JusticeZero

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* Bug: Detention Field's Immobilization effect is easily resisted. (Rigel_Kent)

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There isn't much that can be done about this.

[/ QUOTE ]Could you look at increasing the magnitude of the immobilize? It's bad enough that enemies are standing still with a nigh invisible intangible effect on them in the back - it's really frustrating to have an enemy with a nearly invisible intangible effect running around mingling with other mobs randomly.

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* Balance: Currently the last three powers in the FF set are highly situational and generate a great deal of aggro, all of which is drawn on to the least defended member of the team -- the FF Defender. (Telok)

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Drawing Aggro only applies in Teams. If you are teaming, try to get someone with Taunt to be on your team. So long as you aren't hunting +4's, Taunt should last long enough to mitigate this. As far as situational, that is by design.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm sorry, Castle, but this isn't acceptable. You are, in essence, saying that while in other ways you support a variety of teams, a FF Defender, in order to use a large portion of their toolkit, is required to find a Tanker with Taunt to be on the group. That seems unusually contrary to the flexibility philosophy as seen in action.
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Detention Field has the exact same effect for Controllers as Defenders.
Repulsion Field has the exact same effect for Controllers as Defenders.
Force Bubble has the exact same effect for Controllers as Defenders.

[/ QUOTE ]..the math shows Controllers being slightly more effective with this power compared to Defenders.
Controllers have the same modifier as Defenders for this.
Controllers have the same modifier as Defenders for this.

[/ QUOTE ]I think the problem here is that people get a bit peeved when an AT is as effective or more effective when using powers AS A SECONDARY than they are AS A PRIMARY, especially when they don't have a corresponding nod.
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* Balance: Repulsion Bomb

[/ QUOTE ]The knockback portion is the same. The Damage is higher for Defenders. The Stun lasts longer for Controllers.

[/ QUOTE ]Powers with damage in that class, essentially, only do damage as a mechanism of incurring appropriate amounts of aggro. They are not meaningful as damage powers. An increase in a negligible damage is not a significant increase. A penalty in the primary effect of the power, however, is rather insulting.[ QUOTE ]
No other Defender set provides the level of Defense as a Force Field Defender.

[/ QUOTE ]I beg to disagree. I regularly mitigate more damage than Force Field defenders can/do without using heals with other powersets. [ QUOTE ]
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* PvP: Knockback suppressed players, or players with knockback resistance, can stand near a Repulsion Field for a long time without ill effect, draining the Defender of endurance.

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This is by design. It is to prevent Repel from locking enemies in a corner.

[/ QUOTE ]The problem here is not the inability to knock the foe back, but rather the fact that the enemy can flatline the Defender's endurance merely through proximity. This is because the extra endurance cost hits the one using the repel power each tick, but the power fails to mitigate against it's own endurance drain when used on a knockback resistant target. Picture Force Boy stepping into the battle, 'Stand back' he calls and leaps into the fray, the next panel shows thugs being hurled from him, but the wily villain simply settles onto his feet with his acrobatic skills and steps forward.. Next panel, Force Boy is seen gasping for breath, not from any attack but MERELY BECAUSE THE VILLAIN IS STANDING NEAR HIM. [ QUOTE ]
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Balance: Archery seems underpowered in solo due to low base damage compared to other sets, largely due to animation times and reliance on lethal damage.

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Archery has long animations so that it looksas good as possible while trying to keep the set playable.

[/ QUOTE ]I wouldn't mind the animation times if the resulting attack had enough effect to make it worth it. As it stands, it does not, my Storm/Archery was severely outdamaged by a Storm/Electric, and my archer is in no way deficient in damage output, nor was the electric noticably more offense-focused. If I am going to have to wait through a 3 second attack animation, I would like the attack to do 3 second animation damage - presently, it feels more like 2 second animation damage instead. The accuracy effect is not enough for me to remove the acc SO, yet one Acc SO brings sets which lack the Archery bonus to a sufficient accuracy that effectively there is only a very minimal difference. The effect really is only usful when fighting enemies that are powerful enough that I would rather not be. It seems to fall to an inconvenient point on a stairstep function, essentially.[ QUOTE ]
While few enemies are especially vunlerable to Mental attacks, comparatively few have defense against it, either.

