This is NOT a troll thread...

To be truthful (And I know how much this forum hates the truth), Defenders bring very little to the table now-a-days.

Lets look at this from a few different view points:

lvl50 team. No IO sets. Basic SO/IO team.
Controllers and Defenders are fairly equal. Controllers are a tad bit better, but not by much. Defenders provide slightly stronger buffs/debuffs are are slightly more dedicated.

lvl50 team. moderate to fully IO sets. Dedicated players of their Archetype, the best IO sets money can buy.
Controllers completely and utterly outclass Defenders. My first Hero was a Kinetic/Energy Defender and have never played a Controller past 20. So this isn't favortism. This is straight up truth. Now let us think about this..

IO Sets fill in gaps in team weaknesses that Defenders originally did. What are the top three bonuses to slot for when slotting IO Sets? Defense, Recharge and HP/Regen.

1. With Defense softcapped, Force Fielders have very little use on the team. As well as Sonic and possibly Empathy if the Team is killing fast enough. Which they will be since they are completely IO'd out.

2. Recharge replaces offensive Defenders. Kinetics, Radiation, Dark Miasma to name a few. Kinetics may be able to fulcrum shift and Speed Boost. But their effectiveness is deminished by the +Recharge allowing people to use their more powerful attacks more often. Thus reaching the damage cap isn't even necessary a large portion of the time, heck, it might not even require a Fulcrum Shift if your allies have things like Rage, Sunless Mire, Build Up+Aim etc. -Resistance sets such as Radiation and Dark Miasma aren't affected as bad due to -res not having a natural cap. But it becomes overkill.

3. +HP/Regen. This ruins Empaths and any set that attempts to give their team longevity during a long fight.

This game has never required a 'healer' but it does suggest bringing a 'support' class of some kind. IOs essentially fill in that role. But everyone isn't IO'd out with 6 purples and softcapped defenses. But a large portion of this game's players use IO sets to some degree. They may not have perfect Defenses but they sure are on their way. Even for those of us that don't use IO Sets, we still ask the OP's question: Why use a Defender at all when the Controller does what the Defender does and then some?

Now-a-days the only thing you need on a typical team is a Fire/Kin controller (or 3) and your ready to roll. What do you need a poor little Trick Arrow Defender for? Don't sugar coat it with 'oh, he provides -res'. He isn't providing anything. I don't mean to offend Trick Arrowists but people let's face the facts: you don't need that -res. Infact, you won't see a single increase in speed. So why not replace that Trick Arrowist with something that will? Like a Blaster.

Luckily, this isn't another Worldy MMO that has essentially turned their craft into a science. Where people of specific classes and creeds are never invited to teams based off of the powers they pick. But when I want to make a new character, when new people make a new character, when veteran players make a new character, what is their incentive to playing a Defender over a Controller? Nothing except a Nuke that could probably cook a hotpocket better than a Rikti. And as a Kin/ Defender, I have to team with a billion or so Fire/Kin controllers. How would you feel if you saw someone else playing a Different Archetype doing your job just as well as you and then providing something else to the team on top of it? You feel like a fool for picking the 'wrong' archetype. And that's not fair.

Controllers don't get Dark Miasma or Traps

Age old question really, and the lines got blurred even more with the inclusion of containment and Epic power pool attacks.

Generally though it comes down to:

Controller: control, adequate buff/debuffing, low damage.

Defender: Amazing buff/debuffing, good damage, some control.

Ofcourse due to the nature and variety of our sets, the lines are very much blurred and it all depends on what sets you take. You can't just compare Controllers vs Defenders.

Fire, Illusion and Mind Control both have a respectful amount of damage. Plant is not bad because of its ability to mass confuse. Gravity is a bit weak.
Ice Control and Earth Control have very low damage.

With the exception of Mind Control, most Controllers will take a while to become really solo friendly. Where as a Defender can solo right out of the box with access to multiple attacks straight from level 1.


Anyway, I think its important to realise their capabilities overlap, but it all comes down to what sets you pick. That will have the most impact on your capabilities. Not to mention while Controllers can offer more support from their primary, a lot of times it isn't necessary for the team to be a success. My FF/AR Defender can make a team almost invulnerable while attacking with loads of AoE abilities like buckshot, repulsion bomb, flame thrower, full auto. All powers she has access to earlier then EPP's :-)

If I switched her /AR for something like Fire Control/, then she would be less fun, her shields would be weaker and even with hotfeet, would do less damage early on and play completely differently. Sometimes its nice not to have to spend ages compensating the low accuarcy and short duration of controller powers.

