Biospark

I believe Controllers have it pretty good myself Garent, but I am not 100% in agreement with you on when they are really good. But its probably just my perspective.

My current favorite Controller (Mind-Rad) is SO-d out and He is flying through content in his 20s that was considerably more difficult for my Empath at the same levels. Once Bio hit 28 and picked up Tesla Cage, he did considerably better than he had been doing up to that point, but unless content gets much more difficult in the 30s, My controller is already much better, but not because of damage; but due to the extreme safety that he can provide to himself.
And I am not convinced that my Defender was even better in the damage department, because the only "non-contained" damage my controller does is the very first attack and on Bosses.

If, however, the damage divide you are referring to is AoE damage, then I definitely would agree with you.

Assault Rifle is kinda new for Defenders would be my guess.

Also Kinetics is a melee range set while AR is alot like Archery to me and best played at range. When I heard we were getting Assault Rifle, the only set that seemed to "conceptually" fit was Forcefields (to me), but I have also considered playing as a Traps/AR defender. Both sound like good "synergy".

Yep. Thats something we all know. My observation was more or less two things.

1) In a thread where someone was asking which Defender primary to choose if they wanted to solo quickly and possibly raise difficulty to x8. (Which EVERY other AT hero-side can do with some measure of effort, except SOME Defenders). Five of the primaries were singled out as top performers. Those same 5 are the ones that can use ALL of their non-heal, non-rezz powers while solo.

2) That from my estimation the Defender powersets most in need of help, coincidentally have the highest number of non-heal, non-rez powers that are useless solo.

Its an interesting coincidence, and not one (I am sure) that surprises anyone.

Its also interesting to note that the same arguments over defender parity and balance "pop-up" in a thread about our new inherent. For me that is not surprising, since our current Inherent doesn't help at all while solo and most folks (I believe) feel the only balance problems with Defenders are in the "solo" arena. **Pvp too I would bet, but I dont participate in that, so only guessing**

This was in reference to which primaries soloed the best.

If you make a list of each primary and show which sets have Ally-only powers and exclude Heals and Rezz powers from that list you see some interesting coincidences

Cold Domination (Ice Shield,Glacial Shield,Frostwork)
Dark Miasma (none)
Empathy (Clear Mind, Fortitude, Adrenaline Boost)
Forcefields (Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield)
Kinetics (Increase Density, Speed Boost)
Radiation (none)
Sonic Resonance (Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven, Disruption Field, Sonic Repulsion, Clarity)
Storm Summoning (none)
Traps (none)
Trick Arrow (none)

Notice all the powersets listed as "offenders" have No Ally Only buffs.
And if you list the sets by order of how many Ally-only buffs, the list seems to take on the order of worst to best soloers amongst the remaining sets;

Sonic Resonance (5)
Empathy (3)
Cold Domination (3)
Forcefields (2)
Kinetics (2)

Kinda what I have been saying all along. Powersets that cannot take advantage of their best buffs/debuffs dont solo as well. Ones that can use their buffs/debuffs can solo well and can actually (apparently) crank up the difficulty above +0/x3, which is something my Empath cannot do, even after spending 500-700 Million Influence to IO him out.
**and about 6 or 7 respecs to try different strategies**

In one of your posts, did you say Blasters dont do AoEs as well as Defenders ?

Ok sorry, It was not your post Frosticus

One of Torrynts Examples was a 4 Emp 4 Blaster Team. If I am not mistaken, those 4 EMPS could AB the Blasters who then use their OWN Nukes without crashes and I am pretty sure they would do More damage. Additionally, those blasters would be like very well slotted Archery Blasters that have a regeneration secondary and perma instant healing. Hmmm... Not seeing your argument winning over his. Besides, I dont see the relevance of talking about all defender, all controller or all anything teams. They should probably be taken into account by the developers when balancing the game, but "in-game" they are quite out of the ordinary, so dont really matter to me and most players. The facts are that defenders are the lowest population of the Hero-side ATs (not counting Khelds) and there are reasons for it. Should the game designers and developers decide to study this phenom ? Should they do something to make Defenders more appealing to a larger crowd without making them overpowered ?

For me the answer is a clear Yes. But I am biased. I really like Defenders.
I am sure the folks that fought for the Tanker changes felt the same way about their AT.
And they were right for feeling that way. Tankers are just fine now, and scrappers still outnumber them "in-game".

