Unemployment hits Coh/Cov

Don't need psychic powers to read between the lines.

From your posts it looks like reading what was said is a super power for you.

I really shouldn't get into this argument....

No, none of them lack the ability to solo. The person making this (flawed) description isn't satisfied with the speed at which they do so. Going through what they said:

Starting with this.

Low hit points - Yes, defenders have low hit points. Nobody will argue this. They also have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to avoid losing those hit points, and/or recover them quickly.

Low hit points, however, is NOT the same as low survivability. Do they have armor? Not as in tank/stalker/scrapper/brute armor, no. However, they do have a wide variety of tools to help them stay alive, from boosting their regen rate, to actual defense (in more than just force field) or resistance, to stealth, to lowering the enemy's tohit or damage resistance, to direct holds, knockdown/back powers and pets.

And that ignores the debuffs in the secondary attack powers.

When a defender - *pre IOs* - can tank (D3,) they do not have "low survivability." They have less of a margin when things go very wrong due to the lower hitpoints, yes... but low survivability, I'd argue with.

As mentioned, breakfrees.

That aside, some sets DO offer status protection (FF, Sonic) to the Defender. Others - well, if they can't hit you, they can't mez you. Plus, you do have other tools (available to all ATs) in the power pools - from some defense from Hover or Combat Jumping (also providing immob protection) to a degree of actual mez protection in the form of Acrobatics.

This, as most of my replies, ignores IOs completely - which, given they're seen as a completely legitimate "answer" for other ATs, should not be dismissed here for providing extra defense (to not get mezzed in the first place) to resistance to mez effects - as well as your other complaints, higher HP and higher damage.

You may have missed the change to Vigilance recently. When solo, the Defender gains more global damage (30%.) When teamed, that starts going down... but you've got teammates contributing there, as well.

In addition, you have powers that let you hit more often (-def,) harder (-res, +dmg,) and more accurately in most sets, both primary and secondary. The most obvious one (to me) is Sonic. If you roll a Sonic/Sonic, for instance, you get:

- Status Protection (Sonic Dispersion, providing resistance to *all* damage as well as holds and immobilizes,)

- Means of reducing incoming damage, both directly, again, with sonic dispersion as well as semi-indirectly using the the KB/KD of Liquefy and Shockwave, the sleep of Siren's Song, and disorient of Screech, and Sonic cage.)

- Means of increasing your OWN damage. Every attack does a -res to the enemy, and they stack. Just watch Scream - you'll usually see you're doing higher damage halfway through (say, making up numbers, 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 18) JUST on its own. Even without sonic *attack,* the very first power a Sonic resonance user can get is Sonic Siphon, a -res power. (And Liquefy does -def, as well.)

Add to that the better numbers a Defender gets from leadership (go ahead, take Assault) and I really dont' see the complaint. Is anyone going to confuse you for a Scrapper? No. But you're not doing unnoticable damage.

See my Guides and Tutorials

And how would you rank their soloing speed ?

You just made a very long post managing to make arguments without ever addressing the actual point.

Lets put it like this, is there any at that solos worse than they do ?

Peacebringers.

And let's just back up a moment. Are you seriously surprised or upset that a team oriented AT might be lower on the totem pole when it comes to soloing?

Peacebringers easily solo better than most defender combinations. I am sure you could make a peace bringer that does worse but you would have to work at it. Human only or human-nova only maybe, likely have to work at it.


Upset ? Not at all. They are what they are. With the way things are going they are getting marginalized. I have seen posts talking about how Keyes is going to bring a renaissance for emps and regens, and its hilarious, not in a world were everyone can have rebirth.

Probably not. The last time hard data was looked at, Defenders were about average in solo performance, as measured by measuring actual player performance in-game. I know for a fact Blasters soloed slower, and I suspect tankers probably did as well. Both archetypes that received archetype-wide buffs directly related to their leveling bottlenecks: Blasters getting additional offense and mez mitigation with Defiance 2.0 and Tankers gaining additional solo damage with bruising.

I can't actually state that its impossible Defenders are now the lowest performing archetype, but to believe that you have to believe that D2.0 basically turned the entire blaster archetype around 180 degrees, and bruising accelerated the entire tanker archetype completely past defenders. And everyone else underperforming or performing comparably to defenders took an unexpected dive. The tanker assertion seems iffy, and the blaster assertion is virtually impossible given the performance gap that existed at the time.

