New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

If you have lvl 50+4  incarnate powers then you should have to run the TF +4.Seems only fair.

You don't get to use +3, only the +1, in the statesman task force.  Only the alpha slot level shift worked outside of incarnate content.

[Arcana]

One thing they can't overcome ; - Lag.

didn't you ever get support requests from blasters about being one-shotted by players and AVs? the devs were very clear that was a lag issue (or something else got you) as they clearly instated a handicap on all toons to protect against one-shots even while un-enhanced, out leveled and with no active buffs.

As previously discussed, the one-shot code only protected against single ticks of damage.  And it only prevented one-shot from full health.  If you had even a single point of damage, you could then be one-shot killed from there.  I'm unaware of any lag issue regarding the one-shot code, and I know of no dev statement to that effect.

There were some internal timing issues that affected other parts of combat, like the tricky issue involving despawning oil slicks, but that issue is not related to lag.

yeah, every toon can withstand an attack from recluse, but they'd need to be psychic to get the timing right for the insp to refil health due to lag. even with def around 80% to all LR's damage types you're looking at a /hard/ hit once every 10 attacks which may take around 1 to 2 minutes. which can be enhanced by fly tanking (cause spider boy can't fly) so I'd say once every 15 attacks. the problem is there is a chance for 2-3 consecutive hits, even with such good defense. better have a backup blaster fly-tanker, better have several. definitely need provoke too, need to keep him off the other half of the team that need to do the towers.

You could also use pulling tricks and dead zones.  But if you're going to straight-up try to tank Recluse, I would put two blasters on tank detail and the other six on tower detail.  The "tank" blasters would both be running Hoarfrost for max health and have veng to keep each other propped up on death.  And I'd have them both have the tankiest Lore pets.  I don't have a good recollection for that, but I'm thinking Longbow or Cim.  Both would have the maximum level shift possible, plus pack ultimates.

Then again, I wonder what would happen if you just got all eight blasters together, stacked maximum Barrier and Clarion perma-cycled, pulled Recluse right up to the towers, and let the overlapping buffs keep you alive.  With eight blasters you can cycle two Clarions, three Barriers, and three Rebirths.  That's a lot of protection.

actually recluse isn't the problem, it's ghost widow, mako and scirroco. for ghost widow you'd have to have def, res and breakies pre- applied and would have to expect a death or 2 on the pull to get her alone. you'd also need a team of heal-other pool powers.

I used to be a pulling Jedi master.  I can tell you its possible to pull them apart without dying.  I don't think anyone was 100% perfect at it, but I had something like an 80% success rate at single pulling the AVs.  I've never died doing it.  Hover-snipe works best, because you can insta-break line of sight.

You don't try to pull GW first.  You'd try to get Scirocco or Mako first.  I would probably try to get GW last.

I suppose it's not impossible, but a masters run would be close to impossible that way.

A master run with all blasters would be mostly a matter of luck.  Too many things can break wrong to guarantee a master run, but it would mainly be a question of how many times you could get a team to try before giving up in frustration.  If they all wanted it badly enough, they could just keep going over and over until they got it.

[Arcana]

You don't get to use +3, only the +1, in the statesman task force.  Only the alpha slot level shift worked outside of incarnate content.

If memory serves, Ultimates also worked outside of Incarnate content.  So technically speaking you could be 50+2 in the STF.

[brothermutant]

Ok, new blaster inherent. Power Absorption.

Every time you are struck with a damage type the same as your Primary or Secondary power sets' damage type, you are healed (after taking damage) by 10 or 5% of the damage (10 if it matches the Primary/5% if it matches only the secondary).

[Ankhammon]

The devil is in the details.  When you say that Defenders were forced to "stay that way" in what way do you mean?

The original design intent for the archetypes was that (except for Scrappers) each was supposed to be very strong at one thing and weak at something else so that they were difficult to solo, but meshed well together on teams.  Defenders were supposed to be the ally support archetype, Tankers the aggro control and damage absorption archetype, and Blasters the offense archetype.  That means each was supposed to be good at that thing, and bad at the other two things.  Confinement to those rules doesn't mean that if people are unhappy with Defender damage then that means Defenders are being held back.  Defenders are only confined to those rules if there's an obvious problem with them and buffing the other two things is out of the question, or if there's obvious attempts to change the archetype over time to more closely match that description.  Both statements are false for Defenders, and for that matter Tankers.

