Buff Peacebringers!!

Wanted to refresh the argument for increasing Peacebringers' base damage with some calculations comparing their self-damage buffing ability to that of Warshades.

tl;dr Version: Warshades' methods of buffing their own damage leave Peacebringers in the dust both in terms of the amount of the buff and its consistency. Peacebringers need an increase to their base damage to keep from being left behind. Not enough of an increase to bring them on par with Warshades but enough so as to make a Peacebringer a comparable choice for DPS when trying to decide between the two ATs. Raise the melee damage modifier to .95 and the ranged damage modifier to .90.

Long Version: All numbers are taken from City of Data or Mids' and are for unenhanced powers at level 50.

Both Peacebringers and Warshades have same damage modifiers, 0.85 for melee and 0.80 for ranged. So at the baseline the two ATs are doing the exact same amount of damage with their attacks barring enemy resistances. But discrepancies begin to appear as soon as they acquire their respective damage buffs, Build Up for PBs and Sunless Mire for Warshades.

Build Up: Build Up is a standard damage buff that most DPS focused ATs have. For Peacebringers it provides a 72% buff to all damage types for 10 seconds. It has a 90 second recharge so that buff will be available every 80 seconds.

Sunless Mire: Sunless Mire is a bit of a unique power based on Dark Armor's Soul Drain. It provides an 11.25% buff to all damage types per target in its 15 foot radius up to a maximum of 10. So that's a potential 112.5% buff. The effect lasts for 30 seconds and the power's on a 120 second recharge so the increased damage will be available every 90 seconds.

Comparison: Off the bat some simple subtraction reveals that the difference between Build Up and Sunless Mire with the maximum number of targets is 40.5%. Let's use the Tier 1 human form blasts for this.

Generally i agree with the above , while PB is self sufficiant on its combat ablities. Thou compared to circumstances the only real shining point is AV killing when comapred to WS couterpart.

Warshades comes ahead with more enemies, of course with dangers that
come with hoping into that group. But for min/maxers upon reaching 170 recharge , eclipse becomes a permanant source of capped res in any form. Along with the 2 foremention stuns. Essential a human form can hop into any group untouched due to mez & def, with any dmg recieved being on the level of a grayed mobs.

For tri formers with this recharge sunless mire can be used twice with only a 2 second down time on the human forms version. Thats a potential 225% buff without down time

No reason to get hopes up essntialy new settings clouded PB along with IOs, super reflexes got the same treatment its a fine set but if you can IO shield or WP you can end up with the same def

I get the feeling I"m playing a different game than the people who insist that PBs need a buff. Usually when I team with a Warshade he or she ends up dying while my PB remains upright and happily plugging away. I've certainly never been on a team where I've felt out performed by a WS.

I don't understand why having some ranged attacks, especially the weak ones PBs get in human form, is considered such a serious advantage. It's not like the AI doesn't tend to run right at you, conveniently putting themselves into range of melee attacks whether you want them to or not.

In fact as a PB you'd have to rely on sometimes-knockback that most people hate, or hover, to keep things from closing on you for melee combat.

Most enemies have somewhat weaker ranged than melee attacks, true, but if you can kill something in melee before it attacks more than twice, you're saving yourself more damage than if you let it get off 4-5 attacks using your relative peashoot ranged blasts on it.

Ranged attacks are useful when the mobs are running away with a sliver of health and you don't want to have to chase them down. I've recently taken Luminous Detonation for the first time and it definitely has its uses, especially when on a team.

I must confess that it's a big difference when I switch over to my PB from my Spines Scrapper in terms of damage dealt but then Scrappers don't have anywhere near the versatility of Kheldians. I love them precisely because while best at no single role they can do so much; whether healing, to blasting, to being an off tank, or backup scrapper, or mini-controller--It just never gets boring.

I think my Human/Dwarf Peacebringer is the weakest character I have. Khelds are rooted in the age of Nerfs. Before there was PvP. CoX has changed alot since then. Soldiers of Arachnos were not given the stack of flaws that were handed to Khelds. Buff from dead things, weak blaster/weak scrapper with no status resistance.

Anyway, in my opinion Khelds are still a work in progress. If they were OP'd they would have been nerfed within the first six months, but an AT that needs fixing? That could wait 5 or 6 years.

I think what is needed is that Khelds need to be able to do one of the three forms as well as any regular Archetype. Instead of three weaker forms, players should be able to choose one form as the focus and the form receives special bonuses like status resistance, or better attacks, or better armor, or a combination. Maybe this is done sort of like an epic set of powers for one form only.

Just to chime in that I'm in full agreement that PBs need a buff of some kind.

My all-Human PB was my main for almost 2 years. In that time, she was stacked to the gills. 6-full Purples sets, Numinas, LotGs, Miracles, all Useful accolades... you get the idea. She was very powerful and had her moments.

I started really noticing differences, though, when the ability to radically adjust you toon's mission difficulty came about.

My Uber-PB had trouble soloing +0/+4 missions. I solo alot - and really wanted to tackle giant mobs others were doing. Yeah, I could keep it at +3 or so, but those large mobs are a big lure...

On teams (yeah Khelds are team ATs, I know) her stats (via Cosmic Balance) went thru the roof. But one day I ran a couple missions with a team and a Tanker and Scrapper started with that 'KB Whining'. I'd long sinced learned how to handle my KB; Running to the edge of mobs for Solar Flare (and only getting half of the minions you normally get by doing so), positioning so I'll knock in to walls... Even so, you're gonna have a stray mob go somewhere on occasion no matter what you do.

