BellaStrega

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Golly, I suppose that brutes and scrappers shouldn't have fear because it breaks through some of the Tankers mez protection.

I guess Tanks and brutes shouldn't have any mag four holds since those bypass Acrobatics and of course, Tanks were not meant to bypass mez protection.

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Now you're just trolling. Why stop there with the straw men?

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Or maybe, just maybe you can back down off your high horse and admit that just possibly there should be a chance that you get mezzed by the AT with Blasts + Support.

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It's funny, considering how often people will post "there should never be a situation where any AT outdamages blasters," but apparently blasters should be able to equal other ATs in their things.

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Believe it or not, but there are some blasters that are designed to beat boss level mez protection. Why shouldn't they be able to beat yours? Are you considering yourself better than a boss? If so then hold the phone and get ready for more nerfs cause, a Boss is supposedly a Hero and a half.

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Mechanically speaking, melee has much better status protection than bosses. A boss has magnitude 3 status protection, meaning you need magnitude 4 to overcome it. Scrappers have something like magnitude 9 or 10, and tankers have 12 or 13. If the devs wanted blasters to overcome those numbers, they'd give you holds with magnitude 5-6.

And then controllers would rightfully complain.

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You have really backed yourself into a corner with this arguement Kali. It doesn't make any sense and the more you argue about it, the more it appears you just want melee to reign supreme in battle.

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Right...if you fabricate entire arguments from whole cloth and act like I said those things that by amazing coincidence I did not say. It's pretty pathetic that you're reduced to making [censored] up.

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When creating a blaster it says support for the secondary. Support comes in many ways. The only set that doesn't get any for of control hard or soft is /fire and it gets more damage. So I am fine that blasters can mez and do additional damage cause my poor controller can be beaten by 50 inf. Go buy a BF.

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I'm not saying blasters should never be able to mez. I'm saying blasters should not be able to mez through status protection shields without help. Can you see the difference?

If you look at brutes, scrappers, stalkers, and tankers, they have defense as a secondary or primary. One of the powers in that powerset is there to protect from Sleep, Stun, and Hold, plus a few others from: KB, Immob, Fear, Confuse. Why should I need break frees against an AT whose primary role is damage-dealing when I have a power dedicated to not being mezzed?

Buy break frees to deal with controllers and dominators? Sure. Buy break frees to deal with status effects I have no protection against? Absolutely. Buy break frees to protect myself from being held, slept, or stunned by a solo blaster, defender, tanker, scrapper, stalker, brute, corruptor, or mastermind? No, that should not happen.

No, that doesn't mean those ATs shouldn't be able to fight melee ATs solo and defeat them, nor does it mean anything else.

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Your point was, since a Blaster's "primary" and "secondary" are not rigidly described as "control", they should never be able to "control" a tank (e.g. via stun) under any circumstances.

My point was, since a Tanker/Brute's "primary" and "secondary" are not ridigly described as "control", they should't be expecting mag 4 stuns either, but they get them. I don't ask that that should be taken out, because that would be bad for everyone, but I just highlighted that particular incidence where the rigid conceptions of "the fighter" and "the mage" and "the cleric" break down. And not in a bad way either.

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Your point had the faintest connection to my point, which was not that the mag 4 stuns/holds/whatever on blaster attacks should go away (I never implied anything of the sort).

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I don't think that's an extreme or stupid way to look at it at all. I do think it's extremely stupid to invest more effort in this debate, when the great majority of responses (not just from you, but you are definitely included) boil down to "but it's SUPPOSED to be like X".

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Oh, it certainly is extreme. If your idea of a counterargument is to go off about things that only have a tangental relationship to what you're trying to refute, it's not a very good argument.

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And ps: dividing the frequency a power occurs by 100 is the same as reducing its effectiveness by 99%.

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No, it's not. See, Bonesmasher isn't doing 1/100th its former damage. It still hits as hard as it ever did. It's not 1/100th of its former effectiveness.

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Hey you're right. I don't see Control in tanker or scrapper primary OR secondary roles. They need to take hold/disorient etc. out IMMEDIATELY! How is it EM gets a boss-level stun? Clearly iniquitous! No fair!

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Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I said. Is it possible for you to take a statement and not immediately try to interpret it as extreme and stupid?

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I was just pointing out how people keep funneling every aspect of character mechanics into specific pigeonholes, and you kindly provided another example. A recap of how things "should be" according to many in this thread:

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Of course you were. It couldn't possibly be that you misunderstood the argument.

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Why am I bothering? It's in, heads are jammed wayyyy up there, and I like the new Brute sets. *goes off to play her brute*

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I suggest you pull your head back out, then? I dunno, it'd help if you weren't so quick to make up arguments to assign to me.

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more like "you should need someone with dedicated mez abilities to bypass my mez protection, solo"

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So while we're adhering to a rigid tank/healer/damage/crowdcontrol model, shouldn't it be expected that a tank or brute shouldn't actually be able to get any kills themselves, but get a damagedealer. I considered putting a question mark after that sentence, but frankly I don't care about your answer.

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Brutes have an offense primary. Tankers have an offense secondary. Where do blasters have a control primary or secondary?

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Zub's awesome.

