Well it can certainly solo basically everything from my experience. Also according to s3 I also had the worst primary but I don't know about that stuff.
yeah, s3 has nothing but negative things to say near 100% of the time. I have never seen a cloud of such sheer misery.
Regarding defenders: I have played the same build twice, one 38+ the other 43+. They can solo, level fairly quickly, complete most missions, even those with EBs, and are generally pretty fun. They also have team support abilities that are fantastic. Defenders are always a good choice.
As a man who loves Defenders, has more Defenders than any other AT, they could really use some buffing.
At higher levels they are not as useful as Controllers. Their damage output is pathetic and their inherent is full of stupid. personally I think they should get an HP and base damage buff.
At launch they were probably the single best balanced AT in the game. The problem is all of the other ATs have gotten major individual buffs where as Defenders have only received global buffs that all ATs got. Short of their inherent, which is poorly designed, they haven't gotten any AT specific buffs. Well...I think within the first two years they got an individual endurance discount but it seems to me that happened along the same time as a Blaster endurance discount. Regardless the point is they haven't been improved on in all these years so they are weaker than the other Hero ATs.
In all honesty, Inv. is the last armor set I'd ever use for any AT, and that's with a 50 sitting on the top of my list. WP is in some ways worse than Inv (against S/L and especially against massive S/L alphas and the taunt in it's aura is garbage), but is better in every other regard. It's better against every other type of damage and it gets better quality-of-life elements, like Perception, better mez protection and Quick Recovery. I honestly cannot come up with a reason to make an Inv for any set, other than you want to look like a gay disco.
Well it can certainly solo basically everything from my experience. Also according to s3 I also had the worst primary but I don't know about that stuff.
Well, honestly, I cannot think of a single powerset combination for any AT that can't solo. I guess maybe if you did one of those "healing only" empaths then maybe, but that's more a concept than anything else. Yes, some things are more solo-able, but "being able to solo" isn't really a thing in this game. That's like saying you're able to take a travel power.
My first character was a rad/rad defender. And I loved her. But now she languishes, outdone by everyone else on her team.
yeah, s3 has nothing but negative things to say near 100% of the time. I have never seen a cloud of such sheer misery.
Regarding defenders: I have played the same build twice, one 38+ the other 43+. They can solo, level fairly quickly, complete most missions, even those with EBs, and are generally pretty fun. They also have team support abilities that are fantastic. Defenders are always a good choice.
What's wrong, Rhonyn, still miffed that I mocked your aspirations of Best Buy middle management?
So, what have you described that any other AT can't do? Usually better?
You're trying to appeal to some sense of authority in your argument, but all I'm getting from it is "Nu uh! Defenders are great! I've played two whole defenders!" It's not persuasive in the slightest.
Really, I'm open to changing my mind. But if defenders are such a solid AT, there's gotta be something that you can point to that makes them good. But no one has. The damage? Controllers can do that too. The buffing? Controllers do that to. Safety? Controllers do that better.
Well it can certainly solo basically everything from my experience. Also according to s3 I also had the worst primary but I don't know about that stuff.
You know, Gear, I think you may be on to something...
As a man who loves Defenders, has more Defenders than any other AT, they could really use some buffing.
At higher levels they are not as useful as Controllers. Their damage output is pathetic and their inherent is full of stupid. personally I think they should get an HP and base damage buff.
At launch they were probably the single best balanced AT in the game. The problem is all of the other ATs have gotten major individual buffs where as Defenders have only received global buffs that all ATs got. Short of their inherent, which is poorly designed, they haven't gotten any AT specific buffs. Well...I think within the first two years they got an individual endurance discount but it seems to me that happened along the same time as a Blaster endurance discount. Regardless the point is they haven't been improved on in all these years so they are weaker than the other Hero ATs.
Spot on.
Back at release, defenders did 75% of blaster damage. They also had these awesome buffs. The way the game scaled, that was the trade-off for not being able to buff yourself (in theory). You got to be, basically, better than a blaster, but your abilities only made your teammates better, not you.
Well, it didn't quite pan out that way. Some sets, like Kinetics, inexplicably got some of the most powerful buffs in the game, and then were granted the ability to buff themselves. There really didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why one set could self-buff and another couldn't. But it worked out in defenders' favor. They did great damage. They had great buffs. People wanted to play them, and people wanted to team with them. They were very popular, but despite concerns that they'd overshadow blasters, the game was still (only half jokingly) called City of Blasters back then, because blasters were so badass.
Then they started monkeying with damage and endurance values and ED came along. Blasters got a damage buff. Tankers got a damage buff. Scrappers and even controllers (via Containment) got damage buffs. Defenders didn't. Now, they were doing ~67% of blaster base damage, with the same endurance cost. Now, blasters have another damage buff in the new Defiance. Defenders are doing the exact same damage they did after ED shat all over them.