Its obvious with Tankers: the devs decided that Tankers had issues that increasing offense would address, so they did it.  That basically tosses the Tanker design rule out the window.  Its less obvious for Defenders, but its important to realize that Defenders didn't actually have a problem that needed addressing at release.  They soloed more or less fine as an archetype.  And the reason was because Defenders were not just ally support from the beginning.  From the beginning, they were also the foe debuff archetype which helps self just as much as ally.  And a lot of their buffs affected self.  Because of that, Defenders were broken at launch in terms of their design intent.  They were never the ally support archetype only. 

The question is whether the devs, seeing this, tried to put the genie back into the bottle.  And the answer is: exactly the opposite.  Looking at the first two new Defender primaries created - Trick Arrow and Sonic - and you can see if anything the devs acknowledged that in the future no Defender primary should be too focused on ally-only buffs.  Sonic, pattered after Force Fields, nevertheless has a foe resistance debuff in tier 1.  That's not a coincidence.  Trick Arrow is practically all debuff, which makes it a dual self/ally beneficial powerset.

Really, there's two Defender primaries that stand out as being more ally and less solo-beneficial and those are Empathy and FF.  But even Empathy has implicit self heal in HA and both RAs affect self.  That's way more self buff than the archetype should have if it was following the original design rule.  Its really only FF that sticks to the original defender design rule, and rightly so that was pointed out repeatedly over the years.  But one powerset does not prove the assertion that the devs tried to keep Defenders in their original specialization.  In fact everything they did since launch proves the opposite.  Its just that they didn't do it with any special archetype-wide changes.  They did it in the design and balancing of Defender powersets.

And a word on inherents.  The notion that Defenders were ever "left out" of having an inherent is a pet peeve of mine.  The notion of "archetype inherent" is a fiction.  Archetypes were never supposed to have "special inherent powers."  The term "inherent" refers to a special group of powers intended to be granted to all players, like Rest and Sprint.  That group of powers was later used to hold powers intended to be granted to large subsets of characters, like all tankers or all blasters, when the devs got around to trying to fix perceived issues with them.  Tankers and Blasters got "inherents" specifically to fix problems.  When players started demanding that other archetypes get "an inherent" that was literally like someone seeing someone walk around on crutches and demanding to know why they were being left out.  The Scrapper inherent isn't even a real thing: its literally just a placeholder power that puts the little icon in the power tray that says "your powers all perform critical hits already, so shut up about it" and does nothing else.  I'm paraphrasing a bit there.

What I'm suggesting is that there was always the opinion that defenders were working "as intended" within the dev community. While they worked with the other 4 ATs to address issues that were in the players' minds, the devs took a different approach with defenders.

When Controllers complained about their low damage (and it was pathetically bad), they got containment damage which greatly increased their damage output. Seems to me they outpaced where defender damage was since they could get double damage (sans initial containment blast) as well as they had defender primaries as their secondaries.

When Tanks complained about falling behind, they got an additional –res and as you said added offense. Some could do considerable damage after that change.

When Blasters complained they didn't have enough survivability, the dev response came in the form of added offensive capacity (on several attempts). They still seemed to need something else in survivability.  I do think the developers didn't want it to be about buffs/de-buffs due to the I1 issue with devices blasters.

When Scrappers wanted more (well, everyone else was getting stuff) the dev response was the crit. inherent. Whether it did anything or not is beside the point. Scrappers were the most self contained AT on blue-side and didn't need anything.

When Defenders complained they didn't do enough damage the response was... end discount.

Personally, I would have added a scaling Mez resistance (based on incoming damage) as the inherent for Defenders instead of the end discount. That would have allowed them to overcome being mezzed to help out their team... just thought it fit better thematically.

They did solo reasonably well early on (early issues), particularly some sets (Rad/), but they weren't universally good at soloing. Even as late as when Sonic/ defenders were introduced, they had plenty of issues. I recall my sonic shield dropping every time I was hit after level 40 because sleeps dropped the shield and most enemy damage had a sleep component. That got changed to suppressed and that worked for me.

