Idea for a universal defender pet

So, giving buffing defenders a pet has been brought up pretty often by now, so they can use their buffs while solo.

Right now my stance is "why not?" but, me being me, I'd like something that fits my concepts thematically and doesn't suddenly make it so Empathy can summon a magical fairy who will clash with say, a robot medic.

So I propose this:

The Paragon Police Department.

Give all defenders the ability to work together with a PPD cop as long as they're not on a team. Make it a new inherent even.

It makes sense that a defender whose powers work mostly on others will look for some sort of partner. It also makes sense that, when no other heroes are available, the best ally against crime is the police forces of Paragon City.

Make the cop ascend through the ranks as he levels, or just stay the same all the way through.

The only new bit of coding I'd like to ask for is for rez powers to work on the cop if it falls.

What do you think?

Its an interesting Idea MonkeySpirit

Playing Empathy and also FF in the past, I really prefer not to have a pet.
One of the reasons I play a Defender instead of a Controller is that I really dont like using pets. This extends to other games as well.

I really would rather see Buffing defenders get some "self-defense" boost to help in their solo efforts.

That being said, I would not be opposed to a "pet" available in the epic powers.
In that way, folks that are not as adverse to pet type powers could have that option.

Having an epic-level pet though would do nothing to help low level defenders (15-30) who are in the most need of some help.

I'm against it. If you want to play a buffing character with a pet, you can already get it by playing masterminds or upper level controllers. If empathy and force fields have design issues, then those should be fixed directly.

Play Elec Blast and you get a pet (kinda).

Play Dark Miasma and you have another pet.

Play them both and you get 1.5 pets.

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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler you *******!!!!

Its a cool idea for a concept-neutral pet, since you just have to be fighting crime in Paragon City for it to make sense.
There are still some case that work better than others. A Spawn-like Dark Defender or Namor-like haughty Atlantean FF/NRG Defender might have a few problems with their cop pet tagging along, although there's quite a bit of mileage in the idea that the hero has unwillingly been appointed an 'assistant' to make sure they behave themselves.

Its still a pet though, with all the associated problems. Does it close to melee, or shoot from range where Sonic's Disruption Field will have no effect? Does it taunt and draw fire from you once you've shielded it?

And would you feel a bit less heroic maybe because you have to take a cop along with you to fight crime effectively?

Like Biospark, I find the draw for Defenders is the lack of pet. Defenders fill the very common niche in X-Men level heroes of "I fight from range and do some other cool stuff via my control of a single element or something, and I do it through my own power".


Out of the three problem sets (FF, Sonic and Empathy) I'd say FF needs the least help. I'm thinking of making another one and slung together a quick build that achieves 35% Defence vs everything without even dipping into IOs by around level 30. The options are already there for a solo oriented FF tank mage - not too tanky, not too magey and balanced. I've previously suggested addign some +Def to Repulsion Field and Force Bubble, this would help the set and not require 3 powers from Fighting to achieve effective defence.

Sonic falls down mainly via Disruption Field. This set is unnecessarily team-dependent, and this is the main reason why - the better half of your speciality of increasing damage needs a teammate. Allowing this to be placed on an enemy would fix this, although I believe the game engine doesn't currently allow for that.
While we're at it, Sonic Repulsion could probably be changed to work just like Repel and Repulsion Field without breaking too many hearts. Its valuable mitigation against heavy melee hitters for a solo-ist.

Empathy - hmmm. I've got nothing right now.

In my personal opinion, epic power pets are a great idea for defenders.

First off, all defenders, even FF, Empathy, and other buff/shielders, don't need a pet to be effective. It is the nature of the AT, and the powersets in question, to be used in a team setting. My only point by bringing this up is that the powersets themselves don't need to be changed to be effective. Some sets just aren't strong soloers.

The police officer idea, while interesting, can also be as universally theme-destroying as it can be universally thematic. I, for one, would HATE having a police pet following me everywhere, so generic and boring.

However, I feel every defender could benefit from a pet added to every epic pool. That way you can fit the pet to your overall theme, be it fire, ice, etc. It would help to level out the lack of damage that all defenders suffer from, as well as give those shielders/buffers something to shield/buff while solo.

Just team until you get to 41, they aren't that hard to find.

Edit: Also, this way it is completely optional for those who don't want a pet, for whatever reason.

Honestly, I solo all of my toons to some extent, and although he's not the best, my Emp/Energy is anything but lacking solo, I've posted the vids of him soloing many times.

I know, extreme example because *gasp* I took and slotted attacks, but that's where the fun is.

Letting an Empath use Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost on themselves would be way overpowered.

Fortitude gives 24% Defence to everything, including Psi, when slotted, as well as bonus damage and to hit, and you can keep it up on one or two others.
Super Reflexes takes 6 powers to give around 30% Defence to all except Psi for just the user.

You cant have one power exceeding an entire powerset like that.


A question for Psyonico - numerically, how effective is your solo empath compared to any other solo Defender, or other character you've run? Just as a ballpark figure.

