Bait and switch Aegis Mez protection.

I think this makes my point that the reason you are so against the idea of support types having any mez protection is to protect the tanks' traditional role. You stated elsewhere, though, that it's sheer silliness (I'm paraphrasing here) that a tank should have to rely on a support type for his mez protection. So why not? Why not protect the support types traditional role?

In truth, I'm not for that. I like that each type brings different things to the table, but not the *need* to build the game to protect notions of who should do what that other MMOs have trained us to expect.

For the most part, all roles are no longer needed, especially if we're talking base difficulty levels. Only in extreme cases are support types ever needed. All tank teams do just fine. Heck, many many melee types in general state that they solo +4/x8. So, we already have a situation where many ATs (and roles) are unnecessary. But just because an AT or role isn't needed doesn't mean it can't contribute, or that what it can bring isn't a big help.

I need to second what Stormy mentioned earlier. It's the prevalence of mezzing in general that makes this more of an issue. Used to be, once every 3 or 4 missions you'd run into a mez situation. Back then, your preemptive defense rate of 60-70% was probably plenty to feel 'more or less' successful. When the amount of mezzing vastly increases, 60-70% per spawn starts to feel like a lot of failure over the course of a session of 6 or 7 missions. For comparison, how would most tanks feel if most spawns had 2 or 3 sappers, at least 1 or 2 of which were Lt or Boss class sappers? They'd start to want the game to have a lot more -End protection available, not to be told to team with Stormy's more for the O2 Boost.

I think that everyone will always like teaming (assuming they prefer to team at all) with tanks and brutes and scrappers, after all, who doesn't want someone else to suck the alpha. So rest assured, I don't think those ATs will die even if some more mez protection is made available to non-melee ATs.

This. And breakfrees.

More than acceptable, I think it's vital to differentiation of the AT's. Defenders are DESIGNED to help the team and generally be very limited in how much they can help themselves.

I think that giving mez protection to the other AT's would be a terrible decision and very bad for game balance. Fortunately, since this is clearly not part of the design intent, I think it is extremely unlikely to happen.

Not exactly. Traditional role be damned, I want tanks to keep some kind of role at all.

It's already been proven that a tank is not needed for agro control anymore, and hasn't been for a while now. If every AT were given mez protection, it would not be long before people figured out that inviting a tank actually HURT your team's performance.

Look at it this way: If a tank isn't needed to hold agro, and isn't needed to keep the team from getting mezzed, what purpose does a tank serve on a team? Why would you invite an AT that does low damage, and has no role to play on the team, when you could invite another blaster and kill stuff faster? The powergamers would figure it out very quickly, and it would trickle down to everyone else. And eventually anyone playing a tank would have to beg for pity spots on TFs because they are not only unnecessary, but actually unwelcome on teams. It wouldn't happen quickly, but in the era of the game we are in, the speed at which you can do things directly affects your rewards. If all ATs had mez protection, inviting a tank would just slow you down, because you could have filled that spot with someone who deals more damage.

So, I couldn't care less about tanks keeping their traditional role. I just don't want them to become completely pointless to play.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

And Shockwave and Focus are also upset that they can't help me when the target is 60 feet away.

And Shockwave is particularly upset that it's not in my build at the moment. Something had to go, and the power that pisses off my teammates got the axe.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Mmm...

Sweetie, Tanks do not do low damage, that is a huge and old urban myth. It was true before I3 days, but since then their damage has been slowly been increased.

I contend my Electric/Shield Tank's damage can keep up with the damage a Blaster can do,i n fact, I can do better, much better over time!

Have a hard time accepting that Tankers are not low damage? Why don't you check which AT is doing the ultra high level (+4/x8/N/N) farming and PLg of lowbies? I am pretty sure it is not a Blaster, and while you see some Scrappers good enough to do this, the greater number are Tanks. Fire/Kin Controllers do farming, but never at +4/x8/N/N for their conditional powers would just malfunction too much of the time.

The Tanker as I see it today, its perfectly equipped and balanced to be played in any setting, solo or group. The can hold aggroe, gain aggroe, take a beating, give a beating; they are in short this game's work horse. Despite of makijng other classess less totally vulnerable, the role of Tank and the great benefit of having one in a team will never go away.