[/ QUOTE ]However, I would like to note that comparably few enemies have much defense against -anything-, really.. Psy, in PvE, 'feels' like it is defended/resisted against at a similar frequency overall as Energy damage. Robots and enemies with defenses against psi damage are not uncommon, and enemies with defenses against energy, cold, or negative are in no way ubiquitous enough in my experience to double or triple dip the balancing equasion.

Maybe they've been trying to fix it the whole time and just now figured out where the problem was coming from exactly. It's probably tucked inside some labyrinthine block of code that doesn't look like it has anything to do with it.

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someone aggroes the next spawn. The tanker rushes to the rescue, moving into the center of the new group - and promptly loses all aggro from the first group. The group where the short-range controller, blapper, and their defender escort are all at melee range and suddenly find themsleves facing mobs who completely forgot the tanker was even there.

[/ QUOTE ]Frankly, speaking as a Defender, I can defend myself. To imply that I can't cope with a few mobs that have dropped off the tank verges on the insulting. I've tanked spawns before when things go haywire. I can't do it forever, sure, it's stressful, and I have trouble beating them all, but i'm not some helpless flower either. All my Defenders and my Mind/Empathy controller are typically to be found in the thick of it all in some manner, having a fraction of the aggro come off of the tank to wander loose in my vicinity isn't going to kill me. I'm used to it.

...Thank you, Statesman. I kind've like this. I just wish that this and ED had gone in before a lot of other adjustments that were seemingly put in to deal with the issues that their lack created.

Having their protection increase as they get injured makes sense from a theoretical standpoint, but visceraly i've heard a lot of negative comments. They need a different sort of mitigation, but a lot of SR are disturbed that they are getting one which requires them to get hit - which the entire purpose of the powerset revolves around not getting hit.
Personally, I think it would be a better idea to add a PBAOE -recharge -slow debuff in there somewhere - that would have the same double-hit feedback of debuffs, and give the SR something of a 'bullet time' effect without requiring them to get torn up.

The stranger stepped off onto the road leading to the farm, looked around, and nodded approvingly. From a black salesman’s briefcase, a Bible was drawn and flipped open, it’s pages mirror-bright. The stranger considered himself in the reflection of the Word, adjusting his hat on his head to a rakish angle, and set foot toward the house before him.

The doorbell sang a jaunty tune, to tell those inside of the stranger’s arrival. He stood at the door, playing his fingers over the doorframe, as if to search for meaning lying within the patterns of the wood itself.

Shortly, the door creaked open, and Roy stand within the frame thus questioned. “Hello, there. C’n I help ‘ya with som’in?” He looked tired, worried.

“Good morning to ya, Roy. Wanted to stop in and see how you were doing. Beautiful farm you’ve got here. Couple spots I can probably help ya out with though, and it looks like y’ been having some rough times. One farmer to another, y’know. C’n I come in?”

The stranger stepped inside. Roy followed. “Don’ remember seein’ you ‘round these parts before..”

The stranger nodded. “I’m a friend. Not from these parts, though. Down the road a ways.” He swung the briefcase over and let it land on the table with the thump of tooled leather on wood. On the case was affixed a patch, on the verge of falling off. It flipped up with the movement, revealing engraved on the side of the suitcase a wavy line symbol of a river, before a curved and horned stylized shape – a bird or flower perhaps, or the swing of a scythe, a baby’s cradle or a demon’s head. Then the patch flipped down to cover the glimpse, bearing in front of it an image of a half moon. “Talk to me, Roy. How’s your farm been doin’?”
“You some kind of salesman, then? Ain’t the best time..”
“Hell, Roy, I ain’t gonna try and sell ya anythin’ you don’t already have.” The stranger fixed his eyes on the table and ran his fingers over it’s surface, stopping and caressing a knot in the wood measuringly. “Had some trouble lately, have you?”
“..Yeah.. M’ son.. ‘e’s hurt bad.”
The stranger tilted his head at the table. “Yeah, so I see.” He frowned. “Roy, a man’s farm, it’s more than your castle. It’s your skin and bones. Y’ need to clear up some of those stumps and pests and things, or the tomatoes are gonna go bad. And then they’ll get right confused when you complain about it.”
Roy blinked. “The hell?”
The stranger raised his hands. “Roy, Roy, D’you know where your farm is? I mean really, really know where it is? ‘Cause everyone, they’re gonna start wonderin.”
“O’ course I know where th’ farm is..”
“No, Roy, do y’ –really- know where yer farm is? Look, you need to come take a look around my back forty, and I walked here t’ see you. I know y’ want to make sure the farm is safe, but it’ll keep for a little while. How’s about it?”

