This is NOT a troll thread...

...which is why I'm posting in the Controller forum rather than the Defender forum.

My first characters were defenders and some are still among my favorites - the new color options have allowed 'Bubblegum Pink', a FF/Sonic to fulfill my manga festish quite admirably -but lately I've been sporadically leveling three different */Rad controllers (Ill/Rad, Earth/Rad and Plant/Rad) and have gotten all of them into the high 20's or low 30's and I from that experience I have to ask - why would a team EVER want a defender over a controller?

Now I'm assuming all things are equal, that the builds are adequately put together and the players behind the characters are adequately skilled... but when I think of the effectiveness of my old Rad defender compared to that of my current rad controllers, I can't imagine wanting to trade my ability to shut down entire groups of foes for a little 'pew pew'.

I'm sincere in wanting the perspective of other players - what REAL advatages does a defender - the penultimate 'team' toon - offer a team over a controller?

Here's a tip: Stop playing your controller like a defender.

Start playing your controller like a controller.

If all you do on your controller is buff / debuff, you aren't going to have a different experience than playing a defender. A Controllers primary is, get this, CONTROL. Outside of Ice Blast and the Dark power sets, no defender set is going to allow you to mez the living daylights out of mobs.

Once you grasp what it is that controllers are for, and what they do, you won't be asking why teams want controllers.

Its bad to assume that all things are equal...because the numbers controllers output are lower, because their buff/debuff modifiers are lower than a defenders values.

The secondary comes into affect as well /sonic and /rad and maybe /dark on a defender all have a good degree of Force Manipulation. While blasting away may be lower damage than you blaster friend that has the same primary as your defender secondary. the Debuff numbers are bigger (read Better).

All of a controller (usually) Force Manipulation (in so far as damage outputted) comes form their secondary (Earth Control is exempt form this as its a -def heavy thing) but generally speaking.

Ill has some fun utility letting your take over as tank if needs be for a while (or perma if you can afford it).

I used to think trollers > Defender, until i saw the defence outputs a FF (one was one of my first characters, but before i was into the game maths/knew about the softcap) or Ice can reach and their overall debuff values, and started considering each character in terms of force manipulation individually, rather than as their AT as a whole.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

You play a defender over a controller because they are defenders. The two ATs play very differently. If you want to use controls, that's great! But it's a different play style.

From a purely min/maxing perspective: many controllers can out damage defenders thanks to containment, and the modifiers aren't radically different between the ATs (and in the case of pseudopets, sometimes the same). That said, people will continue to invite defenders to teams. Yes, there are probably some full of themselves min/maxers out there who believe in only inviting controllers to teams, just like there are people who believe empathy is the only buff set and all tanks should be stone. However, said min/maxers probably aren't putting together PUGs anyway.

Defenders will continue to be invited because the mentality of someone who is playing a defender is to prioritize their buffing and debuffing first, whereas the controller ought to be focusing on controls. Whereas a defender, like a tank, will often prioritize the survival of the team, I expect controllers to prioritize their own survival. Yes, Controllers are the "pure support" AT, and everyone should be focused on keeping the team alive, but this has not been my experience. Does this mean all controllers play that way? No. But, I find that when looking for buffs/debuffs for a team, the blue shield tends to signal a different mentality.

I mostly play a storm/psy defender, and personally I love that I have vigilance. On a team I am often running Steamy Mist, two leadership toggles, snow storm, hover, and hurricane. and I can still O2 boost, FR, and summon LS (and Tornado if needed, two endurance heavy powers) on ~20 second recharge. Thanks to vigilance I can do all of this without breaking a sweat, on a controller, you need to pay more attention to managing your endurance. Furthermore, as a controller, your primary concern is going to be your primary power set, so you may not have as many enhancement slots to devote to your secondary, which may make it harder to utilize to its fullest (obviously this depends on power selection).

Do I think defenders could use a buff, yes. Do I think there is no reason to play a defender, no.

*shrug*

All I can go with is my relatively limited experience (one defender to fifty, a second in the early forties, and a controller at 47 and one in the mid-thirties). But what I've found is somewhat similar to the whole Scrapper/Blaster dichotomy; my Plant/Storm Controller can completely neuter piles of minions and lieutenants; but once you start adding bosses or AVs into the mix, my FF/Electric Defender is more effective at keeping the team vertical.

In my experience, if one wants to play primarily as a buffer/debuffer, there is more synergy to pair this play style with the Controller archetype. It has way more survivability and way less stress. A Defender may need to spend half their time trying to reactively avoid aggro after casting their debuffs or while trying to keep buffs up on their team mates if things go bad. It's particularly tricky during times when multiple enemy groups are engaged and a few are persistent at dogging you. In comparison, on a Controller, after you drop a couple controls at the beginning and you can turn most of your focus to buffing and debuffing. You are generally free to be able to have an overview of the battle and pick out the troublesome individuals to be dealt with (assuming you're not aggressively scrapping it out in melee).

