New Defender Inherent

Running out of inspirations = no boosts, would unfortunately be the name of the game. Besides, inspirations drop pretty often, and co-operative teammates can give you them.


That's why the Vigilance bar rises rather slowly, and why there is a limit of 4. The higher level Defender would benefit from this more in the way of freedom of choice, compared to a lower level Defender who has less possible options for situations.


Yeah, I thought of this myself, too. The "no inspirations"-challange however isn't needed for Master of-tasks, so while that challange would pretty much negate the whole Inherent, it would only affect a very small part of the game. It's rather harsh for that part, though, I agree.

Defenders being a rather balanced Archetype (as per devs, can't prove, though!), it is indeed very hard to think of any suitable inherent. The suggestion in OP was a little inspired by TF2's Buff Banner, which rewards doing damage by granting mini-crits to nearby teammates for a short period of time. If you get the Rage-bar full, that is.

Slightly off topic but I love the Buff Banner. Especially if you can coordinate with an uber medic push. Pure carnage.

Well, yeah. Fortitude could give a longer-lasting mode while Traps still has Web Grenade, which is powerful even as a debuff.

The question is, do Defenders work better than Corruptors or Controllers in teams? The difference between Corruptor/Controller de/buffs and Defender de/buffs is so small that Corruptor/Controller is simply a much better choice as a teammate, with damage/control advantages, respectively. Defenders are fine on teams but the other support classes are simply better. This is only how I see it, though. Controller envy is strong when playing my Defenders, mostly thanks to EPP attacks and pets.

Edit/add: I don't know how the soloability should be changed. If an AT has a superb teaming Inherent, should it be advantageous solo as well? Or maybe the Inherent's superb teaming ability should be lowered and in exchange give in some solo ability as well. Bleh.

Well, if things went my way, stacked support in PvE would have diminishing returns. >_>

Other ideas include to manually adjust Defender primary powers so that they have larger radiuses, extra effects or recharge faster. And to make Regen/Recovery be stronger for Defenders. Stuff that can't be decided by simple AT modifiers. But that belongs to another suggestion.

And no one else would be without their inherent.
This is the perfect example as why this version of Vigilence would not work.

It seems pretty clear that the old inherent for Blasters didn't work when it allowed them do more damage when they were almost dead. Thus making the debt-magnets plunge into debt even more rapidly as they shied away from runnign at all because they might take down the foe with that last blast of extra damage.

If Vigilence's End reduction started when the team's health was at an average of half health, and it not only decreased the Defender's end use, but also increased their end recharge, power recharge time, and increase the effect of their healing/buff powers then it might be more useful.

I'd rather see a Defender Inherent that shifts damage and agro from Defenders to non-squishes on the team that are supposed to be protecting them - a sort of Anti-Gauntlet.

I'd also be for an Inherent that allows Defender to do more damage when they are solo.

But that is still requiring certain Defenders to play in a way that isn't the optimal. Sure there are times when spamming Web Grenades is the right thing to do but on a lot of teams the debuffs are unnecessary and I'm better off blasting. Also, what about Radiation Defenders? They have basically one power (Radiant Aura) that is not a toggle, doesn't require a dead ally and has a recharge less than 90seconds. You're basically forcing them to spam the heal aura. The inherent powers should work best when a character is doing what they were designed to do, this does that for some types of defenders where alternating primary and secondary is sensible but for a lot of other Defenders it encourages poor play.

I think you do have a point with Controllers but not Corruptors. At lower levels Defenders do a LOT more damage than Controllers since as you say a lot of their damage is in their EPPs and Pets. At higher levels I think Defenders do still tend to out-damage controllers (with the obvious exception of Fire/Kin) but not by a whole lot.

I think that Corruptors and Defenders are better balanced. Roughly speaking Defender buffs are about 13% to 33% better than Corruptor ones while Corruptors do about 15% more damage (neglecting Scourge). In team play I find they are reasonably balanced against each other. Defenders buff the team a little bit more while Corruptors do slightly more damage. The big difference is Scourge, but if you think about it, Scourge helps a lot more whilst soloing than it does in team play. Soloing you will spend time shooting at every single enemy whilst it is at less than half health (unless you one hit kill them anyway) so you have a chance to Scourge with every enemy. On a team though you won't get to shoot every enemy while they are at half health. In other words, Scourge provides a damage buff that scales down with team size.

I don't see it as a teaming inherent versus a non-teaming inherent I see it as an issue of ATs being multiplicative versus additive. When you add a character to the team you are increasing the team's overall power no matter what AT the character is. However some ATs increase the individual power of their teammates (multiplicative) while others don't (additive).

Characters like Blasters and Scrappers who are strongly additive will automatically be good soloers since their solo capabilities are the same as their team capabilities. Multiplicative ATs are definitely giving up some personal power for the ability to increase their teammate's power so how well they solo can vary radically. Tanks and Controllers are decent soloers, they are slower than Blasters and Scrappers but they are reasonably well protected while soloing so it balances out somewhat (obviously some combos are better or worse than others).

Defenders though are all over the place in terms of soloing ability. Debuff based sets like Traps, Trick Arrow and Rad can use most of their primary powers at full effect while soloing so while they aren't as good at the additive ATs are at soloing like the Tankers and controllers they can at least use their powers effectively to help themselves. Other sets like Empathy have few powers that they can use themselves whilst soloing and so have to rely on a small subset of their powers.

Now multiplicative ATs don't have to be bad soloers to balance their team based abilities. As I mentioned above Corruptor's scourge decreases in utility somewhat as the team gets larger. Similarly one of the advantages Controllers have over Defenders is that with sets that focus on buffing teammates the Defender gets little benefit while solo but the Controller can (generally) use them to buff his pets. This effectively increases his power while solo but the advantage fades away on teams (since buffing teammates tends to take priority over buffing pets).

Tanks are probably the other AT that could use a boost. Like Defenders they don't have anything that scales up whilst solo and unlike Defenders they aren't completely multiplicative on teams either. The first one is but the nature of the game meas that one Tank is usually sufficient for aggro management and a second is therefore only additive. Their advantage is that there is a lot less variation between powersets. Sure, some are better soloers and some are better on teams but they can all use their powers to pretty much the same extent regardless of whether they are solo or teamed.

Personally if I was an MMO designer I would endeavor to make all classes multiplicative with a similar mix of powers that scale up or down based on team size but I'm not sure how practical that would really be.


EDIT: Just as a thought, there has been a lot of talk about whether Defenders will be played less with Going Rogue in favor of Corruptors. I think they will somewhat but I think the reason is not that team leaders will kick Defenders in favor of Corruptors but that players will choose to make new characters Corruptors because they solo a lot better. To some extent we see the same thing now, Controllers tend to be more popular because they are perceived as more powerful. However I think that a lot of that perception comes not from team play but from solo play.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.