mowing).

Living within the cap is irrelevant in this context. We are talking about absolute damage, not relative damage. If a Fulcrum Shifted blaster/scrapper is fine in game, then so is a Contained, Fulcrum Shifted controller, since the controller will be doing less damage.

I can understand that. It is why when I discuss Kin, I try to clarify that I think its a bit off kilter everywhere and not just on controllers. To me, its not containment, its great +rech, +recov, +speed, and massive +damage, all of which are perma on an entire team (although the Kin themselves do not get +recov, Transference covers that lack). Its the Kin that impresses me, not the control (but I am biased against control, as I feel it is highly overrated).

Yeah, you pretty much could see the bait from the get-go, but its still a good mental exercise, IMO.

It's easy to sustain all you need is maps that have large spawns. Dark Astoria, alot of the BP missions, most of the Croatoa stuff, some of the Striga stuff. There are lots of arcs and missions that make it possible. Memorizing the maps make it even easier to do as does the new difficulty settings.

I started out fresh on Protector recently. I started an Ice/Fire blaster there and have been running the Croatoa arcs in flashback mode for drops and merits to flesh out that toon. I have 2% defense to lethal and smashing is all that is slotted on that toon so far. I've been playing on 1/x8 no bosses and actively using the inspiration cascade to succeed. I've been averaging 27 merits per hour from the arcs and usually come away with 4-5 rare salvage in that hour.

Inspiration cascade isn't all that hard to sustain as long as you have enough recovery to jump into the next spawn and keep attacking. The other nice thing about it is that even if it does slow down and drop out all you need to start back up is 2 purples. I find it's very easy to combine insps during a long activating power (Combustion works well for this).

I would. It lets me solo content set to 8 players without any buffs except insps. What exactly do I need a team and buffs for if I can do that? It's not only blasters. I can do that with any blue side AT except the majority of my defenders (I haven't tried on red side though I imagine I probably could.)

I don't care if there are other blasters doing this or not (I know that there are however). I get all the drops soloing and my story arc merit rate sits at 27 per hour on average. That's faster than TF speed for most folks. Why would I want to try fighting an AV with a toon designed to annihilate mass mobs? If I were going to solo AVs I'd set up specifically to solo AV's just like the folks in the scrapper forums. I can sustain it without PFF. PFF means I don't have to pop any purples to start I just use it to splash the alpha. Ice Epic means I have to pop one purple to start. The other epics require 2. Sure it may be faster with a defender but the important thing to note is that it's fast enough without one. The better question is, is it twice as fast with a buffing defender and the answer, from testing with my wife is, that it's not. (It may be with a debuffing defender I haven't tested that.) To keep pace with solo drops and rewards it would need to be twice as fast.

Just about anything actually. The only things that give me trouble are the things that blasters tend to be weak to anyway. Mez heavy opponents that prevent you from using most of your powers (like Rikti) and cascade defense failures from swarms of defense debuffers. Essentially the same things that any "squishy" AT has trouble with. Mez heavy opponents means that insps don't drop fast enough to keep the cascade going since you need break frees AND purples. Defense debuffers aren't as big a problem if you monitor your defense. Mass AoEs reduces the numbers of mobs fast enough to solve most of the problems.

While this is true the point is still that defender roles are being squeezed. Defenders more so than any other AT. DR in PvP, Coop content, Set bonuses, and the upcoming Going Rogue have put even more pressure on the defender AT as currently designed than just the standard lament about controller buffs being enough.

Sure and when I team I take them. It means that I don't have to touch my insp tray if the buffers on the team are decent, but that's not the point I'm making. If I can solo 8 player content other players can do so too. There are folks out there that are better at this game than I am. There may be lots of them out there. If I can do it I'm sure they can and they do. The more folks that can solo this way the fewer opportunity for teams for ATs designed specifically to team which on blue side has the greatest potential to put the hurt on the defender AT.

It may be a non-starter for you but it's mathematically significant and has the potential to affect the player base at large.

12% more defense reduces incoming damage (and successful mez attacks) by 25%. That means that if I needed defender level buffs to survive (or attack full out) before, then buffs that are 25% weaker are all I need to survive (or attack all out) now. That puts us squarely where the controller/defender debate has always been.

It's not at all hard or expensive to add an extra 12% defense to any build out there.

I'm not sure how many additional times or ways I can say this.

