Luminara

You stated that the AE was designed to provide players with a way to create and share new content, then stated that players are farming and PLing because there is no new content.

You say that players PL to experience the end game because there is no new content, but there is no end game and there has been new content (from both AE and developers).

You refer to the existing player base as "what's left" when there is not only no evidence of a mass exodus, but in fact, NCSoft's numbers indicate that the game is stable, and those numbers don't include the new subscriptions for the last couple of months or the players returning in anticipation of I16 or Going Rogue.

You claim that the upcoming changes are unsatisfactory to players, yet there's a rather resounding lack of doom crying (despite your less than masterful attempt to stir some up).

You insist that players will get tired of playing this game if it isn't granted with an immediate and dramatic increase in content and level, yet you don't even attempt to address the reality that this sudden mass lack of interest that you foresee hasn't happened in the five years that the game has been running with regular small infusions of new content and no level cap increases beyond the addition of the 40-50 range.

You assert that the developers are attempting to artificially slow down player leveling, yet it wasn't all that long ago that the developers completely revamped the XP tables and made leveling drastically faster across the board, and are doing so again for the 5-24 range in I16.

You most certainly have contradicted yourself, as well as ignored facts and made unfounded and clearly self-serving statements in an attempt to portray a critical situation which does not exist and never has for this game.

*slaps self several times*

Two. Two melee range powers.

*slaps self some more*

I always forget about the controller AoE/PBAoE Holds. Typically because I've got better tools available (EMP Arrow is a prime example), but I do need to remember that they're there, at least. >.<

Every AT has different modifiers for different effects. Scrappers deal more damage than defenders with melee attacks is because scrappers have a higher melee damage modifier, controller status effects last longer than tank status effects because controllers have higher status effect modifiers, et cetera. And defenders have the highest buff/debuff modifiers, so any powers which buff/debuff will do so with the highest numbers when used by defenders.

Defender buff/debuff modifiers and how they compare to corruptor buff/debuff modifiers is a function of the most basic principle of AT balance, that of differentiating ATs by giving them different modifiers. It has less to do with what Castle wants than sweaters knitted from roast beef.

Well, you're right on that point. The developers aren't going to throw away the AT system they designed six years ago.

I've sworn off of defenders at least three times, because I was frustrated for one reason or another, but each time I found myself making defenders again simply because there are so many different things that you can do with them, and so many different ways that they can be played, they're just too interesting and have too much potential to walk away from. Every time I make a scrapper, or a blaster, or a tank, or a controller, it's essentially the same thing I made before, it just has some different graphics. But I can make twenty different defenders and they're all completely different from one another, in every way.

>.>

<.<

Even though I do tend to play TA/* almost exclusively.

Yes, I'm hopeless. I love my Trick Arrows. I love them so much.

That paragraph was a direct response to a statement regarding the availability of powers which mitigate status effects before level 28. You can count them yourself, there are a total of nine (9) powerset combinations which do not offer "meaningful" status effect mitigation prior to level 28 (and three of those, */Energy, do offer potential status effect mitigation). The remaining sixty three (63) combinations do offer some means of preventing or avoiding status effects prior to level 28.

Taking that paragraph out of context, as you did, may make it appear as if I'm downplaying the deleterious nature of status effects, but in context, which I have restored, you are incorrect.

Low damage output is not a problem for all defenders. Low damage output is a problem for some defenders, and those cases tend to be a result of having a primary which does not offer a way to improve damage output and a secondary without Aim or -Res. Defenders with primaries which do improve damage output (seven, out of nine existing primaries) consistently show solid performance, and when paired with secondaries with Aim (excluding Kinetics, since the damage cap can potentially render Aim's buff useless) or -Res perform very well.

Realistically, low damage output tends to be a problem for builds like Emp/Dark or FF/Psi, builds which are in the distinct minority because they offer neither +Damage nor -Resistance. The majority of builds offer at least one of those options, and many of those builds can offer both.

Defenders which are Slept, Held or Stunned, or out of endurance, or who have no additional methods of improving team survivability beyond what they do initially (ex: FF/Archery which has bubbled everyone but does not have Repel, Force Bubble or Repulsion Field and is waiting for Repulsion Bomb to recharge; TA/A which has already applied all debuffs/controls and has nothing recharged or which will stack to further improve team survivability).