In short, the game has changed, and defenders haven't.
Well, I guess that's not true. The devs did give them a really bad inherent.
yeah, s3 has nothing but negative things to say near 100% of the time. I have never seen a cloud of such sheer misery.
Only when the sets in question are actually crap, which unfortunately far too many of the powersets or powerset combinations in CoX are. Really, no one should feel offended by their primary or secondary being underperforming. It doesn't mean you suck. It doesn't mean you're gimped. CoX is an easy game and allows for a lot of concept builds which are awesome. Underperforming just means you're not some min/maxed bastard, and honestly min/maxing too much in CoX is just a formula for boredom anyways.
I don't know where I was going with this but I totally agree with s3 on most of his powerset opinions, and most of the educated number crunchers and players do as well. Concept builds are awesome, but pretending that they are as powerful as a min/maxed build is dumb. They just have a different kind of power. The power of being cool.
I think the only powersets I would describe as bad are ice corrs, it took til 30 for me to get a decent attack chain, and...well, I used to hate /psi defs back in I2 but it seems a lot more improved now.
Now, I'll hate on stalkers and defenders in general but I've got different kinds of tanks and brutes and so on and I never really say "man, this set sucks!" compared to others of the same AT. It's usually just a question of how many powers from the set I'll take as opposed to pools or the other main set.
You don't like Ice Blast? You have your main 4 powers by 18, which is the same as most other blast sets (and better than elec, which never gets an attack chain). I don't think anyone is sitting around pining for Bitter Freeze ray at 26.
Pb on
0
Options
INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
Well it can certainly solo basically everything from my experience. Also according to s3 I also had the worst primary but I don't know about that stuff.
yeah, s3 has nothing but negative things to say near 100% of the time. I have never seen a cloud of such sheer misery.
Regarding defenders: I have played the same build twice, one 38+ the other 43+. They can solo, level fairly quickly, complete most missions, even those with EBs, and are generally pretty fun. They also have team support abilities that are fantastic. Defenders are always a good choice.
This is not my experience with Kin/Rad defender.
I think when discussing CoX when you say 'can solo' I think you can't use it the same way you describe whether or not someone can solo in other games; sure, a defender can fight things and not die, but if it takes twp minutes to kill a boss solo vs the 20 seconds it takes a brute, I'd say that comparatively, that defender can't solo
It's been way too long since I've played that character, so I don't remember what order I took things in, but I always had the feeling that I must've messed things up somehow. Even with hasten I had too much downtime between attacks, or they weren't doing enough good, or something. Didn't even have room to take all the shields, either, it seemed like it was taking forever to get the powers I needed.
You don't like Ice Blast? You have your main 4 powers by 18, which is the same as most other blast sets (and better than elec, which never gets an attack chain). I don't think anyone is sitting around pining for Bitter Freeze ray at 26.
I'm pretty indifferent about ice, but I just recently deleted a 39 Ice/Cold corrupter. It was the first character I'd played with Ice Blast since some time around I4. My dislike stemmed from 3 things about that set. Well, maybe 4.
First, even though you get an attack chain by level 18, Ice Blast has fairly high recharge on its attacks. It's never a real chain without Hasten and/or a fair amount of recharge slotted in each power.
For comparison, just looking at the 3 single target attacks (recharge in seconds):
It's also quite a bit of an endurance hog (e.g. Blaze costs 10.4 endurance, BiB is 13).
And then there's Ice Storm, which really isn't very good. And Frost Breath, which I'm never happy with or without. Don't have it? Want it. Have it? Feels like a waste. Its performance is just hard to justify.
Not that I think Ice is a terrible set or anything... Blizzard's a fairly good nuke, and it has some good single target damage once you compensate for its shortcomings. The hold is nice, too. I guess holds. Although I'm not a fan of BFR's cool-looking-but-way-too-long animation.
Underperforming just means you're not some min/maxed bastard, and honestly min/maxing too much in CoX is just a formula for boredom anyways.
It's also a formula for ruining everyone else's fun by being a negative nancy 24/7. Seriously, so much crap being spouted here and in the channel these days, it's depressing. It doesn't even matter whether or not the crap is justified or correct, it's still out of place for CoX and totally unimportant to many/most players. I think PA has far overloaded its bitching quotient lately.
Here's my advice: Have fun, play what you like the way you like. Take all opinions with a grain of salt, especially from the folks who are shouting their opinions the loudest.
Edit: if you want to powergame, go for it. But spare us the arrogance of repeatedly telling us that so much of the game we enjoy sucks.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Would some of you people fuck off and die already? You're honestly fucking worse than I could ever be. I'm not saying what you enjoy sucks, I don't know and concern myself with what you enjoy. But when someone asks if something is good I'm going to fucking answer, and I'm going to try to back it up with data. Sometimes people can disagree even with numbers because of how different things are valued, and if you don't like it, too fucking bad. You seem to think it's only s3rial or myself that can be annoying, but I cannot count the number of times I've been reading PA chat and just turned it off because of the stupid shit that was in the channel.