Have I mentioned lately how enjoyable your posts are ? They are just incredible word games where the implications have to be peeled away from the statements and then the statements need to be compared to others for consistency.

Anyway onto this, am I reading your right ? "you are saying blasters or tanks are the worst soloing AT" ? Or are you just trying to leave that hanging out there as something deniable at a later date ?

I ask because the last time we had an exchange on this and you said "Blasters have no trouble soloing" ?*

So in Arcana speak the worst is no trouble ?

In the above case that shift of word usage, is but the most minor. I really have to wonder just what you mean by best and worst soloing here ? I ask because just today I saw this

In reference to the alpha slot system and earlier we had this

Leaving out just what is being used as the definitions here. Just a statistical question here I am sure you can clarify this in a heartbeat, just why isn't a valid comparison of performance to compare an AT that is number 1 in popularity in the level range from 1-49 and 3rd at level 50 vs one that isnt in the top 5 from 1-49.

Maybe we could race ? I'd be glad to see how fast I could solo a tank from 1-50 vs how fast you could solo a defender ?**



*I'd search but its been many purges ago.

** Yes it doesn't prove anything about AT performance but its better than memphis bill's analysis using mutually exclusive defender powers and the best performing secondary characteristics all at the same time to characterize the AT

You don't seem to have paid attention to what I was saying, then.
What's your definition of "worse?"

Most damage? I believe I mentioned earlier that, yes, they have low damage, though depending on sets they can adjust that themselves.

My Defenders can solo in greater safety than my Blasters, as a general rule. Does that mean the blasters are "worse" at soloing?

My Defenders tend to do more damage than many of my Controllers. Does that mean controllers are "worse" at soloing?

If you want them to solo at the speed of a scrapper, then duh, they solo "worse." Nobody makes a defender to be a damage powerhouse. I don't *believe* anyone really makes a "Farming Defender."

In my reply, I pointed out issues you brought up such as "survivability" are flawed, at least in the way you put them, where it seemed you were linking it (at least in my reading) directly to the fact they have low hit points. If I read that wrong in seeing that as what you were saying - well, it doesn't greatly detract from the rest of what I said.

It's called an example. You did see the "For instance" when I pointed out *a* combination, after providing examples of some of the effects available in defender sets, correct? Or, for instance, saying "some sets" offer mez protection, while other sets offer other tools earlier in the post. I did not say that specific combination was the entire AT. That is YOUR assumption. Do you NEED me to hold your hand and go through every single combination of Defender primary and secondary?

The fact you used the description of "Mutually exclusive" powers in what I pointed out strongly indicates you didn't comprehend what was being said.

Also, in your reply to Arcanavile:
while I'm not going to touch tanks, Blasters not having the desired survivability - "Underperforming" - is not *her* analysis. It was stated directly by the developers that they were - which is why we were given Defiance 2.0. By comparison, when Defenders are brought up, they're generally seen as the baseline (survivability and performance-wise) that others are measured against. They don't qualify that as solo vs teamed, just as overall performance.

You can, if you want, take that as being "the worst," though it's more "the average" or "the expected."

Edit:

"The worst performing," for me (as an example that comes to mind, and walking out of Defender territory) is low to mid level Illusion, especially with a secondary like FF or Sonic. It's so dependent on PA, but instead has a confuse (takes time,) a long-recharge AOE hold, a ST damage, a ST hold... soloing my Ill/Sonic was, for most of its life, painful. On a team, it brought quite a bit. Solo, it was a lot of waiting and a fair bit of running (or just being invisible.)

I haven't run across a Defender set or pairing like that, outside of specific *situations* (emp/psi against robots, for instance, is slow going.) But that's true of most ATs - some sets (or ATs in general, like 18-23 MMs vs Scrapyarders) are going to have things they struggle against. But I wont' characterize the entire AT as having problems JUST on that basis.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I don't recall ever telling you that blasters have no trouble soloing in general. Its possible that in very specific circumstances I might have said something vaguely like that - for example, in my specific instance I don't have problems soloing blasters, nor do I personally have exceptional issues with them in high level content - but definitely not in general. I've been repeating the fact that the devs datamined blasters to be the worst soloers prior to the Defiance 2.0 buffs since I first discussed the matter with Castle, back when Blasters got the Defiance 2.0 buffs.