That's not irony or sarcasm, just plain damned fact.

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I've been trying to piss you off for MONTHS!! You mean it's NOT WORKING??!!??


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I haven't even been paying attention to you for the past few months. I must've missed it.

Well, not just you specifically, but the CoH forum generally.

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If you want knockback protection, get knockback protection, that's not a big point for me because it is easily solved and I got tired of arguing about that a month ago. If you think the set sucks, don't play it, and if a lot of people agree with you, then they won't play it either. Eventually that gets addressed and the set gets buffed e.g. Trick Arrow's recent halving of most of its recharges. I think everyone is well aware now that the set does not have knockback protection, and I don't think anyone has said they are happy that the set does not have knockback protection. This stopped being news the day after they announced it.

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So, just to be clear:

When the set was announced, people were to shut up about KB protection until they tested the set.

Now that people are testing the set, people should shut up about KB protection because they talked about it before.

Do I have the sequence of events down properly?

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Wow, it's good you're here to tell us what we're supposed to like or dislike about new powersets. Without that guidance, we'd all be lost.

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And it's good YOU'RE here to contibute to this thread in a constructive and helpfull manner, you know, sharing your insights or experiences relating to ELA, what ever would we do without you?

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I'm still working my way up to the levels where the issues I'm concerned about come into play. And of course it's perfectly constructive to post "shut up about this topic that bothers me."

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*screams in frustration*

For the love of whatever deity you people hold dear, can we stop beating the "lack of KB protection" dead horse with the stick yet?

Lack of KB protection is -not-, I repeat NOT a major issue in a set with this much utility. Hell, there's a lot more utility here than /fire tanks get, and the lack of KB protection hasn't stopped them. Either way, however, you're beating a dead horse. The devs are fully aware that no KB protection is a hole in this set. Odds are, they intended it to be.

The entire argument is like receiving a free mansion to live in, and [censored] about the color of the tile in the bathroom. It's an excellent set, with good utility that makes it stand out above the other sets, who friggin' cares about one dinky hole that's easily filled with something else?

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Wow, it's good you're here to tell us what we're supposed to like or dislike about new powersets. Without that guidance, we'd all be lost.

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I guess so, considering that you were so lost that you read things I never said into my post. I could give a rat's heiney whether you like or dislike the powers, but the fact is: the KB argument has been thoroughly beaten into the ground over and over again already. There are other things to discuss.

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So you're not asking everyone to shut the hell up about knockback because it's pissing you off?

Awesome.

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So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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Since even without the GDR, Ed would've removed the ability to have 90% resists, so even your nitpicky argument is wrong.

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Uhm, think about it for a second, that makes my arguement stronger.

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In the Bizarro world, perhaps. Toggle-dropping was instituted in issue 4, when people generally admitted that tanker and scrapper defenses were too high to be easily overcome in PVP (well, some tanker and scrapper defenses - not all sets are made equal). If the defenses were reduced (and they were), and the devs say "This was changed because defenses aren't as strong as they used to be" (which they did), I'm not sure how it supports your argument at all.

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So no, it wasn't because you had 90% resists.

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Since even without the GDR, Ed would've removed the ability to have 90% resists, so even your nitpicky argument is wrong.

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I'm not saying they're useless - just not required. Blasters and scrappers get the most benefit from enrages.

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So... those archetypes with a lot of existing damage benefit the most from Enrages.

But, because you have mez protection, you should only need Break Frees when a very unusual Controller or Dominator pops up. That doesn't even make sense.

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I, er, didn't say that. I said I constantly use break frees to get out of those status effects, which hit amazingly often for being "very unusual." I've also said repeatedly that I'm fine with controllers and dominators being able to break through mez protection, and break frees are good for that, too. What I am not fine with is the idea that I should carry break-frees because the damage AT can arbitrarily knock off my mez protection toggle and land a stun.

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Bolded for emphasis. Using an unreliable source for insight into the minds of people who... well, decided to buff Stalkers in i7... doesn't work wonders for an arguement.

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You can cherry pick as many patch notes you don't like as you want. The vast majority are still accurate.

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Just wondering, though - why is it when the "these ATs perform badly solo" quote is brought up, the part where Castle says "teamed is a different story" gets brushed over?

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Largely? We don't have that information. Also because I don't see the value of "Three Blasters against one BF-less Tanker" as being that valid of a result.

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And of course you define the terms of what "on teams" means, and take it to mean that the solo results are the entirety of those results.

Perhaps it's inconvenient to consider the possibility that those ATs are doing much better on teams.

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Heh. Why do you think toggle dropping was added in the first place? Because the 30% unresistable damage wasn't nearly cutting it. How many attack cycles do you think a blaster is supposed to wait through vs. an EM tank or brute at the extreme of the scale?

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Just to be clear, 30% unresistable damage and toggle-dropping were added at the same time...when tankers and scrappers could easily cap or approach the cap on their defenses or resists. Strangely, this isn't the case anymore. This is the third issue since then and melee defenses have taken two hits.

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If in the past you only ever fought toggle drop users and they always got your status toggle down in their alpha, sure. I think we all know that's a lot more uncommon than it is a given though, certainly in PVP zones on Infinity and Protector, the servers I play on.

