Should a Defender's Primary Powers Recharge Faster?

I play some Defenders and some Controllers, and I'm constantly struck by how Defender buffs and debuffs don't really seem that much better than the Controller's. Certainly not anywhere near the difference between Defender and Blaster damage.

What occurred to me is that even though Defender buffs are more powerful than Controller buffs, in the end it's more about the recharge and endurance cost than the net effect of a lot of buffs.

So my question is, would the Defender AT take a significant step forward if the base recharge and endurance cost for all powers in the primary was offset by the same values used to enhance buffs, but still be balanced? While I doubt it's likely to happen, with Going Rogue coming out soon this seems like a prime time to ask.

On a set-by-set or even power-by-power basis, yes, definitely.

Force Fields +Def powers and Sonic Resonance +Res powers, for example, benefit significantly from being 33% stronger on a Defender, because of the nature of +Def and +res, the more you have the better it becomes.
So they're good as they are. Ditto for most -Res powers.

Recovery Aura is the opposite - +200% Recovery (same for Defs and Con's oddly enough) is functionally the same as +150% or +250% - you have endurance coming out of your ears either way. People usually slot this for Recharge, because thats what counts, so this power should recharge faster for Defenders.

Basically, just applying scalars to the buffs doesnt work in making Controller secondaries less effective than Defender primaries, because the powersets are so different. I agree that things like recharge need to be taken into account.

And I'm with Biospark too - End costs should be dropped for Defender's (and Tanks) attacks a bit. Maybe not by enough to match the DPE of Blasters and Scrappers, but somewhere inbetween.

When I was listening to the podcasts from Herocon today, I came across this comment

Castle (I think it was his voice, apologies otherwise) said that the defender AT is and remains the most balanced AT. However, the comment was followed that they are aware there is a little bit that needs to be looked at, and they are monitoring the situation.

Overall defender remain good (indeed great), one possible tweak I would suggest in this theme that is in line with the suggestion here would be to keep vigilance more or less as it is but extend the same principle to recharge as well as endrec (maybe on a different scale).

That still doesn't help solo defenders though.

When I look at a power set where a large percentage of the powers are ally-only, I set my solo expectations accordingly. I really don't see a problem in need of a fix here.

With vigilance, the maximum number of targets it can be effected by are 7 which is not really a very nice number to be dealing with. If they factored in the player themselves, then vigilance would be easier to tweak with maximum 8 characters effecting it.

So if they made vigilance more static then it wouldn't only be useful for defenders that cant keep the team they are on alive. They could rework vigilance kinda like the Kheldian inherant. For every team member on the team you get a little end redux, and maybe a little rech redux aswel.

That way the player would always have a little end redux and rech redux without having to lower globals. it could work in a similar way to how brutes have a lower base damage to factor in the colossal boost they get from rage, which therefore makes powers like buildup less potent to keep their damage in check behind scrappers =).

It still seems strange to me that my Controllers so easily match Defender performance with buffs. I don't think the solution is to buff Defenders base values directly, but to alter how quickly the buffs come back and what they cost.

Just how big of a difference there is between controller and defender versions of powers depends on the specific set. I think most of them are fine.

That's a good idea IMHO.

The better numbers on Defenders buffs dont make all that of a difference: the buff happens anyway. What makes the most difference is just basically by having the buffs available.

I can't think of something LESS spectacular in this game than having an endurance cost reduction compared to controllers versions.

Recharge must be the most slotted item across defenders powers, this could free more slots to make a defender more offensively capable too.

To the OP: Very dead horse.

Biospark: you said

i think a tweak to defender blast set endurance costs (and *crosses fingers* a bit more damage) would do more for Defenders in general than reducing the recharge on primary powers, especially for the sets where that would only really make a difference for one power.

Hmm,maybe I shouldn't have calmed my post down as much as I did.

What I read was "Why does [someone else's powerset] do something better than mine?" This may be a purely informational question, but traditionally it's been EXCEEDINGLY unlikely.