Anyone who has been reading my posts on the subject knows I've been extremely consistent in this regard. Back when the D2.0 buffs were being kicked around, Castle specifically said publicly that the reason Defiance was being reexamined was because of extreme performance problems datamined with blasters. There are limits to what I can say about my discussions with Castle, but I was allowed to repeat this statement which summarizes that discussion on the open forums at the time:

Blasters are the *only* archetype for which it is the case that *all* powerset combinations underperform the average performance of all players, whether solo, small teamed, or large teamed, at all combat level ranges. No other powerset combinations in any archetype underperformed as much as the worst blasters, no archetype had lower average performance, and no archetype had anywhere near the number of underperforming powerset combinations.

What's more, the *best* blaster powerset combination underperformed the average by a substantial margin: far outside any margin for error.

I know some of the numbers which I can't repeat, but we're not talking about something like three percent. They are numbers higher than levels of performance difference players complain about just on paper.


Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, computing performance averages isn't a statistical question when the devs measure everybody which it seems they did. Second, averaging normalizes those results. Third, the most logical reason for popularity shifts across higher combat levels would only serve to reinforce the numerical conclusion, if it was actually relevant at all.

The question I'm assuming you're probably referring to is the issue of self-selection. The players playing different archetypes might not actually have the same normalized skill level. But that would have the highest impact at the lower levels, not the higher ones. Shifts in skill would show a very strong counter-trend to the numbers, and at the performance gap values inherent in the numbers, that was extremely unlikely to be the case.


Mostly, I'm mentioning this for the people actually interested in a revisit of those facts, all of which were discussed at the time and several times after that. I'm not especially interested in quibbling with you about something you know nothing about and can contribute nothing interesting to. You're also not all that interesting as an antagonist really, especially when you quote me and point to it, and not only do I not see the point of the insult, I'm wholly convinced not enough other people will to make it worth my time figuring it out to respond. That's pretty much scraping the barrel of boring.

Say what you mean !!! and Make your own statements don't hide behind double blinds of twice undefined performance metrics.

Where would you rank defenders overall on soloing speed as in how quickly can the accomplish tasks in the game to complete missions or gain rewards in the game or just level from 1-50. .

As to arcanaville and the devs statement that is completely unglued. From what I understood at the time, the devs were using debt load as a measure of poor performance. Anyone who plays a blaster giggles at debt by level 20 or they roll something else.

If you want to ignore the data and the way it's considered by the *only* group that has access to ALL of it and just argue on perception, well, there's no point.

The only ones with access to how an AT is performing across the entire game would be the development staff. If they're satisfied, they're satisfied. If they say an AT is not performing -survivability wise - then it's not. Given that blasters were notorious "pavement inspectors," I'd say perception fit their actual data rather well.

Otherwise, its' just arguing "I like this!" "You like that!" and trying to convince each other we're wrong. In which case I'll just say, if you don't like how defenders solo, don't roll one. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

That's such a generic statement it's not worth arguing, as it leaves out - well, *everything.* What rewards? Am I comparing running my Emp/Rad to an IO'd out tank farming for purples?

The only definitive answer I can give you is this, really:
When I reach 50 on a character, I go and find someone with an "M" name to see how long it has taken to get there. My defenders have not been noticably slower than any other AT - and I play *every* AT, having at least one of each at 50 (and often more than one.)

My average 1-50 time has been about 125 hours in the last - eh, two years (barring characters that are very old and dusted off after some time to finish them, which tend to be in the 200 range.) My playstyle includes a mix of soloing and teaming, of course, but I don't tend to solo more or team more on any particular AT.

IF Defenders were so much worse at soloing, I'd expect to see them running *noticably* longer. (say, 160 hours versus 125 for everything else.)

This, of course, is completely subjective, as it's *my* experience with *my* characters. Yours may be different (and sounds like it is.)

(I will, as an aside, also point out that for an AT you're so disappointed with, it has been the source of some nasty PVP FOTMs - seem to recall Rad/Psy being one. But we're looking at individual sets again - and just in general, the sets can vary in performance drastically depending on how they're paired, and what you put them against, PVE or PVP.)

These days, *everyone* should be laughing at debt -though I'd like to see that reference for the latest datamining they've told us about (that led to defiance 2.0.)