Well this is the kind of question that gets into personal opinions about power.

But to answer the basic question as an IMO: there really isn't a reason to mess around with Defenders, which is why I stopped playing them. They're stuck with a "blast" secondary that is nearly outdone (in some cases completely outdone) by Controller damage even with the recent buff, and which has never been able to provide a measurable amount of survivability in any case (case in point: why is the Defender AT stuck with crashing nukes, of all powers? Is there another AT so actively encouraged to skip its level 38 power?)

There are a couple of Defender builds that work okay (Traps, mainly because Controllers don't have it, and Sonic Blast due to huge debuffs) but overall the AT is outshined on all sides. They would be somewhat better if their powers were much more measurably powerful than other ATs (specifically, if they had wider buff debuff AoEs and range on buffs--think Dispersion Bubble at 35 ft radius--and faster base recharge on long recharge powers) but barring that they're pretty meh. Which is why I pretty much don't play my Defender toons at all.

I forgot to mention earlier, that it is my not so secret hope, that developers use the incarnate system to clearly differentiate the AT, so that there need be no more of these and "corruptors will kill defenders" threads. Not to mention the similar threads amongst all of the melee ATs.

Why choose a controller over a defender?

..multiple defenders stack much much better then controllers stack. Sure you can look at specific examples like all fire/* or Illusion/* controllers but largely controllers do not stack all that well.

Control as a function does not stack well. If a group is already held they don't need to be disoriented, knocked about, confused or slept nor can they be held more. Once under the effect of a mez its all about overriding the softer mez with a harder mez and about mez duration.

Control stacking only comes into play when you can't lock down a foe and need to overcome Mez Resistance. Once something is locked it doesn't care that you have pushed the mez to 10 or 10,000 the result is still the same.. locked down for as long as the longest duration control that was applied last was.

Control as a primary is unique not in the fact that it offers mezzing many other sets across all ATs offer mezzing and in some cases better mezzing then controller mezzing (sonic's cone sleep, dark and its fears, Ice and ice patch, Energy Melee and stun stacking for example). Control as a primary is unique in that it combines exceptional defense and offense in a single set. Taken by itself the control primary is all you need to play the game. A held mob does no damage and will die regardless of containment, containment just makes it less boring sub 32. As soon as the controller has control of his enemies he has won the fight and can not be defeated. Because of this design controllers solo extremely well and do so independant of their secondary set. The secondary set just improves on how much better a controller can solo by augementing their damage capabilities and the more powersets rad, and kin typically do just that.

Defenders I feel stack very well, and better then controllers. Their primary and secondaries are always going to be useful no matter the combination. Even if they offer the same primaries their secondary effects of blasting will always be useful unlike similiar controllers or a control/defender combo using a similiar buff/debuff set. Defenders are far more powerful then people give them credit for. There are some defenders that solo better then others just as there are some controllers which solo better then others. What I find hinders defenders is the beleif that they are "The Teaming" AT and the fact that people make pure builds. A balanced defender with a mix of primary and secondary powersets is hands down better then a defender that takes only two attacks and dips heavily into the pools. You can't defeat an encounter by using only the buff/debuff powersets, you must use your secondary powerset and the more attacks you have the faster your target dies.

I do wish defenders could self buff though.. only specific abililities though the various shields, the mez protections and maybe the fort like effects.

Ya exactly. There is certainly a lot of overlap in terms of damage between the two AT's, both st and aoe.

That's not necessarily a problem, but controllers also have insane control.

Either they are getting their damage at nearly no cost or they are getting their control at nearly no cost.

Trollers are by far my favorite AT so I'd be sad if they were taken down a couple notches, but the alternative of elevating defenders is probably not likely. But then again...maybe it isn't entirely out of the question I mean if you actually look at blasters they don't deal nearly enough damage relative to the melee AT's (scrap/brute/stalker) given their drawbacks.

If we were to make trollers the baseline then increasing the damage of defs, corrs, and blasters might be ok. I know there are pitfalls to that idea, but brutes/scraps (stalkers less so) really deal way too much damage compared to blasters. So if it was a choice between reducing trollers, scraps, and brutes so that the other AT's fit into the scheme better, or increasing defs, corrs, and blasters I'd choose the latter.

A very good question, Wiggz.

My stock answer would be that Defenders bring more AoE damage than most Controllers. Thats about all that's in it these days.

Controllers can get a double-recharge AoE in their epic, and Possibly Hot Feet or Carrion Creepers depending on their primary, but nothing like a couple of solid repeateable AoE attacks that Defenders have access to.
On a team thats buffed up the wazoo from either, thats probably more important than control, since once you have enough safety to prevent any deaths, you're safe enough.