You said that all Controllers and Dominator's mez powers is always MAG 3, I believe you are partially in error. All of their "single" target mez powers are MAG 3, their area mez tend to be MAG 2 but some are only MAG 1. The statistics I provided for resistances, incidentally were for equal level mobs as well. Your opportunities for success do erode as the mob's level increases with respect to you, and of course your chances of success increases the lower leveled they are. In a typical TF, many of the mobs you battle, are 1 level higher than you, thus your pre-emptive attack can not be the 60-70% claim you make, or you are one lucky fellow!

Once more, I saw the typical binary mind at work with a poster. If we give support mez protection, why not get rid of mez all together. I have been advocating for some mez protection for support, not immunity! MAG 3 is not even half of what a Scrapper gets, and is a fourth of the Tankers MAG 12.

I see the major challenge in this, is that the devs have found it "all too convenient" to over use mez on the classes they ensured could not protect themselves from mez, as a tool to increase mission challenge. Frankly, this is an exploit, and because a dev uses it; it does not make it right.

I agree with a poster, if all the mobs would have an endurance zap effect as they have mez now, how soon would the melee ATs cry foul? Despite that they have "blue" inspirations they could gulp?

Stormy

So your example is a combo that gets 2 telenukes at high levels and a damage buff aura?

That particular combo does good damage, as does Fire/SS. But can a Stone/Ice do the same thing? Doubtful.

You can't use an outlier example to prove that an entire AT is good at something. That would be like saying that because a Fire/Kin controller deals good damage, an Earth/FF would deal the same.

So every single tank in the game can run +4/x8 mission fast enough to be useful for PLing and farming? I don't think so. Your Elec/Shield may be able to, but any random tank that is only using SOs will not get through it fast enough to PL anyone.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

You make a good point, but...

I have lots of Tanks, some WP, Fire, Invulnerability, with attacks being Axe, Mace, Fire, Electrical, Kinetic and Super Strength.

I can tell you, that I can with all of them do +4/x8/N/N with out a problem for farm or PLg purposes (not that I PL). You are correct that some offensive forms of Tank are better than others; but I do nearly as well with my Fire, Axe, Super Strength and Mace offensive forms in the damage dealing arena. Incidentally all of my Tanks can deal with out using inspirations as well on +4/X8/Y/N...AVs do give me trouble and the reward versus time to defeat is frankly not worth doing them, but EBs are duck soup.

Now I 100% agree, tanks loaded only with SOs, definetly can't do complex high level missions at +4/X8, but same can be told about how lame the other classes could be considered when compared to an IOd Slotted AT. Also my Electric/Shield with out IO sets, could not do as well either.

Incidentally after "Burn" got fixed, my Fire/Axe Tanker out-performs my Electric/Shield Tanker, quite noticeably.

Stone, you may not move quick, but its a pretty tough damage resistant power set; it has definite advantages. Ice is a pretty good attack powerset as well, and good in the damage dealing department as well, but in all cases, the use of IOs to multiply the base abilities of the power sets is needed to get the "God-Like" effects.

The key point is that any Tank can be made to deliver very nice amounts of damage, they are no push-overs!

Stormy

Very well. If so, your points are all consistent and logical. I disagree with your premiss that the ATs need the pigeonholing that other MMOs are prone to, but if you prefer it, we've just reached a point where it's come to a matter of taste.

Except for your comment about balance. In fact, it would be bad for game imbalance to make the ATs more balanced in what they can do, by definition. But if the imbalances are a fun part on the, "differentiation of the AT's," then it's entirely a YMMV or opinion thing at that point.

This comment to me makes as much sense as stating that if every AT has damage protection (Def) you may as well do away with damage entirely. If anyone had advocated that every AT have mag 30 mez protection from every mez type, I might be inclined to agree, but I don't think anyone was advocating that.

OK, fair enough. I hear ya. I don't want any AT to be totally worthless on a team either. But, tanks can do a fair amount of damage, and can hold aggro, and can soak a lot of damage and mezzes. And I don't think any of these things will ever be unwelcome. Especially on the tougher end of the spectrum, I think they will always have their value.

You don't think so, obviously. So your arguments are based on what you fear will happen. Understandable. And frankly, there is no way I can prove or allay that fear, short of the devs actually making some sort of change. However, if everyone feared tanks obsolescence and stopped playing them if such a change should ever happen, that fear could very well become a self fulfilling prophecy. Frankly, I don't think you have anything to worry about because I don't see a change happening, as much as I think it would be a good idea, and even if it did, I'm sure that many people would still play, and enjoy tanks, and value them on their teams. But, I can't prove it any more than you can disprove it, lacking any way to test it.