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The status toggle isn't the entirety of the argument, of course. It is one facet - and a valid one at that. It's unreasonable that

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I eat break frees all the time on my scrapper and tanker. This is because there are holes in their status protection - fear and confuse for my tanker, and confuse for my scrapper. However, I have a perfectly good power that should make break frees unnecessary for most uses of holds, stuns, and sleeps. Do you think that it's unreasonable to want a power that protects you from these effects to actually protect you from these effects? If you want to break my status shield, grab a goddamned controller.

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"You should need a team to beat me solo."

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That's not what I said.

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Which are strangely unclickable when you've been mezzed after your Unyielding or Rooted or Wet Ice drops.

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It is irritating to see this harped on over and over and over. Just because you're playing tank/brute/scrapper does not mean you are on a higher plane from everyone else and should simply never ever have to eat a breakfree. It would never occur to me when playing ANY character, brute or tank or whatever, to enter a PVP playfield without a few breakfrees. Refusing to make use of a readily available and very effective tool that is pretty much a requirement for everyone else is simply bad tactics, and imo nobody should be rewarded for stubbornly using bad tactics.

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I eat break frees all the time on my scrapper and tanker. This is because there are holes in their status protection - fear and confuse for my tanker, and confuse for my scrapper. However, I have a perfectly good power that should make break frees unnecessary for most uses of holds, stuns, and sleeps. Do you think that it's unreasonable to want a power that protects you from these effects to actually protect you from these effects? If you want to break my status shield, grab a goddamned controller.

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Repeatedly pushing this forward also seems to me to glaze over the fact that you CAN carry breakfrees just like everyone else, and much of the complaint in this thread would be simply irrelevant.

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Break frees seem to run out fairly quickly, even if you're only using them to break confuse and fear.

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Unfortunately nobody could exit the base. Instead of letting the villains test themselves an the system the hero side is just crashing down upon them on test for their jollies.

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This is about one-third of the reason I stopped testing the other day. The constant disconnects and the fact that there was always a crowd of heroes right in front of the villain base, meaning that the PVP action was in front of the villain base, meaning that the villains were resorting to "get the heroes into the drones*" tactics made it not so much fun. You can only punch so many turrets or fight so many undamageable AVs before you get tired of constantly losing teams to LCTMS.

* Completely justifiable, IMO. Fight near the base, expect to get droned.

I wish there were a "safe zone" to a certain distance within any base in any pvp zone, or some other way to discourage base camping. It drags the PVP down.

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Please tell me why melee ATs should need break frees to handle status effects that they have defenses against, but blasters don't need enrages to deal a lot of damage?

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At least currently? I'd be sure to bring some reds on my Scrapper. He already needed yellows up the wazoo, and that was with permaFollowUp.

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I'm not saying they're useless - just not required. Blasters and scrappers get the most benefit from enrages.

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Er, no, it's boosting my damage by 12%. I've got SOs, too, at least if I want to add something meaningful?

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Okay, I should not have forgotten that it goes both ways.

Siphon Power's not so good for PVP.

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... according to the numbers released on Patch Notes, which we know are currenlty too low for at least Brawl and ThunderClap, that's only true if they Blasters gets remarkably lucky, or if you have fewer than three toggles.

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Or I was talking about Live.

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And lord knows, there's no Tanker primary with massively useful click powers.

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Which are strangely unclickable when you've been mezzed after your Unyielding or Rooted or Wet Ice drops.

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Strangely, these are a consequence of poorly designed powersets, a controller not trying very hard, and a balancing element designed into the AT, in that order.

Controllers can render a tanker completely irrelevant pretty easily. Masterminds don't have to buff their pets with the tier 9 power. /fire needs help, and /devices possibly could.

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Tribal Boogie could not mez your Tanker, and had a build built around mezzing, to the point where he ignored damage (and, man, did he need it). Was he not trying very hard?

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Tribal Boogie did in fact mez my tanker. He wasn't able to just blow through her mez protection like he did your scrapper, but he did break it. He was also 20-something to my 38. If he were 38, his damage would be boosted by more than a bit.

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Two examples of patch notes not knowing their [censored] from an atlas? Should I go with the "This change was made because Enervating Field was too easy to apply compared to Tar Patch or Freezing (yeah, the anchor power, easier than the two targetted clicks)?"

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I believe there were elements of ego and confusion involved in the EF patch notes. It was not one of Cryptic's better moments. However, we have hundreds of patch notes which are likely accurate.



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Can we negate every tanker damage power, then? It's a Tanker power, but it's a "Blaster Effect".

Hell, can we keep toggledroppers for Blazing Aura and Icicles? I mean, sure, it'll still bug the hell out of you, and negate primary powers, which used to be your arguements, but, hey, they're both "Scrapper Effect" powers.

And, hell, while we're at it, let's make all Blaster damage irresistable, and ignore defense buffs on non-Tankers. If they run into a Tanker, we'll just forcibly disconnect them with a "paradox error". After all, damage is a "Blaster Effect", and as a result, nothing can prevent that unless it's a "Tanker Effect".

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Oh sure, because damage is a binary effect, just like mezzing, and when I said that a single blaster shouldn't be able to break mez protection, I never said that two or more characters should be able to stack and break that protection. I in fact said that the powers should just have pretty special effects and not actually do anything ever.