Regardless, unless you can find some other independently verifiable metric, it's all the information we have to go by that isn't "I think" and "I feel."

See my Guides and Tutorials

Tell me if I am understanding this correctly, empirically you have no trouble soloing blasters, but a random sample of people that selected the at likely because the words blast and cannon appealed and it had a machine gun were having trouble making it work is a valid indictment of the at ?

Just going back to the prior post, you have blasters and tankers as "virtually impossible" to be outdoing defenders. I am pretty sure I can solo either to 50 faster than a defender. That is coming from someone who would never roll another blaster because of the problems inherent in the AT that castle really never addressed.

Anyway going back to what I said earlier, I believe what was datamined as poor performance was debtload


1st thank you, ill bookmark and archive the above post as it will save me considerable typing in discussions on the blaster forums. Its not valid discourse but what the hay you really aren't going to get socratic debates on a videogame forum.

Its funny as I am about the last person to argue that blasters don't need a buff, but in this very narrow context I find myself arguing their greater capability over defenders. But here I am. On anything but very hard targets the blaster is going to do better. I really have to ask just what is meant by performance here ? Is it solo net xp/time ? Is it average time to complete a mission ? Is it time to kill for singularly hard targets ? Is it running with no temps no insps ? To the best of my recollection that underperformance was based on the debt blasters were carrying.

You have a mix of solo and teamed that you are using, I don't know what your mix is but for the sake of argument, lets say your teaming was 20 % more effective because of force multiplication but your soloing was 50% slower, much of the deficit from poor soloing would be erased from improved speeds teaming and the teaming bonus.

Well pvp is an entirely different game, and right now the really big FotM seem to be PSI/EM, shark throwing stalkers, and various corruptors.


There aree all kinds of ways to make the comparison. You can take theoretical best combos and run them through benchmarks to see how well they do. On things like running tip missions, leveling 1-50, various farming scenarios I am confident solo performance of a tanker or a blaster will exceed the performance of a solo defender.

When that random sample happens to be "everyone who randomly decided to play City of Heroes and roll blasters" kinda, yeah. Primarily because for everyone else on Earth collectively, the problems with playing blasters are mostly theoretical. Also because their performance problems would be much more difficult to datamine. Its possible that blasters are fine, just not for the specific group of people that happen to play City of Heroes, but that is a bit more existential than traditional analysis normally accommodates.

Any other questions?

To kill things. You have an entire secondary powerset.

And let's face it, defense is not something to be relied on. It is streaky and debuffed easily. When defenses fail, empathy still has something to do while fortitude, AB, and the auras recharge besides blast and debuff with the secondary set.

I believe this is why praetorians in trials have 64% base tohit, not 50%. Even my Dark Armor Tank that Sucks benefits from force fields and empathy on trials.

Then where do I keep all my purples.

Next to the break frees. Where else?

To speed up the removal of enemies? I don't care how good anyone's build is, you can always be better when someone buffs your chance to hit, damage, defense, recharge speed, regeneration, and recovery. And that's just from the Empathy set. Throw in Defender-level Leadership and you're getting even more.

This kind of depends on what you're facing and what your teammates are running. If everyone on your team has 45% S/L/E/N and runs Barrier Destiny, then they probably don't need a bubbler. The exception would be mobs that have high accuracy/to-hit, defense debuffs, or non S/L/E/N attacks like Psi. If you only have one of those (Barrier or 45% S/L/E/N), then the bubbler will help, regardless. If you don't have someone spamming Clarion for the whole team, then Dispersion Bubble will help maintain mez protection and offer even more defense. Force Bubble has some nice situational value, too. And, as mentioned above, those wonderful Defender-level Leadership toggles always help.

Apparently some people have 20-30 more inspiration slots than those of us limited to the normal 4X5.

No, really, on an even level mission solo vs Arachnos, I get held every single spawn. Sometimes it takes me long enough to kill everything that I can get held again after eating a break free.

If the ability of the character to run a normal, even level mission X1 is dependent on having an endless supply of multiple different types of inspirations, then I think it's safe to say that the character is not independent or self-reliant.

I'm not saying they should be. I only responded to the guy who said that all characters at 50 should be independent. That's a tall order when certain powersets were clearly not created with that in mind. You, you might be able to pull it off by going villain (for the shield) and spending a couple of billion inf, but it's not something that should be expected of every level 50.