Now I am a self confessed Defender-phile and believe they were pretty special where they were. I also acknowledge that the I24 changes would have added huge amounts of damage to them. As such, I didn't really have a lot to complain about.

End result is most of this conversation about blaster issues is kind of focused on the +4/+8 solo crowd. And there were plenty of defenders who had issues that way.

[Arcana]

What I'm suggesting is that there was always the opinion that defenders were working "as intended" within the dev community. While they worked with the other 4 ATs to address issues that were in the players' minds, the devs took a different approach with defenders.

That's fundamentally incorrect.  While the devs listened to player feedback, they primarily sought to address problems that actually existed, not problems that players only complained about.  For example, the devs didn't respond to player feedback that controller damage was bad, but *specifically* to the complaint that controller damage was too tied up in the tier 9 pet.  That created a disparity in how controllers played before and after 38 which was higher than the devs felt was reasonable.  At the same time that the developers added containment, they *also* removed pet stacking, which *lowered* controller damage post-38.  They didn't unilaterally buff controllers, they shifted damage from the higher levels and granted it to controllers earlier.  And that wasn't just merely responding to a player complaint, that was backed up by testing and datamining.

Conversely, the problem with many complaints about defenders was that they were simply not backed up by the evidence.  To be blunt, if you complain about something the devs could verify to be false, that severely damaged your credibility.  So when the devs heard all these complaints about defenders not having enough damage to solo, when the data showed they soloed just fine on average, they simply moved on to other things.

That's wasn't opinion, that's simply fact.  The devs didn't just hand out buffs just to make players happy, they had to be justified through objective data.  And to be honest, I believe the devs so much wanted to do *something* for Defenders because of the persistent "inherent" complaints that they reached for the end discount thing as something they could at least justify objectively.  But there was no predisposition or prejudice there: if *anyone* could make the objective case that Defenders needed some sort of buff to damage, I believe they would have gotten one.

Its actually possible that the end discount came about in part because of testing I did that demonstrated that under certain circumstances you could prove that a defender could not possibly complete a standard difficulty mission without resting very often simply because they would run out of endurance.  That was the */Archery situation I mentioned earlier.  Against missions that spawned too many Lts with s/l resistance, you could prove that the net damage output of a Defender factoring in the most favorable endurance to damage conversion possible would not be enough.  I couldn't prove that defenders didn't do enough damage, only that they couldn't power that offense long enough to complete certain missions.

However, *never* did I hear the devs say that Defenders were okay by definition, only that the data consistently showed them as basically doing fine, and never did I hear the devs say that Defenders did too little damage but they *couldn't* buff damage, so Defenders were stuck.  There was no prohibition on Defenders doing more damage, and in fact they kept getting powersets that improved offense like Sonic.  The fact is nothing held back Defender damage like what held back Blaster mitigation.

End result is most of this conversation about blaster issues is kind of focused on the +4/+8 solo crowd. And there were plenty of defenders who had issues that way.

Then you haven't been listening.  If you could solo +4/x8 with *anything*, then your concerns were quite honestly unimportant.  Where the game needed the most balancing work was for the average casual player that made up over 90% of the playerbase.  For those people, Defenders were fine and Blasters were horrible.  For min/maxers and veteran players, it might have been the reverse in many cases, but those people didn't need any help.  Not only were they the extreme minority, they also could obviously play anything well.  Helping the good players get better always took a backseat to helping the average players play reasonably well at all.  As I stated repeatedly, you have to look at most dev balancing operations in that context, not the min/max context.

Honestly, the number of players that could consistently solo Blasters or anything else at +4/x8 are sufficiently low that to a first order approximation they represented zero percent of the playerbase.

[Noyjitat]

Pulling the avs is for wimps. Build a well balanced team with buffs/debuffs and rush all four of them for a fun time!

[blacksly]

When Controllers complained about their low damage (and it was pathetically bad), they got containment damage which greatly increased their damage output. Seems to me they outpaced where defender damage was since they could get double damage (sans initial containment blast) as well as they had defender primaries as their secondaries.