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Damage has not been the Blaster primary capability for a long time. Weren't people just saying that Blasters were kings of Ranged Damage? Which it's kinda hard to

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Well, blasters do have the benefit of actually dealing the most damage at range of all ATs ever to walk the Earth. However, they also have some nice melee attacks.

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I didn't say I was unbiased. I have, after all, a lot of Storming experience (and my Force Fielder was post 40 when he got a zipperless and lubricant-free reamage). Of course I'm biased. You're biased as hell against anything that'll put Tankers on the same level of survivability as Blasters.
Experience and facts tend to cause that sort of thing.

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Well, you are right about that. A tanker's primary is "I am tough enough to take a beating," so if they had the same survivability as blasters, that would be what we call "[censored] stupid."

However, I don't think tankers should be undefeatable. I do think that defeat should not be via knocking down their defenses.

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But claiming Concern is making this up, not believing it, because he could put a Blaster in his sig?

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I'm not parsing this.

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...
You play a Dark/Dark Defender. Decently, for someone that picked the Energy Epic and :shudder: Black Hole. You know very well that anyone over 20 on a Defender knows how to pop Break Frees when a dangerous mezzer is around. Storm most of all. At least with Rad you can expect them to bug the tanker.

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That was a build I actually played for like two weeks, just so you know. I currently have blackstar instead of black hole. I still have the energy epic because I like total focus.



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Ask TheMightyScourge/Storm, then. I doubt there's a higher authority on the subject. It's powerful in situations, no doubt, but Radiation Emission or Dark Miasma is far more universally powerful, and does so without the costs Storm Summoning takes.

You are also the first person to state that Storm is powerful without adding the modifier "in the hands of a good player/creative person/who knows Storm". Storm is the only Defender set with both no self-heal, and no self-mez protection. It has no -dmg, and no meaningful defense against ranged attackers. Even Snow Storm can't be activated from a decent range.
Storm isn't powerful. It's good for a Defender set. That makes it *playable*. Seldom much more.

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Maybe I'm just used to teaming with players like Myrmydon, WindGoddess, MightyStorm, Mario's stormer, and so on when it comes to storm. However, I don't recall ever teaming with a stormer who was actively bad, and most were pretty good. The results were typically fantastic.

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And Tankermagery requires tank-like levels of survival, which even if they repair Hurricane, without TDs, Storm will never get *close* to, and Damage. Defender... damage...

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Well, yes, the damage is low, even with freezing rain.

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You know we can be beaten by Controllers in a damage race, right? That's tankmagey?

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I'm pretty sure I said /storm controllers are tankmages..

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It was about it being a kludge... that, despite victory here, you haven't bothered to excise from the other cracks in which it lurks.

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It is a kludge. Honestly, I never expected the devs to nerf toggle dropping. I didn't expect the issue to take on such an emotional charge. From issue 4 going live to issue 6 going live, I pretty much ignored toggle-dropping as a necessary evil. Afterward, well...threads were started, as they are started about a great many things. If I had to choose an issue for the devs to notice and address like this, it would've been defenders not being effective enough compared to controllers, or tankers getting a boost to their passives so that their survivability is less dependent upon buffs.

But that doesn't change the fact that I feel that toggle-dropping is a poor rule and a poor way to balance the ATs in PVP.

Just wondering, though - why is it when the "these ATs perform badly solo" quote is brought up, the part where Castle says "teamed is a different story" gets brushed over? I am curious as to how well blasters, dominators, and defenders do on teams.

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Good thing this change didn't nerf Dominator abilities to bypass mez protection. Oh... oh... Wait, no, it did. Ew.

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Dominators with Domination can easily break melee mez protection. I don't know if they can do it without Domination, but we already know that there's issues with the AT.

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You already suggested counters to this arguement, Kali. Tankers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers all benefit from greens, purples, and blues (I'd bring up oranges... but really, those things are sad. Blasters benefit from reds and yellows, despite having multiple powers dedicated to the same thing. Even an inherent.
Why should this be different only for melee ATs, and only for Break Frees?

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I don't know, Blueeyed. Please tell me why melee ATs should need break frees to handle status effects that they have defenses against, but blasters don't need enrages to deal a lot of damage?

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Okay, it's fair for melee to PVP as if they don't have shields. At the same time, it's fair for defenders to PVP as if they don't have any buffs or debuffs.

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Have you tried PvPing as a a Kineticist? You say screw the buffs after the second time you SP an enemy and they think you missed.

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Siphon Power will - assuming three damage SOs - reduce their damage by 10% per hit, right? It's still boosting your damage by 25%. Is the latter less effective because the former is not doing the full 20 or 25% reduction?

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Unless the melee AT was outnumbered, they still benefited from their toggles. _Castle_'s statement was only that you should prepare for the worst.

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For like five seconds, and then they're gone.

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You know, like Kineticists that have to assume they'll miss with all their buff/debuff powers, because otherwise an Ice Tanker wouldn't be doing well in PVP.

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And lord knows, there's no defender primary with autohit debuffs.

