DrMike2000

It could work in theory, I guess.
You have the added complication of mixed type attacks.

Say someone hits you with an Energy Blast for 7 Smashing and 23 Energy damage, and you have:

50% Smashing Resistance
0% Energy resistance
30% Ranged Resistance

What happens?
I suppose the 7 damage gets applied vs Smashing Resistance (because 50 is bigger than 30), and the Energy damage gets applied vs your Ranged resistance (because 30 is bigger than 0)?

So it could be done, the question really would be why?
What sort of character concept is there that would demand it? You could I guess have a space-farer with large AoE resistance because they're immuneto extremes of environment, or something contrived like a kinetic field that slows down incoming projectiles for ranged Resistance.

You could already do this sort of thing with positional defence, and unless you're watching the combat log like a hawk you wont notice too much.

What would a set with this look like? A new set that only provides Melee resistance wont be too popular. You'd end up with a number of toggles covering all the bases, and its really no different from existing sets then. It doesnt really matter if you have a Melee res toggle and a Ranged/AoE toggle vs a S/L toggle and a F/C/E/N toggle, does it?

Finally theres then the added problem of having to balance other things with these new sets. Set bonuses are all types resistance. Tough is types resistance, and so are any epic shiedls, or temporary powers like the Wedding Band. Do they get modified to include some positional Resistance too so as not to penalise the new sets?

Its a cool idea, but ultimately a lot of work for little return.

That's an interesting idea, making END Drain behave like a damage debuff.

There's the problem of working out how much end has been lost from actually using attacks vs how much has been lost due to end drain. This is particularly relevant with Architect custom enemies whose attacks do use apppreicable end.
So it would probably work best just as a damage debuff attached to the end draining attack.

There's still the Short Circuit problem even with this change. The debuff would affect bosses and minions alike. If you make it powerful enough to affect one minion significantly, it's also powerful enough to affect multiple bosses just as much. If you made the damage debuff too powerful, you start treading on the toes of Dark, Sonic or Kinetics users, and also have to consider how these Defenders could stack damage debuffs or resistance from their primary with this secondary effect.

I'd alos apply this argument to any suggestion that the set as a whole can be fixed by improving Short Circuit via animation time. As an AoE it will always fall between being too powerful becuase it neutralises multiple bosses, and too weak because it can't drain a single minion.

And, come to think of it, Fire Controllers who open with Flashfire (ie pretty much all of them) would still get contained Hot Feet damage while the stun lasted.

Oh well, probably not my best idea then.

If you're looking to solo a lot, TA/A may be a bit difficult.
Trick Arrow specialises in laying down mass debuffage on long recharges. Things like Disruption Arrow, Glue Arrow, Poison Gas Arrow and Oil Slick Arrow will be wasted on spawns of 3 or less.
You can boost your own damage by -40% Res from Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow, or just have a higher base damage from being a Blaster.

I'd go the Blaster for soloing. You've got enough damage mitigation with the stuns in Energy manipulation to gey by.

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Phantom Army unslotted for damage does no net damage. But the healback from illusionary attacks is not affected by damage enhancements.
So an unslotted attack may do 20 damage and heal back 20 later, but a slotted one will do 40 damage and heal back 20.
Spectral Wounds is the same - 50 damage, heals back 20 becomes 100 damage that heals back 20 when slotted. I really noticed this with my Illusionist, that at level 18, letting the Phantom Army loose on a spawn would distract them. By the mid 20s, the Phantom Army would defeat them instead, thanks to the damage slotting I'd put in there.

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At level 27 (almost 28) my illusion/ta still effectivly does no real damage with PA if there's more then 3 enemies. They keep switching targets. Granted, it's currently slotted with (all lev 25 common IO) 1 acc, 2 recharge, 1 damage. Half the damage they do with any given attack heals by the time their second attack finishes.

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Yep. 3/4 of the damage they do will heal back with that slotting. (They do 133% base damage and heal back 100% base.) Three slotting for damage will make that half, but also have the effect of getting them to actually defeat minions before the heal back kicks in. Theres a sort of tipping point there where they get enough power to two-shot or three-shot minions.
I got my Ill/Storm to 26 and if I recall slotted Phantom Army above all else, first with recharge, then damage, letting the -Def in Freezing Rain take care of their accuracy. You could do the same with Acid Arrow with TA.

With regards to Containment in general, you got me thinking. The "if the target is held, slept, immobilised or stunned" clause is so un-situational its not funny, you may as well just say "double damage if you're fighting a Controller"

What if... Immobilise was taken out of the equation. ie you only got Containment against targets that were properly incapacitated by being stunned, held or slept?

For a solo Controller it wouldn't be a huge issue, you hold a target first and then start damaging them. Controllers would still be viable solo-ists, which was the point of Containment.