Controllers did not get Containment to add to their damage. They got it to replace the damage lost from running double and triple-stacked pet summons. Or, more accurately, as Arcana said, to shift the damage from post-32 pet-centric damage, to full-game direct damage dealing. Individually some lost damage (Fire, Illusion) while others gained damage (Gravity, Mind). But overall, I doubt that going from 2.5 sets of pets to 1 set but with double direct damage was an overall increase in damage post 32.

Funny, I think that IOs actually added a lot more to Controllers than to other ATs in terms of damage, simply because having a large AoE on an 8 second timer (base) that does low damage but accepts multiple damage IOs is basically the corner case for how to get the most damage out of damage IOs. Blasters may add 14.4 damage from an IO onto an AoE that does 130 damage, while Controllers added 28.8 from two IOs onto an AoE that does 40 damage.

[Codewalker]

There have been multiple pages on it that I've read through so it's possible I missed something, but I don't believe I've seen anyone bring up that Defenders did get a damage buff added to Vigilance. +30% when solo, decreasing by 10% for the first 3 team members.

In fact, it's that damage buff that Corruptor fans often used to argue that corruptors did too little damage, since defenders could do more damage solo than corrs (assuming suboptimal Scourge ticks, which happened quite a bit with minions and Lts).

Both ATs of course are stupidly amazing to the point of game-breaking on teams. That's probably why they didn't get targeted for buffs as much as blasters, because increasing their solo performance without also making them even more ridiculous on teams would have been quite difficult to pull off without unwanted side-effects.

That's also why I think that never in a million years would a powerset or archetype be allowed that mixed force-multiplying team buffs and self-affecting defensive powers. Or even complete (no holes) mez protection. The latter is a pet peeve of mine anyway -- players complaining that they want mez protection for XYZ archetype -- but if all ATs had mez protection, they might as well just remove mez from the game entirely.

Now, buff/assault or buff/melee or something like that we might have seen eventually, but I doubt they would have had any kind of significant personal defense. Or if they did, their buff sets would be severely stripped down.

... Ghost Widow ... All-blaster STF ... etc ...

Ghost Widow is a one-trick pony. Stack ranged defense. Bring purple inspirations. If she can't hit you with Soul Storm or her heal, she's toast. Helps to have an "Oh pancake!" button handy for if she gets a lucky hit in. I successfully tanked her on my energy/ice blaster on a (failed) pre-incarnate master's run after our stone tank got held and died.

All-blaster STFs were doable pre-incarnate, and not an uncommon occurrence once incarnate powers were in the mix. I'm not sure if anyone attempted a master run. I wouldn't call it impossible but it would be very luck dependent.

Pre-incarnate I participated in several all-defender teams and they steamrolled just about everything without breaking a sweat. Ironically, we were unable to complete the STF. I think Recluse himself wouldn't have been a problem -- but Hamidon is a cheating bastard who ignores most buffs/debuffs. We just couldn't get enough damage on the mitos to overcome the healing done by the greens before we started getting picked off. With more time, patience, and EoEs, it probably would have been doable. Certainly once Incarnates were a thing it would have been relatively easy.

The only thing more powerful than all-defender teams are all-controller teams, but only after level 38 or so. Up until then the defenders have a significant edge in actually defeating stuff, even if they aren't quite as safe.

But, as Arcana stated, powerset and AT balancing was not done with these kinds of high-end edge cases in mind.

[pinballdave]

Ghost Widow had a huge Achilles Heel many players didn't realize they could exploit.  Most of her strength comes from consistently hitting you.  That's where she gets her devastating mez and her large self heal.  Not everyone has high enough defense to protect against that, but if its just for one AV, everyone has enough inspiration slots to carry plain old medium lucks that will last long enough to dispatch her.

Enter the BUBBLER! Also, those Lord Recluse towers were designed with the detention field in mind!

[LaughingAlex]

I'll post these video for the +4/8x crowd;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFzFsHc75U (maybe this is why people liked other classes than blasters, and why some people need to stop saying only cater to the +4/8x)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs (Challenge vs punishing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL4st0blGU (Depth vs Complexity)

So, what does this wholly have to do with everything here?  Firstly, not everyone played at +4/8x.  I generally played at 8x, why?  Because the only increase for the most part on some characters was just the damage I had to inflict to destroy the mobs and the damage reduction.  Just upping the difficulty to +4 didn't make fights harder, but more just last longer.