The pickup truck bounced over the ruts in the road as the road became more and more forlorn, until one final bend and they were there. Everywhere was dust, dried grasses, dead trees in the distance. A giant smiling clown’s face, the doorway to a funhouse, hung faded and broken by age and abandonment, smiling eyes looking regretfully out over the landscape. A merry-go-round slowly collected rust, wind-blown dust slowly building a new hill to bury it. A roller coaster stood ahead, slowly rusting into a hulk. The ticket booth’s “closed” sign hung from one nail, paint faded and chipped into obscurity, wood weathered and twisted.

“Here we are, Roy. This is my place. My humble home. You’re welcome here anytime.

“What th’ hell is this place?”

“This is my home. I watch the place. Keep it clean. It’s my job.”

“I thought you said you were a farmer?”

“I am a farmer, Roy. This is my soil. You put the seeds in the ground, you get tomatoes. People come to you for the tomatoes to make them feel better. I put the pain in the ground, I get tears. People come for the tears to make them feel better. Same thing, really.”

“Place aught be condemned.”

“Roy, if nobody kept this place up, no-one would ever be able to get the kind of tears I make. They couldn’t even say what they needed. It’s in the dictionary. It –is- the dictionary.

“Y’r insane..”

The stranger sighed, delaying his departure from the truck. “Roy.. There’s some people. They’re gonna try and take your farm away, Roy.” He sighed, pausing. “They’re not even gonna try and yank it away from you while you fight it. They’re gonna try and get you to throw it away like it was trash. They’re gonna tell you it isn’t real.
“Every night, I go to bed, I go to the place those people are from.” The stranger frowned. “I’m telling you, that place is horrible. Nothin’ makes sense. Bad things happen there. Anyhow, they’re gonna tell you they need you there. They’re gonna say it’s a bad place. Roy, y’ got a good farm. You’re a good man. You’ve earned this. If you want, you can do a world of good here. Make the world a better place.”
“Then, they’re gonna tell ya you’re foolin’ yourself bein’ here. Well, ya’ kinda are, right now. So I’m tryin’ to help ya figure out about your farm.” He stepped down from the truck, hand leaning on the open doorframe. “The table, it told me Little Roy had an accident on your farm. Y’know what? He’s a part o’ yer farm too. Farm’s a part of you. Your hand’s too stiff, shake it out and it feels better.”

Roy frowned, watching the stranger warily. “So, what, now y’r tryin’ to tell me I c’n just snap m’ fingers like that an’ heal m’ boy up right well jus’ like that?”

The stranger slammed the door of the truck. “Naw, Ray. I’m telling you that when the time comes, y’ won’t have to.” He stepped back from the truck. “Just sleep on it. You’ve got my number.”

The truck backed hastily out of the Winter Thorn Garden and trundled away down the road, leaving a cloud of yellow dust in it’s wake, and the dark stranger – the World Unseen, the Duality of Night – watched it roll away, sighed to himself, and stepped inside the funhouse.

TA is a good set, but it has a large synergy with Controllers. If you balance it around Controllers, the Defenders are going to be left with a painfully lackluster set, as they lack those internal synergies - and it seems that it is supposed to be a Defender set first, not as a weak afterthought.
Pull it from Controllers rather than risking the anger that Controllers are Defending better than the Defenders can, and getting ALL of the Defenders powersets with little variation.
Then get to work on creating some Controller-only buff sets PLEASE, so that the Defenders can get a bit of variation from Controllers. At the very least, decouple the powersets with different names and balance them seperately according to the needs of each AT.

