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[Arcana]

There are some powersets that simply shined on Defenders due to their strength in defending the squishies (which is what controllers primarily do). Empathy's ability to strengthen squishies with Fortitude (PBU fortitude even), give heals when damage does go through and also give them crash-less nukes with Adrenaline Boost made the need for controls much less prevalent.

You could argue the reverse, that controls make the need for heals and defenses less necessary.  So I consider that to be a wash.  The question is, is the difference between controller empathy and defender empathy so high that it is better than having an entire control set?

Then you get the Defender's secondary which generally contributes more offensively to the team than a controller's primary, especially /Sonic.

Especially Sonic implies all defender secondaries outdamage all controller primaries, and Sonic just has additional benefits, but that's not really true.  Control sets tend to have significant damage - they have to, because otherwise controllers wouldn't be able to solo.  And in fact, if we are only talking about solo damage output, then Fire, Illusion, and Plant are all very high damage sets.  They will outdamage the average defender secondary (they can give the average blaster primary a run for their money).  Electric is probably better than average also.  Overall, I believe the average controller outdamages the average defender solo, at least at higher levels (a lot of the damage potential of controller primaries comes from the tier 9 pet, for those that have one, and mass confusion is a horse of a different color altogether).

Your point about resistance debuffs is a good one though, but as I said there are exceptions.  Sonic Blast is one secondary.  There's also the question of how we judge team contributions.  Up to a point, more damage is always useful, whereas more mitigation isn't.  But the flip side is that usually more damage is a nice to have but not a necessity, whereas when you want more mitigation its a often need not a want, because you can't do much when you're dead.

[parabola]

This thread just makes me want the game back soooo much. All this talk of high end builds and incarnate stuff makes me smile; I played for almost the entire lifetime of the game, in all that time I had three level 50's*, never did any incarnate content whatsoever and didn't complete an IO build on any character. For me tooling around with low level characters in random teams was where the game was. I would generally tire of a character in the late 30's and roll another. I had a huge number of shiny mids builds planned for all the 50's that never happened though!

* and two of those were a pair of trollers that I dual boxed and farmed heavily. I discovered a neat trick that I ended up using for all my farming needs; I created an AE mission with critters that all had accelerate metabolism and farmed it with plant trollers. Hit each spawn with seeds of confusion and immediately bask in a dozen doses of AM. Immediately capped recharge, damage, recovery and movement. At some point they changed critter ai a little which nerfed this somewhat and I could never work out if that was to address this exploit specifically of if it got caught in the crossfire of another fix.

[Auroxis]

You could argue the reverse, that controls make the need for heals and defenses less necessary.  So I consider that to be a wash.  The question is, is the difference between controller empathy and defender empathy so high that it is better than having an entire control set?

My point is that Defender Empathy (when used well) is so powerful defensively for a team, that having controls as well just isn't necessary. In other words, while defense can reach a point where anything more is superfluous, that isn't the case with more offense.

Yes, Sonic is hands down the best offensive contributor to teams. But most other secondaries aren't actually that bad offensively:

- Beam Rifle gives -res and -regen.
- Dual Pistols and Archery on high recharge builds get a mini-nuke every other mob, DP gets some -res as well.
- Dark Blast gets two fast recharging cones to load with damage procs.
- Rad can fit a -res proc on everything, has three AoE powers, a strong single target power in Cosmic Burst and a proc machine in Neutrino Bolt.
- Fire Blast while isn't as good on defenders can still dish out solid damage.
- Ice Blast had a blaster-level nuke and AoE (Blizzard+Ice Storm)

When it comes to solo I agree controllers are better, but on a team Defenders can have a higher offensive contribution while being able to sufficiently keep a team going (not on the level of a controller, but on a level that's needed).

[Vee]

Then again there are those of us who'd prefer almost anything to an emp except in certain situations (which Arcana laid out a few dozen pages back). Just sayin'  ;)

[Auroxis]

In general, Controllers have a higher defensive ceiling while Defenders have a higher offensive one. However, pairing the strongest defensive powerset with even more defense in a controller isn't that flexible (emp/ill?), same with defenders who choose to go full offense (kin/sonic?) while controllers paired with the more offensive secondaries (kin/rad/cold and a few others) are fairly balanced and more likely to contribute to a team.

It's why /Kin, /Rad and /Cold were so popular for controllers, since they complemented the strong defensive primary very well. It really comes down to preference, both AT's are close performance-wise depending on the choices you make.