My highest level blaster was 47 and Also Energy/Devices. He has been retired so I could play him as an Energy/Energy. I wanted to try a Blapper for... forever
With that being said I can tell you quite alot about Energy-Devices.

I built mine as a Hover-blaster with Ranged Defense as the main IO bonus.

Gun Drone, I skipped. In fact I tried every single device power at one point or another and in the end I had ONLY Web Grenade, Caltrops and Smoke Grenade. I was debating about adding back in cloaking device or Targeting Drone at 49, but had not decided. Energy Blast played at range works just fine without Gun Drone. But I just have never been into sommoning things like pets on any characters. Damage wise, its not bad, and gives a pretty nice Defiance boost, operates while you are mezzed etc...

Caltrops are AWESOME on a range focused character. Think of them as a castle wall that blocks a passageway or area from melee villains to approach you. They dont do great damage, but if you Web Grenade a target that is standing on a caltrop patch, its extra damage. Even as a hover blaster, you can pick your spot to hover over, drop a patch below you and still have a buffer zone in a low ceiling area. Not to mention any flyers that come over to you drop right onto the caltrop patch if you web-nade them.

Cloaking Device is a good power, For stealth. If you take it for defense also, like I did, you will be somewhat disappointed since the defense suppresses in combat. Take it if you can fit it in, but only run it for stealth.

For epic powers my first choice was Electric. I wanted a third AoE to try and shore up the one weakness of Energy Blast. I was not that impressed. You could have different results, but I switched my plan after I got an epic resist shield and never looked back. My build had Boxing/Tough/Weave and Electric Mastery at 45, I dropped the fighting pool and electric mastery to pick up Medicine pool (Aid Other/Aid Self) and Power Mastery (Personal Force Field). I admit that I generally play support characters and have a "defensive" outlook on making characters, but PFF+Aid Self is flat excellent on a Blaster.

Some IO advice. Hover slotted with Blessing of the Zephyr WAS the way to go, after the coming Nerf its still probably the way I would slot Hover and may even become cheaper than it currently is. Most BoTZ IOs I have were dropped or gotten thru Merits purchases, so I have not spent nearly as much as some folks have.

For your Blasts, Thunderstike all the way. This set is affordable and 6-slotted on Power Bolt, Power Blast and Power Burst is really solid attack Chain.

For a cheap defense set, Red Fortune is not bad, but requires 6-slots for the Range defense boost.

Gaussians in Targeting drone is also good, but again takes 6-slots.

I do reccommend getting MID's to help with respec planning, or you can use "Sucker Punch" online to see how many slots you can get into different build plans.

From your listed power choices, I think you have the right ideas. I went Power Push over the Snipe. Sniper attacks just dont seem to be worth the time spent, not to mention that being interrupted is BAD. Power Push was the difference between soloing Paragon Protectors and NOT soloing them. Its that good at knocking things down.

One other thing about this combination that I found was on teams I would WebNade a target and that would be the one I would single target to death. If this was a target of a melee character I would not be sending them flying on the first blast, so I didnt get many complaints about my Knockback on teams. I also did less AoE blasting on teams and just picked Hard targets to "assist" in their defeat.

Hope this helped a little

I love how this keeps happening game after game too.

What will all the non-support characters do when people who like to play support roles, like myself, decide to play something else.

Ask yourself a question. In any Guild/Super Group etc... has anyone ever been asked/told to switch to their "insert needed support AT/Class here" because we need them for this mission/quest etc... ?

I "believe" that CoX is not yer ordinary MMO. Its the reason I returned to play after a 3 year absence. I also believe that it is not "done" and can be improved, tweaked, etc... to make it break even more of the "rules" that seem to plague every MMO. But I could just be too optimistic.

I think it really would matter how they re-do the game. Its very possible, depending on how they do powers/powersets and archetypes that your character could not be recreated accurately enough to be worth the extra coding.

They COULD however, let the oldest Veterans into Beta earlier to "grab-up" their character names before the general populace can "take-away" your favorite character's "moniker".
I for one, would look forward to playing an all-new and improved system from the ground up, but dread the thought of some of my "cool" names being used by someone else.

Torrynt gets it ! Well Said

What !?! Are we playing the same game ? My Defenders have to work ! Hard ! to keep your sorry butt from landing in the hospital. And for that effort I get to look at crappy soloing as the trade-off ? Maybe I should play a DPSer so I can be the poor AT with only one job. hehe.