They do, but as with all other things related to being a defender, it's dependent on the pri/sec combination. Some defenders can put out amazing AoE damage, some have such poor AoE damage output that it could be referred to as "not worth bothering with". /Dark, /Archery and /Rad are all considered excellent defender AoE damage secondaries, with good reason.

For the sake of argument, let's presume that all */Sonic defenders can meet that criteria. That's nine of the seventy two combinations decided. What other combinations can deal impressive single-target damage?

All */Archery except FF/ and Emp/.
All */Energy except FF/ and Emp/.
All */Ice except FF/ and Emp/.

Without going any further down the list of secondaries, we've already reached a total of thirty combinations which can deliver solid single-target damage through a combination of +Damage, -Resistance and having sufficient number of attacks and/or sufficiently powerful attacks to deal significant damage. Thirty out of seventy two does not, by any stretch, represent "the smallest percentage", and as I said, that's not even a complete list. The total number of defender combinations which can deal acceptable single-target damage is higher than thirty.

Now, had you said "only the smallest percentage of defenders can even begin to touch excellent single-target output within a set span of time", you would be correct. This is one of the prices we pay for having the best Damage buffs and Resistance debuffs in the game, we are expected to use them to improve our own damage output. This is part of the basic design of the AT, we are given powerful tools which we can and should use.

I've noticed a trend in threads like this one. Those who continually insist that all defenders need a buff to improve damage output generally play FF/* or Emp/*, or deliberately avoid addressing the use of +Dam/-Res in order to make their position appear stronger because they don't want to "waste time" using their tools to improve their damage output, they want blaster level damage output out of the box and they don't care if it would make some defenders ridiculously overpowered, they care only about their own convenience. I'm not implying that you, StratoNexus, are approaching this discussion from that position, merely that it tends to be a common factor in these threads.

We have defenders who can solo AVs and GMs, we have defenders who can solo team-sized spawns, we have defenders who claim to struggle when soloing three +0 minions (ridiculous as it sounds). I'd say that covers the entire range of damage output. Or is there some exotic range of which I'm unaware that defenders are incapable of playing in?

Again, some defenders have low damage output. Not all. That is why a unilateral damage buff is not appropriate. Buffing the entire AT means buffing the highest as well as the lowest. We already have defenders soloing AVs and GMs, do you really think the developers want defenders out there trying to solo two AVs or GMs at once, or soloing an AV/GM in half the time?

You want to address one outlier case with no regard to what happens to the other outlier case. If that position were reversed, if the developers were saying that the extreme top end of defenders were "too powerful" and instituting an AT-wide damage reduction, would you consider that reasonable? Of course you wouldn't. And your position that the entire AT should have its damage buffed is no more reasonable.

No, it really isn't. Blasters don't have a very wide spread of differentiation in their abilities, they deal damage above and beyond all else. Damage is a constant, it's the same thing from one blaster to the next. Some blasters have some extra tricks up their sleeves, some blasters have higher damage output than others, but they tend to be very similar despite the variety of powersets available. A Fire blaster might defeat foes a little more quickly than an Ice blaster, an Ice blaster might defeat foes a little more safely than an Electrical blaster, etc., but that's their focus, they "kill stuff".

Defenders don't have that focus. Every defender primary is very different from every other defender primary. The defender secondaries are more streamlined, but how they function on concert with the primaries makes each combination unique (ex: an FF/Dark is not at all like a TA/Dark, which itself is not anything like a Kin/Dark, and so on). Every defender combination does something different. Blasters just shoot and hit things, and with the exception of /Devices, how they do it doesn't change much from one combination to the next.

I quantify any character capable of soloing AVs or GMs to be a tankmage. There are many such builds in this game, and yes, there are defender tankmage builds.

And there are defender builds capable of doing both. Furthermore, a tankmage is not required to solo normal content, and none of the defender builds are incapable of soloing normal content. Not a single one. Any defender who claims to be incapable of soloing normal content is either deliberately or unintentionally playing with a build that they designed to be extremely limited (such as only having the tier 1 attack).