[Arcana]

When it comes to solo I agree controllers are better, but on a team Defenders can have a higher offensive contribution while being able to sufficiently keep a team going (not on the level of a controller, but on a level that's needed).

Whether they can have is not the question.  The question is do they have.  Outside of Sonic Attack debuffs, I don't see a strong argument for that.  While all the things you list are strong points of those sets, I don't think its obvious those properties are sufficiently good to overcome containment and pet damage consistently.  All defender secondaries are hobbled by the defender modifier - 0.65.  The controller modifier is worse - 0.55 - but Controllers get containment, and at least one fast recharging immobilize to enable it.  And all their pet damage is at an effective 1.0 modifier.  To put this another way, Defender secondaries basically did about half the damage as Blaster primaries due to the damage modifier difference.  If you believe Defender secondaries did more damage than Controller primaries, you're effectively saying that Controller primaries did less than half the damage of Blaster primaries.  That defies gameplay experience.

[Auroxis]

"Defender secondaries basically did about half the damage as Blaster primaries" isn't really telling the whole story.

1. Res debuffs were more powerful for defenders, which closes the gap a bit.
2. Once you add IO procs into the mix, the gap closes.
3. Once you add purple IO procs and Reactive into the mix, the gap closes further.
4. As I mentioned for Ice, they did the same damage as blasters with a couple powers.

Gameplay experience isn't really anything I can comment upon after so long, but I remember fire/kin not being that much of an offensive powerhouse in teams where using an AoE immob every opportunity was often a detriment to team clear speed (as it kept the mobs spread out instead of close together).

[Arcana]

In general, Controllers have a higher defensive ceiling while Defenders have a higher offensive one. However, pairing the strongest defensive powerset with even more defense in a controller isn't that flexible (emp/ill?), same with defenders who choose to go full offense (kin/sonic?) while controllers paired with the more offensive secondaries (kin/rad/cold and a few others) are fairly balanced and more likely to contribute to a team.

It's why /Kin, /Rad and /Cold were so popular for controllers, since they complemented the strong defensive primary very well. It really comes down to preference, both AT's are close performance-wise depending on the choices you make.

I think its a misconception to think of Controller primaries as "defensive."  Controller primaries have a lot of control, but they are offensive sets - they are the only offense controllers have, and its a sizeable amount of offense.  Consider Fire Control.  Fire Cages is an AoE immobilize, but look at the power as an offensive power.  It does 0.33 scale damage with activation time of 1.03 seconds and 8 seconds of recharge.  Its a very fast recharging AoE.  Its DPA per target is pretty low (0.33/1.03 = 0.32 unadjusted) on initial application but with containment that doubles to 0.64 DS/sec.  Compare to Dark Blast's AoEs which have ratings of 0.55, 0.39, and 0.85.  Its a very respectable AoE in its own right, and hits a very large area at long range.

Then there's the PA.  Often described as indestructible tanks, the focus there is also often on the defensive.  But the PA average an attack about every two seconds or so, each doing about 0.3 DS damage, and there's three of them.  Due to the wonky way their damage works, they actually behave like they do 0.65 DS per attack on the pet scale, or about 58 damage per attack, or about 87 dps while they are up.  That's actually a lot of damage for a "defensive" power, and the PA were explicitly designed to deal that level of damage.

The reason why /Kin and /Rad were popular among Controllers wasn't because of a desire to match offensive secondaries with defensive primaries.  It had more to do with /Kin and /Rad synergizing well with Controllers, and specifically Controller pets.  Those sets took already formidable Controller primaries and made them better.  It wasn't just /Kin and /Rad that were popular, they were most popular with Illusion and Fire Control, the two control sets seen as the strongest offensively.  Far from trying to combine offense with defense, the popular combos were the ones that took formidable controller offense and mated them with formidable offensive secondaries.

If players were more interested in balancing "offensive" secondaries and "defensive" primaries and vice versa, the most popular controller combos would likely reflect that.  They tended to reflect the opposite.  Earth/Emp was a popular combo, but it combined what was recognized as a more "controll-y" primary and a more defensive secondary.  Grav/FF was also popular, also combining a more "defensive" primary and a defensive secondary.  Ill/Rad, Fire/Kin, and Fire/Rad need no introductions.  Conversely, combos like Grav/Rad, Earth/Kin, and Mind/Rad were far less popular (they existed, but at a significantly lower frequency).  The key wasn't offense/defense balance, it was synergy, and synergy often paired like with like.  In fact the only controller combo that lacked obvious synergy and fell into the category of offense/defense balance that was at all popular that I'm aware of was Ill/FF.  It was an interestingly common combo, with no obvious driving reason.  It was never a flavor of the month build.  It has obvious anti-synergies (most of the pets do not benefit from bubbles).  But it was an oddly popular conceptual combo, relatively speaking.

