Buffers rejoice!

Call me masochistic but its amazing how many people fail to constantly proactively buff everyone yet I dislike this change as it leaves Pain, Poison and Empathy out without a change of equal value. A forcefielder should have no reason not to keep buffs up yet when I am on a scrapper who shouldnt even really be paying attention to other peoples buffs normally I notice it alot. People did fail to probuff, this can and does lead to problems and now people just have to wait for a power to recharge less often fitting in the cast time in less times around other duties. IMO no way was Pain, Poison or Empathy over powered before so why there is nothing for them of equal value is something I'd like to see someone have a guess at.

/Poison could have envenom and weaken give some splash debuff to affect 7-10 feet around the target. /Pain and /empathy's only single target buffs are too powerful to get any sort of aoe bonus.

This change will definitely trivialize buffing but I bet there will be people still not buffing my doms. Autofollow/cast on the tank without fail, but at least I can position myself to get some kind of buff.

This change is 100% good, but as long as we've had Hamidon raids it makes you wonder why it has taken this long to come up with.

If Fortitude got the same treatment, I'd be happy. I want to give 41.75% Defense, 31.25% damage, and 55.94% To-Hit buff with three button clicks completely unenhanced. Heck, I'd even start calling out for people to gather. Then again, I'm going to do some defense increase on Fortitude, so I'd be giving 49.98% Defense to the whole team without Maneuvers. In fact, I'd say screw Maneuvers and Tactics and take myself an extra power pool power or Scramble Thoughts.

You be silly.

Dark Miasma: Shadowfall -> anti Fear
Cold Domination: Arctic Fog -> reduce slow (60%)
Force Fields: Dispersion -> Anti Held, Stun, Immobilize
Sonic Resonance: Sonic Dispersion -> Anti Held, Stun, immobilize
Storm Summoning: Steamy Mist -> Anti Confuse
Traps: Force Field Generator -> Anti Held, Stun, Immobilize

Even with the most recent Black Scorpion post making mez protection still only ST, that would still only be Stun, Immobilize, Held (What FF/Traps/Sonic can do auto), -tp, -kb, -kd, -repel on top of a movement debuff. Decent for squishies against for sure council and against Numina's Praetorian version, but the usefulness ends quickly thereafter.

I'm not asking to see an AoE applied to whats now a ST on them sets, although why not on the Mezz protection powers atleast? Usually often or not only like 3 ppl can do with it supplied to them but even I have been a single empath on a manic nearly all blaster team.

Ah, I see. You're one of those people that thinks when a set gets buffed, all other sets need an equivalent buff.

You are wrong.

I believe that powersets should be balanced so that peoples characters have equal value in teams or atleast on paper.

Cast time reduction tips the balance of favour towards a teams survivability. Some sets getting it while the more reactive sets don't is unfair.

I think a lot of people would agree with you on that! Fortunately, you aren't the one measuring the value of powersets, since you appear to be very bad at that.

Let's try this again: the sets that benefit from this change required an outsize investment of time to confer their buffs on the entire team, which is what they are balanced around. This change reduces the time required for them to meet their expected level of performance.

This change in no way makes them more powerful compared to other powersets that don't benefit from the change. Those sets were already working as expected. The reason that mez protection powers weren't made team/league-wide is because they aren't supposed to be.

I play all the sets when it comes to what sets required a cast time reduction I do not feel that the specific ones that needed it have been targeted.

Somebody else who actually plays all the powersets should be talking to me about what would and wouldn't benefit from the change.

Some defender sets are far easier to play than others, and require less attentiveness to team support yet they are targeted whilst the more reactive sets are not.

The devs have been pretty clear for a while now (although with Castle gone, things may obviously change) that Clear Mind, Clarity, ID, Thaw, etc. were meant to be used as reactive powers, not preemptive buffs. Making the mez protection AoE would invalidate that design decision and start to render mezzes irrelevant. I think the devs did a good job of striking a balance between QoL, and making things too easy.

Its a fair answer, but I think all the powersets which buff need to be looked at for time spent casting on people, during this time a more important power could be used or an attack. Especially as with empaths when they do attack its not on anything they're debuffing.

I wouldn't want the same treatment to apply to fortitude as thats OP. AoE shielding would be easier playing with the types that would normally forget to buff but thats about it.

Elitist much?

Cold domination to 50, kinetics to 50, pain domination to 49, sonic resonance to 47, three storm summoners to 50, and empathy and force fields to some levels that I can't remember.

Is my pedigree good enough for my opinion to be valid to you?

Clarion seems to defy that logic, but I can understand that Incarnate powers seem to defy lots of game balance logic.

I am not a fan of this change, but I respect that a lot of people have wanted this type of thing for a long time. I always enjoyed the frenetic pace of playing a buffing/shooting Kin. I guess I'll just have more shooting time now. I can still play my Emps when I want a more frenetic buffing experience (but there was nothing like the Kin when it comes to that).

Cold and Kin in no way needed any improvement, IMO.

Sonic and Thermal always seemed fine to me.

FF is what it is and will still be what it is after this change.