You have access to data mining which proves this? Or have conducted a scientific survey obtaining mission completion times at specific difficulty levels with various brute, scrapper, blaster, dominator, mastermind, stalker, tank and defender builds? Or is that just an opinion with no evidence to support it? Because I can easily counter that opinion with my own, based on my own experience playing defenders, blasters, tanks, scrappers and masterminds.

Again, I'd like to see some legitimate evidence of this "majority opinion", because it's not reflected in any of my four years of play experience on teams. To date, I have only met one defender who did not take or use his blasts, and again, that's in four years of playing this game, across three servers. That doesn't seem to support your assertion that the majority of defenders believe their damage output is meaningless or don't bother to blast.

*snort*

You appear to be a bit stuck on the Kins and Storms thing, like you believe they're at the top of the heap.

They aren't.

How does an increase in HP help a defender with 1200% Regen and a 25% self-heal which can recharge in 3s?

How does a damage buff help a Rad/Sonic?

As I said, solutions which don't address the problems aren't solutions, and every defender combination has a different problem, so unilateral solutions aren't going to fix anything for every defender. It it really were as simple as that, I have no doubt that Castle would've done it years ago. He's not blind to the general dislike of Vigilance or the various complaints about defender issues.

It's effective with normal slotting, no focus on +Recharge at all, not even Hasten. If it weren't, I would have lost interest in playing it before I hit 50, at least until I got bored with something else.

It's utterly devastating if built the way I've outlined. It's a debuffing, damage dealing monstrosity capable of standing up against almost everything in the game. The potential when filling out this build with IO sets is staggering. It was the reason it became my main character, it was just thrilling to see all of the things I could do with it.

Two powers out of nine defines a powerset as "melee based"?

Should we also define TA as an "invisibility set" because it has one perception debuff out of all of the other things it does?

Fire/TA is a fantastic combination, and it's not even incompatible with the Farm/Kin mindset that rumormongered about Fire being "melee based" until it became "common knowledge". You can use all of TA's powers in melee range, if you choose. They don't suddenly disappear from your tray or shut down if you get closer to critters.

No. I play Fire/TA, TA/Dark, TA/Sonic (among others)... redraw never bothers me on any of my TA characters. Debuff/control with your TA powers, then use your other powers. You'll rarely have to redraw your bow more than once or twice a fight, if even that frequently, unless you're deliberately trying.

Fire has one, exactly one, melee range power. Hot Feet. Anyone who has told you that Fire is "in your face" is almost certainly referring to Fire/Kin. Fire/anything else is not Fire/Kin and you're not required to play it like Fire/Kin.

Fire/TA can and does play at range quite well. I tried Hot Feet with my Fire/TA and found that it wasn't worthwhile for the way I wanted to play. The endurance cost was too high, the damage ticks came too slowly and the availability of Fire Imps and Oil Slick Arrow later completely overshadowed it. I respeced out of Hot Feet and haven't missed it one bit.

Over 15% when slotted? Yes, it's absolutely worth it.

66%.

I use the 1-4 extra chat windows to make backups. I don't leave them open, so there's no chance that they'll be deleted.

I started doing that after I accidentally quit my own global channel several times. The game doesn't actually lock the mouse pointer in place, it simply renders it invisible, so someone like me who uses the right-click function to jump will pop up random context menus, and hitting the wrong key at the wrong time... argh.

After having to ask for op status in my own global channel for the umpteenth time, I finally assigned the 1 chat window to The Lumiverse and the 2 window to a backup copy of the main tab I keep open. I wasn't using them for anything before. Now if my main chat tab is deleted, I don't accidentally quit my global channel and I have a copy of the tab which I can quickly drag into place.

I didn't miss because of my accuracy (6% global +ToHit, 77% global +Acc, 70% acc in OG). I'm capped against +4s with unslotted powers on my TA/Dark.

I missed because the series of events caused my attacks to sidestep the streak breaker. I had one attack which missed. The next power which had a hit roll was OG, and because my previous attack had missed, the streak breaker kicked in and forced a hit on that OG check. The next thing that happened in that sequence was my second attempt to hit with a single-target attack, which rolled over 95%, thus causing another miss, and since the streak breaker had just forced a hit, it ignored the miss roll on that attack. This occurred because the streak breaker only forces one hit for every X rolls, with X in my case being two (maximum possible, can never be reduced to one), and since I had a minion inside OG's radius, it counted toward that two.