One more thing:
DO NOT PUT A !!!!ING HEAL IN THE SET!!! for crying out loud! We've been trying so hard to escape that damn idiotic stone age 'healer' label for ages.

On the whole, I like it.
However, I do not think it fits with Controllers.

First, Defenders have been concerned for a long time about lacking uniqueness due to sharing almost all of their primary powersets with Controllers, especially as often, Controllers are able to better utilize the powers than the Defenders. ALL of the new Buff/Debuff powersets in I-5 are shared between Controllers and Defenders. In both cases, Controllers are very excited about the new abilities which have excellent synergy with their Control powers; Defenders have nothing new to call their own.

Second, Trick Arrow does not fit Controllers for story reasons.
The rationale, as I understand it, behind Controllers is that they posess impressive powers of control and manipulation of enemies, but their origin did not bless them with high direct damage potential - you may be able to conjure and finely manipulate flames to harry and frustrate your foes, but you were not blessed with the hot, explosive flames of your Blaster friend, nor the searing, protective flames of your Tanker teammate.
However, from a "realism" point of view, many Controllers, frustrated from slowly brawling targets into submission, will be asking themselves, "Okay, so I can shoot glue arrows, flash arrows, ice arrows, and all the rest - WHY CAN'T I JUST BUY SOME PLAIN BROADHEAD TIPS AND SHOOT DAMAGE ARROWS?"

Third, Trick Arrow has a high "Control" component to it. Though the focus of the set is Debuff, it resembles Dark Miasma in that a large amount of it's debuffing ability leans in the direction of control. Trick Arrow is heavy on control-like abilities which add to their Control options more heavily than other sets available to them.


I will also add that I found the animations dissapointing and highly stilted, please consider taking the time to do a better capture of the movements from a skilled archer, and add a quiver to the weapon from which to draw arrows at the beginning of the animations. (This also applies to the Archery set.)

There is one situation I can see this change penalizing people unfairly on a REGULAR basis.

Archvillain battles.

It is a regular occurance that I see AV battles open with the AV firing off an AOE capstone nuke and dropping key members of the group, then the rest of the group spends the rest of the battle trying in vain to pull the AV away from their bodies far enough for them to res. Or, the AV charges the support and one-shots them, then stands on their body for several minutes while they are whittled down.

Could you look at adjusting the timer for AV's?

Hmmm... How does this look? Not so much a scrapper player as a Defender, so some of the stuff might look dodgy. Plus, I just can't see where to get the slots.

Slot[01] Level 1 (Starting Primary) : Storm Kick /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[02] Level 1 (Starting Secondary) : Dark Embrace /EndRdx,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes
Slot[03] Level 2 : Thunder Kick /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[04] Level 4 : Murky Cloud /EndRdx,DamRes,DamRes,DamRes
Slot[05] Level 6 : Swift /Run
Slot[06] Level 8 : Boxing /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[07] Level 10 : Obsidian Shield /EndRdx
Slot[08] Level 12 : Combat Jumping /DefBuf
Slot[09] Level 14 : Super Jump /Jump
Slot[10] Level 16 : Dark Regeneration /Acc,EndRdx,EndRdx
Slot[11] Level 18 : Health /Heal
Slot[12] Level 20 : Stamina /EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec,EndRec
Slot[13] Level 22 : Cloak Of Darkness /EndRdx
Slot[14] Level 24 : Challenge /Range
Slot[15] Level 26 : Intimidate /Acc,Acc
Slot[16] Level 28 : Cloak Of Fear /EndRdx,EndRdx,Acc,HitDeb,HitDeb,HitDeb
Slot[17] Level 30 : Invoke Panic /EndRdx,Acc,Acc,Fear,Fear,HitDeb
Slot[18] Level 32 : Eagle's Claw /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[19] Level 35 : Dragon's Tail /Acc,EndRdx,Dmg,Dmg
Slot[20] Level 38 : Crippling Axe Kick /Acc

This is a respec build, but I exemplar reasonably often so it's
'ground up'. I'd like to work Acrobatics in but I just don't see where it would go, barring replacing CoD. Which, come to think of it, might be a reasonable idea, even if it makes fights a bit slower on account of less mitigation.

