So... Defenders are my new favorite AT

My first level 50 was a Defender, but that was forever ago. Since then I had devoted about 99% of my time to melee archetypes, specifically Brutes, Scrappers and a Tanker. Like many others, I had written off Defenders as a (sometimes) necessary asset to a team and little more than a useful augmentation of my powers.

**Warning, war-story imminent**

Until I created a Storm/Fire Defender. I knew the combination was fun, but tried not to take it too seriously. I was waiting for it to get boring and trying not to invest too much influence in him. Last night, however, he gained the title of my new main. One of the 8,471,987 (of course that's an exact figure) water/something Blasters decided to aggro a second group of +3 DE during a mission. I think about four of us died within thirty seconds. Recognizing the situation as dire, and with Vigilance's end discount in full swing, I turn on Hurricane, pop Tornado and spam blasts like crazy. As I was doing this, everyone but another Defender (Empathy/something) had died. Tornado proceeds to wreak havoc and the 962 (another exact number for you) DE can't touch me thanks to the knockback and/or Hurricane. I got hit with a hold and was promptly CM'd by my still-alive teammate. I managed to tank the aggro cap's worth of +3 DE while she rez'd our Brute and a few others awaken/break freed themselves. We recovered from it with no hospital trips.

I was stunned. I knew Defenders were apt at... defending... but I didn't know that they were capable of that. And I have a whole new respect for "emergency" powers. This archetype rocks. Period.

Topic: what makes you love Defenders? (war-stories encouraged!!)

Well one of my first Defenders was Traps/AR. I was teaming with some people running Carnie radio missions to get the badge. Anyway I tend to act like I'm the tank when playing my trapper, I run off and assume that the rest of the team will follow me so when we came to an intersection I went right and the rest of the team went left. I was halfway through the next spawn before i realized that the rest of the team had not followed me and was in fact almost dead. I finished off my foes and then went back to help scrape them off the floor.

Another good one was on my Time/Elec Defender which is about as close as you can get to a Tanker without actually being a Tanker. I was on another random mission team against 5th Column (or maybe Council?). Anyway for some reason most of the team had scattered leaving me and another Defender (I think a TA/A) alone. Now several of the other team members were dying but mean while the other Defender and I were happily sitting in a crowd of foes who were so heavily debuffed with so little endurance that they weren't even scratching us.

When people talk about how Corruptors are so much "better" than Defenders I just smile and nod. The extra damage is nice but the toughness of Defenders is a lot higher than many people realize, especially when you factor in Pool Powers (Defenders get Tanker mods for most self defense buffs and the best Leadership mods). It's most noticeable with sets like Traps and Time but every set has at least some abilities that can keep the Defender himself alive and the higher numbers DO make a difference.

Those are indeed epic moments to have on a Defender, especially as a Stormie.. When you can go balls-to-the-walls on a Stormy you can survive a lot of **** lol. (and with the Vigilance Bonus, well you have infinite End at that point)

I had a similar experience the other day on my (then mid 20s) Storm/Water defender. The mobs were Council though, but we were hit with a double pull from the front and several chained ambushes the behind.

I was able to corner the ambushes using Hurricane while O2ing the only surviving scrapper as he cleaned up the mess in the front.

In the end we cleaned em up followed by an echo of cheers from the team.. Funny because the whole time they were telling me to run for it, but I say to hell with that!

So interesting factoid on Defender Toughness. A Cold Domination or Storm Summoning Defender with either Dark Mastery or Soul Mastery (for Dark Embrace) has almost the same Resistances as an Invulnerability Scrapper. Unslotted the numbers are (going S/L/E/NE/F/C/T/P) 30/30/15/15/15/15/15/0 for the Scrapper and 27.5/27.5/20/15/20/20/15/0 for the Defender.

The Scrapper does have better Defense but the higher Defender numbers for pool Powers can help close the gap there.

Now obviously the Scrapper gets a lot of other nice goodies like Debuff Resistances and Mez Protection but it's still interesting to think about.

The only time a defender dies is when he has stupid teammates.