Because with more buffs you could do it faster.

Edit: More significantly, you've defined a case with a significant number of caveats. That your baseline is solo is very important. No bosses is too. You're repeating maps you've memorized, with obviously the same foes repeatedly. You've got an AoE-centric build, designed to mow minions fast. You've declared that what matters to you most is drop rate, and you want the Defender's benefit to double your solo speed in order to make it worth your time.

Those conditions are not the whole game. Adding a force-multiplying Defender to a team of 5 is a 20% decrease in per-teammate drop rate for easily a 25% increase in kill rate.

Here's a question for you. Do you think any one Defender doubled your speed before IOs? I will bet you it did not, unless maybe it was a Kinetics.

This alleged problem is not founded in the existence of IOs. Again, this is the part of your thesis I take exception to.

I think that you're putting far too much faith in a mathematical model dictating actual player choices. I think basically no one is basing team build choices on minimum performance optimality criteria like that. If they were, no one would ever invite a Tanker or a non-AoE Blaster to a team.

It's an interesting point you make about /Kin in that it pretty much covers everything a team could need vs. several other secondaries that have no such depth and breadth. It's not just + rech, + rec, + speed, + damage but also healing, huge damage debuff on multitudes of mobs and single target AVs, status protection for the huge damage dealers (blasters) on your team and damage resists.

The only thing really lacking from it is a defense buff and I think defense is horribly weighted in the Defender primaries vs. other goodies mainly because ATs that need it (tankers, brutes, scrappers) can cap it without needing a dedicated +DEF set like FF.

I just imagine if Kin had a 10-15% defense buff, it would basically lose the Heal, lose the +damage component of SP/FS, lose SB and lose SS. Obviously the devs think different, but I just can't see Defense buffs being that important that something like FF lacks the debuffs that Sonic has and sonic is one of the less useful sets. Then of course Traps blows FF and Sonic out the water in terms of what it can offer but still doesn't provide the force multiplier than Kin would provide for a team and I say that as a big fan of Traps (it's what finally convinced me to try a Defender after playing a Traps MM and Corr).

In the interests of full disclosure, I don't have a Kin Def, only a /Kin Corr and in terms of team contribution, no other AT can touch my /Kin in making my group an unstoppable killing machine (and I've done some crazy stuff with my /Traps /Dark /Storm MMs and /Rad trollers). And if I pair him up with a /Stone Brute I have the game on ezmode.

Coming back to the original topic though, I just can't see Storm, Rad, Warmth or Dark (I might have omitted a few like Poison that aren't available all around) being balanced at all with more effective T9s (or even T8s for some of them). The rest of the sets definitely need to be re-evaluated in what it offers a team while leveling and at the endgame, some more than others.

I do this inspiration cascade thing with my Fire/Fire blaster all the time. With the exception of an empathy defender, duoing actually decreases my chance of success. I think inspiration drops are reduced dramatically on a team. Even with an Empathy defender, my performance actually goes down, although I think its a bit more fun.

I do not think Milady's observation is a function of IO set bonuses, so much as the inspiration drop rate on teams is borked (and has been for a long time; in issue 3, I remember being on a team of 3 (I remember because we did it a lot) and having my inspire tray fill and fill and fill as we mowed down enemies in TV or CF; now, the same type of team, doing the same type of mowing (actually killing even more enemies), and I can hardly get inspires fast enough, yet solo, I can hardly combine them fast enough to keep room in my tray.

Except it isn't and it doesn't have the other benefits of control with it.

Hell no to both options you're implying.
I hate playing Radiation because I have to go through the painfully long toggles for every mob and when you're on teams that don't suck, everything is dead by the time you finish the animation. Oh joy! I never get to do anything because I'm in animation lock!
And the factor that's making me think of rerolling my TA? Animation lock for the debuffs (and Acid Arrow being a stupidly small AoE) keeps you held in place long after everything is dead. Passive debuffs are fantastic.

That said, being able to cast it on yourself would be great.

Mostly this does seem to be the case. Thanks, M_K, for the coinage "inspiration cascade," if it's yours.

Interestingly, I see that M_K was in the last thread I waded in with inspiration cascade talk, and the picture I posted there of inspiration cascade in action has been disappeared.

I will say that it's not really a tactic that's very reliable prior to level 25 (3 rows & "SOs"), but that level 40's new insp bar makes it a breeze.

