Peacebringers in play?

Yes, you can stack -def debuffs with other AT's -def debuffs. So what? The value of your redundant -def debuff goes down considerably when a Controller throws Radiation Infection out there, just like a Warshade's slows are insignificant in the face of a Cold Defender's Infridgidate. No one will ever say "we've got too many debuffs" because no one really cares once they're redundant. If there's a specific debuffer on the team no one cares if someone else also does that debuff to a lesser extent. At that point the game is more about damage.

And the point that -def debuffs are fairly useless in a situation where everyone can hit consistently still stands. Please demonstrate a single situation where you've seen a team that had a hard time hitting their foes where an ACCURACY BASED -def debuff would have helped, because if you're having a hard time hitting, then you're going to have a hard time applying any sort of persistent debuff that relies on you hitting. I've rarely seen teams that had a hard time hitting, however.

Did you just post this to say you agree? Because your points about Tactics, Buildup and teames that occasionally miss Mako in Elude don't really do a whole lot to support the usefulness of the Peacebringer's -def. Dechs wasn't saying Warshades help teams hit targets. Where did you get that? The point was that -def as a secondary effect in a Peacebringer's attacks is worthless ALL ON IT'S OWN because the nature of accuracy and tohit in this game makes it irrelevant. If you can't hit consistently with your -def attack, you can't apply the debuff. If you CAN hit consistently with it, you don't NEED the debuff.

Forget what warshades do or don't do with their secondary effects. Accuracy dependent -def debuffs are worthless in this game without the need for comparisons of any kind.



Again, everyone misses from time to time, whether there's a debuff to the mob's defense or not. If people are only missing from time to time, then where's the usefulness in the effect? And again - in situations where you're missing more than you're hitting, how are you going to apply that -def debuff if you can't hit often enough to make it useful?



-recharge means less incoming damage, so the warshade in the comparison is actually helping the team survive, vise adding to their damage, as you point out yourself right after the quoted text. By contrast, the Peacebringer's -def debuff doesn't help add to their damage. All it does is allow you to slot a single -res enhancement that DOESN'T STACK and rarely fires. I'd hardly call that increasing a team's damage. Besides, if a PB can slot it then so can the Rad in your comparison.

Wow. 19 minutes, huh? Now I don't have any datamining to show this, but I'd be willing to bet my account that you and the AV melting teams you join are the outliers in this game. I'd also be willing to bet my account that you don't have any datamining to show that you're the norm.

And on a team that can melt an AV in five minutes and power through ITF's in 19 minutes you could be on a COMPLETELY UNSLOTTED build and feel uber. No one would notice if your peacebringer is underperforming, because the debuffs, buffs and damage your team is throwing around are such massive overkill that individual performance is irrelevant. Not saying you or anyone else are not performing well on that team - just saying that it's a bit hard to measure personal performance. As in: nearly impossible.

Well, let's do the numbers on that. First, assume a double mire off three mobs average for a 67% damage boost.

Strike, assuming 95% damage enhancement, does 152 points of damage
Smite, assuming the same enhancement, does 239
Drain, assuming 80% enhancement in heal and 80 in damage, does 337 points of healing and 167 points of damage
Mire will do 225.78 points of damage.
Assuming an attack chain with enough recharge to chain strike, smite and drain twice before miring again, it comes out to somewhere around 134 dps. In addition, it has the potential to heal the shade for around 600 points of damage (assuming two drains in the chain)

134 dps isn't top shelf dps, but I'd hardly say it sucks. Never mind if you're on one of those speed ITF's in lag valley with fully saturated mires. It also doesn't take into account the added damage of the fluffies.

No snark intended at all when I say I'd like to see that softcapped PB build. If you've got one handy, would you mind terribly posting it? Sounds like something I'd be interested in.

I actually disagree with your assertion that Warshades are superior with AoE's. Peacebringers have just as much AoE capability as Warshades. I also agree that Peacebringers have more single target potential. Where we differ is in the significance of single target damage. You're not speeding through those ITF's because of single target damage. You've countered with hard targets and AV's, and while I still maintain that AV's are a small part of the game for most people, I'm willing to concede that the single target damage helps the team when up against hard targets, but consider this: A stalker brings to bear far more single target damage potential than a Peacebringer, and has mez protection and higher base hit points. Wouldn't you say the Peacebringer is paying too high a price for that single target damage advantage?

To answer your question about what I personally would like to see changed, I would like to see Photon Seekers have that rather punitive recharge shortened to the point that they can be made perma. Hell, make them unique in the way that an Illusion Controller's Nightmare pet is unique (spawning more while others are out de-rezzes the others) and GUT the recharge time so that they're perma right out of the box.