I am, however, curious as to what effect adding Fear enhancers into CoF would have. Would they make CoF self-stack, like Choking Cloud does?

I have a question.. is this meant to REPLACE current chat, or ADD to it? If it is a replacement, it might be frustrating trying to work with the names from the board rather than character names. If it adds.. nifty.

A Defender isn't a "Cleric". A defender is a hybrid buff-debuffer/nuker designed as a support class with decent punch. The buffs and debuffs available in CoH are far more powerful than those in other games; with one debuff a defender can make an entire group of enemies almost completely helpless in some aspect, or enhance a group member to almost god-like status. As a result, the role of healing is greatly reduced in comparison to other MMO's; with adequate and competent defensive buffing and debuffing, a skilled group will rarely need all that much repairing, though repair will often still hold some importance. The means by which a given Defender is able to defend the group and themself will vary from one defender to the other, as unlike other sets, the defenses are not in the form of virtually identical powers with different animations, but rather, in a variety of unique defensive powers, each needing different tactics and design considerations to use at full effect.

Set specialties are:
Darkness (Debuffer): A "fully defensive" set, this set excels at a blend of Controller style lockdown with the greatest capacity to cripple an enemy's offensive ability.
It's heal (area, centered on you, must hit a mob to use) is also a formidable single target debuff; my usual use for it is to chain it on archvillains in conjunction with my other powers, rendering the foe unable to deal significant damage. It's most powerful powers include Darkest Night, a toggle which debuffs both foe accuracy and damage. Unlike other MMO's, this debuff effect is massive; it can quite easily render foes two levels above you virtually unable to harm anyone. My typical demonstration of this power is to throw it on an orange in a pack of mobs, jump into the middle of them, and proceed to discuss the rest of my powerset while ignoring the foes attacking me. It's capstone is Dark Servant, a pet which cycles Tenebrous Tentacles (a cone immobilize from Dark Blast which is sometimes referred to as "the japanese schoolgirl treatment" or the "hentai blast"), Petrifying Gaze (a single hold), an unenhanced form of Darkest Night, and a heal. Get this, slot for recharge. Permahaste and 5 recharge means three of these out at any given time.
Other powers include an AOE stealth that gives protection against psychic and energy attack, a fear (lockdown), single hold, AOE res/AOE debuff, and more.

Storm: I'm always amazed to see so few of these, as the ones I have grouped with are extremely potent. I chalk it up to people not realizing the advantages they grant. Storm primarily excels as support for ranged combatants. A Storm defender can herd like a tanker, utterly protect blasters from melee, grant stealth to the group, rearrange the positioning of enemies in the room, slow the foes in the area, enhance the damage of the group, and contribute destruction. Their heal is also a formidable status effect protection buff, but the Defender cannot use it on themself. The important powers I know of include Hurricane, which should be slotted heavily for accuracy debuff - this repels foes away from you to the edge of a certain radius around you, while debuffing accuracy and granting a 50% range debuff (nearsight in DAoC terms) and is complete protection against melee attack; Freezing Rain, which provides ice-slick or earthquake type 'falldownandstandupandfalldownandstandup' control while debuffing those affected by it's defense (they are easier to hit) and resistance (every hit does more damage).

Kinetics: Slightly unusual in that it focuses almost entirely on offense rather than defense, Kinetics excels as support for melee fighters. It's heal, Transfusion, takes the form of an attack which, if it hits, drains the endurance from a target, which 'explodes out' from the target hit in the form of a sizable AOE heal. This allows you to repair a group of melee fighters without having to enter the battlefield yourself, if needed. It's capstone power, Fulcrum Shift, drains the damage capacity of a group of foes (the more the better) and explodes it out from them in the form of damage buffs for your team; it can easily bring your croup to the damage cap while reducing enemies to the damage floor. The earlier form of this power, Siphon Power, buffs around you, and is only single target (thus must be enhanced heavily with recharge to reach the drain cap) but refreshes rapidly. Kinetics has the buff Speed Boost, imo the best endurance regen buff in the game. While it's competitor, Recovery Aura, grants a faster recovery rate unslotted, RA's recharge rate is too slow to be made perma even with 6 recharge and permahaste. 6 slots of recovery in Speed Boost is typically more endurance than anyone can burn through, can be kept on without interruption, and enhances attack speed and running speed. Runspeed can be clumsy for some to control when overdone, so I don't recommend enhancing this aspect. If the buff from Speed Boost isn't enough, Kinetics also gains Transference, which is similar to Transfusion but heals Endurance instead, letting you top people off as needed. Kinetics also (at 18) has the power to grant an AOE Superjump buff; at level 6, they have a targeted slow (has to hit) which grants temporary superspeed to the wielder. Kinetics is often considered to be "slow blooming" and does not provide much defense, and so isn't for everyone.

