Changed Defender inherent for i17

Probably not, I'd still like to see soemthing doen to decrease the disparity in the soloing capability of different defender primaries.

Hehe, to me ? Yeah

Do I expect something like this ? Nope !

Will we get something even close to it ? Doubtfull....

But whatever we get will most likely be better than it is now, so consider me nervous as a school girl before her prom.... uhm... yeah, you get the idea

That would be horribly overpowered in a team setting. A team of 8 Defenders is already one of the best team combinations out there. Increasing the base damage of a team of Defenders just makes it even more broken.

Power bolt- 180.7 damage, with a 0.8 modifier that would be 222.4
power burst- 383.2 damage, with a 0.8 modifier that would be 471.6 (this is enough to one shot a minion, and is more damage than a kin/energy corruptor could do even after double stacking FS)

beheader (a 4 second attack like power bolt)- 124.2 damage with build up and 99% slotting
gash (a 10 second attack like power burst)- 243.3 damage with build up and 99% slotting

A fully capped defender does about 50% more damage than a tanker using build up. After your proposed change, they would be doing about 84% more damage, almost double the amount.

It wouldn't be anymore overpowered than a team of 8 corrs/trollers/blasters or anything else. aside from it being unrealistic for 90% of the game.

... is that taking into account FS's duration and recharge,compared to BU's duration and recharge?

One would hate to have math errors give deceptive impressions.

when did defenders get a 500% damage cap?

Why is a tanker with 7 defenders not horribly overpowered? They are, and yet you are not calling for their damage mod to be sunk into the ground. Why is a blaster with 7 defenders not horribly overpowered? They are, and yet you are not calling for their damage mod to be sunk into the ground.

Why can the most survivable AT in the game have a 0.8 damage mod and not be considered overpowered but a defender with a 0.8 damage mod would be terrible?

There is NO balance reason to keep defender damage so low. The only reason to keep it so low is that you want to encourage the AT to NOT shoot stuff on bigger teams. You want them to consider their secondary for control and debuff alone. This is why Fire blast is not ported (yet). Defenders should be concentrating on their teammates and not focusing on the enemy, unless they are on a small team.

I disagree with that viewpoint, but I believe the devs view it as a guiding principle of defender design. If you agree that defenders should not shoot stuff too much on teams, then you should be fine keeping their damage in the dirt.

If you feel defenders should shoot stuff, then you should be clamoring for them to have a 0.8 damage mod.

Oddly, I often feel like I am asking for the AT to be re-imagined; and yet when I look at their basic design (ignoring actual numbers, just the basic design), I feel like I am simply asking for the AT to have the numbers to back up the concept. I do not believe the AT was originally imagined to be a passive, team-window babysitter.

In game defender description:
Website defender description:
Based on my knowledge of the game, the defender concept screams for scrapper level HPs and a 0.8 damage mod.

7 Defenders and 1 Tanker or 7 Defenders and 1 Blaster are overpowered but not because of the Tanker or Blaster. Defenders are force multipliers, they increase the power of everyone else on the team. Tankers and Blasters are not force multipliers (ok, the first Tanker on a team is a weak force multiplier). Because of the way buffs and debuffs work in this game characters that are force multipliers (Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers and Masterminds) stack together a LOT better than anyone else. To some extent this is limited by their lower base damage. Even with their current damage they are pretty overpowered, increasing the base damage makes that even worse.

TL;DR version: Defenders do not need to be made more powerful on a team, they could use some help solo though.

I actually agree with the sentiment. However I don't think that it can be done within the current framework of the game. The game is already horribly imbalanced in favor of buffs and debuffs over damage. In order to make increasing defender damage practical then either the game needs to be completely rebalanced around less powerful buffs or the ATs that don't have buffs/debuffs need to be re-imagined so that they do.

Do you believe this because you haven't seen other reasons or you chose to ignore them?

That is exactly my point! A huge team of buff/debuff characters may be overpowered, BUT NOT BECAUSE OF THEIR DAMAGE POWERS. By saying its not the blaster's or tanker's higher damage mod, you are proving my point. The higher damage mod is irrelevant to the power of these teams. Stacked buff/debuffs may be overpowered, they may even be "broken", but increasing the damage mod of defenders is not in any way going to make this "more broken". It will simply aid defenders on "normal" teams feel more effective with their blasts.

This is not limited by their lower base damage. Increasing their base damage will not in any way make the situation worse. It will aid defenders on "normal" teams and will have almost NO EFFECT on teams that are overstacking buff/debuff.

How do you reconcile that first sentence with the rest of this paragraph? If damage is not the problem, then adding more damage to defenders is not a problem. Do you really believe that a defender with scrapper base HPs and a 0.8 damage mod will somehow cause too many people to ignore scrappers, brutes, blasters, and tankers?