This statement is wrong on many levels. But the main one is that Tankers do the SAME thing Defenders do on a team. Which is ....Working Hard to keep your sorry butt out of the Hospital. Tankers who know what they are doing and play well with a patient team can make Defenders and Controllers feel completely unnecessary. Point of fact, the last Praetorian Arc I ran on Guardian with Steel Authority had a Shield Tanker and alot of squishies like me. People died... when they got seperated from the tank and were off aggroing stuff on their own. They had defenders.... like me.. trying to keep them alive, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Meanwhile our tank was blissfully standing down multiple spawns of villains until everyone decided it was safer to stand behind him.
How does that play into your theory?

Well, in this we agree. We dont NEED a buff. But some of us are tired of being side kicks and would like to have a better solo experience and hmmm... maybe be useful on teams for our secondary too, other than whatever debuffs are attached to said secondary.

Rather than state a combination of powersets, I will just throw out some of the things I find the most FUN

Energy Blast :: This set is just so beautiful graphically, and the Knockback makes you just feel like a Super Hero. Whats even better is that you can play a Defender version or a Blaster Version depending on your tastes. Or Both. Heck I think someone gets Powerblast in their epic choices. Controller ?

Martial Arts :: Once again a nice looking set full of Super Hero feel. I still giggle every time I Crane Kick someone over a balcony rail inside a mission. Now that they have added alternate animations, you can better customize your attacks.

Super Strength :: Just like Martial Arts for Scrappers, this powerset evokes the spirit of tankers completely with its powerful punches, footstomp, handclap, hurl etc... And also like Martial Arts we now have customizable animations so you can better tailor your character.

There are more powersets I could go into, but you get the idea: Visual appeal, Knockback, killer GFX all make me a happy player.

Another thing I like to do from time to time is make out-of-the-box characters.
As an example, here are my latest attempts at playing something unusual.

Radiation-Dark Defender with a twist. Inspired by Luminara's guide for a Melee-Fender, plus my own personal wish that we could get an AT that has Defender Primaries and Melee Secondaries, This character was meant to be an in-your-face melee character. I had 2 pool attack powers, plus dark blast and gloom (which both have kind of a punching animation) as well as Sands of Mu. The character would throw out his debuffs and run in to punch stuff. I didnt stick with it, but this idea is still in the back of my mind and there will come a day when I will dust it off and try it again.

Mind-Radiation Controller. Inspired by another guide called "Building a Wartroller", I wanted this concept to be a Blaster in Controller "clothing". Unlike my Melee-fender, this character is a BLAST (no pun intended). This one is a keeper, and not for the reasons you might think. I suffer no end of hilarity using "confuse". You cannot imagine the joy of turning Tsoo sorcerers, Lost Mind controllers, Vahzlok Bombs, Sky Raider Engineers, etc... into friends and annihilating a spawn with ease.

The whole idea of playing one AT and trying to emulate another intrigues me alot.

Hope this helps

It seems you and I agree much more than we disagree. This solution makes so much sense to me and always has, but there have been so many reasons thrown at me for why this will simply not happen. Game engine issue being the top offender.
The silliest argument given to me was that Forcefield defenders would trivialize SR scrappers if they could get those "2" additional buffs. Okay, so FF has fewer hps, less status protection and CONSIDERABLY less DPS and no way to raise their own damage.
I think Scrappers would still get played if this were a choice available in the game.
The fact that many Defenders get to take advangtage of their own primaries while solo, while some select "special" sets get the "short shaft" is just something I would like to see changed, but am not expecting to see it happen after all this time.

The reason I subscribe to the damage boost is because I don't expect them to do the above change. So, in light of this, I will gladly take an improvement that helps ALL defenders, even if the "solo" gap still remains between the primaries. Afterall, they are my defender brothers. I would not be jealous of a RAD/SONIC 's improved ability, because my EMP/ELEC would have also recieved a boost.

I have played this game 3 years out of the 6 years of its existence (I took a 3 year break to play another game about 15 months after launch), and in all that time I have been on ZERO 8-man teams consisting of ALL Defender/Controllers. Perhaps I don't play as much, or team as much, but the most common occurence is 1-4 Controller/Defenders and the rest are Scrapps/Blasters/Tankers with Blasters more often as the predominant AT on an 8-man team. So, I have to agree with StratoNexus that ALL-Defender or ALL-Controller teams are indeed outlier considerations and I seriously doubt that the game is balanced around something this infrequent. I could be wrong.