Empathy is an unusual set in that it specializes in repairing damage, rather than preventing it. It has THREE potent heals, a res, the best status effect protection buff in the game, an AOE endurance recovery boost, a slow recharging targeted defensive buff (Fortitude), healing buffs, and the like. Empathy is often considered the weakest soloer due to the fact that their buffs so predominantly are targeted or recharge too slowly to make easily perma; it is important to note that this does not imply that they are of increased effectiveness in a group. They are often in demand because of players' high level of familiarity with their powerset; they are very common.

Force Field is a set based around pure damage mitigation. Their powers are almost all based around increasing defense or knocking down enemies. Everyone is familiar with the main three powers in the set: two targeted buffs which profoundly enhance defenses, and a big toggled AOE bubble which further greatly buffs defense. Beyond this, the set also has powers to knock down and knock back foes. A Force Field defender has no healing powers, but healing will often be completely unneeded around them.

Radiation (Debuffer) has been at times the most popular set in the game. It provides excellent damage mitigation through debuffing while profoundly enhancing damage with the same debuffs. Radiation Infection is probably the most important power in the set. It gives a massive debuff to both enemy accuracy (they miss) and defense (your team hits a lot more). Also of great importance is Enervating Field, which debuffs their damage (they do less damage when they hit) and resistance (when YOU hit, you do about 40% more damage than you would have). EF cannot have it's effects enhanced, but it's endurance drain is severe, so many slot endurance reducers. Radiation also has Accelerate Metabolism, which hastens, increases damage, increases endurance recovery somewhat, and though it doesn't prevent status effects, makes the effects wear off much more quickly. By using AM, EF, and RI together with a well slotted secondary set, a Rad defender can approach the damage of a blaster, turn a tanker into a scrapper, turn a scrapper into a tanker, and turn a blaster into a tanking, scrapping, old-testament style wrathful God. Finally, Radiation has what is possibly the single most powerful AOE Hold in the game.


Secondaries: Once again, the Defender isn't some meek cleric to throw bandages about , only to squeal in horror when beset upon by the least foe the group is facing. Defenders get blasts, at 2/3 the damage of a blaster, with often useful secondary effects.

Energy: Knockback can be useful for knocking things into position or for keeping them on their backs and not attacking. However, it can ruin the plans of a debuffer or a melee. Approach with caution, for Energy can get your group killed. It will absolutely destroy any sort of plan involving debuffs. Let me put it more bluntly: NEVER, EVER, EVER COMBINE ENERGY BLAST WITH DARK MIASMA OR RADIATION!!!!

Electricity: Sucking endurance is good! The most important part of this set to most Defenders is Short Circuit. Slotted for drain with haste, this power is the only one that can remove that last pesky point that comes back every tic and lets the mobs throw their heavy hitting 0.001 end cost attacks; it does this by having a debuff which prevents endurance regen for a few seconds. Many also adore Tesla Cage, a single hold. It also contains a pseudo-pet, in Voltaic Sentinel; while it can't draw aggro or anything else of the sort, it does add damage unattended while you might be doing something different.

Dark Blast: All these blasts reduce the accuracy of the enemy somewhat. This set is very heavy on control options. The Tenebrous Tentacles/Night Fall combination (run up for the hentai blast, back for the NF to catch everything in the two differetly shaped cones) is extremely effective. It also contains Dark Pit - an excellent AOE disorient, and a Gale-like knockback tool in Torrent for those who use such tools.