I don't care if you like it or not, but things like knockback can (and often do) hurt team DPS. You and everyone else might be okay with that. Wonderful! I'm still going to mention that when someone asks about an Energy set. You might like Bitter Freeze Ray's animation and think the power is awesome. Great! It's still the worst non-epic hold in the game (and is worse than most of those). And now I honestly don't care if you don't like my opinions, I'll give em more often and more vociferously.
See, this is why I think number advice should go into the build thread. For some people "good" = "fun", and for some people "good" = "highest numbers/dps/heals/resist/whatever". Fun sets may not have the best numbers, and sets with the best numbers might not be the most fun to play. And sometimes they match. I think a lot of us fall into the "fun = good" category, especially considering that's the audience CoX was trying to get for a couple years by giving us no numbers to crunch at all. And we think "bad" = "not fun".
So when we've been enjoying a powerset for 35 levels and someone says it's bad, we get confused and angry. Sometimes it sounds like a personal judgment, like, I know koro gets a hard time for playing a stalker. Or maybe my judgment of fun is flawed because I like my Bruiser, or something. Sometimes kicking all the stalkers out of the SG is funny, and sometimes it isn't.
I think what really gets annoying is that by the "fun" standards, 85% of the powersets in the game are "good" with about 10% of "great". But by number standards where everything is compared to the "great" sets, the majority of sets seem to suck. Each AT has its one or two best combos and everything else is underperforming compared to those. So the number players have a lot more to complain about. And we get to hear the number players complain a lot more.
Scooter on
0
Options
Gear GirlMore class than a state universityRegistered Userregular
Well it can certainly solo basically everything from my experience. Also according to s3 I also had the worst primary but I don't know about that stuff.
Well, honestly, I cannot think of a single powerset combination for any AT that can't solo. I guess maybe if you did one of those "healing only" empaths then maybe, but that's more a concept than anything else. Yes, some things are more solo-able, but "being able to solo" isn't really a thing in this game. That's like saying you're able to take a travel power.
My first character was a rad/rad defender. And I loved her. But now she languishes, outdone by everyone else on her team.
I think you guys kind of missed what I was saying. I was saying that you can basically be on any difficulty against any enemy group as a solo invuln scrapper and have no real trouble. I added the MA thing to say that I had no real trouble with what is apparently the worst primary as well.
Duck, you know I agree with most everything that, for example, you or s3rial say. I respect you guys for your knowledge. I enjoy playing with you. But I'm tired of the powerset comparison bitching. I'm tired of constant complaints that X set or AT sucks. I've been there, I've done that. It doesn't accomplish anything. It especially doesn't accomplish anything when a new or returning player gets a harsh opinion piece in response to a simple question about a powerset that seems cool to him/her.
By now it's just bitching for bitching's sake. It's not constructive. Constructive would be telling someone how to make the most of their powersets, not immediately saying entire sets or ATs suck in comparison to the best. It would be talking about how to make underperforming sets work better within the game as it stands today. With IOs we've never been more able to make underperforming sets or ATs work better. Constructive would be, perhaps, PMing a list of issues to Castle, or hell, mailing it to freakin' Positron if that floats your boat. This round-and-round of the same old opinions and vitriol doesn't really do anything for anyone, except maybe make some folks feel better after they've vented. And it's a very skewed view of the game, to boot.
Why do I think this? Why does it piss me off? The only time I've every considered quitting CoH was back when I had been playing just a couple months, around I3-I4, and was leveling with the old-time PA crew who were mostly playing scrappers. And scrappers were gods. They could do anything, and do it solo. And I made the mistake of constantly comparing my energy blaster to what those scrappers could do. It ruined the game for me, and I had to leave for a while, my blaster abandoned. Sure, I could (and did) wail about how scrappers were too good, or blasters too weak, or other ATs barely even necessary. But all it got me was sour grapes. That doesn't need to happen to anyone else. CoH doesn't require that we spend our time leveling only the most powerful characters, and crapping on all the others.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
See, this is why I think number advice should go into the build thread.
But what differentiates number advice from advice? None of us are posting builds or screencaps or dumps from mid. If someone is making a mastermind and asks me what primary is the best, I'm going to run them all down and mention their relative power and each set's weakness. Does that constitute number advice? If I say 'Mercs generally seem to underperform, or are not very popular, though they're still playable', I'm not making a judgement on Merc/ MMs. I'm not even saying you shouldn't play the set, and I'm not bringing number crunching into it at all. I'm just giving straight up advice. I have no idea why that is so offensive, except that some people can't separate the performance of their POWERSET from THEIR performance.