Adding to the concept of Defenders seeming to blast less on teams, I am sure there are people out there that do not care to use their blasts and feel their "Job" is strictly in their primary. They would be missing out on the best part of being a defender though. But I would say that being on a team and simply doing your job of defending the team, can reduce significantly the amount of time you can spend blasting. This is simply a matter of choices at times; example: Do I cast a "Heal Other" on the blaster that just got "spanked" and is in the "red" or do I cast my largest single Blast at the Villain that is attacking said Blaster and make a small dent in its health....?
IMO my damage could be Blaster level and I would STILL do less damage on a team than a real Blaster.

So the question still keeps coming up, How do you make ALL defenders solo better without upsetting the Apple-cart of AT-to-AT balance or making Defenders too powerful on teams.

There are distinctly two seperate camps on this; One group feels that even though Parity for Defender primaries are all over the map, lets leave it alone because any attempt to fix it would ruin everything.

And the group I belong to feels that Defenders are just fine on Teams, and solo just fine on Base settings throughout the game, but feel that no two defenders are created equal and that where some defenders fall flat on their backsides is in the Damage department.
Raising Defender damage closer to Tankers is not unbalanced since they have considerably more HPs and much better status protection in order to survive the time needed to defeat a spawn.

consider:

TANKER Primary ---> roughly equivalent ---> DEFENDER Primary (with regards to personal survival)
TANKER HPs ---> considerably greater ---> DEFENDER HPs (also much greater Status Protection)
TANKER DMG ---> greater than most ---> DEFENDER DMG (some defenders can raise dps, not all)

That makes Tankers better in 2 of three categories, and the only thing that folks in "camp one" will continuely throw out there is "Force-multipliers" as the "balance panacea". Which does absolutely ZERO good while solo. Tankers keep ALL of their benefits solo.

Yes COH2 would most likely be done to overcome game engine limitations that they have had to work around for the last 6 years, but I would not place much hope on porting existing characters. It is exciting, if true

I would LOVE to have a desktop version of COH that would be mod-able like Neverwinter Nights. Imagine giving the player base not only a mission creator, but the freedom to "mod" to their hearts content. :::looks around for his GMAX notes:::

Hehe, to me ? Yeah

Do I expect something like this ? Nope !

Will we get something even close to it ? Doubtfull....

But whatever we get will most likely be better than it is now, so consider me nervous as a school girl before her prom.... uhm... yeah, you get the idea

I pray daily for such a change. In one fell-swoop, Defender parity would be much tighter.

Alas, this could spark some pretty dramatic changes to alot of things we might not all like, but if the end result is good, I will be a happy Defender.

Also, this could be something that only occurs when you dont have any team-mates or pets. If you have no team-mates or pets in play, any ally buff you cast basically effects you. You could leave the strength alone, but limit this to only ONE buff at a time. As soon as you summon a pet or add a teammate or cast a different ally buff, this shadow buff goes away. So, for example, my empath would have to choose whether he had "Fortitude", "Clear Mind", or Adrenaline Boost" in effect. This creates some tactics as well. You could switch buffs based on the encounter type, or even during the encounter as needed.

I too think its way too late to ask/expect for AT to AT parity in regards to solo and teaming capabilities. In fact in every MMO that I have played in the last 10 years, its fairly common to find ATs/Classes, which for whatever reason are better suited to teaming because their tools/powers contribute more in a team environment, that often suffer in their abilities to solo. And by the same result the powers afforded to other ATs/Classes which give a better "solo" experience often have fewer tools to contribute in a team setting.

Honestly, I dont know if that's by design or if it just happens thru the course of game development and the actions of the player base. Because you "Know" players never find ways to focus their skills/talents/tactics to do things "unexpected" or "unforeseen" by the developers. Not to mention that once a game has been around for awhile, every player "knows" which ATs/Classes are needed to maximize the success in certain endeavors.



My remaining hope is to see some improvements in parity between the different Defender primaries . I think its completely unrealistic to expect parity between all ATs. Even if the developers felt that way, I think we would have seen alot more effort over the years to move the ATs together. Judging by the state of Empathy as compared to when I first rolled one back in June 2004, Its kinda obvious AT to AT parity is not the design goal, and perhaps not even Powerset to Powerset. The later I refuse to believe, and instead like to think they just havent got around to reviewing Defender Parity with an "eye" towards soloing. Probably not high on the list of things "to do"

Hehe You Rock the Aura HOBO !