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It's also fair for blasters to PVP as if they don't have any melee attacks. It's fair for Controllers to PVP as if they don't have any control. Masterminds should be playing as if they don't have pets.

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Devices and Fire Melee. Any Controller against a Tanker. Any Mastermind that doesn't have six minutes.

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Strangely, these are a consequence of poorly designed powersets, a controller not trying very hard, and a balancing element designed into the AT, in that order.

Controllers can render a tanker completely irrelevant pretty easily. Masterminds don't have to buff their pets with the tier 9 power. /fire needs help, and /devices possibly could.

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And we all know we can trust the patch notes. Like "Enervating Field not changed", or "This change will not affect PvE".

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I don't believe either of those is comparable.

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I believe he's referring to UberGuy's "Blasters should need a team to kill me" statement, or similar statements.
Of course, stating that a Blaster power (stun) should only be useful in large groups of the same type seems like it might edge the sides there.

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Why? It's a blaster power, but a controller effect. Controllers should be able to stack effects on their own much more easily than any other AT. Blasters shouldn't. It's really that simple. Heck, neither should defenders, tankers, or scrappers. That's not to say they shouldn't have any control - I certainly don't think that. I just don't think their control should be as good. If a controller can blow through mez protection, a blaster should not.

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"I don't like something. Remove it. Oh, and if you can fix the now-nerfed sets, fine, but don't hold back the fix to what irritates me at all."

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Yes, because it's only about irritation.

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The whole point of toggledropping is to reduce the advantage some powers give to archetypes that, largely, aren't balanced in PvE or PvP, but only balanced to match what players feel is wanted. Again, melee AT with >1.5x the survivability, mez protection, and ~1x the damage (scrappers), for example. For equality, this changes requires Blasters to give up the primary capability they have.

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What, give up damage? Bull. Blasters still have their primary capability.

As for the advantage - the advantage that was supposed to be reduced was issue 4 defenses, something that no longer exists.

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It does not negate the power. There is no way that I can turn off your toggles without hitting you, at least not without developing real-life telekinetic powers.

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So you pop up and hit bonesmasher, and most likely two of my toggles are gone. How is that not negating? You think having them up for all of one attack means they're effective?

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VERY much a bad arugement to pick, Kali. I, for example, have made only one Blaster over 20, and she didn't make it to 25 (deleted before PvP was added to the game). I have more levels on one Fire/Stone tanker than I do on all my Blasters combined. My Force Fielder died a rather horrifying death around i6, and never entered a PvP zone or the Arena. My Stormers have avoided ThunderClap since it's a pathetic TDs and an even more pathetic PvE power.

My Regener is my character with the highest PVP rank, and the only one with any PvP zone badges.

So stuff the bias card.

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Don't even play that card. You spend all of your time ranting about how awful FF and Storm has it, and how melee has it way too good. You leak bias with every post.

All of my characters in my sig have PVP zone badges. None of them have any real PVP rank because most of my PVP has been on the test server.

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Remember BreakFrees? Remember how melee ATists keep pointing out that TDs ignore Break Frees? Whohoo, what an impressive jump there.

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So if you lay a hold on a stormer, dropping his snow storm and hurricane and travel power, the break free magically turns them back on?

Right, then.

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Storm was powerful?! Oh, you mean for a Defender set. Powerful for an archetype that rivaled Dominators for the lowest kill to death count.
Aren't people trying to get Dominators buffed?

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Now you're just taking the piss. Storm is a very potent set. I've never seen anyone in-game playing a storm defender actually claim with a straight face that storm is weak. I've only seen that on the forum. In the game, storm has in the past bordered on tankmagery - and that's arguable with /storm controllers.

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I mean, let's not get into how Force Field and Storm have been screwed repeatedly because of a stupid PvP-only mechanic with no real thematic relevance. Let's not even look at how they're the on the single lowest-damage Hero archetype, with the lowest personal defense.

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So low, Storm/ could solo AVs in issue 4. Like Rad and Dark, the nature of Storm's debuffs are such that they can defend themselves very handily.

Blasters have the lowest personal defense. Defenders do not.

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Let's look and see if you can possibly expect a solution to two powersets that were just neutered in PvP, when their entire AT is currently being backburned by the developers.

You've seen the "Drumroll Please..." thread. You're happy leaving people that weren't doing well in the first place even worse for issues on end because it irritated you?

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It wasn't about irritation.

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It is not always possible to keep status protection on everyone in a team in PVP. It's also not always possible to have someone on a team who can provide it.

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Stop right there. Then we come back to the blaster being at greater risk of being mezzed by the melee character. You are always going to lose on this issue. Either they both have buffs, or neither has buffs, either they both have insperations or neither has insperations. In any scenario where you paint it as balanced the melee toon has the advantage. Now they have more of an advantage. Your fine with that of course.

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No, because a good defender will prioritize buffs. If scrappers, tankers, and brutes aren't arbitrarily losing their toggles because a blaster breathed on them, it's easier for the defender or corruptor to prioritize where the mez shields go (onto the squishies), rather than try to keep them on everyone. Considering that they typically have long animations (like Clear Mind) or short durations (like Increase Density), this isn't really a bad thing.