Your response makes it even more likely that you were requesting an improvement, instead of an explanation.

I'm going to give you an explanation, though, because apparently I'm too respected [...] to just open up on people any more. (you see that post count? Fighting with blasters back when they were fifty times more fragile than scrappers. On the side of the scrappers.)

First, neither Force Fields nor Sonic is a particularly good set at keeping you, the Defender, alive. Solo or on teams. It's not, one might conclude, what the set is FOR. A 20% difference in survivability is very, very small to me; a Scrapper is about six times as tough as a Blaster, if they're both level 35 with SO's. 500% more survivable.

What, then, may we postulate the two sets are for?

I believe Force Fields is for capping defense on the entire team (except yourself), mez protection for the team (if they're close), using strategic knockback, and... well, virtually nothing else. There's a small amount of direct AOE damage, these days. Which is an improvement, and it took only four years or so to get it.

Sonic? Adding resistance to your teammates [and yourself], extended/reactive mez protection to your teammates [and yourself], and... oh yeah, reducing enemy resistance, thus increasing the damage of the entire team by 30-50%.

You MIGHT guess that last bit wasn't free. And it wasn't. You get more attack, you get less protection.

There's another thing, though. Defense and Resistance are comparable... if you're solo, your inspiration tray is empty, you have no secondary powers and you've slotted only SO's.

... you may be thinking that pretty much all those things push Defense, though. And you'd be right. The list of things that debuff enemy accuracy, or increase your own Defense, is a lot longer than the list of things that increase your own resistance. Look at Pool powers- hover, combat jumping, weave, maneuvers buff Defense, and only tough buffs resistance.

None of that matters to Force Fields, though, because Force Fields very, very nearly caps teammate Defense ALL BY ITSELF. (FF guides all tell you to take Maneuvers for a reason.That gets you to 45%.) Doesn't matter if you've got Acc Debuffed enemies (rad, dark teammates), Defense-buffing teammates (anyone with Maneuvers,ice shields, another FF'er, anyone with IO's of their own, anyone who took a purple pill or three, SR or Invuln or Ice Armor, Fortitude, Crab Spider powers, Widow powers, smoke, smoke grenades, are we there yet? ) Once everyone's at the to-hit floor, Force Fields do nothing more.

How many people are at or near the Resistance cap? Some people- S/L only- a few Khelds in Crab form and ... no, Granite doesn't get there. Oh, and people with Resistance from somewhere else, PLUS A SONIC.

Since Issue 6, I can count the number of times a team has had no use for more resistance... one. I think I was on a team with capped resistance once, in the last four years. Capped defense? 80% of the people on 80% of the ITF's I've been on have had capped defense.

Resistance is not a common buff. Even the res inspirations don't give out much.

... oh, hey, I didn't mention shield scraps/brutes/tanks up there in the Defense list. I'm sure I'm leaving out LOTS more.

So.....

Your explanation is that the small disparity that I am seeing is;

A) Not enough to worry about

B) more than made up for by the added DPS it provides to the team/defender

C) Rare enough as a commodity to not warrant equal treatment


Ok, I agree with B) I simply did not sit down and try and calculate the survival implications of -res for the powerset as a whole. It was more or less an observation regarding the two powers alone.

A) and C) seem more or less opinions, so you are entitled to them, no hard feelings if I disagree I hope.

As far as requesting an improvement, well I certainly know how happily any suggestions for improvements are met on these forums (not reffering to you), but I honestly was just curious what people thought about the disparity. After having played both Sonic and Forcefields, my opinion is that one is far better as a set than the other in respect to keeping a team alive AND oddly enough keeping a solo Defender alive. Also I am sure that is due to the powerset as a whole and NOT just in regards to the Dispersion powers of the two sets. But it does beg the question; Is the resist amount enough ?

What do you see as the design goal of Sonic Resonance?