Radiation Blast: The most "offensive" form of blast available to the Defender, this set specializes in making hard to hit foes easy to hit. Irradiate is an excellent debuff, a point blank area of effect damage over time nuke which profoundly improves your team's chances to hit affected targets.

Psychic Blast: Often dismissed as "Slow", the Psychic Blast set can be very rewarding at higher levels, once you have gotten faster powers than the agonizingly slow Mental Blast and anemic Subdue. (Unless you have some specific idea for how to use them and are familiar with your build, do not get Subdue, do not slot Mental Blast.) Psychic powers slow the recharge of enemy powers, reducing their effectiveness in battle. Further, they all have longer range than other blasts in their class. Psychic Scream is AOE, with a larger cone than most blasts in it's class, and a noticable slow. Telekinetic Blast does good damage, part crushing type; Will Domination does serious damage and afflicts targets with a sleep. All have respectably fast animations. Psionic Lance is possibly the best snipe in the game for pulling. The often touted advantage of Psi attacks is that "Few mobs have any resistance to psi"; furthermore, you become very useful against enemies like Paragon Protectors and the like who activate powerful defenses which have no protection against psi. The downside is that when you do find a mob which is resistant to psi, they are PROFOUNDLY resistant, and you are unlikely to be able to solo them effectively without relying almost entirely on the mixed damage of TK Blast.


Tactics:
Radiation and Dark both rely heavily on debuffs. With debuffs, the key is to keep everything clustered together tightly. The easiest way to do that when solo or in a pair is to, immediately following placing the debuff, jump into the center of the mob. This is counterintuitive to many people. Furthermore, many people don't understand the debuff and innocently attack the debuff target early in the fight. This can lead to serious pain when the anchor falls and the enemies suddenly become much tougher. Explaining this to your teammates can be difficult, I generally recommend a demonstration after telling them to do nothing but watch and maybe stand next to you if needed.

Kinetics plays a lot like a blaster; the damage is less, but they can also lower incoming damage slightly, and heal themself.

Force Field is often considered a "Buff Bot" set. Once you've bubbled the team and put on your deflection bubble, your defending part of your job is mostly over. Thus, FF defenders should have working secondaries so that they will be able to act during the battle. Be cautious, as the lack of your targetted bubbles makes you the 'squishy center' of the group.

Storm should know how to herd like a tanker - take lessons if you must - and pay close attention to the shape of the room in which the fight is taking place. They are uniquely suited to re-ordering the position of mobs in the room for maximum effect. If playing with other defenders and Blasters, the blasters should know to move to the Storm defender for protection, as Hurricane offers almost complete protection for such people. Coordinate the use of Freezing Rain with the blasters, in order to maximize the effectiveness of their AOE's.

Empaths should keep people buffed appropriately. Many empaths spend the battle locked into watching the health bars. This is, imo, a bad idea. Instead, keep mobile, adjust settings to show health of all group members over their head, and monitor the battle, contributing CC and damage where it can provide the greatest leverage (such as badly wounded enemies, knocking back mobs chasing blasters, and the like) and paying close attention to the flow of the battle. By doing this, you can often see a change in the flow of battle which will result shortly in a teammate taking damage, and be able to patch their injuries almost before they take the damage. It can be difficult to cultivate this mindset (which is effectively the opposite of scrapper-lock) but when grouping with those who have developed that awareness, the group's effectiveness goes up considerably.

Played well, living up to the potentials of their unique design, a Defender can be a formidable force both inside of and outside of a group; they are rewarding to play for those who enjoy the tactical challenge of meshing with groups and protecting others, as well as those who like to mix offensive might with significant amounts of utility to seek out the tactical synergies of their abilities in any situation.

Howling Twilight is auto-hit, no risk of it missing..

It's not just something about "Oh, the client didn't show them because you were moving".. i've had groups of +3 Trolls materialize around me while I was standing still watching the Defender try to work out how to pull.. hadn't taken a step in two minutes.