Of the other sets with single target buffs, Empathy and Pain seem to fall in the same place as Sonic and Thermal, fine as is; Storm in no way needs improvement (I just want Hold protection in O2 Boost for convenience, but it certainly doesn't warrant changing). Poison, OTOH, could use some buffing and making their single target heal AoE would be a good start (that said, Poison changes probably should wait until the devs can assess the entire powerset).

I will miss the Old Way on my Kins, Bubbler, Cold, and Sonic. But I am interested in how I can adjust to the new paradigm.

To be fair, you are also granting AoE status protection and power boost for up to 90 seconds.
Ironicially, the 40% (enhanced) SM/LE resists from ID on top of the 75% (or significantly more) damage and 25% damage debuff from FS, with 50% extra recharge and +end Recovery from SB are likely more potent in many situations and will function from level 32 onward instead of requiring an APP power and an Incarnate one. I am not saying Fortitude should get buffed, but then are we really saying Kinetics or Cold needed help?

No it isnt and its not down to elitism. When it comes to defenders I think they need to be experienced. Too many people give advice or have an opinion on sets they don't even play.

That is what people call elitism all the time.

For me, I have no problem with the change. It is simple QoL. I have seen this talked about on the forums and in RL with people I know. I like it, since it will mean I will want to play my Dark/Fire corr again. Also since we are in the Def forum, I will pull out my Ice/Sonic will get more team play than solo play, since I do find it annoying when I am basting to forget my buffs and spend time doing that instead of other fun things.


Also since I just started a kin, and got a taste of the "SB me!" chants this is a god send. It does not detract other powersets, it does not make one "king of the world". The end is still the same it is just the time it takes to get there.

People with their sets can spend alot of time chasing people, finding people or more usually getting in range of people in order to buff them. This time can add to the cast time of the buffs and prevent other actions which can mean someone gets defeated whilst you finally became locked in your cast time or with all that fannying about your damage output is lower. That's not the fault of the devs or maybe the ST buffs should have longer range.

Forcefield,

defender time to buff for a 8 man team roughly takes up 1/7 of the time they could be doing something else. The whole team can be done within 2 fight durations out of 12. Positioning and blasting can be done easily together. Hardly any FFers utilize nigh damage less KBs for people survivability nor detention field as they're just barely desired. Given the lack of desirability for half of FFs set, the powerboost on the buffs is fair. Even the change we're talking about, to it, is probably fair.

Empathy,

3 constantly applied forts out of people with SO builds, 5 out of IO builds. IO build would do fort buffing excluding movement 1/10th of the time (120s/12s). Still usually atleast 3 people not buffed with it, AB is saved for specials but atleast 3.2s in a 120s period.

Both RAs are up within 90s and their combined 4s of use plus if people do it that way the gather time which adds 3 to 5s then thats roughly an average of 11s addeds to the fort time of 12s over a 120s cycle. 120/23s = just over a 1/5.

Then there are the heal powers which can be either used once in a blue moon late game or a lot early game which reduce personal blasting time not only in for reactive purposes the anticipation but the travel to the target. A minimum of an average 6s use within a 120s fight period on a decent team although I've been in them teams where I am activating all 3 heals after eachother, and for the sake of someone better doing damage hardly blasting at all. Being generous then by saying I am not having to heal much in a team then that 6s plus maybe a tiny bit of travel is added to the 23s of other buffs which hasn't included CM yet and not taken that buffing time to 30s. Even if my figures have been wrong still a 1/4 of the time can easily be spent buffing.

Empaths don't even debuff so that either themselves or 8 ppl can effectively do more damage, the +Dam from fortitude is not relatively special on one but good across the 3 to 5 people, no reason not to use it especially as atleast 25% of your time can be spent attending peoples needs, not to mention that can increase from CM use, any real traveling to that sod that cant stay within 80ft of you and aniticipating to heal to be fast enough.

CM is better proactively used when you realize that someone can need healing whilst other people play in a way that they get themselves mezzed. I'd much rather CM at the end of one fight cycle than in the middle or at the start of one but keeping that out its still around 25% buffing and 75% blasting. Must be some people still stacking CM on some non flexible tanker vs GW somewhere.

I'm all for Kins getting an AoE ID, from a fun play perspective there is so much to do in so little time but if they can do that with Kins ID then that puts my Kinetic out infront of my Empath when playing with players that know what they're doing. I realize with Kinetics I can barely get to blast myself from stacking buffs but the contribution to the team is greater and the ability to solo is also greater. It's not like many people, don't already believe that Kins are superior anyway.

I am sure I read somewhere that the Defenders were considered the most balance set so a bit of tweaking would cause some inbalance.

Really I am not suggesting for Empaths to recieve the same buff just some buff of equal value. If the Devs took off 1 second of forts and heal others cast time I'd be well happy.

I just want all my defense sets to be equal, people with a view from one or two of them won't see where people with all of them find them unequal ingame.

Edit: As someone who almost never soloes a defender although I did with TA/DP to compare it to DP/TA pre defender damage buff my views are biased.

They are equal though with the change. It is not like they added more buff power to the sets, everything else moot.

As Silas said above, Pain and Emp have already big AOE buffs. Why need more? Also poison being more focused on debuffs needs a full revamp in gen.