I would like to see the knockback mag reduced on Solar Flare and ALSO see the damage slightly increased to the point that those who would want to slot it for knockback and damage would see roughly the same performance as now, and those who would see the knockback turned to knockdown could do so and also have a bit of extra damage to compensate for the slightly less mitigation offered by knockdown. I would like to see the mag on Pulsar increased and the recharge decreased slightly to give peacebringers a reliable AoE mez.

In a perfect world I would toss out that worthless -def debuff in favor of a -res debuff, but that would violate the cottage rule and anger players like yourself who value it. And yes, I count your opinion as valid, regardless of how much I might disagree with it. As I've said, that problem is more with the game itself than with peacebringers, and so I don't expect anything to change there. If there WERE a -res component ADDED, it would totally reverse Peacebringers' fortunes. Hell, I'd be happy with something like Bruising for Tankers!

It might also mean trading one or more of the other changes I'd like to see, but I'd be willing.

Okay, it's late, and I'm not even going to respond to the rest of the post. Good night.

EDIT - actually, there were a couple of things I wanted to respond to:


My point is that Archvillains don't spawn alone. If you're ignoring the minions and heading straight for the AV, then so is that warshade, meaning - you guessed it! - he's not buffing off a single mob. And see what I said above about terrible dwarf damage. And again - a warshade has fluffies to add to the damage.


Where are you getting that anyone at all is stating that Warshades are affecting team tohit?

And the ACC IO buffing tohit was a mistype on my part. I well know the difference between accuracy and tohit, the old brain just reverses the names now and then. oops.


Just because YOU and PEOPLE YOU KNOW spend a lot of time doing task forces doesn't make it any more than anecdotial evidence. Judging by the remarks you've made about perma essence boost and IO bonuses and speed ITF's and melting AV's, it looks like you're on a majorly expensive build on an outlier team. Hardly indicative of normal play. Most players don't even have a fifty. If they did, there'd have been no need to lower the level cap for unlocking Epic Archetypes. Was it you that made that point earlier in this thread or was it Bill? I think it was Bill.

And I used time spent assembling a team as an indicator of how many people were doing task forces in my own admittedly anecdotal evidence. If the majority of the playerbase were running task forces there shouldn't be any time standing around waiting to find players willing to run it, right?


Okay, first of all, unless you're stacking that essence boost for longer than a couple seconds it means absolutely nothing that it's perma. I was assuming that already. And if you ARE stacking it for longer than a couple of seconds, then you're far from the average build, and not something on which balance can be judged. But even with accolades you're only approaching 1900 hitpoints. You're going to have to come up upwards of 30% hit point bonuses from IO's, and I would VERY much like to see that build. Is it the same build that's softcapped to defense?

In either case, however, we're talking about balance, and whether you use them or not the game isn't balanced around IO's. Not everyone uses IO's, and we shouldn't be forced to use them just bring a character up to par with its nearest cousin.


Because the areas at which a peacbringer excells have far less need for it than the areas where a warshade excells, and a peacebringer pays a heavier price for it.

Where exactly did I say that it seems people are playing content with AV's more often than all the other content? That meshes up much more with what you're saying, and I'M saying that you're flat-out wrong. You seem to have focused in on the game that YOU'RE playing without paying too much attention to anything that isn't anecdotal to your personal experience.

But you know what? I haven't done any datamining, either. So let's leave our personal experiences aside and look at what the content OFFERS. The game offers TEN TIMES the content for the leveling experience that doesn't include AV's over what does. Now if people choose to AE Farm or even TF farm to level past that dross then that's all well and good, but we shouldn't be FORCED to do that because a select few like yourself have been successful at it. Balance is based on what the game as a whole offers, not what you and your friends have experienced.


Warshades' AoEs are dark clones of Peacebringers for the most part, with Solar Flare being the exception. Its counterpart, however is Unchain Essence, which not only scatters mobs to the four corners of the map, it also stuns them so that they don't reform in that nice little AoE-vulnerable group in the Tanker's taunt aura for a while. And Warshades also get knockback in Gravitic Emanation.

And Warshades can stealth in, pop eclipse and mire before the target ever sees them, so where are you getting that a Peacebringer has some stealth advantage? And again I'll remind you that no target spawns alone.

And no one is saying that Peacebringers should be AoE specialists. What we're saying - well, what I'm saying is that what peacebringers do get is undervalued by the nature of the game system and the state of the content itself, and that they consequently pay too heavy a price for that.

I grow weary of saying "Peacebringers could use some love, but they also get some pretty good benefits" when those benefits are increasingly becoming irrelevant as more power is given to the players that specifically erase the need for those benefits.

Peacebringers. Need. Change.

And it's bloody well time we started asking for it with a fair bit more insistence than we have in the past.

I like peacebringers because all they're missing is the surfboard.