But it would reduce the AoE damage stunts that Controllers are capable of, such as contained Hot Feet. This would leave Defenders with unqualified better AoE damage as their niche.

It would also have the unfortunate side effect of preventing Containment on purple triangle EB's. Would that be too much of a penalty?

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Defender does less damage than any other class, and uses the same endurance. Yes, they do more for teams, but not everyone teams all the time.

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Uhm, actually controllers generally do less damage. As I look through the level 50 damage of a fire controller (considered the highest damage one) I notice that while it has a few powers that will out damage the defender blast set I'd mentioned, it requires containment to do more damage then most defender blasts with the mainstay damage dealers. And to get containment, mobs have to be locked down, thus negating Bonfire's ability to damage them. Bonfire's the highest damage power in the set too.

This means the controller damage either has to be done single target (which will take longer and use more endurance) or a require letting mobs run around and attack you in the hopes they run into bonfire. This is for fire control only.

How about illusion controllers? Another high damage controller set.
Spec wounds does out damage most controller attacks, and yet it doesn't. 10 seconds after use it loses almost 20 points of it's damage. Single target by the way. Blind does less damage then most defender attacks, and is single target too for it's damage.

Phantom army then? Those pets are high damage, right? Well they are, sort of. For burst damage they do a lot of damage. They then have most of that damage heal after a few seconds. And since they love to randomly change targets, enemies can get ample time to recover. No containment for them too. So that's two powers modified by containment damage only.

That brings us to Phantasm, the capstone of the set. Phatasm isn't going to out damage defenders either. Two attacks which might be slightly stronger, but it's still only two attacks. So no, defenders do more damage overall then controllers. Even if you factor in containment. And if an enemy is highly resistant to mez they do more damage still.

(someone may claim this is covering multiple points but no, I'm simply taking time to do a fair review)

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The problem with having an endurance discount for foes in range is that the Defender, a non-melee AT is forced into closer range in order to benefit from the inherent.

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Actually, most of my defenders prefer melee. And if it gave an end discount based on players/enemies nearby it would presumably (I'd hope) count you too.

Expanded: Just logged into my illusion controller (love it btw) and checked something. I'd dare suggest that PA can't kill anything if there's 3 or more enemies in the group. The enemies heal from too much of the damage. They are more of a distraction that adds some spike damage.

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Bonfire will do full damage if you use Fire Cages first and then cast Bonfire under the mob. Keep up Fire Cages and they'll stay in the bonfire due to the -KB in Fire Cages.

Phantom Army unslotted for damage does no net damage. But the healback from illusionary attacks is not affected by damage enhancements.
So an unslotted attack may do 20 damage and heal back 20 later, but a slotted one will do 40 damage and heal back 20.
Spectral Wounds is the same - 50 damage, heals back 20 becomes 100 damage that heals back 20 when slotted. I really noticed this with my Illusionist, that at level 18, letting the Phantom Army loose on a spawn would distract them. By the mid 20s, the Phantom Army would defeat them instead, thanks to the damage slotting I'd put in there.

8 Blaster level Ice Storms up every 15 seconds, and a -240% Resistance debuff?

Now that would be wicked!

IOs are not necessary to play the game but they do let you distort your character almost beyond recognition and do things they couldn't do otherwise.

In the Blaster boards recently, a blaster with capped Ranged Defence solo'd a Rikti pylon.
Illusion Controllers use Recharge set bonuses to perma Phantom Army and go on to solo AVs and Giant Monsters.

You couldn't pull this off with just IOs, but you can still play the game. So while IO's aren't necessary, they are far from fluff.

Thats a really good point, Rejolt.
Before ED (which was before my time) Short Circuit could be six-slotted for END drain and drain a whole group in one go. Its high base accuracy also suggests this was the intention - you didnt need to waste a slot on an accuracy enhancer.

The reason I suspect this hasn't been fixed post-ED (say by upping its base drain to 50%) is that a boss-level AoE control is a bit too much for a blast set.

Oh yeah, I've seen it in action twice on my way to 50

The thing is, Endurance Drain could be a brilliant tool, but just seems to be held back by the odd layout of the set.

End drains characteristsics are:

- It affects bosses as much as minions (unlike holds, but like knockback)
- It stacks with itself, sometimes requiring multiple applications to take effect (like holds, unlike knockback)
- It can be permanently maintained once established (unlike knockback)

The odd thing is, in a blast set as opposed to a control set, we're given the tool in the form of an AoE? It would be overpowered to let a blast set control multiple bosses, so it gets saddled with the long animation, the incomplete drain, the long recharge and so on. AoE controls in blast sets are often minions only (eg Dark Pit) - we cant do this with End drain because it doesnt distinguish between minion and boss.