Another thing to consider is how inconsistent the difficulty of some mobs were.  I for one actually disliked the presence of the council being a punching bag, in a lot of ways, but they were kind of an "easy difficulty" setting without being an official difficulty setting.  In a lot of ways, they were as a mob there for people who generally hated fighting any kind of buffs/debuffs/crowd control the mobs used here and there.  But city of had some spikes, big ones, when buffs/debuffs came along and it even had mobs who were brutally difficult early on.  For example the vahzilok.  They could debuff your recharge rates to a point that you just automatically lost.  You had so few attacks that you could automatically lose(i'll count retreating as losing for this to) for taking on a couple of lieutenants at level 7-8.  Some mobs had crowd control early, to.

Now, city of heroes gave you some good solutions to counter this stuff, but it didn't have as much of a tutorial for that as I feel it could have.  It should have had inspirations explained better.  The player instead just had to figure it out.  Facing crowd control?  Use break frees, simple.  Facing -recharge debuffs?  Use some purple inspirations, ect.  Instead many people were likely not getting right away what the other inspirations did.  They only knew that the blue inspiration gave them endurance and the green one health.  Because there wasn't much to explain that in the game.

We get our game back, revising the tutorial would definently be a smart move.  More than it already was.  Include an inspiration tutorial and make the player USE the inspirations to win.  Make them use the break frees and purple inspirations.  Make them use resistances.  I'd also have a tutorial explaining the value of buffs by having a mission in which an NPC has you fight something with sonic resonance shields and without to explain how buffs work.  I say sonic resonance BECAUSE IT IS RELIABLE.  Resistance always works.  Guild wars 1 actually had tutorials in the game for classes and how they played, and while it wasn't 100% perfect, it was still smart and expected you to use the skills/spells.

But guild wars only taught you how to use a class you selected.  So players wouldn't learn anything about how other classes worked.  This lead to things like the infamous "Wa/Mo" or "Wammo".  A player playing warrior/monk who only saw how overpowered he was with his health regen from mending, high damage and armor ratings in the early game.  He thought he was an indestructable force of nature, even though mending only healed, at most, six HP/second, and many enemies could hit for far, far harder than that later on.  So he gets later in the game, he dies constantly taking off more than he can chew, refusing to learn better spells/skills to survive things due to mending giving him a crutch for enough time that he became stubborn.

I think a tutorial in which players learn the roles of the other classes would be helpful.

So back on topic a bit(blasters):

Firstly, as mentioned early levels already had enemies that could shut your offense down.  Other archtypes had better counters and tools to deal with that, blasters needed to wipe the guys out quickly.  But even earlier days, blasters sucked at it.  They had that dreaded 25% chance to outright miss.  Many people felt this game was a luck based game for it and even quit over that, and I am certain that blasters being so dependant on that certainly didn't help the game.  And when people were hit with holds, if they didn't know anyone by then, well I am sure they'd have cried fake difficulty, quit and never came back.

Granted, our community really made the game work, because without it I'm sure people wouldn't have access to that knowledge that "breakfrees counter holds, keep them with you.".  But other than seeing hold and not being able to do anything, was there anything to tell you how to stop it?  Not really.  And because blasters generally had nothing BUT damage, well a lot of blasters didn't learn anything about the game, only how blues and greens worked.  But blues and greens were only reactive, they were not very strategic or helpful in reality, because they didn't counter the real fundamental threats players had to deal with; enemy CC and debuffs/buffs.  But many blasters didn't learn that right away, unlike other archtypes :/.

[pinballdave]

There have been multiple pages on it that I've read through so it's possible I missed something, but I don't believe I've seen anyone bring up that Defenders did get a damage buff added to Vigilance. +30% when solo, decreasing by 10% for the first 3 team members.

In fact, it's that damage buff that Corruptor fans often used to argue that corruptors did too little damage, since defenders could do more damage solo than corrs (assuming suboptimal Scourge ticks, which happened quite a bit with minions and Lts).

