Changed Defender inherent for i17

The numbers I've been tossing around have their damage output really close. From what I'm seeing defenders are actually ahead in raw damage for mature builds that utilize the stronger defender sources of +dam (assault, aim, souldrain, pbu). Which puts a lot of weight onto scourge. IMO it is too close given that defender forcemultiplication is significantly superior to corrs.

I'm fine if the dev's want the corr damage advantage to be back loaded I just think a small positive tweak to scourge is appropriate. I haven't examined it closely, but if it started taking affect at 60% hp rather than 50% it might provide the boost that is warranted while retaining the form of the AT.

I won't argue that scourge is very tangible, it is highly visual and even though most of it is wasted in overkill it feels very visceral and powerful. However, it isn't really that big of a damage boost over the lifetime of the toon when you figure we probably face ~90% minions.

Granted if every corr set had something as good as rain of fire that checks scourge with every tick and double scourges then this discussion would be unnecessary.

Prior to this change the only defender set that was superior to corrs for damage was sonic blast, post buff it looks like every set will be (excluding fire as the don't have it) once you factor in a complete build taking advantage of stronger +dam powers and stronger -res (for procs). I'm not really sold on the idea of defenders being on par with corr damage solo, while having a much easier time neutralizing targets with their powerful debuffs AND being considerably stronger than them in teams.

The traps/sonic/dark build I'm looking at in mids is a monster compared to the sonic/traps/soul lined up next to it. As in so much better than it you would have to really be excited about the corr version and/or the ppp pets to make such a sacrifice.

In my opinion, scourge does need a buff. I have a different opinion on what type of buff it should be though. One of the problems with scourge is that it favors certain types of powers over others. For example, it works very poorly with a lot of DoT powers such as ball lightning. Powers like this will merely get the power of each tic doubled, which often causes it to have no impact on gameplay as the enemy gets killed by another attack instead of scourge helping by killing the enemy immediately. Meanwhile, scrapper incinerate has its bonus damage front-loaded at the beginning of the attack.

Maybe if Scourge kicked in earlier on minions/lts?

Either way, given how long it took for Defenders to get this, I think Corrs won't be getting any Inherent love any time soon

Unfortunately nowhere near enough people play Corrs or post on their boards to generate noticeable squeak >.> It seems to be one of the slowest moving boards. The same can be said for Stalkers, but a complaint of theirs was that they were useless on teams. The same cannot be said for Corrs

For people who run a lot of TFs, (like me), Scourge is a lot more beneficial because of the huge damage increase against all the big hp targets.

Before these changes, I preferred Corrs to Defenders because the buff/debuff strength difference wasn't noticeable to me in gameplay, but the damage difference was. Since I team a lot, this leaves Defenders in more or less the same boat as far as I'm concerned.

My other problem with the Defender inherent was/is that it's well, boring. You can't really see it working. Criticals, Containment, Domination, Defiance, Fury, Scourge and Assassination are all very visceral and tangible inherents. You can also play to maximise them. Incidentally, I happen to think they're the best designed Inherents in the game

You can't really play to maximise Vigilance. I find it to be very much a background process. That's boring to me.

Edit: Frosticus, I also thought it was pretty funny how they worded the Vigilance buff in the patch notes, lot of finger-quotes going on

Yeah...it's a pretty lazy fix.

My personal issue with the Inherent was that IMO, a good Inherent both rewards you for doing your job and helps you do it better. All the good Inherents do both of those things.

Old Vigilance rewarded you for not doing your job or doing it poorly and helped you not do it well even better. New Vigilance rewards you for not doing your job or doing it poorly and punishes you for teaming on a team-based AT. GG.

But hey, what do I know, I play Corrs all the time

Eh, I don't think minions are really threatening enough for it to matter if we had Scourge, a 30% damage buff, or critical hits for that matter. They are going to die fairly quickly regardless of what gimmicks your AT has. Scourge is much more effective against more threatening targets, which is good because those are the targets I'm more worried about.

Corruptors have a damage advantage over defenders against targets that actually require more firepower, where as they remain relatively equal (in terms of damage) against targets that don't. Even with the defender inherent change, I would still much rather have Scourge, though I will agree that DoT's should act more like Rain Powers in relation to it, if only to balance the primary/secondary's within the Corruptor AT.

The thing defenders have that I am slightly jealous of on my corr is their higher buff multiplier. I don't consider the difference very significant when comparing powers such as Weave or Maneuvers, but when comparing something like Sonic Dispersion of Fulcrum Shift defenders gain a rather huge advantage.

I also think Defenders have relatively better epic choices, though Scorpion Shield is very nice in Corr's favor for defense building.

Overall I would say Defenders come out ahead of Corr's, not because of their inherit powers, but because Defenders buff values so much higher. That's originally why I thought they had a sort of sub-par inherit, but I guess I've been proven wrong in that regard.

I'm famous for playing an FFer, and I've never felt that my soloing was "slow".

Since I usually have greater tools to protect myself than other Defenders, I actually don't need to stop and recuperate very often at all, I can keep going like a one person steamroller.

The other thing I sometimes think about is all the people that complain about FF and how it sucks to solo with. Granted.

But are they aware that by lvl 19 and still running on DO's (no IO's) they can give every single person on their team 42.5% defense to all but psi if they wanted to?

Not to mention mez protection and end drain protection.

I dunno, but if you want to protect everyone without having to babysit them all like a heal based set does FF is amazing. And not just protect them all, but easily give them 90% damage mitigation.

Why would a set that can do that be permitted to solo as well as some of the other sets?

Forcefields is pretty solid for soloing, because of the Mezz protection and very powerful defensive tools. In fact contrasting My Empath's road to 30 with my FF going to 30, they both have no tools for increasing their damage outside of Assault, but I found Empathy to have the edge prior to SO's, but after SO's its really no contest. Forcefield's Mez protection is such a helpful power while solo that it easily can solo better than Empathy with moderate defense combined with KB. Then, if you do like I have and take PFF, Aid Other, Aid Self soloing is really an excercise in "how long till I wear down my enemies".

On a team, I have a somewhat different opinion. My Empath "feels" much more complete as a support character. Buff as many as I can, AB who needs it most, fire Auras at opportune times (like right before an AV fight starts) and patch up the rest with heals.
With Forcefields, buff-up and hope everyone's green bars stay filled, cause I am gonna be going "offensive". Hehe, well I have medicine too, but that was more a side effect of wanting another layer of "personal" survival.

I consider soloing an FF to be somewhat akin to playing a Super Reflexes character. It takes time to build up all that defense, and defense is really only good in large amounts. But once you gather it all together, it's really good.

KB= Defense. Enemies aren't attacking you when they're on their butts. And you get one of the best KB powers in the game at level 2 if you want it.

Hmm...looking at this buff I think there may be something else impacted. Defender Duo's.

For example two sonic/emp defenders constantly casting Fortitude (while running assault) sounds fantastic. I'm sure theres a few other Duo's that will be pretty damaging combos when this goes live.

Has this been looked at or thought about at all, I wonder?

... or the equivalent of another Assault.