Please examine the balance of Psychic Blast - Mental Blast, Subdue, Scramble Mind, and to a lesser extent Psy Tornado, as all four powers are infamously inconsistant with balance norms of other equivalent powers and generally poor. Advice is typically "Don't get Subdue, ever, and don't waste a single slot on Psi Blast - EVEN IF YOU'RE MAKING A HEAVILY OFFENSIVE CHARACTER." Tornado's end cost seems unusually high, and Scramble seems like an unusually weak effect for an 8th tier power.

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If Regen is NOT tweaked I think you'll see alot more troubles:...one level 31-32 Katana/regen Scrapper

[/ QUOTE ]So basically, "something is wrong" because one scrapper at the very peak of the narrow band of levels where they aren't hamburger before any threat managed to slowly solo their way through a lot of mobs? Honestly, a group wipe doesn't necessarily mean that 'the group was way too tough". It just means things went haywire. I've "soloed a group wiping mass" before, and I play a Defender. Plus, i've seen my groups wipe more than once against groups I solo with ease under other circumstances. Frankly, often it's the other people in the group who are killing us, and once they've Darwinized themself, I can actually concentrate on doing my job and putting the foes down.
By the way, the line between "Didn't seem to take any damage" and "Flattenned dead like a bug" on a regen scrapper is razor-thin. Imagine a fight that an Invuln or SR Scrapper ends with their health flashing red - for a regen, they finish that fight at full health. Imagine a fight just a tiny bit tougher than that that the SR or Invuln won't actually survive - maybe there's a grey with a pistol plinking away, now - long, long before the SR or Invuln gets nickled and dimed down, the Regen scrapper's regen was exceeded and they went face down right out of the box. Hardly unbalanced.[ QUOTE ]
He was also either playing with an outside macro or one handed and the keyboard, because he always turned clockwise in a slow, steady fashion that is nearly impossible to achieve with the human hand and a mouse.

[/ QUOTE ]And this has what to do with anything? Maybe the guy turned his keyboard turn rate way down for some reason.

Why not just, I don't know, YANK Unplayable Stance and put something similar to Practiced Brawler or Integration in in it's place? Smaller job, no rooting. I don't even find a SLOW to be "comic book". I don't recall seeing many tanks creeping slowly around, let alone being locked in place.

Regen isn't a problem.. they play just like the DAOC Bonedancers do in a way.. people would say "When the fight ended they had full health!" but they got the guy down to 10% several times and if the damage rate was just a hair faster, they would have been a smear on the pavement and a pushover. There's only a very hairline thin area between "blew through it without trouble" and "died almost instantly" on a Regen - it's like giving an AT less than 20% of Blaster HP but capping their Defense.. either they won't get scratched or they'll go down in one hit, no middle ground.

Pistols don't fit the blaster feel, either.. every attack being short range doesn't work very well for them. But it works OK for scrappers.

Isn't the fact that Stim is INTERRUPTIBLE and you have to administer it at melee range (where you really likely would rather not be) two things that would balance Stim as weaker than Clear Mind? Give them the same duration, yeesh.

The origin of The Crimson Muse can be found here, writing style maybe needs some feedback.. I assume this is what you were looking for?

*shrugs* I suppose I could break out the powerposes, it's just the comments like "Total immunity to mental powers isn't a power, it's an accessory" that annoyed me. I'm sure I couldn't get away with claiming total immunity to physical attack as a Controller with no physical defenses mentioned anywhere.

How difficult would you say it should be for someone to incorporate 100% immunity from someone else's abilities? Because today I was in a scene with someone and they were attacked (with no apparent rhyme or reason that I could see) by some tanker. Said tanker has no powerswhatsoever that would provide resistance to my powerset in game. When I posed trying to stop them from attacking, I got this pose about 'his helmet utterly protects against all psychic attacks.' I quite wish this was an isolated incident, really. Honestly, i'd be pretty gratified if I could get someone to clutch at their head or stumble briefly on occasion, but as a rule, if someone attacks, they attack with utter immunity to anyone else's attacks. If I can't affect someone, and it's not a no-brainer or just me not being the right person for the job when others present are, i'm certainly not going to acknowledge any damage CAUSED BY them, no matter how extreme a stretch it may be..