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Absolutely. Especially in the case of defenders. Defenders PvP as if they don't have any -dmg debuffs. Because basicaly they don't. Not going to change either according the dev responses.

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Right, because one debuff (which isn't completely inconsequential) is exactly the same as an entire powerset.

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Also, playing as if you don't have toggles is not the same thing as saying you don't have them. It is telling you not to rely on them. They are an advantage similar to how range is an advantage for blasters. Since range is a blasters defense should he always be at range? That wouldn't be very fair to melee now would it?

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No, it's more like saying that the blaster should play as if he shouldn't use ranged attacks.

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You still have your defenses, you just can't rely on them. I can't rely on my debuffs hitting half the people I target if they have any kind of defense. That is the game I am playing in. Keep comeing up with these arguements where you try and convince yourself that you are getting the short end of the stick. You have toggles that almost never drop, hell give me some debuffs that almost never miss. I sure as hell don't have them.

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Strangely, buffs never seem to miss, but attacks can and do miss. I wonder which of these things debuff is more like...

Even so, you can use debuffs to very good effect in PVP. If it were half as bad as you're saying, you would have nothing to fear from ice/cold or ice/rad dominators.

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Starting to understand that maybe melee is complaining about having to play the same game that everyone else is? Do you begin to realize how much of an advantage self buffs are? Probably not.

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No, I realize that self buffs are an advantage. That's the point. Your powers are supposed to give you the ability to do things like that.

I do not think that melee is complaining about having to play the same game that everyone else is, though. I have played in Recluse's Victory, and I've found that while my tanker (40) and scrapper (50) are not particularly weak, they're strangely not immune to defeat. Generally speaking, brutes and stalkers aren't big threats. Corruptors, Dominators, and Masterminds tend to bring the trouble. Dominators with Domination up just blow through my mez protection - which is fine - and Corruptor debuffs can kill my mobility, on top of other things. One lingering radiation right as I hit hibernate kept my health from regenerating past 20% for the full duration of hibernate. Force Bubbles seemed pretty effective, especially combined with any kind of -jump power. My tanker is able to survive more damage than other ATs, but that's a major part of the point of a tanker.

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All player powers with Forced Toggle Drop effects have had the chance for those effects to go off reduced. The need for these effects is greatly reduced with the advent of Enhancement Diversification. No player power has a 100% chance of dropping toggles with this change.


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TAKE A GOOD LOOK, SEE ANYTHING ABOUT THE GLOBAL DEFENSE NERF? NO? Just wanted to make sure we were reading the same thing. So, does that mean that the toggles droppers were balanced around the GDN? If so, then one can argue that as much as the ED hurt defenses it also hurt blaster damage. Ignoring the other classes that were hurt by the toggle dropping nerf.

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Now you're just reaching.

Here's another one, though: Obviously toggle-drops, designed as they were to bypass defenses, were balanced around the need to bypass issue 4 defenses. If they're weaker, you have much less need to bypass them.

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No, I'm arguing that it is ridiculous that a blaster can mez melee characters due to the ability to bypass mez protection entirely.

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You are argueing about something that has a chance to happen. It is not guaranteed unless the odds are overwhelmingly in one sides favor in which case everyone agrees that the side outnumbered should lose. There is a chance that it can happen, but a chance only. By saying that a blaster can negate the mez protection of a melee character and objecting to it, you are saying that you cannot accept even a CHANCE that it happens. There is a chance that a blaster can stack mez, there is a chance that he can knock off the right toggle by taking the risk of being attacked in melee. ALL CHANCES. Which you object to.

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I object to knocking off the right toggle and mezzing right through it, yes. Blasters should not be able to overwhelm or bypass mez protection any more than controllers should be able to outdamage blasters. If you want to hold a tanker, scrapper, brute, or stalker, get a controller or dominator to help. That's how it should be. Otherwise, face them without mezzing them. Blasters already get fairly heavy melee damage in exchange for being in melee range. However, it should not really be that simple to jump in and stay there.

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Actually, toggle drops should just go away entirely. Get rid of the whole mess and find some other way to balance the ATs in PVP.

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I have no problem with this. All that I ask is that they find the other form of balance first, then do away with the kludge, rather than nerf ATs that didn't need nerfing and ruining what little balance there was between the squishy and the melee.

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I'd prefer that too, but at the moment, it doesn't seem to be the case.

You might recall that I said I wanted the ATs to be rebalanced without toggle-dropping. That hasn't changed. I never campaigned to just eliminate toggle-drops and leave people swinging.


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Defender builds were nerfed. There is no doubt about it. It was a direct result of the global toggle drop nerf. Defenders definately did not need a nerf to their ability to PvP and the current numbers for the toggle drops is a rather huge nerf for those defender builds. Defenders could have used a buff, they could have used re-worked mechanics that would actually make un-resistable debuffs mean something. They could have gotten a bunch of buffs to go along with the nerfs but they didn't. I do see melee getting pretty much what they asked for. Defenders were told that since those changes dealth with game mechanics, they weren't going to change. Why did defenders get ANY nerfs? Go ahead, give me a really good reason. For melee not to feel irritated? At least you have defenses that are useable in PvP, we have debuffs that don't even work.

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Which debuffs don't work? I've tested -res, -damage, -acc. I've never tested -def, but I assume it works.