... and there was much spluttering.

FIRST REACTION: so you're saying that the guy who has near-capped defenses, severe penalties to speed and recharge, and can use an unlimited amount of +Dam is a good match with Kinetics? Huh.

SECOND REACTION: Kinetics has a CRAP damage debuff. 25% per enemy (20% on a corruptor, 16% on a corruptor against +2s.) But even at the full 25%, that's similar in effect to 33% Resistance. Enemies take 33% longer to kill your friends, assuming perfect usage (hits everyone, fired off at the start of the fight, etc.)

Compare Rad defenders, against +2s, where enemies take around four times as long to kill your friends with the same perfect usage. Or Force Fields where enemies up to +5 take ten times as long to kill your friends.

If you think Kinetics is protecting your team, you have set the bar extraordinarily low.

THIRD REACTION: What in the name of small stone idols makes you think that Controllers, Defenders and Blasters don't need +Def on a team? Have you SEEN what a couple of force fielded blasters are like? Blasters with no fear of return fire put out an appalling amount of damage, all the time, over large areas, and they only stop when they run out of targets. Hell hath one fury like a woman scorned, and that's a Blaster who can finally open up the can.

I'm not sure how many additional times or ways I can say this:

If I add a teammate we have to do it more than twice as fast for it to really be "faster" especially in terms of non-merit rewards.

If I add a third person to the team we would have to do it 3 times as fast, etc. I can assure you that with the possible exception of a kinetics that double soloing speed isn't possible and tripling certainly isn't possible no matter what combination of toons you use.

That's because I've only presented one example thus far. The most extreme case. I can solo bosses (and elite bosses) too but honestly the rewards for time required to defeat aren't worth the extra time to defeat them. I've even experimented with defeating the spawn and moving on to the next spawn with the boss(es) in tow but all too frequently the boss(es) have taken so much damage so quickly that the run AI kicks in and it's only random chance if they run toward the next spawn or away from it. On glowie click or other objective type missions it's not a problem but on defeat alls the extra time to chase down and defeat scattered bosses isn't worth it. Bosses would be the only case where damage buffs "could" make the difference but then you have over kill on minions and lieuts and are spending the same amount of time finishing off bosses and not really speeding anything up.

As far as memorized maps go I've played enough of this game that I have the majority of the maps memorized (blue side I don't spend much time on red) anyway. AE gave the locations of all possible spawn and objective points and I vary the mobs I face depending on whim, character level, and choosen AT.

As far as solo being base line you are correct. It would have to be the base line since not solo means teamed and the maximum number of mobs can not exceed 8 players worth no matter how many players are actually on the team.

I'm sorry but that's not the case because of hard caps. Activation times are one type of hard cap, but there's also recharge, damage, defense and resistance hard caps and a target cap of 16 on AoEs and 10 on cones. I've been on teams where 2 AoEs and a couple single target attacks wipe out the spawns and those teams are limited more by spawn size, travel time, and team coordination than any thing else.

Missions and arcs that feature extreme foes are a not the whole game either. They are a tiny fraction of total content and I find extreme foes rather boring in any case. The game's mob AI is extremely limited. Extreme foes tend to come down to overcoming a huge bag of health or overcoming mob regen rates. The final mission of the blue side 5th TF is the poster child of extreme mind numbing boredom.

Why yes, yes they did. Prior to the defiance revamp, prior to no toggle drop on mez, prior to set bonuses, prior to combining insps, prior to the new difficulty settings, relying on outside buffs was the best way to survive on a blaster. Dealing damage was never a limiting factor when playing a blaster. Survival was. Defeat drops kill speed to 0.

I know this. I listed a large number of things above, which you may note is not even the total of potential concerns, it leaves relative buff strengths completely out of the issue. All these things contribute to the potential problem. IOs are a factor and defense for a no/low mitigation class is a huge benefit. Ignoring a contributing factor by taking exception to it does not eliminate it.

I simply point out that in some cases (possibly a statistically significant number) IOs allow some players/ATs to completely obviate the need for outside buffs/debuffs. When you consider that the defender AT is primarily a buffing/debuffing AT its not hard to see that the more situations where this becomes the case the fewer opportunites there are for the defender to team.

I don't. I know that it is happening in some cases. I don't have the tools available to know if it is happening in enough cases to actually be a problem.