I used to judge soloing ability very heavily on "chance of death", but there are so many ways to avoid death and tactics to help ease through an encounter that you cannot strictly base it off "death rates".

What I find frustrating on my Empath is that to solo at even a "reasonable" pace (to me), means that I have to turn Bosses off. This is a significant problem to me, since it changes the quality of prospective drops. Additionally, I cannot even imagine running difficulties over +0/x3. Even against the easiest Foes, larger spawns contain multiple "mezzing" mobs so that its extremely risky doing this. I agree that some ATs should solo better than others, so dont try and say that I expect "scrapper-like" soloability. That is simply not true.
But I expect that each of the diffierent varieties of Defenders should have "roughly" similar performance, much like how the different varieties of powersets in other ATs do.

With Defenders, this is absolutely not the case. The "range" of solo performance between defenders primaries is ALOT wider than the range that you will see with Tankers or Scrappers. And I will always advocate improvements rather than nerfs, so what I hope to see is that Forcefields, Empathy, Sonic and even other sets that most folks feel are just fine, get looked at and given "slight" enhancements to make them perform a bit better solo.

I want my Empath to be a Super-Hero, not a Side-Kick

SIIIIIDE-Kick !!!

This kinda takes the thread full circle back to the original topic of Defense without DDR.
And this point definitely got my attention.

No squishie has ANY DDR, nor personal Mezz protection(some exceptions) and about the only folks that could have a shot at SOFTCAP to ALL positions would be Forcefields and Traps (probably someone else I am forgetting too), but everyone else (the vast majority) can, at best, cap Ranged or S/L or go for generic moderate defense (20-30%) to all positions. You would deny the opportunity for lower damage, lower HP ATs with no toggle mezz protection the use of the same IOs that YOU feel certain ATs legitimately deserve to use in order to gain more defense.

Hmmm...

Please think about that some more. The question should be asked does ANYONE that is not playing a DEFENSE-based powerset deserve to reach the softcap? If you had said that, then I would reluctantly say you have a point.

We did not have to do anything like that. My Emp stayed opposite the Warshade so that My Auras, Tactics and Maneuvers effected him, but far enough away that I could avoid LR's attacks. Kept Fort and AB on our Warshade, healed and used RAs as they cycled.
Recluse never left the Tank.

It can be done My first ever STF had a Warshade as our Tank.

plus me Emp/Elec, Fire/Kin, Fire/Rad, Dark/Dark scrapper, Peacebringer, and one more scrapper and a defender (FF iirc).

Those are all good choices, and I am sure there are folks that can give you good advice on each of them.

The first one seems more of a solid single target choice, but I am not an expert. Seismic Smash at 38 looks like it would be well worth the wait for AoE damage. Fiery Aura can be a little squishy at first, but there are ways to toughen it up (+hps, tough, weave etc...), but you cannot go wrong with a set that can replenish both the "green" and "blue" bars on fairly short timers.

Your second choice is a good overall choice with AoE and Single target damage, but lacks control. With my WP/Fire I took Air Superiority to get a small bit of control, and then Char at 41.

The final choice is going to do very well once you get into the mid-late 30s, but will be really heavy on endurance usage. Just one more reason I went with a Tank for an Elemental concept over a Controller.

Good Luck

One other thing to consider is that you dont need powersets for some concepts.

For example, one of my Tanker builds that I play with an eye towards Stone, used his costume and the Stone graphics available there. Using a costume change emote you can switch costumes and turn into a "Stone Thing". That enables you to take just about any of the lower-key primaries like "Willpower" or "Invulnerability" and call it your "Earth" concept.

For Damage, my favorite is Fire Melee. But you could also take Super Strength and call that your "Earth" set. The blows are very powerful and footstomp is just plain awesome and certainly evokes the "earth's power". Not to mention Hurl Boulder, if that's not earth, I dont know what is.

Also, dont forget color customization AND Auras.
Alot can be done with this to assist in your concept.

My Willpower-Fire-Fire Tanker has the Willpower toggles set up with a nice flame orange look to help evoke the complete fiery theme and uses a flaming Aura on his eyes, head and hands. I could have gone Fire-Fire-Fire, but Fiery Aura is just a tad too squishy for my tastes, and I am not a big fan of click powers on melee characters unless they are attacks.