This is why it would make much more sense to have the drain loaded into the single target blasts. Say you're soloing and come across a boss:

If you're an Ice Blaster (or Psi), and you attack with damage as your primary aim, the boss gets off 20 to 40% less attacks during the fight due to -Recharge.

If you're an Energy Blaster attacking the boss, he spends some percentage of the fight flopping around on his back or sailing through the air.

If you're an Electrical Blaster and you attack with intent to damage, currently the boss will lose about 20% of his END bar and therefore not affect his behaviour or mitigate damage in the slightest.
If you have the right secondary, and you modify your behaviour to risk a long rooting animation in melee, and you've slotting for it, then you can drain him.
This seems to me to be a lot of ifs.

If the single target blasts drained more END, you could attack with them and have the boss drained by the time his health was say at 40% or 20% or whatever, putting the mitigation on a par with that from other blast sets with defensive secondary effects.
With this kind of damage to drain, a damage-slotted Blaster is going to defeat a lieutenant before they drain them. A Defender would maybe drain the lieutenant first due to their lower damage, especially if they've slotted for drain rather than damage. Minions being attacked by the single target blasts (as opposed to Power Sinked or Boost-Short Circuited) would be defeated before being drained.

The set is workable under some circumstances as it is, but I think could be improved. At the moment, the secondary effect on most of its powers is about as useful as a short lived Mag 1 hold - it's there but never takes any effect.

These people who've only ever played AE have had a greater selection of content than us old-schoolers ever had.

Not that its necessarily fantastic quality, or that they make much use of the range available...

I think let them be. Let them know about some of the cool stuff out there and some of the rewards you can pick up, and see if they bite.

I haven't run most of the Task Forces in game, but I don't feel like I'm short of stuff to do. Some people only play Melee classes, or only play certain types of Defenders. Some people never solo. Everyone limits their play experience in some way.

Tha Axe is good for killing ghosts, many of whom pack some To Hit debuffs in their attacks. This makes an attack with unenhancable accuracy much less appealing to use.

So the Ghost Slaying Axe isn't really all that brilliant even then, unless you've got a good reliable source of +To Hit or Def debuff handy.

I'd love a Soccer Blast set where you kick footballs at your opponents to damage or stun them. AoEs are either a fast ricochet between all targets, or a self-dividing football kind of like Nightfall in Dark Blast or the Kheldian cone powers.
I'm not 100% sure what the nuke would look like.

Skis as a travel power, preferably flying skis. Make them a +Fly Speed -Run Speed toggle for Cross Country Skiing and Combat Skiing where you do a series of Knees together jumps and twists. Like Combat Jumping but with skiis on. Im not sure what the melee attack would be, but it would be pretty cool!

Trick Golf Balls.
- Glue ball, Exploding Ball, Disruption Ball, Acid Ball, and if anyone gets too close, the trusty No 5 Boxing Glove Iron!
Sexy Jay to provide a smart series of customisable golf bags, and if you have the 36 month pet they can caddy for you.

Electrical Blast's secondary effect of Endurance Drain is pretty much concentrated in a single power - Short Circuit. Even stranger, its a PBAoE power with a long animation.

Other sets, such as Ice Blast, for comparison, tend to have their secondary effects evenly spread over most of the powers.

Designing Electrical Blast from scratch, it would make more sense to me for all the standard attacks to do a bit of END drain so that when soloing a hard target like a boss, they got their End drained at say 1/4 health or 1/2 health if slotted for End Drain.
Ice Blast applies a steady -Recharge just by attacking. Energy Blast knocks the target around a bit just by attacking. Why doesn't Electrical Blast drain significant End just by attacking?

I know this is the way the set is, I've played Electrical Blast to 50 twice now (Elec/Elec Blaster and Kin/Elec Defender, so Ive been able to use End Drain quite well) and I'm going back for thirds with another Blaster, this time Elec/Energy, the third functional sapper build.

Im just curious if there's ever been any dev word on this design decision, or if any other players have any insights into it.

It never really works to make you harder to kill for a prolonged period. If you have 25% Health and 75% resistances, you may as well just be at full health with no resistances. And you almost definitely have to be that low for the full Resistance to kick in.

All the scaling resists do is prevent you getting downed by two consecutive lucky shots.

Cosmic Burst would make much better use of slots for Recharge, Stun, Damage and Accuracy.

The -To Hit is small, and will only matter on Bosses and above anyway, since everything else will be stunned by the attack.

The other two procs would work better in Neutrino Bolt if you dont already have them in there.

When, without a Sonic, is a team ever at the resistance cap?

Best case scenario is a high level team. Say everyone's packing a slotted Resistance toggle like Defender/Blaster epics at a minimum - that's about 40% S/L Resistance there for Defenders, less for Blasters and Controllers.
A Thermal, who's your next best bet for all-round Resistance buffage, will add about 25%, so we're all at 65% or so, against Smashing, Lethal, and close with another element of choice from the epic shield maybe.