[Arcana]

"Defender secondaries basically did about half the damage as Blaster primaries" isn't really telling the whole story.

1. Res debuffs were more powerful for defenders, which closes the gap a bit.
2. Once you add IO procs into the mix, the gap closes.
3. Once you add purple IO procs and Reactive into the mix, the gap closes further.
4. As I mentioned for Ice, they did the same damage as blasters with a couple powers.

Averaged across all defenders, those effects don't really close the gap that much.  For example, the defender Sonic debuff is -20%, while the blaster debuff is -13%.  That means, in an environment where the average debuff is one stack (across all targets, only one of the debuffs is in an AoE outside of the tier 9) that means the Blaster would be doing 1.125 * 1.13 = 1.27 while the defender would be doing 0.65 * 1.2 = 0.78.  That means originally the blaster was doing 1.125/0.65 = 1.73x damage, and after would be doing 1.27/0.78 = 1.62x.  And this doesn't factor in defiance, which in teams can average a good +30% base damage.  That means the blaster would tend to be doing between 6% and 15% more total damage, relative to the defender.  And all of this only affects Sonic, just one ranged set among many.  The other -res effects in other sets would have an even smaller effect.

Also, the reason why damage procs don't have as large effect in practice as you're suggesting here is because in real builds damage procs have an opportunity cost.  For every proc you slot, there's a chance you're degrading your build in some other way, including ways that hit damage.  But lets take the best damage procs, the purple 33% ones.  They have a 33% chance to hit for 107.1 damage, which means on average they increase the damage of the power they are slotted in by 35.34.  If you were to slot this into a Blaster and Defender power that did scale 1.0 damage, that would be 62.56 for the blaster and 36.15 for the defender.  Slotted to about +100% damage, the initial difference would be 125.12 vs 72.3, which we've already established means the blaster would be doing 125.12/72.3 = 1.73x damage.  With the proc, that changes to an average damage of 160.46 vs 107.64, or a difference of 160.46/107.46 = 1.49.  And that is with the best proc; you can't do that to every single attack.

But lets put it all together: in a relatively low damage attack (scale 1.0), where the blaster is running a mediocre +30% defiance, and we're only counting about +100% damage strength buff - meaning no other help from the team which would reduce the effects being looked at - we have the blaster doing (62.56 * (1.0 + 1.0 + 0.3) +35.34) * 1.13 = 202.53.  The defender would be at (36.15 * (1.0 + 1.0) + 35.34) * 1.2 = 129.17.  That puts the gap at 1.57, down from 1.73.  That is the best case scenario.  So initially defender damage was 58% of blasters by modifier, which I called "about half."  With all of these factors calculated in their best possible way to the defender, that drops to 64% of the Blaster, six percentage points higher and just under "about two thirds."

And that's the best case scenario.  Most scenarios will have a lower effect, which averaged across the entire archetype means the final number probably moves closer to "58%" than "64%."  Given that, "about half" still seems a colloquially reasonable description.

Gameplay experience isn't really anything I can comment upon after so long, but I remember fire/kin not being that much of an offensive powerhouse in teams where using an AoE immob every opportunity was often a detriment to team clear speed (as it kept the mobs spread out instead of close together).

But if you're going to count that, then the highest offensive contribution won't come from controllers or defenders, but from a melee archetype with taunt and the ability to cluster targets for AoEs.  No amount of res debuffs coming from the worlds best defender is going to scratch the paint off an Invuln tanker with invincibility setting up the blaster AoEs.

Edit: this also means controllers like Illusion have an additional offensive contribution that hasn't been counted yet: the PA can taunt critters together, something I don't think any defender primary or secondary power really does off the top of my head.