I've also had rare situations where I've missed a target with a single-target attack, then missed it a second time with a cone/AoE. Why? Because the first miss caused the streak breaker to kick in and force a hit on the initial target in the cone, then random bad luck caused a second random miss on that first missed target.

Nothing that can be done about it, it's just a quirk of the way the streak breaker works. If we were capped at 99.99% Acc, it could still happen because the streak breaker doesn't account for every power separately, it accounts for all powers equally.

And as ArcticFahx pointed out, the streak breaker never forces misses. Ever. Not for players, not for critters, not for pets, not for anything. It only forces hits, and it only forces hits when you've missed a specified number of times determined by your last hit chance.

Level 1.

But that's not quite suggestive of an imbalance, because some defenders can also preempt status effects at level 1, and because status effects don't actually begin to become problematic until the late teens and early twenties.

So in actual game play, it's not who has what at the beginning, but who has what and how well the player is using it once the "training session" (meaning, the first ~20 levels) is over.

Oh, believe me, I've been down that road. Hitting 28 with Electron Girl was a huge thing because it meant I wasn't going to have to spend a significant portion of my time waiting for status effects to end so I could finish fights. I know exactly how good it feels to get to that point.

But objectively, I also have to acknowledge that it's only one out of seventy two possible defender combinations, and furthermore, only nine of those seventy two combinations are "suffering" by having to wait until level 28 for reliable control options of their own. That's 12.5% of all defenders. One out of every eight, and that's if we presume that all primaries and secondaries are equally represented. Given the vocalized popularity of powersets such as Dark, Rad and Storm, all of which have status effect mitigation tools much sooner than level 28, it's very possible that the actual number of defenders getting shafted on the status effect situation is even lower.

This goes back to the point I made earlier, that buffing defenders is never going to be a simple "Give defenders X" solution, that a unilateral change which applies to everyone won't solve the problems for all defenders, because the AT itself is so incredibly diverse. You have a small percentage experiencing issues with status effects, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with damage output, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with protecting teams, you have a small percentage experiencing issues with endurance management... every one of those seventy two defenders is different, in a way that no AT other than controllers can even approach with their different powerset combinations.

What if that level 30 Emp is Emp/Dark, with stacking -ToHit and a mag 2 Stun? Or an Emp/Ice with a Hold available very early and a second one available later? Or an Emp/Sonic who can utilize that reliable KB power to mitigate status effects and damage? Or Emp/Psi? What about a level 30 Rad/Sonic? Or a level 30 TA/Dark? Or a level 30 Storm/Ice? Or a level 30 Dark/Archery? Are these defenders really struggling when faced with status effects, in the same way that an Emp/Elec, Emp/Archery or Emp/Energy might be?

Do you see the enormous difference in potential between the extremes? It's that difference that makes balancing defenders, against other ATs and in regard to the content, such a difficult thing. You don't see that in other ATs because they're relatively standardized. Even controllers are more standardized than defenders, they at least have primaries which generally follow a pattern. Defenders are all over the place, covering the entire range of strength in this game.

Scrappers, blasters, tanks and controllers, and even Kheldians, can generally be measured for performance because within each individual AT, they generally perform equally with most of the pri/sec combinations. Defenders, however, can perform at both extremes (tankmage and "hate soloing because it takes an hour to clear a short mission"), and there is no single performance metric which can be used to balance this AT against the others because of that wildly fluctuating difference in capability within the AT.

Heck, we, defender players, have been having this same debate for years now and we still can't agree on one single buff which would improve the AT across the board. We can't even agree on what needs to be improved because the differences between defender pri/sec combinations are so dramatic in so many cases.

I'm not knocking anyone's ideas, or trying to belittle anyone for proposing solutions, I'm just saying that it's time to stop pretending that the defender AT is a one size fits all thing and trying to create balanced solutions for it with that mindset. Defenders represent the very essence of this game, diversity, in all of our myriad combinations, and our problems cannot be solved with a one size fits all answer. I suspect that we won't truly find a balance solution without a complete overhaul of the pri/sec combination system to allow bonuses to be granted for specific combinations, which could then be used to address the problems that the most troubled combinations face... but if that is the case, it'll be a long time coming, if ever.