I'd say my worse solo Defender experience was Cosmika - Sonic/Energy with Fighting pool and a solo-oriented build. She really did feel about 70% as effetcive as say Kin/Elec, FF/Sonic and maybe 50% as good as the better soloers like Dark/Rad or Storm/Ice.

Wow, so much to talk about

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Originally Posted by DrMike2000 Letting an Empath use Fortitude and A question for Psyonico - numerically, how effective is your solo empath compared to any other solo Defender, or other character you've run? Just as a ballpark figure. I'd say my worse solo Defender experience was Cosmika - Sonic/Energy with Fighting pool and a solo-oriented build. She really did feel about 70% as effetcive as say Kin/Elec, FF/Sonic and maybe 50% as good as the better soloers like Dark/Rad or Storm/Ice.

I'm not sure I can put a numeric value on that, but I'll ramble a bit.

Firstly, when I ran my Invincible Carnies mission, I completed it in just under 10 minutes without any deaths, Catwhoorg was kind enough to lend his namesake Claws/Regen scrapper to run a similar mission, he came out about 20 seconds ahead of me and had 1 death (no running back from the hospital, self rez) So this tells me that I am running fairly high on the strength.

The issue I have putting a number down is what difficulty I solo toons on. For example, I solo my emp on +2 with spawns at about x2 - 3 and Bosses on, my Rad/Son, probably my "strongest" solo defender solos spawns at +3 with team size at x2-3, no bosses, meanwhile my TA/A solos at -1 - 0 with team size at x6, no bosses, they all run at about the same speed and my emp doesn't feel any lack of mitigation, but since he can handle something the other two don't, it makes up for the slightly lower numbers, he can solo larger spawns or higher levels, it just starts to slow him down.

For reference, my two best soloers are my WP/Mace tank and my Stone/ELA brute, the tank usually solos at +2 x 6 and the brute at +3 x 3, purely for AoE/ST reasons, compared to my defenders, they're probably about 25-35% faster.

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Originally Posted by Biospark I know this was directed at Psyonico, and no disrespect to the OP for the minor hijack, But I have an idea for which I will be starting a thread on (soon, I hope), to explore an idea that attempts to isolate Defender primaries with regards to their ability to effect survival (Both Solo and Teamed). I am hoping that you, Psyonico, Laughing Man, StratoNexus and everyone else with an interest will assist in isolating more powersets than the ones I am most familiar with. I was kinda inspired by Bill Z Bubba from the scrapper forums with how he was able to isolate DPS on different powersets using a logical framework.

Interesting idea, the issue for the team survivability thing is factoring in stackability, my Emp is going to keep the team alive better than my TA in small teams (2-4) but it evens out in larger teams, and TA might just take the edge in 8 man teams, however, if you are looking at 2-3 emps vs 2-3 TAs, the emps take the lead once again. In fact, Emp is probably the most stackable set.

Similarly, FF, in my experience, is more effective than Sonic at providing survivability, but there are certain circumstances (last mission of the STF, all of the ITF) where Sonic far outshines FF

You also come into a minor issue when dealing with Buffs vs Debuffs and enemy conning, Debuffs will, for the most part, come ahead in the -1 - +2 range, but I'm willing to bet buffs will come ahead in the +3 + range because of the purple patch.

There is also the issue of kill speed vs survivability, Kin has the lowest survivability rating, but thanks to the incredible increase in kill speed, it doesn't need as much in terms of survival buffs/debuffs.

To sum this all up, I could probably put together a spreadsheet showing survivability on the various sets (I have each defender set leveled to at least 29) based purely on numbers, however, factoring in +DPS and large scale healing (ala empathy) makes those two sets difficult. Sets with a single heal are relatively easy to rank.

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Originally Posted by DrMike2000 Awesome! Can't wait! My line of thinking here was that conversations on these boards often go (for example): "Gravity is underpowered" "Oh no it isn't! My Gravity Controller does just fine! He kicked *** in the RWZ last night etc." This is a mature game, and its kind of unlikely that any one powerset will be 50% as good as any other overall, maybe 80% is the kind of variance we have now between sets at a real push. For Defender primaries there's still quite a bit of scope for further variance when you take soloing into account because some sets are just plain made to work with teams, so we could be seeing that kind of 50% effectiveness drop. I'm also really interested in proving my pet theory that Sonic sucks worse than Empathy solo, despite having four functional powers instead of three Anyway, back to pets. I dont have the little energy wisp combat pets Vet rewards unlocked yet. Has anyone ever had any success leveraging them to help a Defender solo, eg sticking Disruption Field or even Sonic repulsion on them? I understand they're pretty fragile, but they could help a bit there. I did this once with the Clockwork pets from Faultline - dragged them out to help with a tricky boss on my Sonic Defender, aminly for the -Res field. Are there any other tricks like that? eg regularly using Shivans?

I would believe that Sonic is worse than empathy solo, though my Son/Son is only 29, he feels weaker than my Emp/Energy did at the same level. I don't get my buff pets for a few more months (I think April) so I can't check on that, however, I have used the relatively fragile clockwork gears to some success against Heracles, the trick there is to hold the aggro on yourself.