All number assume SO slotting:

SR Scrapper:
30% Def to most things (6 powers)
+20% recharge (Quickness)

Self-buffing Empath Defender:
24% Def to everything including Psi (Fort)
+100% Recharge bonus

The empath has 80% of the defence of SR. Power pool boosts (Hover/CJ, Manouvers) will close this gap, since the defender gets better modifiers. No DDR for the empath.
Empath gets better recharge.
So its close, with the SR scrapper coming out as maybe 20% better defensively, the Empath has way better Recharge.


Regen Scrapper:
+400% Regen (Integration + fast healing)
+1000% Regen for 90 seconds every 325 sec (instant healing)
+60% recovery (Quick rec)
+600 heal evry 30 seconds (Recon)
+1000 heal every 180 seconds (Dull Pain)

Self-buffing Empath (+100% Rech from AB factored in):
+1000% Regen (AB)
+1000% for 90 seconds every 170 seconds or so (Regen Aura)
+1600% Recovery (AB)
+266 heal every 3 seconds or less. (Healing Aura)
+500 heal every 3 seconds, if this counts as a self-buff? (Heal Other)

The self-buffing empath wins hands down here. The scrapper gets bigger heals but less frequently, and far less regeneration, both constant and from the emergency god-mode powers (IH and Reg Aura).

The Empath wins in sheer regen numbers. The scrapper has more HP, so that helps close the gap.

(I havent mentioned the offensive buffs from Fortitude, BTW.)

This is what I had in mind when I said a self-buffing empath would have the powers of both SR and Regeneration.

Magic J.
You made a suggestion. Based on in-game experience and the numbers I ran before making my Empath duo, alarm bells went off, and I pointed this out to you. I'm not trying to be a jerk here and disagree for the sake of arguing, so I'll stop here.

Absorb Pain as well would provide a 1300 hp heal. It would of course prevent you from using other self heals for 20 seconds, but you would still have the benefits of the massive regen you are running.

Handy if hit by a massive spike in damage like a Statesman KO blow that took you down to 1hp.

That doesn't even get into what a power mastery emp defender would be doing. Easily enough recharge for perma PBU'd fortitude. Which would push their def (all) up to 38.5% and let them do crazy things like 780hp heal other on themselves.

Not to mention a solid IO build could have over 50% uptime on Force of Nature.

Effectively giving them a mortality line that makes granite tanks do a double take.

Why not though right?

But I Exemplar Well!

Defenders used to exemplar to very low levels a bit better than controllers did. A storm or kin defender had his complete primary on Katie Hannon Task Force; a /storm or /kin controller would be missing Lightning Storm or Fulcrum Shift.

Not so much the case anymore. Allowing powers up to Exemplar Level + 5 helped controllers out a ton when exemplaring in a team. The new Vigilance damage buff didn't help defenders out at all when exemplaring in a team. So much for that small, situational advantage.

Naughty Tentacles

Thank goodness defenders do have a few nice secondary blasts. Some are so nice, in fact, that Castle is afraid to give them to blasters or VEATs. The key is recognizing them, slotting them (esp. for cone range), spamming them, and hoping the controller or tanker on the team is doing his job with aggro. That's pretty iffy, though, on most PuGs.

Defenders Welcome Here

Actually, when looking for a support hero for a PuG, with no information other than AT, I'll choose defenders over controllers.

Why? Because many, many controllers build strictly for DPS and do not buff teammates. Fire/kins, I'm talking to you. Apologies to those in this thread who still think of controllers as a low damage AT, but fire/kin is still one of the top DPS builds blueside, and will again reign supreme if and when elec/shield scrappers get nerfed.

Defenders, on the other hand, are almost always in the AT they're in because of the buff/debuff, not because of the DPS. Not to say I won't ever bring a controller on board for a PuG, nor will I complain if I get an offender (see how I feel about defender secondary powers, above), but I'd like to know what a controller's power sets are in their search comment, to get an idea of what I'm getting.