But it doesn't cost us anything to talk about the problems and suggest solutions, so keep the ideas and threads coming. There's a lot of fresh meat on the development team these days, and you never know when someone's going to peek in our corner of the forums and see something that sparks an idea that leads to a universal solution.

I noticed it a few months ago when I caught a single-target attack missing twice in a row. I spent about an hour doing math to try to figure out how it could have happened and trying to replicate it so I could get a screenshot of the Hit Rolls channel (i even had a long, detailed PM all typed up and ready to send to Castle), then saw it happen again and realized that it was because I had a minion wandering around next to me while I had Oppressive Gloom toggled on. The first single-target attack that missed had triggered the streak breaker on OG's next pulse, which caused the missed hit roll on the next single-target attack to remain a miss due to the streak breaker having already granted me a forced hit with OG.

I think I recall actually cursing out loud at the game that day. >.<

TA/Dark/Dark, focus on +Recharge so you can double-stack Disruption, get the Achilles' Heel proc in Acid, slot your cones with damage procs (3 in TT, 2 in NF), slot TT with two Range IOs and take both Dark Pit and Oppressive Gloom. Damage galore, up to 80% -Res, enough control to Stun entire spawns and so much -ToHit (take and slot Flash Arrow) that even if you decide not to play control heavy, very little is going to hit you or anyone else.

As for theme, pick any "ancient" culture with a god/goddess of the dead/underworld and play off of that. The bow and arrow were common weapons in ancient times and the Dark powers can be attributed to many mythological deities.

I think I posted my latest build in my TA guide, somewhere on the last or second to last page.

I can't wait to do it again as a Dark/TA corruptor. *glee*

So addiction is not simply doing something, or doing something to the point of not doing other things, but doing something in a way that makes it detrimental or harmful to your existence.

To make an example of myself, if I play games for eight hours every night, this activity which would appear to be detrimental or harmful if done by another person would actually be viewed as beneficial for me because it functions as a social outlet and/or relaxation, things which I could not otherwise do if I weren't playing games. But if it reached a point where I quit or lost my job, or my health began to deteriorate specifically due to playing games, it would then be labeled as an addiction.

It is... not the activity itself, but the repercussions of the activity that make it a positive or negative thing.

Am I understanding the concept of addiction better now, or is there still more to it?

Per BackAlleyBrawler, redraw can impose up to 0.66s additional animation time. The explanation was given in an Archery or TA thread, so he may have been addressing only bow animations, but it was never clarified beyond that so whether it applies to all weapons or not, or whatever the redraw times may be for other powers/powersets if they are different, is unknown. That he said "up to" indicates that either different Archery or TA powers will have different redraw times (which should not be the case, as they all use the same animation for redraw), or different weapon sets have different redraw times (much more plausible, despite the fact that he addressed the redraw debate in an Archery or TA thread).

At most, a weapon animation will be as long as it was before the "baked in" animation times were removed, which really represents the worst possible scenario (weapon animation/weaponless animation/weapon animation/weaponless animation/etc.).

Cones, AoEs and PBAoEs can make it appear as if your single-target attacks are missing more frequently by forcing the streak breaker to kick in at the "wrong" time. Were you using any cones, AoEs or PBAoEs?

And deal almost no damage, which would make your Taunt and Gauntlet so weak that a controller could pull aggro off of you with Brawl. You'd be functionally useless on teams and incapable of soloing.

Tankmages, which the developers really would prefer not to have in this game because they trivialize everything.

The developers specifically designed the AT system to replace the freeform power selection system to prevent both of these kinds of builds from being possible. They aren't going to turn around now, 6+ years after they created that system, and gut it.

We're not going to get an increase in maximum level because some other game did. Co* innovates, WoW imitates.

If Vista were causing that to happen, it would have been resolved a long time ago, or every Vista user would be required to have that flag in the shortcut. I don't have any flags in my shortcut, I'm certain that there are others who aren't using that flag, so that means it has to be something else. Mouse driver, the extra software bundled with the driver, a specific program running in the background... not the OS. If it were the OS, everyone running that OS would be having the problem, and that isn't the case.