I do find it ironic that pre I19 I avoided shifting to dwarf because it burned my endurance... and after my reworking to be human/dwarf I shift when my endurance gets low to keep fighting while it recharges.

I have three dark clouds following me.

Fine. I'll suck myself!

I have three angry little white glowing...

...wait, there they go again...

...one grumpy little white glowing dot following me who didn't explode.

If I eat Tacobell I can have 3 dark clouds following me too....lol

LOL I got that feeling last night when I played my PB. I used Solar Flare... and then where did everyone go?

Ask me, the kheldian community could do with a little more passion, and I for one think it's refreshing to see people actually caring enough about an archetype to have a spirited debate about it. If that comes across as arguing, then so be it. We've spent too many years having minor flare-ups and friendly disagreements about problems with peacebringers that ended with agreements to disagree and discussions on how we could learn to live with those shortcomings.

We thought we were being reasonable. Now I'm thinking we might have instead come across as more than a little complacent.

You do, however, have a very good point regarding teaming. I might feel the disparity between Warshades and Peacebringers is a bit wider than you do even teamed, but that doesn't mean my Peacebringer doesn't do exponetially better on teams than solo. The gap between Peacebringer performance on teams and solo is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

My warshade doesn't have nearly so big of a gap between solo and teamed performance, but leave that aside. The exact same argument you just used with regard to khelds being intended for teaming was used for years with regard to defenders' low damage being okay because they weren't intended for teaming.

Yet they recently got a damage buff when solo, did they not?

EDIT - and I wouldn't say no to a buff that affected us in the same way as the damage buff affected defenders. I wouldn't say no to ANY buff.

Cute. But you're being just a little unfair. With the exception of a bit of snarkiness on Dechs' part and more than a little from _Dawun_, the overall discussion - though passionate - has been on topic and focused on the overall points at hand (vise being focused on each other).

And no one has gotten personal. Well, no one had gotten personal until you implied that we're all slackers who post at work when we should be getting paid. Not everyone has the same work hours you know. (he says as he looks over his shoulder.)

Gotta go.

Natalie Portman is soooo Hawt!

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm all for debate, too. But the posts I *did* read, seemed to consist mostly of two people going back and forth trying to find new ways to say the same thing. I'm sorry, but DPS is not everything. The clifs notes summary of my opinion on the PB/WS argument and comparing them to the other AT's: Don't. PB's are not WS's, and neither are they intended to be. PB's (or WS's) are not Blasters, nor Tanks, nor Scrappers, nor Widows (just throwing that one in because I can), nor are they intended to be. They (in my opinion, at least) are intended to be a "Master of None" AT that can do a little of everything, but doesn't excel at anything. Like a Tank excels at tanking, and a Blaster excels at... Blasting?

And this part right here:

I think you missed part of my point. That's the way it's supposed to be. Peacebringers are intended to be played on teams, yet not suck like a Hoover when solo (though some would argue they fall short in that regard, I would disagree, mostly). Warshades *seem* better at soloing than on teams, because their inherent is less useful to the team as a whole, and is thus less noticable when on said team. (And also because their secondary effects are much more useful than the -Def+KB that Peacebringers get. I'd be the first to agree to change that.)

On the subject of Defenders getting the damage buff (that only applies when solo, or on VERY small teams), I would argue that: One, the devs came to realize that while, yes, Defenders *are* intended to be played on teams, not everyone can be guaranteed to find a team 24/7, and thus Defenders WILL be played solo, regardless of their intent. Two, I would argue that Peacebringers (and Warshades) have their fair share of an equivalent to the Defender damage buff by being useful in both situations (solo/team) as it is. Tell me ONE Defender primary (or secondary, take your pick) that offers the resistance/defense numbers of a Peacebringer/Warshade, along with the wide variety of useful powers (debuffs, buffs, self heal, and in the case of Peacebringers, ally heal, inherent flight/Teleport/recall [as applicable], etc), along with the damage numbers (regardless of how short they fall from being Blaster numbers, that's not their intent) all in one package, and without spending several billion influence on IO's to get there.

Could Peacebringers (and/or Warshades) use a buff? Sure. But so could every AT in the game, in one regard or another. I would like to see an increase to the target cap on Taunt (I could start a whole topic on Taunt being nerfed to Dwarf form effectiveness, but I won't), and the aggro cap for starters. But that's not what we're here to discuss, is it?


(And for the record, I wasn't trying to imply that things were getting out of hand when I said "arguing". Arguing might have been to strong of a word. I encourage debate, just not when it becomes an endless cycle of repetitive debate on the same subject over, and over, and over, making zero progress whatsoever.)