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Here is the biggest myth of all.

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the melee toons don't know when to stop and pause in their nerf cry. It all has to come down and be damned if there are no fixes to fix the mess it creates. Something irritates melee, it must be fixed NOW and bedamned the defenders.

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i agree, huge myth.

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Remember the good old days, when regen scrappers were able to jump into large crowds of +4 to +6 and not even get hit? Or when broadsword scrappers were two-shotting +2 or higher bosses? Or how scrappers were constantly and reliably sitting at the 500% damage cap?

Gosh, it's not like anyone who played a squishy AT made those claims.

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BTW, what the heck is schadenfreude?

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Schadenfreude: A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others

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HA HA HA HA!! It makes me so happy that you didn't know that! Now you look stoopid!

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Zub's awesome.

That's not irony or sarcasm, just plain damned fact.

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Ah, we are back to 1v1 arguements again. Assume team buffs and it doesn't work that way. At least from the villains point of view. Didn't you guys come out of the woodworks and say that all my arguements were 1v1? What exactly are you presenting here? One, a Brute or melee toon that apparently doesn't know what a break free is for, and one that apparently can't kill a blaster while the blaster is in the TF animation of doom. Two, you present a blaster that apparently doesn't have to worry about his health and can "attack attack attack" and that the Brute or melee toon is not buffed to resist any damage. Who is bringing up 1v1 arguements? Did you read any of my arguements or examples from PvP play in TEAMS. Mathematicaly, in TEAMS the brute is not going to be held or stunned. He is going to be kicking the blasters [censored]. Been there and done it often enough.

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It is not always possible to keep status protection on everyone in a team in PVP. It's also not always possible to have someone on a team who can provide it. It is also really stupid to insist that status protection should be provided to protect melee characters who have status protection in their native powersets from any AT that isn't a controller or dominator.

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Yeah, a year ago. Over a year ago. It may get re-worked now only becuase if toggle drops stay the way they are, it will be necessary.

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It didn't happen in issue 5 because they wanted to do the GDR first. It didn't happen in issue 6 because it was City of Villains. It didn't happen in issue 7 because that was City of Villains too. The time taken over those three issues is inexcusable, and they really should've taken the time to work on blasters for issue 7.

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Yeah they should, they wouldn't [censored] so much about toggle droppers if they did. Melee is far from crippled in PvP due to toggle droppers.

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Okay, it's fair for melee to PVP as if they don't have shields. At the same time, it's fair for defenders to PVP as if they don't have any buffs or debuffs. It's also fair for blasters to PVP as if they don't have any melee attacks. It's fair for Controllers to PVP as if they don't have any control. Masterminds should be playing as if they don't have pets.

Do you really want to make that argument?

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Funny, in almost every one of the arguements I have set forth on the issue of toggle dropping, it has always been that if Blasters are to play their role in teams they must be a threat to the melee classes and a fast threat. Notice the word team. I haven't changed my tune. I have stated that PvP degenerates into a series of 1v1 brawls. That is absolutely true. There is still team support however in the forum of buffs.

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You sprinkle the word "team" into your arguments, but your arguments aren't about teams.

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Here is the biggest myth of all. Toggle dropping was introduced in a time when defenses were higher. No doubt. Since toggle drops reduce the benefit of a toggle to zero it cannot be argued what they were balanced for. If they balanced the sets around GDN it would still apply to the higher values of the defensive toggles before GDN hit simply because it reduced those values to zero. So, simply saying that defenses were reduced does not mean that toggle drops are unbalanced. Also, at the time that toggle drops were introduced the developers were playing with GDN values on their test machines. It could be argued that they current toggle drops have always been balanced around GDN.

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Which is of course why the patch note says[ QUOTE ]
All player powers with Forced Toggle Drop effects have had the chance for those effects to go off reduced. The need for these effects is greatly reduced with the advent of Enhancement Diversification. No player power has a 100% chance of dropping toggles with this change.

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It has always been a percentage chance that the melee player will be stunned. That chance hovered around 20% with EM unless he activated TF, or he applied a mez before ATTEMPTING to drop the mez protection of the melee toon. It also disregards mez protection that is in click form and not toggle form. It also disregards that in team PvP there is normaly mez protection being passed around. Notice, my arguements in Brute VS. Blaster is that a brute does indeed have enough damage to kill a blaster before the opposite is true. I don't even think about mez. Granted, I carry break frees or team something that most melee toons haven't figured out yet. They probably never will if things stay as they are. They'll just complain about how easy it is for a controller or dominator to hold them. It has already started actually.

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Has it? There is a good argument that if a Controller or Dominator can easily blow through status protection as if it weren't there that this might be too good as the point of status protection is to slow such things down. There's also a good argument that Controllers and Dominators should be able to break through status protection, because otherwise they're not really able to fulfill their purpose.

If you're going to point to my post about a Dominator perma-holding me, the thing I pointed out as wrong about that situation was that the Dominator was unable to defeat my Scrapper, not that the Dominator was able to break my mez protection. It took three applications of DOMINATION-backed holds to do it.

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So essentially, your argueing about the possibility of this happening. As if it simply should never happen. Not surprising. Blasters want 50/50, melee wants what? Thats right, a team to challenge them.