Harsh... I haven't seen any bitching going on. It would be nice if the developers buffed Invuln or rearranged the powers in SR, but it's not like I see our chat or this thread filled with anger over things like this. I'm just seeing reasonable discussion of the power level of various sets. The only bitching I'm seeing is from people who are taking this too personally.
To counter one argument, Stalkers are bad. I know over time it's been reduced to just the meme, but honestly, it cannot be argued that they aren't. Generally when you see something that's operating against the very nature of the game it's no trouble to point and it and laugh. People deserve shit for playing them.
That said, I usually don't dissuade people from taking sets (i.e. call them mouth-breathing retards). I don't care if somebody plays Elec blast, if that's ultimately their choice then fine. But if somebody says that their Elec blast is just as "good" as, say, Ice or Fire, then no, that's not okay. That's not okay at all. What I'm tired of is people taking their opinions, stating them as fact (and yes I know this line will be used against me liberally) and spreading that shit all over the place. If someone is going to sing a set's virtues they should do so for the right reasons.
This isn't to mention that every set has it's faults, and sometimes even a good set can be frustrating because of little issues. I think it's important to enumerate these before somebody gets 35 levels into something and realises that their project character is going to be a turn sandwich no matter what they do. This is how Energy Melee was for me because the whole set is "Oh, wait until you're 40, then it's good." I have a bunch of characters that stalled in the 30s or low 40s because while the concept proved to be okay, parts of the sets or the interaction therein kills the experience. I could get my Ice/EM, or Storm/Elec, or Ill/Emp or others to 50, but it would be mostly a chore. If I had comprehended how bad EM was at AoE damage I would have never made one (and this is a gold-standard set too). If I had known that Voltaic Sentinel and Elec in general was as anemic as it was, I'd have skipped it. People should know what they're getting into before they waste their time.
Concept can definitely get people to 50, but I have a feeling shitty sets stop way more than that from playing a character. It's great that there are people like you who will work from that angle, but I refuse to accept criticism when I'm offering an alternative look.
See, this is why I think number advice should go into the build thread.
But what differentiates number advice from advice? None of us are posting builds or screencaps or dumps from mid. If someone is making a mastermind and asks me what primary is the best, I'm going to run them all down and mention their relative power and each set's weakness. Does that constitute number advice? If I say 'Mercs generally seem to underperform, or are not very popular, though they're still playable', I'm not making a judgement on Merc/ MMs. I'm not even saying you shouldn't play the set, and I'm not bringing number crunching into it at all. I'm just giving straight up advice.
See, that sort of advice is great. It's reasonable, it's helpful, it doesn't wave away entire powers or powersets or ATs just because they don't compare well to others. But what I hear too much is not that. It's X powerset sucks balls. Why would you make an X. It's terrible compared to Z. X set is only good in such-and-such situation. Steamroller teams would never take X. No one should take Y power. The dev responsible for Y power should be fired. Such-and-such is the best farming build. You can't solo with that set/AT. LOLstalkers (repeat x100).
It's just not helpful. (Except for the lol stalkers part, that's pretty much true. :P)
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Honestly though, some sets do fucking suck balls and should only be taken for concept purposes. And there are powers that nobody should ever, ever take, or would you actually tell a fellow PA person that Chain Induction is a worthwhile power? Or would you suggest that Stalkers actually take Elec Armor? I'm sorry, this is not The Brady Bunch; I'm not going to chuckle and ruffle your hair while you propose to make a terrible decision. I am going to call you and possibly your entire family tree a bushel of retards while telling you why you're an idiot.
Honestly though, some sets do fucking suck balls and should only be taken for concept purposes. And there are powers that nobody should ever, ever take, or would you actually tell a fellow PA person that Chain Induction is a worthwhile power? Or would you suggest that Stalkers actually take Elec Armor? I'm sorry, this is not The Brady Bunch; I'm not going to chuckle and ruffle your hair while you propose to make a terrible decision. I am going to call you and possibly your entire family tree a bushel of retards while telling you why you're an idiot.
I think one of the underlying issues here is that you believe in two reasons to choose a powerset, performance and concept. What we try to add to the table is simply "fun". We might find a set fun that you do not and you might find things fun on the basis of performance and that is fine. We are just asking people to consider what looks interesting to them rather than what will allow them to level the quickest and you are offering them the hard data that may convince them to consider a set that maybe didn't fit their original concept. I don't see anything wrong with either of these approaches but they often seem to clash in this thread. I have even on occasion got a bit heated in here but I am going to try to just relax and let you and s3rial and whoever else say what you would like as after all it is just an opinion. I just urge people to remember that opinion is just opinion and there is no reason to get as mad as some people seem to get over issues that in the long run really do not matter that much.
