Buff Trick Arrows!

So you alone hold the key to TA being intensely amazing if played just the right way, but don't wish to share it because it's a secret which must be discovered personally. Gotcha.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

It is said that the defenders are the most balanced set. Maybe that was said before TA came out and before Sonic came out. I have to as a Tanker create survivability for others by directing effects away from them. If a controller isn't held they can do more of what they do. If a blaster isn't stuck in his own solo fight struggling with one target he can aoe the team and do greater dpe for the rest of the team etc etc. All I need to do is help others and they even if its by support fire help me and everyone else back. I have to look at every defender set and merely be concerned with what they can do for me, which will help me do more for the team. In doing that I can look at every defender, think of creating survivability with their help and say yes that any defender will do. I am not fussed, ergo from looking at TA, TA qualifies as a defender, because I can do, teamed with them whatever it is some people require as much as 3 or 4 other defenders for, such as the STF. Gotta eat my dinner now.

LOL +rep for you, saying what I was thinking

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

Ditto...you know in the spirit of Halloween and all that jazz.

I can assure you this 'unique role' that you believe TA does is done by traps to about 1000% the effect. And that is being conservative.

I don't know why you are being elusive in your responses. Everyone knows you are talking about grounding/immobing AV's and taunting them from range allowing you to complete content with suboptimal toons if they were to try and 'tank and spank' the instance.

Great, that takes care of 0.00001% of situations in the game where TA is almost as good as another defender that brings way more to every single other scenario. In fact traps is so strong you'd never need to resort to gimmick approaches like that. That is verified by my traps corr solo'ing ghost widow AV...love to see a TA do that.

And corruptors apparently too right? Because defenders were the last AT to get an AT wide buff, so obviously they werent so balanced right?

I was going to quote all the idiotic puke you just spewed out with your keyboard, but I think your constant running from others questions has done it for me already. You just said you know how to play TA so much better than everyone else, yet you skip the t9 hold that solidifies its ability to mitigate damage. But yeah, we are the ones who dont play/know how to play our TA'ers.

TA does not have ONE SINGLE BUFF. It is ALL DEBUFFS and some mitigative holds. Now, considering it isnt a troller primary, I dont think those holds should be making up for the lack of buffs (moreso debuffs.) So, that makes it an all debuff set. That can be outdebuffed by just about every other set in multiple categories. These are numerical fact. And Im not saying it needs to outdebuff every set in every department. It just needs more going for it than -movement speed.

Not at all, you said that if you skip either EA or FA you're not using everything TA has to offer. Since Trickshooter stated that most TA players he has met only skip one of those two powers your response seemed to imply that TA players should take all 9 powers. In any case if you're going to use that argument then you should be taking EMP Arrow for the same reason. If you skip EMP Arrow then you are denying your team the chance to fight a group at essentially no risk every 2.5minutes or the ability to force a drastic chance in a fight that might be going against you (depending on which way you prefer to use it and the overall quality of the team).

Your claim at this point (as I see it) is essentially that skipping EA or FA drastically weakens the abilities of the set but skipping EMP Arrow (probably the best AoE hold in the game). I fail to see how that makes any kind of sense so I'm going to ask you to elaborate.

I have a TA/A Defender. The build is moderately IO'd, I took all of the TA powers except for EA and all of the Archery powers except for Ranged Shot and Stunning Shot. I also have two leadership toggles and some powers from Dark Mastery (which at some point I'll get around to changing, the PBAoE nature of the powers is a poor fit for my style). So given all of that please tell me why you believe switching out EMP Arrow for Entangling Arrow will make my character stronger.

Glad you clarified that, Frosti, 'cause I for one read it twice and still had no idea what he was on about. o.O

I know of what other defenders can do, I probably knew this before you. I've kept secrets from 2007 that still haven't come to light on these forums. You can tell from all the limitations people put on others from saying what can't be done.

There is more ingame yet to be discovered by most people which is a good thing. If someone can discover something in 2 weeks that took me two years to work out then good on them. If you tell people how to complete the game then shame on you because you've basically taken away a persons chance to discover things for themselves.

The point I am only making really is that TA is a good defender set from which even the STF can be done well to a high degree with.

I have said that the set does require tweaks but when there is so much comparing that puts TA in a bad light without discussing its goodpoints someone has to mention a couple of good points.

TA gets a bad rep from people who can't work it out, whether to play with or to team with. Then even with people who can work it out to a good extent they look at each power separately and compare figures showing TA to look bad and leave it with a bad rep. Nevermind things like the fact that you don't need an anchor.

In the end you end up with someone who loves TA somewhere who can't get in a team from it from all the painful posts people make about it. Which is BS. The truth of the matter is TA qualifies as a defender set. You can get plenty of the game content done with it providing you and the team can offer eachother the flexibilities required. If you can't offer eachother the flexibilities required then whose fault is that? TA is there, people play it, some better than others.

Most of the time with my TA I am doing normal content and teams don't struggle with normal content. So what is the problem with TA in such circumstances?

So coming full circle, the argument is that TA is fine when used in situations where you don't need support to begin with because it's already easy.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I hadn't said that I know how to play so much better than everyone else.

I don't find TA inadequate at all is what I am saying. EMP isn't needed.

It's good that it is a set with controls and debuffs and no buffs. If it were upto some people it would get healing arrow. Which is pants. Turn every defender set into a set that everyone can play the same way with and you don't have anything special.

Why make life easy, where is the challenge in that. I liked TA cos it is different. I expect to play differently with one and in a different way to my other defenders when I am playing one.