My Time/Energy/Power defender tanked both Primal and Praetorian Duray after everyone but me died. I wasn't actually hurting them but they weren't really able to hurt me in any way that mattered either. I kept building threat on Praetorian Duray until my team got back so we could focus on Primal (and his annoying teleporting). Praetorian Duray stayed focused on me while we wrecked his primal counterpart and then he was just toast after that.

I've come to appreciate the much higher buff values of Defenders over Corruptors just because it often means even if my dps isnt Corruptor level, I can often be virtually invincible (depending on the power sets and build), often with less slot investment than a corruptor, which means as long as my dps can overcome their regen I can't lose barring a spectacular one shot. In the case of this defender she has perma capped defenses to everything thanks to power buildup/farsight (as long as she doesn't exemp below 30), some -regen, a great mix of buffs/debuffs/controls and, when i24 hits, she'll have perma fast snipe as well to add to the mix.

Storm is a particularly good set in a life-and-death crisis. Its weakness (the scatter/chaos) only really affects the offensive output of an orderly team. Once the team's focus turns toward staying alive, the chaos isn't so much of a penalty, and Storm is better than the soft cap at keeping people alive. (I say "better than" because it has knockback and ragdoll and -range and -recharge to go with the to-hit debuff, making it more effective than just floored to-hit.)

NA looks to be very clicky, so I'd hesitate with the Archery choice...but how are you conceptualizing Elec? Other than "It's not really this bad. It's not really this bad. It's not really this bad!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

Hmmmmm....

Much to think about, much to think about indeed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

Add me to the list of folks just discovering how fun defenders can be to play after many years (some away from the game).

I tried a few early on and never got over the hump. But for me, playing my Water/Time corrupter was sort of a gateway drug. On that one, I do some team support, but also blast a lot.

Then I created a Kin/Rad defender. Oh my. I almost never blast, but I'm constantly pressing buttons. And it can't solo for beans, despite having heavily slotted the rad attacks. But I don't really care. I pretty much only play it on full teams and it's a ton of fun!

The nature set is intriguing, but sort of agree that nothing is jumping out to me as a good fit for secondary. Well, I would say water, but since I just leveled up a water corr, I'd rather do something else. I hardly ever repeat a power set, even across ATs.

Personally I don't think that the redraw is going to be that bad. The only really spammable powers are Corrosive Enzymes and Regrowth. CE you probably won't use a whole lot except for AV fights anyway and if you're having to spam Regrowth to keep your team alive then you're not going to have a lot of time for blasting with any secondary.

Now I probably won't recommend NA/DP due to redraw but Archery and Assault rifle both have quite fast redraws which I think will be manageable. That being said, I haven't tried it on Beta yet.

Yea I don't recall Archery's redraw being much of an issue, and I was playing it with Kinetics..

Then again, redraw doesn't really bother me, so ymmv.

I have played at least one of every defender, but have indefinably doubled and tripled (etc, etc) them through deleting and altinitous.

One of my great war stories was similar to the storms with my storm/sonic. A team of squishies going against a bunch of warriors. Before I knew it, half the team had dropped and then the blaster and I were left. I rushed over to her with a little 02 boost to get her out of the stun and surrounded her in my hurricane. kept her healed and no hold bars! tornado and lightning storms flying around with crazy gales. It seemed like we were almost done so others started self rezzing and then the blaster accidently arrgo'd another group. I flew to the front of the mish and did a mass tp. some died before it went off. luckily, there was a hallway that fit my hurricane perfectly. The survivors and I took down the group a lot easier than the previous, but the blaster died from the first group. I love defenders.


...and of course.....my dark/dark defender...howling twilight coming back from a full restroom and team was just wiped. tp'd them in one place and used it. rezzed 7 at once. my most fav defender moment ever!!!! Defenders...we rock!

The Issue 24 Blast set changes should further improve the experience of playing Defenders.

Not to be a downer, but the only reason the OP pulled that off is that there happened to be an Empathy defender in the group. Without that particular character the actual scenario in that situation would be that the defender would take a ranged mez from the DE, the toggles would drop, and the defender would die instantly. The empathy mez protection is what really made the difference.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present:

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.