Or it would also be a lot like saying melee ATs can't be expected to close the distance as a way of contending with ranged attacks because of a granite, rooted, tank.. Oh, wait......

Sorry, I know, not a valid argument. Just pointing out that we all cite extreme example hoping to leverage the norm, but, even though Stormy's examples were extreme tankers, I'd have to say that tankers aren't all that low as you make it seem. Plenty push out decent levels of damage compared to other ATs. Are they going to eclipse scraps, brutes, or blasters? Doubtful. But, I'd have to say average tanks are at least on par with average defenders and controllers, whose roles are just as unnecessary in most cases, and have low damage on average, yet they still manage to team on occasion, and not from mere pity.

Again, not necessary does not mean not valuable.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

*shrug* Perception range is 45' for minions (admittedly, 55' for bosses, but most squishies can't reliably one-shot mez a boss so 60' means nothing there), and there's a delay before mobs attack after they notice you. Given that I routinely get Fault off - which has a 20' range - before the spawn gets a chance to react on both of my SM Brutes, I'd say that if you really wanted to you have plenty of active mitigation available to you.

Just like a squishy saying that they have no way of dealing with mez - something that you were the one disputing - saying that Claws has no active mitigation doesn't make it true. It's probably one of the worst sets you could've picked as an example, since it actually has ranged mitigation and the lower recharges make it really easy to keep things constantly either falling down or getting back up. If you choose not to use it, that's your own fault.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

You make a good point, but I wanted to address this as being basically what I've been saying the whole time.

Most support ATs have multiple means of preventing a mez from ever occurring if it originates from a LT or lower.

I see people complaining about it on a somewhat regular basis, and the conversation goes like this a lot of the time:

"These mezzing minions keep killing me, and there's nothing I can do about it!"
"Well, can't you use the stun in your secondary to stop them from doing that?"
"Oh, I skipped that power. It doesn't deal any damage, so it's useless."

Most of the time, problems with mez would be solved by paying attention to what is in the spawn, and using your powers a little more intelligently.

Too many times I see people on teams complaining about something that is mezzing them, and they turn around and attack something else, leaving the mezzing mob to do it again.

"Oh, the boss is the bigger threat, so I kill them first"
"Well, the boss isn't mezzing you, wouldn't it make sense to kill the mezzer first?"
"No, I shouldn't have to do that, the devs need to give everyone mez protection so I don't have to think about what I'm doing."

(I am of course paraphrasing, and being somewhat sarcastic, but that is the underlying attitude of a lot of the complaints I hear in game)

And then there's the "Melee can solo at +4/x8 because they have mez protection" attitude. No, melee can solo at +4/x8 because they have defense and resistances designed to keep them alive. And not all melee can do it, you need an expensive build to pull it off on most combinations. If your Empathy defender can't solo on +4/x8 to begin with, giving them mez protection is not suddenly going to make it capable of it.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I'd say, if there was any real danger of this, your firm defense of the status quo on account of tanks getting marginalized if any change should happen only serves to make matters worse. If you and everyone else instead said, "Gee, I don't think other ATs need mez protection, but it'd be nice for people that play them, so why not? But tanks will still be the kings of aggro control and damage/mez soaking," then the problem you're worried about would be far less likely to occur.

And second, I don't feel (subjective, I'll admit) the powergamers wag this game as much as other MMOs, or that you seem to think they do. So, I'd not argue against something just because a powergamer might have an incorrect impression of a AT or powers utility.

So, really, who cares if the trend following, uninformed powergamers who just listen to opinion and don't know personally or know how to play an AT or set like an AT or not. The REAL powergamers will still happily use their tanks. The casual players will, too. The old school types will. The RPers. Everyone but the FOTM crowd, and the easily swayed by rumors.

I totally agreed with a lot of your previous thought processes, even if I disagreed with the conclusions based on a different initial value judgement, but I don't agree with this idea at all. If your reasons for not adjusting the mez protection system currently in place rest upon this at all, well..... I just seem to be put in mind of the Emperor's New Clothes except in this case, instead of the majority of the populace seeing the phantom garments, a minority do, so....