I have not seen any reasons that make any sense. Perhaps you would like to try?

Have you not seen alternative suggestions, such as reducing defender endurance costs rather than directly increasing defender damage (via vigilance alterations or AT-wide endurance modifications) or is increasing defender damage the only solution?

Have you not seen inter-AT balance issues caused by corrupters, who are already listed as a high damage AT, having a .75 damage mod while having weaker offensive buffs? (note: I am amused at tankers having a higher damage mod than corrupters).

Have you not seen mention of how a direct damage boost ignores intra-AT balance issues that are glaringly obvious when comparing, for example, rad/sonic (who often out-damage corrupter counterparts already) to ff/elec? I've never seen a request for a buff to rad/sonic, so does it simply get a boost because it's an easy fix?

All of that ignores the hyperbole of defenders not attacking on large teams because their damage mod is low, as if all defender teams heal their enemies to death.

If you ignore inter-AT issues, then there's really no need to even stop at 0.8. Just double defender damage to about 1.3. After all, damage isn't the issue, and we're not worried about people abandoning other archetypes. Because, if that's not true, then someone who disagrees with a straight damage boost might not do so out of a "shut up and heal" attitude, so to speak.

edit: to be more succinct, increasing defender damage mods demands either an appreciation for the current status of other archetypes, or the complete disregard of other archetypes. The latter is present in a proposal that only increases defender damage to 0.8, for example.

Is there really any content that a competent team of 8 players can't handle?

Yes, a team of 8 defenders would be overpowered. So is a team of 8 controllers. 8 scrappers... and so on.

So the price for this hypothetical "uber" team is to gimp the class for any other situation? I never really bought this as a concept. Sure there will be some defender teams that will rip things up, but there are some troller teams that make content redundant already (8 frads?).

Some kind of sliding damage scale is kludgy at best. I get worse when I team?! Really?

The first day the Kahn TF (is that it's name?) was released I had a team of 8 that breezed through the entire TF until the reichsmanwhat'shisname started his unstoppable cycle. 4 tankers, 1 controller, 2 scrappers, 1 blaster. After over an hour the team was depleting faster than the AVs hitpoints. The ice/ff controller spent a lot of time AFK, but somehow I don't think that mattered.

Sorry, as the TF changed in the past few months?

I've seen a few teams of mostly tankers/scrappers unable to handle the regen of certain GMs, like jack-in-irons (%^&@#$ terror).

SQUIRREL!

FS has a 60 second recharge. It also has a 45s duration.
Build up has a 90 second recharge. It has a 10s duration.

However, my point was simply that tankers, with an offensive secondary get a .8 modifier. They also can self buff 25% of the time to nearly defender capped damage. They do this in near perfect safety while providing an equally important benefit to a team. Additionally, they can do this solo, vs. 1 mob. Where a defender has to engage large groups frequently if they want to stay capped.

Perhaps .75 would be more palatable, but I still think the game would be fine with a .8 mod.

As for inter AT issues, I would say that corruptors could also use a bump. They have an offensive primary and a low damage mod. If you give tankers the melee bump because they desperately needed it... the logical conclusion would be to do the same (even if not to the exact same base mod) to the defender.

It's simple mathematics. Buffs and debuffs act as damage multipliers. Lets say for the sake an argument that a team of 8 defenders is 16 times as powerful as a single defender (i.e. in a team each defender is twice as powerful as they are solo). This number is made up, but I suspect it actually underestimates the power of a team of defenders. If you increase their base damage by 23% then they will still be 16 times as powerful as a single defender but will become 46% more powerful than they currently are, or 23 times as powerful as single current defender.

Now the numbers are made up but it illustrates my point. If you increase the base damage of a single defender then the power of a group of defenders goes up by considerably more than the amount you increased the damage by. If you believe that a team of defenders is currently underpowered then this isn't a problem. However if you believe, as I do, that a team of Defenders (or any other AT with a buff/debuff set) is overpowered then increasing thier base damage while on a team is a bad change.

Not at all, a team of 8 characters who are damage multipliers (i.e. any character with a buff/debuff set) is overpowered. It doesn't even need to be a team of 8, stacking 3 or 4 of them tends to make a joke of most content. Conversly a team of 8 non-damage multipliers will generally be weaker than a mixed team. Given this increasing their base damage is something that needs to be approached VERY carefully. Personally I think the current damage values are about right in a team setting although I would like to see some sort of damage buff when solo.