I don't need any defender or controller in a team to get an STF done. Why should anyone? I don't need a tanker, scrapper or blaster. It could be a 1AT team of any of them and the game is doable. So yeah, TA is as good as any. I don't need to concoct an ideal team, just bring your badge toon.

This is basically the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. Just saying.

TA is fine because nobody really NEEDS a Defender so may as well fill the slot with a worthless and underpowered toon rather than one that's fifty times more useful.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Keyword "seemed". I seen your build a while back. I wouldn't play it. I could still tank the STF for it but I'd doubt you'd be the right sort of player behind it EMP is only up so often. It's just a panic button I rarely use.

My glass is pretty half full looking across at anyones primary/secondary. Blasters are often damage/control. They'll do for support. Why people need to make the game easier than it is I don't know.

TA does need tweaks. I didn't say otherwise but someone needs to make it clear from here on that the set works. When it does work it's nice. The game is more interesting when you don't need to have the same old powersets for any given TF.

TA needs tweaks. I said that TA qualifies as a good defender set. I am not arguing, I am replying to posts that imply I have said something I haven't quite alot of the time. TA is fine in my book as its useful enough to me.

I'm glad you learned that AV's have an immob hole in 2007 and that Entangle provides -flight. Those are big realizations. As for the rest of your super secrets they sure sound amazing. If they are as impressive as your TA ones I'll pass because they aren't secret, or super, or amazing.

If it makes you feel any better your argument that TA is fine can be matched by a single temp power from sirens call.

It's great that you've found a unique niche for TA that comprised a fraction of a percentage of the game. Unfortunately it isn't even the best at that. I'd take a x/x/mace corruptor over any TA for that niche. Not only could it fill the role the TA is doing better than the TA it could also have a secondary that actually brings much more value to the situation. Conversely, any controller st immob provides -fly and is higher mag than Entangle (one shot immobs AV's). Again the controller can have a much more potent secondary and still do what TA is doing.

Ah, I looked that up. You recommended dropping Explosive Arrow which, to me, pretty much kills any credibility you have when it comes to build advice.

It is what you implied, and your attempt at deflection by crying about context isn't working.

When you stated that skipping either of the mandatory tier 1 powers, which are the weakest in the set, left the TA lacking in appropriate utility or mitigation, you implied that all nine powers were required in order for a TA to be effective.

Go ahead, pull the context card out again. See how far that gets you.

Low levels are of the utmost importance. Low levels are when you make your choices on which powers to take, how to slot those powers, how to build your style of play around which powers you have available, how to adapt to situations when powers are not available or not effective and so much more. Every experience at low levels colors a player's perception of the game, and when a player experiences TA at lower levels, what they get out of it is that they don't mitigate damage very well, the recharge times on those powers make them even less useful, the powers themselves are frequently buggy and even the combat debuffs (-Res and -Def) are either unreliable or don't live up to expectations.

So either you're implying that the game begins at 50, or you're simply denying that low level play has any merit, and ignoring the impact that bad experiences have on players. You might as well just say that low levels are watermelons. It would make about as much sense and be more correct.

So has one of mine, and at least one of Trick's, and at least one of Rush's and many of the other respondents here. Some of us spent weeks testing the I7 changes, giving feedback to the developers and sharing everything with every player who reads the forums. Some of us have spent countless hours learning the intricacies of the game engine and systems, just to understand one aspect of a single power in TA and share that knowledge with others. Some of us have been in close contact with the developers for years in an effort to find ways to improve TA and fix problems.

Nothing that you've ever said in any TA thread in which I've spotted you has led me to believe that you know one tenth as much as any one of us do, and nothing you've said in this thread leads me to believe that pretentious little claim of having played TA since I5 gives you any authority on the set.

If you see a TA leading a team, you wouldn't expect that TA to turn you down when you were looking for a team? Really? Gosh, who would've thought that solidarity existed.

Congratulations, you've just grasped the most basic rule of the game, every power has a use. Come back when you figure out the difference between having a use and being useful.

What you don't seem to understand is that other defenders are more effective regardless of the choices or abilities of other players.

Your main point is inane and meaningless. TA is a defender primary for one reason, because the powers were categorized together and flagged as defender primary powers. If Castle decided to flag the powers in Martial Arts as a defender primary powers, then Martial Arts as a set would qualify as a defender primary.

Nope that's not true. No point deriving anything that I haven't said. Really it's pointless.

No I have not mentioned anything about a unique role.

So you are saying because you play a Tank Trick Arrow is ok because they do something (support can be anything from buffing a team to debuffing or dealing damage) on the team when your tanking. Good enough and balanced are not the same. Im sorry but I dont think you understand the subject at hand. You have yet to say a single helpful thing on the matter of TA and your wording on almost post is being misinterpreted, or so you believe. I think its time for you to just walk away from this thread.

You guys are talking to me like I am saying that TA doesn't need any changes. I haven't said that. You've assumed very little that has been correct and fail to impress me with what you know altogether. Your still assuming the wrong things by your putting 2 and 2 together. What I know about TA is pretty much from the get go . What I know about AV holes was prior to TA, so really you're assuming you know more about me than you do.

For the umpteenth time TA qualifies as a defender set with which teams can be more than capable of getting the game content done.

All the posts that are about knocking it for improvements simply put TA into a worse light than it needs to be imo, without giving much away I was promoting it. For many reasons I like it not one.

No that's not what I am saying. I'd play with a TA as any AT. You have to take words and then not add assumptions to them. I dont have time to elaborate for those who like to pick an argument for the sake of getting their post counts up or whatever.

With all the negative attention to TA needed some postive things said. It's not as limited or as useless as people could be falsely concluding. Jumping to false conclusions is quite epidemic around here.

You are out of context.