I disagree. There has to be a baseline of performance. Brutes recently saw changes to their inherent based solely on comparisons to not one - but two - other archetypes, so there is precedent for comparisons to be drawn, especially where the epic archetypes are concerned.

Before the days of advanced difficulty settings and spawn size sliders, I'd have agreed wholeheartedly. Now, however, Warshades can set the spawn size up to maximum levels and roll through missions at maximum resistance and damage.

Warshades also ARE their own team when solo due to the fact that even an SO'd warshade with hasten can keep two extracted essences going at all times.

Two extracted essences (and I'm not even counting the fact that most builds with moderate IO investment can keep three essences out) add somewhere in the neighborhood of 120-152 dps to a warshade's attack chain whether teamed or solo (assuming around 95% Damage Enhancement). The burst damage in Quasar and Unchain essence provide the same burst damage potential as Dawn Strike and Photon Seekers, and what does a Peacebringer gain to compensate for that difference in damage?

Solo or teamed, Warshades can walk into at least every other fight with near-capped or capped resistances. More often than not they can do that with better frequency than a Peacebringer's Light Form. Nonetheless, a Peacebringer's heals do give them a slight nudge in survivability in high damage situations, and that alone makes them slightly tougher, depending on the team makeup.

But there again you make a good point when you say that a Warshades secondary effects are much more useful to a team than a Peacebringer's, and it's one I agree with. So - again - what does a Peacebringer gain to compensate?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to say that Peacebringers should do exactly the same damage as Warshades, or even that they are gimped to uselessness. All I'm saying is that there is an unjustifiable gap in performance between the two archetypes and between Peacebringers and the other epic archetypes as a whole.

It isn't because the dev's hate Peacebringers, or because Peacebringers were poorly designed, or any other such nonsense. The game itself has changed, and Peacebringers haven't been able to leverage that change as well as other archetypes.


That same logic applies to Peacebringers, though. In fact, I'd wager that defenders have a MUCH easier time finding teams than Peacebringers.

I'm not talking about giving Peacebringers Blaster-level damage. I'm talking about bringing Peacebringers *more* in line with Warshades. Whether that's done through changing/adding secondary effects, tweaking recharge/damage levels on individual powers or through a straight up damage buff is immaterial to me. I have ideas about how it can be accomplished, and NONE of them involve buffing damage to anywhere near blaster levels.

You have a good point about Defenders not getting Peacebringer-level resistances, but then again Peacebringers don't have defender-level debuffs that - depending on the powerset - can bring defender damage up to and even above that of Peacebringers. To say nothing of the fact that player damage resistance is all too often trumped by defense - something defenders can get much easier than Peacebringers.

The problem is that we've been saying - in fairly reasonable and polite terms - that for quite a while. For ages we've said Peacebringers need a nudge to bring them closer to warshades, and we've largely been ignored. Yes, they buffed Kheldians in general a couple years back, and at the time we said Peacebringers were still lagging behind. When we were told to be happy with the changes we got in lieu of more datamining, we acquiesced. Still no changes have been forthcoming. In my opinion it's probably because we didn't make all that big of a fuss.

I could take this opportunity to agree with the sentiment that Peacebringers need a small to moderate buff and bow out of the topic like I've done so many times in the past, but that's just not good enough for me any more.

If we can all agree that Peacebringers could use a buff - and I believe nearly everyone in this thread has posted similar sentiments - then why are we saying in the same posts that Peacebringers and Warshades are roughly equal? Clearly something gave us the notion that they need help.

Defenders didn't need a solo boost any worse than Peacebringers, and they got one. Brutes certainly didn't need what amounted to a buff for mid to low end builds, but game balance dictated the changes. Peacebringers need work. Now's the time.

Heh sorry Joe. Just going for the lols . Actually I admit I am one of those slackers who posts when he should be working. At the time I posted that I was stuck at my desk in the office for 13 hours and was posting here more than I was doing paperwork. So it was more a self admonishment than an accusing of the player base. Tho it totally came across that way. I love this forum. And I really enjoy the contributions of everyone on it. So sorry if it sounded unfair or personal. Really. I like you guys alot.

I really really doubt any of the Dev's would agree to combining the -Def and the -Res into every attack. You can say that the -Def is negligible all you want but from an outside point of view you'll hear fairly unanimously that it's too much.

And besides, if it really is that negligible, would you really miss it all that much? Maybe in the early levels where you don't have ridiculous amounts of Accuracy but once you hit your 30's that's likely to change.

Just a note - Personally I am pretty happy with my Peacebringer. If no changes were implemented in anyway I'd still play him and enjoy it every step of the way. However, I can also see where others are coming from so that is why I have suggested this change. It seems to accomplish what everyone so far has asked for at least partially. Maybe it would be enough, maybe not but I don't think anyone could accurately assess that until it had been implemented.