Would some of you people fuck off and die already? You're honestly fucking worse than I could ever be. I'm not saying what you enjoy sucks, I don't know and concern myself with what you enjoy. But when someone asks if something is good I'm going to fucking answer, and I'm going to try to back it up with data. Sometimes people can disagree even with numbers because of how different things are valued, and if you don't like it, too fucking bad. You seem to think it's only s3rial or myself that can be annoying, but I cannot count the number of times I've been reading PA chat and just turned it off because of the stupid shit that was in the channel.
I don't care if you like it or not, but things like knockback can (and often do) hurt team DPS. You and everyone else might be okay with that. Wonderful! I'm still going to mention that when someone asks about an Energy set. You might like Bitter Freeze Ray's animation and think the power is awesome. Great! It's still the worst non-epic hold in the game (and is worse than most of those). And now I honestly don't care if you don't like my opinions, I'll give em more often and more vociferously.
Petrifying Gaze might be worse than BFR. I'd have to look at the hold/recharge ratio. PG loses on the "no damage, no secondary effect" front too.
Also, I agree with everything Accault said about Defenders, and this is from a guy whose first character was a defender, and who stubbornly played Dark Miasma nearly to 50 while it was the worst power set you could possible take in the game.
Defender's are simply lacking compared to the other AT that can do its roll, Controllers. They could really, really, do with a five to seven percent increase to damage. The game landscape has drastically altered around defenders, with every other CoH receiving substantial increases to their damage since Launch.
Open question to everyone who has an opinion on the subject.
I've thought about it a few times, and I'm really not sure what you can do without turning them into scrappers. For starters, I think they need more HP. Stick them on the Blaster HP scale at least.
Corvus on
:so_raven:
0
Options
Gear GirlMore class than a state universityRegistered Userregular
edited May 2008
Accualt had a pretty decent one I think, more damage when your teammates are doing well health wise and more defense/resistance whatever when your teammates are in trouble. I think that was what he said anyway.
Petrifying Gaze might be worse than BFR. I'd have to look at the hold/recharge ratio. PG loses on the "no damage, no secondary effect" front too.
PG animates TWO SECONDS quicker, though. In the time it takes BFR to animate my DM/EA can fire off 5 attacks! PG has a worse hole/recharge ratio, but it also costs half the endurance of BFR. If you're stacking holds BFR is better, but if you want to just stop a pesky Lt or Minion every spawn then PG is more useful.
One thing that might help Stalkers is the ability to crit outside of hide, under controlled conditions. Stalkers don't have a huge problem soloing; they fall short in teams. I guess in that case, why not give them a chance to crit if a target is under the effect of certain mezzes? You'd have to take out immob and stun because the Stalker can do both (EM would be horribly overpowered), but why not let them get a chance on enemies that are held or slept? Corrs, MM and Doms would all be able to improve their damage that way.
EDIT - Sorry, Stalkers get holds instead of immobs. Still, I don't think that would be too much. I'd still say to keep immobs out, although maybe with a lower chance that holds would have it might not be overpowered.
One thing that might help Stalkers is the ability to crit outside of hide, under controlled conditions. Stalkers don't have a huge problem soloing; they fall short in teams. I guess in that case, why not give them a chance to crit if a target is under the effect of certain mezzes? You'd have to take out immob and stun because the Stalker can do both (EM would be horribly overpowered), but why not let them get a chance on enemies that are held or slept? Corrs, MM and Doms would all be able to improve their damage that way.
I like it!
It makes sense, too. Coup de grace on a defenseless opponent, for example.
I was going to doll this up to look like a script, but I think the point gets through either way.
A: "Hey guys, I'm thinking about buying a Pinto. Is it worth it? Should I look at something else?"
B: "Oh yeah. I drove a Pinto for a week two years ago, and it was okay. You should buy it."
C: "I had a Pinto in high school. I used to race it. It was fun! You should get one!"
"I've got a Pinto now, and it's okay."
E: "Uh, Pintos have a poorly-engineered gas tank. They tend to ignite when they're rear-ended. Here is a link to some information about the gas problem and a possible recall. And you can see here that they have a fairly high defect rate and poor crash safety. Also, they're not very good at racing. Sure, you can race them, but they're not very fast; you won't win anything, or go very fast. If you want to race, you should probably look at something faster, like a Mustang.
All in all, the Pinto's a pretty shitty car. You'd do well to consider something else."
B: "Well MY Pinto never had any problems. It was just fine. Pintos are fine."
C: "Yeah. And you don't need a Mustang to race. A Pinto's just fine to race. You can race them all you want. Only assholes drive Mustangs, anyways."
"You're so negative, E. Why do you bitch about Pintos so much? They're just fine. Leave them alone. I don't need your permission to enjoy my Pinto!"
...
That's sort of how these conversations go, isn't it?