In those circumstances, adding a Sonic not only fills in most other damage types, but caps everyones S/L, reducing incoming damage from 45% normal to 35% normal, a non-trivial change.

Maybe some of the exotic damage types like Energy, Psi, Cold or Negative are getting extra coverage from a Storm, Cold or Dark Defender's stealth aura. But with any of those three and the Defence/To Hit debuff they bring you're really in the relams of mitigation overkill already.

So, in this worse case scenario, adding a Sonic Defender, "only" caps everyones resistance, increases group damage by 30-60% and provides an irregular big grab bag of debuffs every few spawns?

I'd generalise what you're saying here to "any team with 2 Defenders probably doesn't need a third" and leave it at that. I agree Force Field is special, you can get a mitigation heavy team where they dont add much. But Sonic is no less of a toolbox set that Cold, Rad, TA, or Storm.

I loved the minigame on my Fire/SS tank - deliver KO Blow and try to get underneath the victim as they landed, to set off a Burn patch while they were held.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear there.

The 'poor' DPS I was referring to was the meat and potato attacks like Jab, Punch and Haymaker. They're not great are they? But the average DPS for a Tanker is brought up above poor by the irregular bursts of stellar damage like KO Blow.

I wasnt suggesting that Tanker damage overall is poor, I was comparing high burst to low background.

Yeah, BFR does do OK damage already. So if it was upped to do KO Blow level damage, would that work?

I reckon youve got a point with Force Fields, Turbo. If a team is never close to dying for whatever reason, then a FF-er isn't going to bring much to the mix because it is the most specialised set of all.

Now that anyone can build a bit of personal Defence via set bonuses, a dedictaed Defence set may be less attractive than one that provides a mix of Defence and Offence boosts.

Dark and Sonic are much less specialised than you're making out though - if you've got a team with plenty of protection they're both going to pull their weight either in terms of rolling through missions or an AV or GM fight.

Dark provides round-the-clock Regen debuffing from Twilight Grasp (both from the Defender and Dark Servant) and 30% res debuff. I'm not sure how important -Regen is these days, I know it was huge at one point when GMs had insane regeneration, and I feel like I notice the difference when I tackle AVs with a Kinetics or Dark Defender.

Sonic provides -60% Res debuff on your target of choice, (higher than any other Defender) plus the big Defence debuff from Liquefy. Thats one hefty offensive boost right there.

I play around 16 characters, and have just started moving them round the city like chess pieces to gather a few appropriate day job accolades, so this guide has come at the right time for me.

And I love your conclusion! That's just awesome!

That's a thought...

Compared to Scrappers, Tankers used to do low damage but now do burst damage. The Tanker secondaries typically do poor DPS but pack a nice "Sunday Punch" every 20 seconds or so - KO Blow, ET+TF, Clobber and so on.
These powers were often originally just controls, KO Blow and Clobber certainly were, I'm not sure on the history of Energy Melee.

So rather than giving Defenders a smooth overall damage increase, what if burst damage were added to selected powers?

I'm looking at... Stunning Shot, Power Push, Bitter Freeze Ray, Life Drain, Scramble Thoughts and Screech.
Cosmic Burst and Tesla Cage are too frequent (potentially every 5 seconds) and are mezzes, so maybe add damage to the snipes for Elec and Rad?

This doesn't feel 100% right, but it popped into my head while reading this and I'd love to know what others think.

Its a low damage set, especially low on burst damage, because it lacks the third heavy hitter 10 second blast.
Voltaic Sentinel helps, but certainly doesnt add burst damage.

Both AoEs are DoT, as well, and one of them (Short Circuit)often ends up not getting full damage slotting in favour of END drain.

The secondary effect of END drain is set up very strangely, ie all packed into a single long animation PBAoE power, and requires very specific buidls to leverage fully, but despite that, the overall control and damage mitigation is very good for a blaster.

My first 50 was a Elec/Elec who played very much like a Dominator - hold or drain them first, then go to town with the damage.
I found this much more successful than playing as a classic Blaster and neutralising threats by immediate defeat - my first priority was always how to hold or drain everyone.

I havent got too far with /Regen yet, but I think they are excellent suggestions, Santorican, and not in the least bit overpowered.

I came across the -Recharge debuff problem with my Fire tanker, who relied on Healing Flames against Psi and Ice damage. Fiery Armour now has some Recharge debuff resistance in Temperature Protection to make the power more attractive and cover that hole.
With this precedent, Resilience would be the perfect place for Regen to get similar resistance.

Adding Regen debuff resistance to Dull Pain adds an extra tactical eleemtn as to when to use that power, assuming its not perma'd.