[Joshex]

We were talking about the ITF, and the ITF brings special considerations.  Any tank can solo a map, but then again any well-built anything can solo most standard content (anything short of an AV, say, can be done with decent, but not overly powerful builds).  The ITF is special because the content is always scaled for a full team and Cimerorans pose special problems for a solo melee archetype, specifically stacking phalanx defenses and huge amounts of -Def debuffs.  You can soft-cap almost anything, but without defense debuff resistance you'll lose that defense and a huge chunk of your protection against Cims very fast.  And if you can't kill or mez then quickly and you let them pack together too closely their phalanx defenses can make them literally unhittable.  Even Invuln tanks with capped resistances and well-slotted invincibility can see their mitigation, and then their health bar right behind it, melt.

I kinda had ITF and a lot of other mission content in mind when I wrote that. there are nigh invincible builds out there, tank or otherwise, seen some good MM builds just murder it. did an all MM ITF once nothing stood a chance.

but yeah a good tank build can do the mobs in an ITF solo without incarnate, and possibly kill faster than a lot of incarnate and boosted builds. there's only a few types of mobs my tank dies on and only at +4 x8 incarnate and.. only SOME of those mobs like 1 or 2 types of enemies from those mobs, so if I get a pack of all them I might fall but that is only a temporary setback as I have self rez. when my tank was unslotted I'd typically have to wait 20 minutes after each defeat to get back up with enough chance to beat some mobs, but once the build was finished that was it. my tank was sunset with only tier 2 and a very weak tier 3 incarnate power, in the end I rarely used the tier 2 anyways.

[Auroxis]

But if you're going to count that, then the highest offensive contribution won't come from controllers or defenders, but from a melee archetype with taunt and the ability to cluster targets for AoEs.  No amount of res debuffs coming from the worlds best defender is going to scratch the paint off an Invuln tanker with invincibility setting up the blaster AoEs.

Highest? No, but you can freely use your AoE's without disrupting the aggro guy. And even with the lower damage, there are some strong AoE's available.

[Cherubael]

If you ask me the problem is that "most effective" is pretty meaningless, in the context of effective builds. Optimized builds were so powerful compared to normal that they could essentially solo a full x8 mission's worth of mobs in most cases (at least on even/+1 levels. On x8/+4 I grant it is a bit more specific).

So what exactly is the most effective defender/controller? Is it the build that can take the weakest/most uncoordinated/whatever team and make them succeed against x8/+4? Or is it the one that can speed up an effective team the most?

As an example, my FF/Dual pistols defender (a combination I've never heard described as a powerhouse  ;) ) could solo x8 at a pretty reasonable rate at the end - though the bosses did drag out a bit if they were nasty enough that dragging them with you to the next spawn was risky. This defender essentially provided a defense softcap and a stack of assault/tactics to the team, plus in the neighborhood of around 650 wide-area aoe damage over 5-6 seconds for most spawns, while having a _lot_ of personal durability (defense softcap, 60%ish smash/lethal resist, rebirth destiny for healing/regen).

Basically - when you could pretty much build a defender to be a team of one, in addition to the support powers, what are the parameters by which you judge efficiency? The answer varies wildly depending on how you value defensive/offensive support and personal durability/damage compared to each other. :)

[umber]

In general I agree.  The average controller will tend to provide more utility to the typical team than the average defender because controllers essentially have two support sets to the defender's one.  You might argue some corner case exceptions. 

Agreed, its why I never really took to the defender AT as I almost always felt I could bring more support to a typical team with one of my controllers.  If the team needed more damage output I'd bring a blaster.  Defenders tended to fall into a D&D Bard-esque "jack of all trades, master of none" role, once a player had a decent number of alts to choose from there was likely a better choice to be had.

The only powerset that I found to be sufficiently stronger being fielded by a defender over a controller/corrupter to merit playing the set as a defender was Force Field, and that was due to DEF's odd nature in the game.  For sets like Empathy or Thermal, a little more healing or a little more RES just wasn't that noticeable.  For sets like Storm Summoning, the power was less in the variables and more in what the power did at its base, a controller or defender stormie was going to field tons of KB either way.  But for Force Field... a few extra points in DEF from the defender version was appreciable.

Even there, I'm still left with the nagging feeling I'd be better off with a FF controller that is also tossing out holds preventing the attacks from reaching the force fields in the first place.

[Auroxis]

For sets like Empathy or Thermal, a little more healing or a little more RES just wasn't that noticeable.

But for Force Field... a few extra points in DEF from the defender version was appreciable.

Empathy's key power was Fortitude, which had greater DEF values for defenders than for controllers and could be applied to most of your team.

[Ironwolf]

I found that Empathy while useful - did little to stop incoming damage.