Quick question to those of you who get offended by some power gamer's analysis of something you have/do play: Why do you get offended?
Posts
yeah, s3 has nothing but negative things to say near 100% of the time. I have never seen a cloud of such sheer misery.
Regarding defenders: I have played the same build twice, one 38+ the other 43+. They can solo, level fairly quickly, complete most missions, even those with EBs, and are generally pretty fun. They also have team support abilities that are fantastic. Defenders are always a good choice.
At higher levels they are not as useful as Controllers. Their damage output is pathetic and their inherent is full of stupid. personally I think they should get an HP and base damage buff.
At launch they were probably the single best balanced AT in the game. The problem is all of the other ATs have gotten major individual buffs where as Defenders have only received global buffs that all ATs got. Short of their inherent, which is poorly designed, they haven't gotten any AT specific buffs. Well...I think within the first two years they got an individual endurance discount but it seems to me that happened along the same time as a Blaster endurance discount. Regardless the point is they haven't been improved on in all these years so they are weaker than the other Hero ATs.
Well, honestly, I cannot think of a single powerset combination for any AT that can't solo. I guess maybe if you did one of those "healing only" empaths then maybe, but that's more a concept than anything else. Yes, some things are more solo-able, but "being able to solo" isn't really a thing in this game. That's like saying you're able to take a travel power.
My first character was a rad/rad defender. And I loved her. But now she languishes, outdone by everyone else on her team.
So, what have you described that any other AT can't do? Usually better?
You're trying to appeal to some sense of authority in your argument, but all I'm getting from it is "Nu uh! Defenders are great! I've played two whole defenders!" It's not persuasive in the slightest.
Really, I'm open to changing my mind. But if defenders are such a solid AT, there's gotta be something that you can point to that makes them good. But no one has. The damage? Controllers can do that too. The buffing? Controllers do that to. Safety? Controllers do that better.
What makes them so great?
You know, Gear, I think you may be on to something...
Spot on.
Back at release, defenders did 75% of blaster damage. They also had these awesome buffs. The way the game scaled, that was the trade-off for not being able to buff yourself (in theory). You got to be, basically, better than a blaster, but your abilities only made your teammates better, not you.
Well, it didn't quite pan out that way. Some sets, like Kinetics, inexplicably got some of the most powerful buffs in the game, and then were granted the ability to buff themselves. There really didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why one set could self-buff and another couldn't. But it worked out in defenders' favor. They did great damage. They had great buffs. People wanted to play them, and people wanted to team with them. They were very popular, but despite concerns that they'd overshadow blasters, the game was still (only half jokingly) called City of Blasters back then, because blasters were so badass.
Then they started monkeying with damage and endurance values and ED came along. Blasters got a damage buff. Tankers got a damage buff. Scrappers and even controllers (via Containment) got damage buffs. Defenders didn't. Now, they were doing ~67% of blaster base damage, with the same endurance cost. Now, blasters have another damage buff in the new Defiance. Defenders are doing the exact same damage they did after ED shat all over them.
In short, the game has changed, and defenders haven't.
Well, I guess that's not true. The devs did give them a really bad inherent.
I think you came up with the only reason anyone around here needs.
I was thinking that as I typed it, but I put it in anyways. It felt right.
That's Robo's team anyhow.
In all fairness, it'd likely be a non-starter. The costume creator may have bell bottoms, but the shirt collars are way too small.
Only when the sets in question are actually crap, which unfortunately far too many of the powersets or powerset combinations in CoX are. Really, no one should feel offended by their primary or secondary being underperforming. It doesn't mean you suck. It doesn't mean you're gimped. CoX is an easy game and allows for a lot of concept builds which are awesome. Underperforming just means you're not some min/maxed bastard, and honestly min/maxing too much in CoX is just a formula for boredom anyways.
I don't know where I was going with this but I totally agree with s3 on most of his powerset opinions, and most of the educated number crunchers and players do as well. Concept builds are awesome, but pretending that they are as powerful as a min/maxed build is dumb. They just have a different kind of power. The power of being cool.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
Now, I'll hate on stalkers and defenders in general but I've got different kinds of tanks and brutes and so on and I never really say "man, this set sucks!" compared to others of the same AT. It's usually just a question of how many powers from the set I'll take as opposed to pools or the other main set.
This is not my experience with Kin/Rad defender.
I think when discussing CoX when you say 'can solo' I think you can't use it the same way you describe whether or not someone can solo in other games; sure, a defender can fight things and not die, but if it takes twp minutes to kill a boss solo vs the 20 seconds it takes a brute, I'd say that comparatively, that defender can't solo
First, even though you get an attack chain by level 18, Ice Blast has fairly high recharge on its attacks. It's never a real chain without Hasten and/or a fair amount of recharge slotted in each power.