Solution to what? Defender slow solo speed? While I think it would be nice to address that, my bigger concern is that many players think its not worthwhile for defenders to shoot stuff. Encouraging players to shoot more with their defenders can be accomplished by increasing the damage or by increasing the debuff values. The debuff values are already so high, I believe there is no more room to go higher and I also believe this change would not encourage shooting very much. People like to see visible results. Why do you think people say great heals, even if Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare did most of the mitigation.

Even if defenders get no change at all, I think corruptors should have a 0.9 damage mod.

Yes, Rad/Sonics get the boost too. No, I do not fear the Rad/Sonic with the 0.8 damage mod.

I doubt intra-AT issue "fixes" are on the table any time soon. FF/Elec may not have the offensive output of a Rad/Sonic, but their buffs and end drain can provide massive mitigation. I am not against variety and I think it is hard to quantify the value differential of a Rad/Sonic vs. a FF/Elec.

Many people would feel the Rad/Sonic is the clear winner. If I were on a team of 7 blasters and I could add either a Rad/Sonic or a FF/Elec, I'd take the bubbler. If I were on a team with one tanker, 2 blasters, and a scrapper, I'd rather have the bubbler. At any point where my mitigation is in doubt, I'd probably take the bubbler. Offense is easy to come by, so many ATs provide a lot of it. Of course, if every damage mod in the game was 0.65, some might think they NEED to play Rad/Sonic in order to move through the game.

In summary, while a 0.8 damage mod (and scrapper HPs) will not close the gap between FF/Elec and Rad/Sonic (whatever gap that is, since the Rad/Sonic is not clearly superior, IMO), it will make the FF/Elec (and the Rad/Sonic) more desirable than it currently may be for some people.

Who cares about all defender teams? This type of team continually gets brought up by those who want to keep defenders in the sub-basement of damage. Hell, I just want them to be in the basement, down there with tankers. Once again, its NOT THE DAMAGE MOD that matters on heavy buff/debuff teams.

If all defender teams are common and 1 tanker, 2 blaster 1 scrapper, 1 controller and 1 defender teams are rare, then please ignore me. If most teams are buff/debuff heavy, instead of having 2-4 buff/debuff characters and then a mix of other ATs, I withdraw my proposal.

It is possible I am wrong. Maybe there is no clear bias against defenders blasting on large teams by the devs. Perhaps most defender players slot their blasts effectively and use them regularly. My experience is just my experience. What I see, is only what I see. I have to believe what my senses tell me and I have seen and heard far too many players discuss defender blasts as if they were irrelevant.

I would not ignore inter-AT issues. I am saying that there is boatloads of room to increase the defender damage mod (and their HPs) without marginalizing any of the other ATs (well, except corruptors, but I think they should have their mod increased as well).

Damage is still not the issue on those heavy buff/debuff teams. Even at a damage mod of 1.5, they would not be all that much better than they are now. All defender teams rip through spawns so fast as is. Once each defender is only using one or two attacks to wipe a spawn, there really is not much room for improvement. Most of the all defender teams I run on, rads do not even get to use their toggles until we start to fight three spawns at once. A Fort or two, an occasional FS, always on Sonic Dispersion and other debuffs become irrelevant, except vs. AVs. One of the reason I love Freezing Rain so much is that even if I do not need the -res, the KD and slow helps keep them in place for the killing.

ALL of the other damage oriented ATs have something defenders and corruptors will never have. Neat melee attacks. People like to kick, bash, rip, shred, punch, stabbity-death baddies. They will also still do more damage than defenders and be on par with or better than corruptors and will do it without any ramp up time (well, brutes need a bit of ramp up time).

Increasing defender HPs will not make the armored ATs obsolete. The strong mitigation of armors and status protection will keep many people quite happy with tankers, scrappers, and brutes. The extra HPs would be a nice differentiation from corruptors.

Except most of the enemies in the game have a finite number of hit points. If you are already killing the enemies in one or two attacks, becoming 479.87% more damaging is irrelevant. It will still take 1 or two attacks from each defender to wipe the spawn. There is already tons of corpse blasting on heavy/buff debuff teams (and heavy blaster/scrapper/brute teams, vs. most content, heavy buff/debuff teams do not outperform heavy damage teams when it comes to speed of killing, although they often have an edge in survivability that can make a difference).

Buff/debuff really only shines vs. AVs, and even then its only marginally better vs. even con and +1 AVs than a damage heavy team (assuming the damage heavy team has enough mitigation to survive) or a balanced mix. Versus higher con enemies (+3 or higher for normal enemies, +2 or higher for EBs and AVs, and maybe some +2 bosses) debuff heavy teams do start to shine in normal content, but once again, we are now talking about fringe cases.