Because people that play the game poorly have a problem or an opinion, doesn't mean that it isn't a problem or the opinion isn't valid. Especially if people that are quite skilled at the game agree. Many people feel that scrappers are too fragile compared to tanks and brutes, because of their poor skills at one facet of the game or another. Now, if the devs took all mez protection away from scrappers, lowered the Res cap and HP cap for scrappers (or if all of these things had been much lower all along), these same low skilled players would be making the same foolish mistakes and complaining that scraps were weak. But because they were unskilled wouldn't make them wrong.

But then you're basically saying that the very skills the Devs gave you to deal with the problem aren't an adequate solution to the problem because the people complaining don't choose to use them.

That's not a Dev problem, but a player problem, and the Devs aren't required to fix those.

"Pigeonholing" is a very negative and biased term.

What I said was that differentiation of the AT's was important. If everyone has mez protection, then that is one less area in which they differ.

I don't get how that follows from what I said. If so, I mis-spoke (typed), or used unclear wording.


Let's be clear. The Devs aren't required by the ELUA to fix any problem. I'm certainly not part of an entitlement crowd. But they may want to address issues that increase QoL or game balance.

To clarify, what I was trying to say was, if there is an aspect of the game that a large enough % of the population finds frustrating, and the unskilled complain about it, but the skilled do, too, the fact that the unskilled complain doesn't mean that it isn't a potential issue to address.

Next time you play solo, try this:

When you miss an attack with a recharge of about 10-15 seconds or so as melee, turn off all your defenses that you can for 45 seconds.

On a regular mission you probably won't die. Boosted settings are probably going to ruin your day though.

No matter how much accuracy there still is a chance of a miss. And if going against higher level you get less duration as well as being harder to hit them in the first place but the defense can be countered to an extent.

10-15 seconds represents recast time on my crowd control stuff. I don't know the timings for other sets but I'd assume they are similar. Any time you miss with that attack though means whatever you wanted to mez now has free reign to shoot back and stun/hold/sleep with impunity.

I certainly can have reasonable success at such accuracy but it is a far cry from anything approaching guaranteed. Additionally, if I attempt larger spawn sizes the chance is now more that a miss will occur on anything vital. With 2 mezing lieutenants, I have a ~90% chance with AoE to not get hit with return fire that may include a stun or anything. Add more and that percentage goes down even further. 10% of the time with a chance death with 2 stun/hold/sleep lieutenants. In practice this is a bit lower because mobs have only a 50% base chance to hit modified by level and may choose not to actually use it. With a boss, it's at least 10+ seconds to even consider mezing because no single application will do it.

Move to a team and my awe inspiring AoE sleep is near useless, leaving me with a single target stackable stun, which I use. Any team will cause multiple lieutenants to spawn so I can only lock down one while the other can shoot at whoever they feel like. Granted there's no real risk to dying in a team context, but I'm now on the sidelines for 45 seconds if the RNG picks me after trying to do the defender-y things I signed up for when making a corruptor!

10% exposure vs. 0%. The only thing I want is a way to reduce this mez equals death equation that you vehemently defend as a good thing. Mez as a mechanic is fine. Mez duration needs to be fixed.

Breakfrees. Use them.

If you can't play at higher level enemies or increased spawnsizes without dieing, then Don't. Simple.

45 second duration mezzes? What, where? Sleeps can be a bit long, but they break as soon as you get hit. Malta stuns can be a ***** agreed, but overal I think your exagerating a wee bit.

I played 4 corruptors (dark/dark, ice/kin, ene/sonic, fire/pain) and a defender (rad/rad) to 50 and have twice that number on lower levels and I really don't see the big fuss people are throwing over mezzes.

Very fair point. I apologize. I try not to let any biases get in the way, but obviously fail from time to time. Thanks for calling me on it.

To your other point:
That the ATs are different from each other surely is important. But they don't all need to be differnt in all regards, and the quality of the differences is important, too. Blasters blast, as do several other ATs. We don't feel the need to keep ranged, primarily damaging attacks away from other ATs. In fact, I can't think of ANY AT that can't get a single target, ranged attack that is mostly damage dealing. It's the amount of damage that they do that differentiates the ATs, and at what level they gain access to this ability.

Certainly, if everyone has access mez protection, then they no longer differ in whether or not they have access to mez protection. I don't think that is a difference that makes the game better. So therefore, keeping that difference, prevents the game from being better. I would not advocate the same type or degree or magnitude of protection, nor that the level of availability should be the same. I think that is a much better way to differentiate the ATs.