For comparison, just looking at the 3 single target attacks (recharge in seconds):
Sonic: 3/6/11
Fire: 2/4/10
Archery: 2/4/10
Energy: 4/8/10
Ice: 4/8/16
It's also quite a bit of an endurance hog (e.g. Blaze costs 10.4 endurance, BiB is 13).
And then there's Ice Storm, which really isn't very good. And Frost Breath, which I'm never happy with or without. Don't have it? Want it. Have it? Feels like a waste. Its performance is just hard to justify.
Not that I think Ice is a terrible set or anything... Blizzard's a fairly good nuke, and it has some good single target damage once you compensate for its shortcomings. The hold is nice, too. I guess holds. Although I'm not a fan of BFR's cool-looking-but-way-too-long animation.
It's also a formula for ruining everyone else's fun by being a negative nancy 24/7. Seriously, so much crap being spouted here and in the channel these days, it's depressing. It doesn't even matter whether or not the crap is justified or correct, it's still out of place for CoX and totally unimportant to many/most players. I think PA has far overloaded its bitching quotient lately.
Here's my advice: Have fun, play what you like the way you like. Take all opinions with a grain of salt, especially from the folks who are shouting their opinions the loudest.
Edit: if you want to powergame, go for it. But spare us the arrogance of repeatedly telling us that so much of the game we enjoy sucks.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
I don't care if you like it or not, but things like knockback can (and often do) hurt team DPS. You and everyone else might be okay with that. Wonderful! I'm still going to mention that when someone asks about an Energy set. You might like Bitter Freeze Ray's animation and think the power is awesome. Great! It's still the worst non-epic hold in the game (and is worse than most of those). And now I honestly don't care if you don't like my opinions, I'll give em more often and more vociferously.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
So when we've been enjoying a powerset for 35 levels and someone says it's bad, we get confused and angry. Sometimes it sounds like a personal judgment, like, I know koro gets a hard time for playing a stalker. Or maybe my judgment of fun is flawed because I like my Bruiser, or something. Sometimes kicking all the stalkers out of the SG is funny, and sometimes it isn't.
I think what really gets annoying is that by the "fun" standards, 85% of the powersets in the game are "good" with about 10% of "great". But by number standards where everything is compared to the "great" sets, the majority of sets seem to suck. Each AT has its one or two best combos and everything else is underperforming compared to those. So the number players have a lot more to complain about. And we get to hear the number players complain a lot more.
I think you guys kind of missed what I was saying. I was saying that you can basically be on any difficulty against any enemy group as a solo invuln scrapper and have no real trouble. I added the MA thing to say that I had no real trouble with what is apparently the worst primary as well.
By now it's just bitching for bitching's sake. It's not constructive. Constructive would be telling someone how to make the most of their powersets, not immediately saying entire sets or ATs suck in comparison to the best. It would be talking about how to make underperforming sets work better within the game as it stands today. With IOs we've never been more able to make underperforming sets or ATs work better. Constructive would be, perhaps, PMing a list of issues to Castle, or hell, mailing it to freakin' Positron if that floats your boat. This round-and-round of the same old opinions and vitriol doesn't really do anything for anyone, except maybe make some folks feel better after they've vented. And it's a very skewed view of the game, to boot.
Why do I think this? Why does it piss me off? The only time I've every considered quitting CoH was back when I had been playing just a couple months, around I3-I4, and was leveling with the old-time PA crew who were mostly playing scrappers. And scrappers were gods. They could do anything, and do it solo. And I made the mistake of constantly comparing my energy blaster to what those scrappers could do. It ruined the game for me, and I had to leave for a while, my blaster abandoned. Sure, I could (and did) wail about how scrappers were too good, or blasters too weak, or other ATs barely even necessary. But all it got me was sour grapes. That doesn't need to happen to anyone else. CoH doesn't require that we spend our time leveling only the most powerful characters, and crapping on all the others.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Harsh... I haven't seen any bitching going on. It would be nice if the developers buffed Invuln or rearranged the powers in SR, but it's not like I see our chat or this thread filled with anger over things like this. I'm just seeing reasonable discussion of the power level of various sets. The only bitching I'm seeing is from people who are taking this too personally.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
That said, I usually don't dissuade people from taking sets (i.e. call them mouth-breathing retards). I don't care if somebody plays Elec blast, if that's ultimately their choice then fine. But if somebody says that their Elec blast is just as "good" as, say, Ice or Fire, then no, that's not okay. That's not okay at all. What I'm tired of is people taking their opinions, stating them as fact (and yes I know this line will be used against me liberally) and spreading that shit all over the place. If someone is going to sing a set's virtues they should do so for the right reasons.