It was not Defender-like behavior it was reactive to damage. Dark and some of the other Defender power sets minimized or in many cases stopped altogether damage even hitting your team. I use Dark first because in mitigating damage it was incredible. So many slows, stuns, debuffs and other benefits like -Recharge that it was so far superior to the heals based set of Empathy that having an Empath on a team with a Dark Defender or Corruptor was nearly pointless.

While all power sets had advantages, I personally found Empathy to be one of the weaker sets.

[ivanhedgehog]

I found that Empathy while useful - did little to stop incoming damage.

It was not Defender-like behavior it was reactive to damage. Dark and some of the other Defender power sets minimized or in many cases stopped altogether damage even hitting your team. I use Dark first because in mitigating damage it was incredible. So many slows, stuns, debuffs and other benefits like -Recharge that it was so far superior to the heals based set of Empathy that having an Empath on a team with a Dark Defender or Corruptor was nearly pointless.

While all power sets had advantages, I personally found Empathy to be one of the weaker sets.

empathy was strong in fights that did not require enemy targets for heals. hami raids and stf's. also some like kin could not heal ranged dps as effectivly as emp. there were situations through out the game where one power set or another was more or not as good as others. It didnt make that one bad, it showed how diverse the coh devs managed to make the game.

[Auroxis]

Empathy Defenders could:

1. Give +30% defense to most of your team with Fortitude and Maneuvers (I personally kept 6 people Fort'd constantly, and sometimes even 7 if I had someone feeding me recharge). 

2. Fortitude also happens to give a damage buff, so +50% damage to your teammates together with Assault.

3. Give a character softcapped defenses with PBU Fortitude.

4. Easily heal any damage that goes through those defenses with active heals (Heal Other, Healing Aura) or passive heals (Regeneration Aura, Adrenalin Boost).

5. Give a team mez protection.

6. Solve a team's endurance issues with Recovery Aura.

7. Give fast recharging crash-less nukes to a blaster with Adrenalin Boost.

And a nice bonus is how none of these have to be done at the start of fights. Empathy Defenders can start blasting the second fights start, they don't have to apply control powers or debuffs on the mobs before their benefits take effect. Empathy was weak? Maybe healers were weak.

[Winter Fable]

Agreed, its why I never really took to the defender AT as I almost always felt I could bring more support to a typical team with one of my controllers.  If the team needed more damage output I'd bring a blaster.  Defenders tended to fall into a D&D Bard-esque "jack of all trades, master of none" role, once a player had a decent number of alts to choose from there was likely a better choice to be had.

Ouch!!That kinda hurts.

[Noyjitat]

I wanted defenders for debuffs and team buffs, dominators for holds and confuse, and blasters / scrappers are self explanatory. Tanks when needed for dangerous bosses and speedruns.  (Although i wont turn down one of those rare masterminds or scrappers that play like tanks.) Controllers are a nice counterpart for a dom or defender to overall add extra security to the team are a nice or to use as a hybrid for when doms and defenders are not available. Corruptors are an interesting mix and when possible the rare skilled stalker to melt some bosses.

[umber]

Empathy's key power was Fortitude, which had greater DEF values for defenders than for controllers and could be applied to most of your team.

Never cared for Empathy.  The combination of being largely reactive and high-maintenance - rotating through a team Fort cycle was awfully distracting for me, moreso than back when FF bubbles were individually applied and that became a non-issue itself when the mass-application came into play.

Fort wasn't bad, and yeah it benefited from the defender values greater than controllers, but IMO the benefit wasn't large enough even the odd nature of DEF to encourage Emp-Defender over Emp-Controller.  Slotted, what was it, 18% vs 23% controller vs defender?  Forcefield's values were large enough, getting close enough to the softcap, that those small value changes started to take on much more significance.  A FF defender was giving out, what, about 40% with the small and big bubbles combined?  While a FF controller gave out about 30%? 

(I'm honestly asking/guessing/trying to remember, I don't have the numbers in front of me)

Even before getting into things like Maneuvers or Power Boost, the FF defender was cutting the incoming damage rate vs a FF controller by about 50% (IIRC), for those small defender-controller values differences thanks to the creeping nature of CoH DEF. 

So yeah I see what you're saying about Fort, just found FF to be a larger beneficiary of the defender-controller value differences, and even if Empathy was on par with that benefit I still personally didn't care for playing the powerset.  And thats all that I was speaking of, personal perception of what would push me over the ledge into playing a defender over a controller with FF being one of the few sets that would.