I don't subscribe to the theory that the "casual CoH" player is sub optimal where numbers are concerned, in fact, I believe it to be just the opposite. The speed that the price dropped on Force Feedback procs post nerf and the speed at which the AE was swarmed at inception and then abandoned after being adjusted are 3 points that demonstrate that the casual CoH player is saavy where numbers and performance are concerned.

Outside the social aspect of teams, minimum performance optimality criteria may make a difference. Your point on defenders previously is the best argument yet. Are we at the point where the optimal team for a defender is a sub-optimal team? Shouldn't that be a cause for concern?

@StratoNexus
I believe that it's a function of 3 things. IOs and set bonuses, the ability to combine insps, and borked insp drop rates.

Set bonuses do several things. Increased recovery allows you to use fewer (or no) blue insps, accuracy/to hit set bonuses allow you to use fewer yellow insps, defense set bonuses allow you to use fewer purples, greens, oranges, and break frees which can make the difference between having enough and running out prior to finishing off a spawn.

The ability to combine insps means that you can tailor your inspiration tray to cover your own specific weaknesses. The set bonuses that you have means that the particular type of insp that you no longer need (or the surplus of those that you need fewer of) can be converted into those that you do need and defense set bonuses slow down the rate that you consume the rest of them.

Borked insp drop rates may have been done deliberately or may simply be a low/no priority bug. It's possible that if an insp is rolled and assigned to a player with a full insp tray that it is simply lost rather than only being rolled for a player that has a slot open for one. This could have been deliberate or it could have been an accidental oversight.

All in all I don't want the changes that have been made thus far reduced or eliminated. They are, in my opinion, all good and needed changes. It is my veiw point that the defender AT may be in need of a revamp to account for all of these changes and certainly needs to be scrutinized. I have made several posts with suggestions on possible ways to proceed.

Isn't a damage debuff equivalent to resistance? If the enemy is debuffed 25%, isn't that, in effect, equivalent to 25% resistance?

What makes that 25% debuff matter is not that it prevents all damage, but that it prevents enough so people do not die. It stacks nicely with other teammate abilities. It stacks nicely with your own other abilities (for instance, Transfusion, to-hit debuffs from dark blast, the resist debuff in Howl, it gives you those extra seconds you need to drain the bosses end with SC+ Transference, etc.)

I don't think I have ever heard FS called a CRAP damage debuff before. Its obviously not bubble level survivability, but it is also not insignificant (I would even say it IS significant).

What about the vast majority of the game where in order to survive and flourish vs. +1s a team only needs the enemies to take 1.1 times as long to kill my friends? What if the tanker takes most of the aggro and needs very little (if any) extra survivability vs. +3s and the whole team benefits from taking a bit less splash damage due to FS?

Yes, Kinetics massive offensive capabilities are balanced by its weaker defensive capabilities, except when defensive capabilities are less necessary.

Does a team of blasters and 1 bubbler need more damage? No. But they could use +speed, +recharge, and +recovery throughout the game; vs. hard targets like AVs, the CRAP (Completely Robust and Potent?) damage debuff and -regen/heal would be somewhat useful as well.

More conditions. Merits are part of the game, and TFs are the fastest way to get them. XP and inf are a part of the game, and I'd hazard a guess that XP is a bigger part to more people than drops by a massive margin. Your most critical efficiency criteria are not shared by everyone.

No one intelligent brings a Defender to drop farms, because no one intelligent brings anyone else on their farms. At best they might bring their own alt accounts along to buff and maybe debuff if they've got a good multi-box control setup going on. This isn't a Defender-specific problem.

And as I said, while mob drops are clearly important to you, they aren't everyone's primary motivation, and the problem you describe holds true for any teammate. It's ridiculous to say this is specifically bad for the Defender AT when a drops optimizer would never invite anyone on a team.

Which, again, is the primary consideration when you want to optimize drops and not XP/time or merits/time.

Um, no. I took caps into account with the number I gave you, which I made sure was insanely conservative. All you need is someone who can put out a base 30% DR debuff every spawn to achieve around 24% kill speed increase against +2 mobs. I gave the +1% as a freebie on the assumption that most buffers can provide some other kind of force multiplication, be it +dam or +rech. Several builds can do that, especially if they are built with high recharge. IOs don't just help the non-Defenders, you know.