Both ATs of course are stupidly amazing to the point of game-breaking on teams. That's probably why they didn't get targeted for buffs as much as blasters, because increasing their solo performance without also making them even more ridiculous on teams would have been quite difficult to pull off without unwanted side-effects.

That's also why I think that never in a million years would a powerset or archetype be allowed that mixed force-multiplying team buffs and self-affecting defensive powers. Or even complete (no holes) mez protection. The latter is a pet peeve of mine anyway -- players complaining that they want mez protection for XYZ archetype -- but if all ATs had mez protection, they might as well just remove mez from the game entirely.

Now, buff/assault or buff/melee or something like that we might have seen eventually, but I doubt they would have had any kind of significant personal defense. Or if they did, their buff sets would be severely stripped down.

Ghost Widow is a one-trick pony. Stack ranged defense. Bring purple inspirations. If she can't hit you with Soul Storm or her heal, she's toast. Helps to have an "Oh pancake!" button handy for if she gets a lucky hit in. I successfully tanked her on my energy/ice blaster on a (failed) pre-incarnate master's run after our stone tank got held and died.

All-blaster STFs were doable pre-incarnate, and not an uncommon occurrence once incarnate powers were in the mix. I'm not sure if anyone attempted a master run. I wouldn't call it impossible but it would be very luck dependent.

Pre-incarnate I participated in several all-defender teams and they steamrolled just about everything without breaking a sweat. Ironically, we were unable to complete the STF. I think Recluse himself wouldn't have been a problem -- but Hamidon is a cheating bastard who ignores most buffs/debuffs. We just couldn't get enough damage on the mitos to overcome the healing done by the greens before we started getting picked off. With more time, patience, and EoEs, it probably would have been doable. Certainly once Incarnates were a thing it would have been relatively easy.

The only thing more powerful than all-defender teams are all-controller teams, but only after level 38 or so. Up until then the defenders have a significant edge in actually defeating stuff, even if they aren't quite as safe.

But, as Arcana stated, powerset and AT balancing was not done with these kinds of high-end edge cases in mind.

I can see why level 38 is the turning point in controllers vs. defenders. I also believe that mixture of controllers and defenders needs to be considered as well. Illusion has a lot more offense than Earth or Ice in my opinion. Whichever AT certain combos like bubbles+kinetics+dark excel over FF sonic or trap overkill on defense and resistance. I did experience a Reichsman where a sonic+bubbler+storm had amazing results.

[Arcana]

Enter the BUBBLER! Also, those Lord Recluse towers were designed with the detention field in mind!

FF did pretty good in the STF since FF defense was particularly good to have against Ghost Widow, and FF defenders and controllers that took repulsion field could keep repairmen away from towers.  Also was funny when Recluse triggered his mass summons at the end.

[pinballdave]

FF did pretty good in the STF since FF defense was particularly good to have against Ghost Widow, and FF defenders and controllers that took repulsion field could keep repairmen away from towers.  Also was funny when Recluse triggered his mass summons at the end.

I admit I slept some since then, and we are on the same page. IIRC, I used Force Bubble for the repairmen since its didn't end drain like repulsion field would.

FF was also very good for the Apex taskforce. Edit: while the defense is good on Apex, the particular instance I misremembered was the director mission in the TIN MAGE task force.

[Arcana]

That's also why I think that never in a million years would a powerset or archetype be allowed that mixed force-multiplying team buffs and self-affecting defensive powers.

You could argue that Widows dance on that line.  They get maneuvers, assault, leadership, and mindlink that are team buffs, and one of which is a direct team damage buff.  Not quite as strong as what I think you're getting at, but I think it is precedent setting.

Now, buff/assault or buff/melee or something like that we might have seen eventually, but I doubt they would have had any kind of significant personal defense. Or if they did, their buff sets would be severely stripped down.

Well, buff and defense are on the same "side" of the build ledger, so you're unlikely to ever get both as complete powersets.  But I could see a defender primary that had an analog to the protector bots in the mastermind primaries.  In fact I could see an entire drone-based defender primary focused mostly on ally buffs but with some self mitigation buffs as well, balanced against drone mechanics (like for example some of them could be destructible, making it harder to sustain self buffs indefinitely).  That would add interesting mechanics to defender primaries, and also be an interesting pairing for the Robotics primary.