I'd leveled up several other toons to 50 and all of them could solo better than my pimped out PB (3 do +8 easily). None them of them cause whining when on a team. Disclaimer: by far most teams were fine with my PB, but then I was always overly careful with KB. Either way: extra careful or risk upsetting others...after a couple years it can simply start to grate a bit.

So, my PB is now in retirement. I've gutted 2 of her purple sets for my alts, alont with all the other good IOs, and my MM is probably about to get the other 4 purple sets.

PBs:
* Can solo, but other ATs not nearly as tricked out as her can do it better
* Can team, but requires extra care most ATs don't have to worry about...and you *will* run into whiners at some point regardless.
* Do not have Dev priority, evidenced by no ability to customize power colors, longstanding bugs like the Cysts issue, etc...

None of the above is a huge deal, despite the tone of my post, but this is a game I play for fun, and other ATs, all things considered, is simply more fun to me. I'll never delete my PB, and if someday the AT gets some real love, I may bring her back out of retirement (likely getting all this IOs my other toons stole from her

We still don't have it as bad as Defenders by a long shot.

In all seriousness, I've been running solo +1/+4 missions in the RWZ since I19 (musculature boost ftw!) was released and seem to do alright although needing help from inspirations quite a bit and my build is by no means uber in terms of IO sets. Still faceplanting some but half the fun of a PB is the ability to shrug off death like it's nothing.

Yes, because the measure of how powerful something should be is in whether it can solo an AV.

Interesting tidbit: since the vigilance upgrade a solo defender does 95% as much damage in terms of "modifier * enhancement" as a kheldian's ranged attacks. I haven't done actual attack chain analysis because that's a lot of work, but a defender's 0.65 mod * 225% (100% base + 95% enhancement + 30% vigilance) = 1.465. A kheldian's is 0.8 * 195% (100% base +95% enhancement) = 1.56.

My estimate is that an attack chain analysis will, for many of the blast sets available to defenders, probably fall in the defender's favor because of their access to superior attacks, ie, their sets mostly have actual tier three blasts in them. The 'good' defender blast sets like archery, ice, or radiation will certainly match or exceed kheldian damage; this is without regard to what the defender's primary is, an empathy or forcefield defender's personal damage when solo is now looking to be basically competitive with a humanform kheldian's damage. And while I'm just going to leave things there, if we start involving sonic blast and primaries with -res or +dam, things will get pretty messy. Though I'd note that those sorts of "offensively slanted" sets are very popular today among people who do play support characters at all, especially radiation emissions and kinetics.

The warshade I'm sure can then pull ahead consistently with good use of mire and help from their extracted essence, and the PB can probably pull ahead if they use their melee attacks often and effectively. Both can pull away a bit with nova form too, I'd expect. Still, the gap clearly isn't as big as we'd think - or want - between the 'worst damage AT' and kheldians.

And this further reinforces the fact that the PB human form is really, in practical gameplay, a melee oriented character, and that their ranged attacks are a tactical convenience at best and a performance-sapping trap for their player at worst. If you want to consistently and clearly outdamage a defender, anyway, you need to be meleeing. It also reinforces the point that defenders who don't take, slot, and use their attacks are doing themselves and their teams a disservice, but this isn't the defender forum

Only thing I want is mez protection in the toggles and for them to get rid of all the void/quantum thingies and then I will consider playing this AT to 50. Right now it doesnt do anything special that warrants the epic name and the back story itself is lame and not epic. Voids/quantums just get in the way of teaming because cysts can spawn in the worst of all possible spaces, like last room of a TF right next to an AV. The benefit khelds give the team in damage is countered and then some by the risk the team takes on with cysts and such. I say move voids/quantums/cysts to kheld only arcs and that kheld TF.

Mez protection in toggles won't ever happen, at least according to everything we've heard from the devs over the years. However, I think adding a bit of mez resistance in each toggle would be fantastic. Sure, you'd still get mez'd, but the more armors you have active, the less the duration of said mezzes would be.

As I said at the beginning of the thread, buffs to PBs are always welcome, but the AT really only needs a few minor tweaks to vastly improve it's performance. Changing Solar Flare to KD would completely change the usability of the power without even touching the cottage rule. Adding stun to Proton Scatter to bring it in line with the WS version would also help with leveraging Pulsar. Sure, WS's can do it better with Inky Aspect + Gravitic Emanation but as it stands, PBs have very little active damage mitigation, outside of KB.

I think the Build Up being changed to a Rage-like power suggested previously is an interesting idea, but seems too good to ever happen. The above changes, however, seem (on paper) to have a lot of pay off for little changes.

Looking at Warshades and at Peacebringers, it's very clear that from the outset, Warshades were designed as one integrated package, where the powers work with each other and mesh quite well, regardless of whether you took the Forms or not.

Peacebringers, on the other hand, are a cobbled together mess that borrow blasts from *defenders*, melee from *tankers* and shields from *scrappers* and a heal from a *controller* set. There's no consistent theme, nothing to make the powers work together coherently, no really unique playstyle.

Ultimately, until that is addressed, the best boost I can think of is, yes, increasing the damage scalar for Human-form ranged and melee attacks. So at least Peacebringers can blap effectively.

I believe I should have used the term "measure of acceptable power".

The only change which I greatly desire is to give the Kheldian inherent power a base Mag 1 Status protection in addition to the +1 Mag per Controller/Domiator. That way have 1 Controller/Dominator on the team would have a tangible effect on game play. At present have Mag 1 Status protection vs Hold/Sleep/Stun/Immob provides absolutely no benefit for a Kheldian.