I didn't have it that hard on my Blaster. I played a Blaster who was actually pretty good at soloing thanks to things like stealth abilities, mezzes of their own, and soft controls like KB and slows. A good Defender sped me up, but it didn't speed my reward rate up by a factor of two, because my baseline reward rate was not so sucky that a survival boost lifted me up that dramatically. I primarily soloed a Blaster to 47 before we even had IOs.

Holy understatement, Batman. You didn't start out by calling this "a contributing factor". You mentioned it by name, and practically called it out in its own post, indicating it as responsible for a shift back to pre ED/GDN days, which you then declared to be the reason a Defender is no longer "integral on a team". (Personally, I don't ever recall them being "integral" to teams, and frankly, I don't want a game where anything is "integral" to a team. I like it to be pretty wide open for general play. I'm reminded of many debates on the Tanker AT.)

What you fail to show is that this effect is actually a problem. Sure, stated the way you do, it seems perfectly obvious that somewhere, a Defender didn't get a team or someone didn't play their Defender. How strong is that effect in practice? How many people prefer your optimization goals to others? How many people prefer teaming to soloing irrespective of efficiency? How many people aren't heavily IOd?

I see. Well, my anecdotal experience suggests to me that it's not actually happening very often. I haven't been denied a team in years until today. Today I was kicked off a team because I was on a level 24 character and the leader only wanted 45+s for his banner team, not because of my AT. (You might be amused to know I was kicked while playing a /Rad Controller. And yes, I think that person was incredibly ignorant.)

Woah, nelly. You assume that market prices on IOs are driven by "casual" players? I don't think I share that view at all.

All I need to see to know that the "casual" player is sub optimal is to look at the majority of the TF median rate rewards. The exception? The RSF. My interpretation of the reason? The sample set of people who play and/or complete the RSF is composed of more hardcore players.

Why should it be? The cause for concern would be if a Defender could not bring enough that anyone would want them on a team. Your argument is extremely binary - because (under your conditions of choice) a Defender is both not required and needed less than before, they automatically devolve all the way to not desirable. The problem is that your viewing this through the lens of the specific goals you have laid out: that of optimizing for drops on a AoE-centric Blaster. Because IOs allow your Blaster to solo at a reasonable pace without a Defender to prop him up, you conclude that no one would ever want a Defender thanks to IOs. But that only holds up under your specifc goals. Moreover, that criteria is biased against everyone, not just Defenders. Surely you would never invite a single-target melee character on that team with your Blaster, because most of them would do even less than the Defender while leeching away your drops.

Sure, some people might take a Controller (or Corruptor) instead. It's apparent to me that most people don't actually care which they take, because for most purposes, people consider a wide array of them interchangeable. It's not automatically a problem if someone else can bring what Defenders do - that problem has existed since the game released for multiple ATs, and hasn't stopped people from playing any of them. It doesn't matter if a Defender (or any buffer) does less for a team than they once did as long as they can do something some reasonable number of people considers worth having. Your concern is that this will stop happening. Given the criteria you're using as the foundation of that concern, I'm not convinced it's an issue.

I know that wasn't addressed to me, but I want you to know I am pleased by all of it. A lot of what you have said prior has had an undertone of nerf-calling on ... well potentially a lot of things. Sometimes that's valid, but in this case I disagreed enough with the reasoning behind the (perceived) calls that I didn't want to let it lie.

While I have no major issues with the Defender AT (other than never being a fan of their inherent), if you can convince someone to buff them, I'm not likely to complain.

Heh. What's the current minutes per merit approximation, something like 3 minutes to each merit? Yeah, if my group's average times were the norm...

As for the RSF being more normalized towards faster play? Put simply, villains just don't have as much content to run. Granted, it also doesn't help that villain content was made second for the most part, so it tends to be on the less "busywork" side of things. As in, they have 5-10 missions as opposed to having 15 missions of which 5 tend to be defeat all clones of one another (with laughably little content to justify it usually). They are also more poorly made in regards to their challenge levels, making them rather brutal on ill-prepared teams or just outright boring for being so easy.

Stupidly enough, this then results in villains effectively getting punished in regards to rewards because the old hero stuff is poorly made.

TL;DR: Devs do hate villains!


I'm going to be amused by what will happen to Positron's reward in the next "balancing" because of the +5 levels making the TF that much easier. Of course, god forbid they apply an ounce of logic to what individual recipes cost and balance those but hey.