I decided to upgrade my computer in February, but it had been almost three years since the last time I'd replaced any components, so it was cheaper to buy a new pre-assembled system and start fresh with that. Picked up an Acer M3641 (2.7Ghz dual core, 4GB DDR2, 500GB HDD) with Vista 64 for about $400, threw in a 500w Antec PSU and moved my old 7800 GTX over to it, haven't had a single problem running Co*. Or any game. Or, for that matter, any program I need/want to run.

Be careful. You wouldn't want anyone poping out and robing you.

If no AT is truly threatened by status effects, then the value of status effects as an enemy tool is gone, at which point they may as well be removed from the game completely.

Status effects exist because they're the least objectionable alternative to the other methods of increasing risk. Yank status effects out of the game and you're left with the options of increasing enemy damage, increasing enemy HP, increasing enemy buffs/debuffs, decreasing player damage, decreasing player HP and/or decreasing player status effects/debuffs/buffs.

No-one wants to spend two to five minutes beating on a +0 minion (example), so that means increasing enemy HP or decreasing player damage is off the list of options.

No-one liked being defeated in one hit, which was one of the reasons the code was changed to prevent that from happening, so buffing enemy damage or decreasing player HP are also out of the question.

That leaves only enemy buffs/debuffs being increased and/or player buffs/debuffs/status effects being decreased, and we've already got people screaming their heads off about how ineffective player buffs/debuffs/status effects are, and how frustrating it is to fight an enemy which can, for instance, floor a player's hit chance through high +Def or -ToHit. Making the game harder this way would put this "issue" right back to square one, substituting "enemy buffs/debuffs" for "enemy mezzes".

So status effects have to stay in the game, and they have to stay meaningful by representing a risk for everyone. Even a tank or scrapper can be mezzed, if he/she is inattentive or picks the wrong fight. Yes, some ATs are more vulnerable to status effects than other ATs. Some powersets are more vulnerable to status effects than other powersets, but everyone, absolutely everyone in the game, has some kind of option for dealing with status effects, and that includes defenders.

You neglected to note that defenders typically have access to their own status effects, so they can use the same tactic that controllers use, or that defenders also have options like ToHit debuffs, Defense buffs, Knockdown patches, things which prevent mezzers from hitting, or sometimes even having an opportunity to use their status effects on the defender, all of which decrease the risk presented by status effects.

No-one, not even defenders, are truly without options for fighting mezzers. Some defenders may not be as capable at dealing with mezzers, but the AT as a whole cannot be proven to be at an unfair disadvantage.

I will even go so far as to say that I have more experience dealing with status effects on an "unprotected" defender than anyone else in this thread, because I had two options, and only two, on my Kin scrapper prior to level 41 (Air Superiority and Tesla Cage), and despite that my only real complaint about status effects was that I had to turn my toggles on mid-combat frequently. I wasn't being defeated over and over again, I was merely inconvenienced and annoyed, and that annoyance was resolved with the change which made toggles remain active when mezzed.

Defenders don't need status protection. Defenders may want status protection, but want and need are two very different things. What defenders do need is to be proactive in their status effect mitigation, because that is how they were designed.

That said, I wouldn't turn my nose up at a Break Free function if it were added to the inherent, because it is thematically appropriate and it would provide a useful function for both teamed and solo defenders. As I pointed out above, everyone, even tanks, can suffer a complete failure of status protection/mitigation, but it does tend to be more detrimental to defenders than to other ATs because almost all of their status effect mitigation is active, not passive (in the sense of not having to frequently activate a power or powers), and when you lose that ability to be active, your ability to deal with status effects drops to near zero. Even controllers have better options to deal with status effects, such as Earth's Embrace or Indomitable Will, or even the AI code which tells critters to attack the controller's pet(s) instead of the mezzed controller. So giving defenders a "free" Break Free option, even a limited one would level the playing field in terms of risk when facing mezzers. It isn't necessary, but it wouldn't be unwelcome, or detrimental to the overall balance of the game (if the power were balanced appropriately to ensure that it was not exploited or abused).