[Vee]

re MoSTF - i'd be more impressed at 8 blasters getting past the tree level without dying than the end AVs.

[Ankhammon]

That's fundamentally incorrect.  While the devs listened to player feedback, they primarily sought to address problems that actually existed, not problems that players only complained about.  For example, the devs didn't respond to player feedback that controller damage was bad, but *specifically* to the complaint that controller damage was too tied up in the tier 9 pet.  That created a disparity in how controllers played before and after 38 which was higher than the devs felt was reasonable.  At the same time that the developers added containment, they *also* removed pet stacking, which *lowered* controller damage post-38.  They didn't unilaterally buff controllers, they shifted damage from the higher levels and granted it to controllers earlier.  And that wasn't just merely responding to a player complaint, that was backed up by testing and datamining.

Conversely, the problem with many complaints about defenders was that they were simply not backed up by the evidence.  To be blunt, if you complain about something the devs could verify to be false, that severely damaged your credibility.  So when the devs heard all these complaints about defenders not having enough damage to solo, when the data showed they soloed just fine on average, they simply moved on to other things.

That's wasn't opinion, that's simply fact.  The devs didn't just hand out buffs just to make players happy, they had to be justified through objective data.  And to be honest, I believe the devs so much wanted to do *something* for Defenders because of the persistent "inherent" complaints that they reached for the end discount thing as something they could at least justify objectively.  But there was no predisposition or prejudice there: if *anyone* could make the objective case that Defenders needed some sort of buff to damage, I believe they would have gotten one.

Its actually possible that the end discount came about in part because of testing I did that demonstrated that under certain circumstances you could prove that a defender could not possibly complete a standard difficulty mission without resting very often simply because they would run out of endurance.  That was the */Archery situation I mentioned earlier.  Against missions that spawned too many Lts with s/l resistance, you could prove that the net damage output of a Defender factoring in the most favorable endurance to damage conversion possible would not be enough.  I couldn't prove that defenders didn't do enough damage, only that they couldn't power that offense long enough to complete certain missions.

However, *never* did I hear the devs say that Defenders were okay by definition, only that the data consistently showed them as basically doing fine, and never did I hear the devs say that Defenders did too little damage but they *couldn't* buff damage, so Defenders were stuck.  There was no prohibition on Defenders doing more damage, and in fact they kept getting powersets that improved offense like Sonic.  The fact is nothing held back Defender damage like what held back Blaster mitigation.

I don't think you were reading my post the way I intended. Probably my fault as I was typing it up during training at work. :) I meant to say that this was the perception of those in the forums (and certainly enough to give me pause). I never had devs ears and could not (and would not) speak on their behalf. 


And yeah, I remember post after post from devs and those quoting them stating they didn't see the damage issue with defenders. All I can say to that is I played them, solo'd them, teamed with them, played many multiple characters and some of them simply took a long time to deliver the knockout blow. It's not that they couldn't stand the incoming damage and it's not that they couldn't solo, it was just the return took a long time to set up.
Typical situations include setting active defense (toggle or other ~3 seconds), group buffing (that affects you ~1 second), debuff of target (or cage or other special touch ~2-3 seconds) and then blast.
Much of this was without any substantial damage to the enemy. This left some Defenders with a "feeling" of under-performance. Particularly when you see a blaster or scrapper or brute or... jump in and do lots of damage in those 5-8 seconds you are attempting to set things up.  

And bear in mind, that I did not completely share those thoughts. Some sets needed help, but others did not. Dark blast (and it got help), Dark Miasma (and it got lots of help), Sonic Resonance (sleep hole that I mentioned earlier), the list goes on.  


As for the controller change, I stand corrected. I did think that the devs got rid of multiple pets an issue or two before they instituted the double damage on contain. I do wonder if it didn't smooth out controller damage somewhat. I'm thinking of Earth and Ice trollers... double poo vs. being able to target what you want and continue hitting it. 