This isn't to mention that every set has it's faults, and sometimes even a good set can be frustrating because of little issues. I think it's important to enumerate these before somebody gets 35 levels into something and realises that their project character is going to be a turn sandwich no matter what they do. This is how Energy Melee was for me because the whole set is "Oh, wait until you're 40, then it's good." I have a bunch of characters that stalled in the 30s or low 40s because while the concept proved to be okay, parts of the sets or the interaction therein kills the experience. I could get my Ice/EM, or Storm/Elec, or Ill/Emp or others to 50, but it would be mostly a chore. If I had comprehended how bad EM was at AoE damage I would have never made one (and this is a gold-standard set too). If I had known that Voltaic Sentinel and Elec in general was as anemic as it was, I'd have skipped it. People should know what they're getting into before they waste their time.
Concept can definitely get people to 50, but I have a feeling shitty sets stop way more than that from playing a character. It's great that there are people like you who will work from that angle, but I refuse to accept criticism when I'm offering an alternative look.
See, that sort of advice is great. It's reasonable, it's helpful, it doesn't wave away entire powers or powersets or ATs just because they don't compare well to others. But what I hear too much is not that. It's X powerset sucks balls. Why would you make an X. It's terrible compared to Z. X set is only good in such-and-such situation. Steamroller teams would never take X. No one should take Y power. The dev responsible for Y power should be fired. Such-and-such is the best farming build. You can't solo with that set/AT. LOLstalkers (repeat x100).
It's just not helpful. (Except for the lol stalkers part, that's pretty much true. :P)
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Open question to everyone who has an opinion on the subject.
I think one of the underlying issues here is that you believe in two reasons to choose a powerset, performance and concept. What we try to add to the table is simply "fun". We might find a set fun that you do not and you might find things fun on the basis of performance and that is fine. We are just asking people to consider what looks interesting to them rather than what will allow them to level the quickest and you are offering them the hard data that may convince them to consider a set that maybe didn't fit their original concept. I don't see anything wrong with either of these approaches but they often seem to clash in this thread. I have even on occasion got a bit heated in here but I am going to try to just relax and let you and s3rial and whoever else say what you would like as after all it is just an opinion. I just urge people to remember that opinion is just opinion and there is no reason to get as mad as some people seem to get over issues that in the long run really do not matter that much.
Baby Plays City of Heroes
Edit: Whoa, unexpected YouTube embed thingy.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Petrifying Gaze might be worse than BFR. I'd have to look at the hold/recharge ratio. PG loses on the "no damage, no secondary effect" front too.
Also, I agree with everything Accault said about Defenders, and this is from a guy whose first character was a defender, and who stubbornly played Dark Miasma nearly to 50 while it was the worst power set you could possible take in the game.
Defender's are simply lacking compared to the other AT that can do its roll, Controllers. They could really, really, do with a five to seven percent increase to damage. The game landscape has drastically altered around defenders, with every other CoH receiving substantial increases to their damage since Launch.
The inherent is garbage. It rewards you for fucking up, basically.
So, ideas for different Defender inherents?
Also, still waiting on Stalker suggestions.
I've thought about it a few times, and I'm really not sure what you can do without turning them into scrappers. For starters, I think they need more HP. Stick them on the Blaster HP scale at least.
PG animates TWO SECONDS quicker, though. In the time it takes BFR to animate my DM/EA can fire off 5 attacks! PG has a worse hole/recharge ratio, but it also costs half the endurance of BFR. If you're stacking holds BFR is better, but if you want to just stop a pesky Lt or Minion every spawn then PG is more useful.
My Vet reward Sands of Mu and Blackwand each do something like double the damage of my snipe on my Dark/Dark Defender.
EDIT - Sorry, Stalkers get holds instead of immobs. Still, I don't think that would be too much. I'd still say to keep immobs out, although maybe with a lower chance that holds would have it might not be overpowered.
I like it!
It makes sense, too. Coup de grace on a defenseless opponent, for example.
B: "Oh yeah. I drove a Pinto for a week two years ago, and it was okay. You should buy it."
C: "I had a Pinto in high school. I used to race it. It was fun! You should get one!"
E: "Uh, Pintos have a poorly-engineered gas tank. They tend to ignite when they're rear-ended. Here is a link to some information about the gas problem and a possible recall. And you can see here that they have a fairly high defect rate and poor crash safety. Also, they're not very good at racing. Sure, you can race them, but they're not very fast; you won't win anything, or go very fast. If you want to race, you should probably look at something faster, like a Mustang.
All in all, the Pinto's a pretty shitty car. You'd do well to consider something else."
B: "Well MY Pinto never had any problems. It was just fine. Pintos are fine."
C: "Yeah. And you don't need a Mustang to race. A Pinto's just fine to race. You can race them all you want. Only assholes drive Mustangs, anyways."
...
That's sort of how these conversations go, isn't it?
Quick question to those of you who get offended by some power gamer's analysis of something you have/do play: Why do you get offended?