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No, I'm arguing that it is ridiculous that a blaster can mez melee characters due to the ability to bypass mez protection entirely. I didn't say anything about how difficult a fight between a blaster and a melee character should be. That's another issue - it's just that the blaster shouldn't be able to stun the melee character unless other stuns are being stacked. If three blasters all TF the scrapper at once, should the scrapper survive, it should be stunned. One blaster alone? No way.

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You are absolutely correct however, there are several sets that could have used more toggle droppers. How ironic that the devs instead of bringing those sets up to par, nerfed the working sets into obscurity and mediocrity. /Fire and /Ice should have had more toggle drops, your right. They should have at least equaled Energy Melee and Elec Melee. TA defenders should have been given toggle drops as should Dark Defenders in some form or another. Probably a 20% chance on the heal or something like that.

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Actually, toggle drops should just go away entirely. Get rid of the whole mess and find some other way to balance the ATs in PVP. The whole point of toggle-dropping is to simply negate entire powersets without recourse - something you consider to be fair because you primarily play characters that benefit from such abuse.

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That didn't happen however, and believe me, in 1v1 duels it hurts an incredible amount not to be able to drop toggles. Not against melee, but for my own defender against corruptors. Yes, I know. Incredible as it may sound all those arguements I made about toggle drops not being completely designed against melee had a point. More than melee uses toggles and the toggle debuffs are the strongest AoE debuffs in the game. Believe me, I would love to be able to knock snowstorm down from a corruptor when they are useing it to completely neuter my TA defender. I can't though because players whined their [censored] of about toggle drops.

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There's always single-target holds, disorients, and other status effects. Only /sonic and /traps can provide themselves with status protection, and then to hold and stun. Admittedly, sleep isn't something defenders get much access to.

Also, admittedly, sonic and traps don't get snowstorm.

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Remember when Blueeyed and I argued that if the developers nerfed toggle drops it would effect defenders just as much as everyone else. All the melee proponents said the developers wouldn't do anything as stupid as that. Who was right Kali? Who was right? Who got hurt in the end? Yep, the poor defender got nerfed along with everyone else.

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Oh, please. Two whole defender powersets had enough toggle drops to rely on them. Storm and FF losing their TDs won't have any affect on Rad, Empathy, Dark, Sonic, Trick Arrow, and only minor effect on Kinetics as its TD was already very unreliable. Defenders as an AT did not rely upon TDs. Storm, already a strong defender primary, got toggle-drops on top of that, and FF, a weak primary that needs some attention and variety, used TDs to shore up its leaky corners.

Yet, the melee toons don't know when to stop and pause in their nerf cry. It all has to come down and be damned if there are no fixes to fix the mess it creates. Something irritates melee, it must be fixed NOW and bedamned the defenders.

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Gosh Kali, watching my defenders get nerfed along with everything else. Why would I be upset with melee? What possible reason could I have for being upset at all the nerf calls that melee made when we warned them that this would be the consequence.

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I deconstructed this claim above. Defenders were by and large not nerfed. Defenders need help in PVP, to varying degrees. Claiming that their viability hinged on toggle-dropping is extremely misleading. It's like saying that nerfing Total Focus makes all blasters useless in melee.

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But I thought a Blaster pityfest would be more along the lines of "Them mean old scrappers took away my I win button". Or something like that. Also, I never said "Statesman did not say they were going to fix blasters.". Until now. Because Statesman did not say they were going to fix blasters. He said they were going to look at them. That could be good, it could be bad, it could be both, it could be neither. We won't know until the Devs tell us what exactly they are doing.
And yes Cite is monosyllabic. So is please. And together they are no more rude than "find it yourself".

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There's more discussion on the topic than I could find, with some details on how the secondaries were going to be fixed, what the consequences of that would be for existing characters, and so on.

Blaster pityfests also include "We never get anything nice."

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Okay, if you want a more exact number, I don't think anyone out of scrappers or tanks had any defenses DIVIDED BY ONE HUNDRED - going from two guaranteed toggle drops to .05 x .22 = 0.011. The poster I responded to was the one who brought in the term "proportional".

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I wasn't quibbling over the number. I pointed out that having even a 1/100th of your former chance of dropping a toggle isn't 1/100th of your former power.

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I'm fairly certain I saw Jesus at one point during my Mayhem Mission.

So. Good.

One comment: there is way too much glue flying around. Kudos on everything else!

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At one point in my mission tonight, I had:

3xglue
2xflash
2xsmoke

I had used one 50% insights, a 33% insight, and a 25% insight. I also had Rage up, at its base to-hit buff, and I was missing consistently. I had a second 50% drop and used it, at which point I was able to hit things again.

At level 30, on the Talos map. The mission was fun for the most part, except: I would've liked a longer timer. 20 minutes, maybe. At 15, I felt like I just barely had time to rob the bank.

I drew a lot of attention. I found a Freak tank yelling about a kidnappee or stolen jewels or setting things on fire (all three at different times) and picked a fight. As soon as I started fighting, Longbow and SWAT started pouring out from everywhere, and I wasn't really able to handle the incoming damage at all.

I was playing my SS/Inv brute.