[Ankhammon]

There have been multiple pages on it that I've read through so it's possible I missed something, but I don't believe I've seen anyone bring up that Defenders did get a damage buff added to Vigilance. +30% when solo, decreasing by 10% for the first 3 team members.

In fact, it's that damage buff that Corruptor fans often used to argue that corruptors did too little damage, since defenders could do more damage solo than corrs (assuming suboptimal Scourge ticks, which happened quite a bit with minions and Lts).

Both ATs of course are stupidly amazing to the point of game-breaking on teams. That's probably why they didn't get targeted for buffs as much as blasters, because increasing their solo performance without also making them even more ridiculous on teams would have been quite difficult to pull off without unwanted side-effects.

That's also why I think that never in a million years would a powerset or archetype be allowed that mixed force-multiplying team buffs and self-affecting defensive powers. Or even complete (no holes) mez protection. The latter is a pet peeve of mine anyway -- players complaining that they want mez protection for XYZ archetype -- but if all ATs had mez protection, they might as well just remove mez from the game entirely.

Now, buff/assault or buff/melee or something like that we might have seen eventually, but I doubt they would have had any kind of significant personal defense. Or if they did, their buff sets would be severely stripped down.

Ghost Widow is a one-trick pony. Stack ranged defense. Bring purple inspirations. If she can't hit you with Soul Storm or her heal, she's toast. Helps to have an "Oh pancake!" button handy for if she gets a lucky hit in. I successfully tanked her on my energy/ice blaster on a (failed) pre-incarnate master's run after our stone tank got held and died.

All-blaster STFs were doable pre-incarnate, and not an uncommon occurrence once incarnate powers were in the mix. I'm not sure if anyone attempted a master run. I wouldn't call it impossible but it would be very luck dependent.

Pre-incarnate I participated in several all-defender teams and they steamrolled just about everything without breaking a sweat. Ironically, we were unable to complete the STF. I think Recluse himself wouldn't have been a problem -- but Hamidon is a cheating bastard who ignores most buffs/debuffs. We just couldn't get enough damage on the mitos to overcome the healing done by the greens before we started getting picked off. With more time, patience, and EoEs, it probably would have been doable. Certainly once Incarnates were a thing it would have been relatively easy.

The only thing more powerful than all-defender teams are all-controller teams, but only after level 38 or so. Up until then the defenders have a significant edge in actually defeating stuff, even if they aren't quite as safe.

But, as Arcana stated, powerset and AT balancing was not done with these kinds of high-end edge cases in mind.

Just to clarify, I did mention the damage boost, just didn't go into it too much because I never felt it added a significant advantage. Particularly when you consider the damage cap for defenders that could be hit (or close to it) with some defender builds.

Also, I never mentioned getting mez protection, just resistance. My thought was that it fit the idea of the Defender. On a team with you mezzed and the whole team is in the process of faceplanting. Then you (the defender) digs deep to resist the hold and can throw out a heal/debuff/buff just in time to save the day for your team.

Finally, it was always my fantasy to get a Defender primary/Dominator Assault secondary char. Naff/Earth... sounds good to me.

[brothermutant]

Enter the BUBBLER! Also, those Lord Recluse towers were designed with the detention field in mind!

Did that actually work on those? Did it stop giving Recluse the buff if they were "caged"? That would be a reason to get Detention Field/Bubble/whatever again.

[Arcana]

Also, I never mentioned getting mez protection, just resistance. My thought was that it fit the idea of the Defender. On a team with you mezzed and the whole team is in the process of faceplanting. Then you (the defender) digs deep to resist the hold and can throw out a heal/debuff/buff just in time to save the day for your team.

On a tangent, the problem with conceptualizations like this is that to me it always seemed they could be used to justify anything for anyone.  Everyone wants their favorite archetype to be able to save the day, and its always possible to present a situation where archetype X faces any situation Y and has whatever ability is necessary to surpass it.  When you say mez resistance fits "the idea of the Defender" what idea is that specifically?  Is there any archetype for which mez resistance *doesn't* fit in exactly the same way?  If we replace "throw out a heal" with "throw out an AoE" or "throw out a control" is there any time it doesn't work?