I don't believe in ignoring the fringe and outliers, but I also do not believe one should ignore the "normal range of gameplay". If the fringe gameplay will be barely affected, as I believe, and if you agree that encouraging defenders to shoot more is a reasonable position, then increasing the damage mod to 0.8 is all win.

Plus, none of the other buff/debuff ATs have to suffer with this mentality that damage needs to be kept artificially super low. I agree the damage should be kept low, just not as low as it is.

There is simply NO GAME BALANCE REASON not to increase defender and corruptor damage. It is a concept choice only. It is not even a choice I can call wrong, it's just a decision I disagree with.

I don't think Defenders need any more encouragement to shoot (some players might, but that's their problem). Personally I'm perfectly happy with the damage output of my defenders in team situations. The only time I feel their damage is lacking is when I'm soloing.

Come again? Corruptors have only slightly higher damage than defenders (0.75 modifier plus scourge) and yet defender buffs are substantially stronger (up to 30% stronger for the good ones, less on weaker buffs like healing). Controllers are technically 1.1 with containment but they have a very limited selection of attack powers and most of the ones they do have have low damage scales compared to powers with equivalent area and recharge (for example the Controller version of fireball has twice the recharge of the defender/corruptor/blaster version but the same damage scale). Masterminds I can't really comment on (I've never played one and the math is less obvious due to the pets) although I'll point out that their buffs/debuffs are mostly weaker than corruptor ones AND have higher endurance costs.

I disagree. With the way the game is balanced now increasing defender/corruptor base damage would be detrimental to the balance unless substantial changes were made to the effectiveness of buffs/debuffs (I'm talking ED/GDN level changes here).

I think at this point in the thread though we might as well go our separate ways and agree to disagree.

That is a valid point of view. I do not believe it is the player's problem, but instead a problem with the AT implementation.

I concur. If you can look at defenders currently buffing damage mods higher than 0.8 and feel its fine and yet at the same time look at defenders buffing damage mods of 0.8 and feel it would be unbalanced, then I do not believe I can say anything that would convince you.

I have played this game 3 years out of the 6 years of its existence (I took a 3 year break to play another game about 15 months after launch), and in all that time I have been on ZERO 8-man teams consisting of ALL Defender/Controllers. Perhaps I don't play as much, or team as much, but the most common occurence is 1-4 Controller/Defenders and the rest are Scrapps/Blasters/Tankers with Blasters more often as the predominant AT on an 8-man team. So, I have to agree with StratoNexus that ALL-Defender or ALL-Controller teams are indeed outlier considerations and I seriously doubt that the game is balanced around something this infrequent. I could be wrong.

Adding to the concept of Defenders seeming to blast less on teams, I am sure there are people out there that do not care to use their blasts and feel their "Job" is strictly in their primary. They would be missing out on the best part of being a defender though. But I would say that being on a team and simply doing your job of defending the team, can reduce significantly the amount of time you can spend blasting. This is simply a matter of choices at times; example: Do I cast a "Heal Other" on the blaster that just got "spanked" and is in the "red" or do I cast my largest single Blast at the Villain that is attacking said Blaster and make a small dent in its health....?
IMO my damage could be Blaster level and I would STILL do less damage on a team than a real Blaster.

So the question still keeps coming up, How do you make ALL defenders solo better without upsetting the Apple-cart of AT-to-AT balance or making Defenders too powerful on teams.

There are distinctly two seperate camps on this; One group feels that even though Parity for Defender primaries are all over the map, lets leave it alone because any attempt to fix it would ruin everything.

And the group I belong to feels that Defenders are just fine on Teams, and solo just fine on Base settings throughout the game, but feel that no two defenders are created equal and that where some defenders fall flat on their backsides is in the Damage department.
Raising Defender damage closer to Tankers is not unbalanced since they have considerably more HPs and much better status protection in order to survive the time needed to defeat a spawn.

consider:

TANKER Primary ---> roughly equivalent ---> DEFENDER Primary (with regards to personal survival)
TANKER HPs ---> considerably greater ---> DEFENDER HPs (also much greater Status Protection)
TANKER DMG ---> greater than most ---> DEFENDER DMG (some defenders can raise dps, not all)

That makes Tankers better in 2 of three categories, and the only thing that folks in "camp one" will continuely throw out there is "Force-multipliers" as the "balance panacea". Which does absolutely ZERO good while solo. Tankers keep ALL of their benefits solo.

I don't think it would ruin everything, however I don't see an easy way to do it. There was a suggestion a few pages back about allowing defenders to use ally buffs on themselves. Some variation on that is probably the only practical way to change things so that all Defenders get equal usage from their primary but the standard code rant applies as to why it's unlikely to be implemented as a solution.

If Defenders are just fine on teams then there is no need to raise their base damage, adding something that raises damage when solo would be sufficient.