Luminara

I like to know what powers do and how they do it. I don't like having to guess about what's happening, or spend hours testing to be certain that a power is having an effect or doing what it's been said to do. I don't go much deeper than that. I'm not interested in server ticks, for example, or the effect of network latency, so I don't go any deeper than the base mechanics, scales and systems.

I want to play whatever I think will be fun, without feeling like I'm working with something which is suboptimal. Understanding mechanics and numbers allows me to take something which may not be "the best" and make it work as well as it can, and that allows me to have fun with it.

Back when ED was on the test server, many people were proclaiming the "death of defenders". I wanted to know if that was really what was going to happen, so I started a new defender with the intention of restricting myself to only attacking with melee attacks. In doing so, I found myself learning more and more about the game mechanics and numbers, as a matter of survival, and found that I could make the concept work very well once I understood what was going on under the hood.

That changed my perception of the game permanently. I realized then that any character could be viable and fun, even the most outlandishly designed characters, as long as one understood how the game worked. That opened up a lot more options for me, allowing me to explore more interesting concepts, but also led to a renewed interest in the game itself and expanded my understanding of what a "superhero/villain" could be.

Imagination empowered and supported by numbers.

My Archery/Devices build was planned and implemented entirely around IOs, so I'm not certain it would be a good template for others. The build also eschews a lot of the "blaster standards", such as "everything can be fixed with enough +Recharge". Instead, I focused on Ranged Defense (sitting at ~29% at level 40, will be over 41% at level 50) and only put a minimal emphasis on +Recharge (30% at level 50).

It's a good, even all-around build, with essentially all of the key powers, and all of them except Gun Drone are fully enhanced, but I don't want to promote the idea that IOs are required to play, so I've been hesitant to post either that one or my Archery/Energy build (which is focused on +Regen (will be at or above 300% by level 50 (currently level 48))).

Stacking Dark Pit with Oppressive Gloom does take care of lieutenants and bosses, but that's not what makes TA/Dark as good as I've found it to be. You can stack Dark Pit with itself with the right slotting and a heavy reliance on +Recharge.

Stacking -ToHit from multiple powers and buffering that with some +Defense is what makes TA/Dark a good, safe build. Matching TT's range to NF's is what makes it less "work intensive" (it permits you to pick one spot and stay there, instead of moving back and forth to use your cones effectively) and more fun to play. And if you're at all interested in or passingly familiar with IOs, slotting three damage procs in TT makes it a very good attack.

Those three things make TA/Dark one of the most effective and powerful TA builds I've played, or even theorized about. I can rip apart a spawn along the walls in Cimerora in roughly 30s. I use the first mission of Maria Jenkins' story arc, the one with Chimera, as a playground, and I regularly test myself by beating the snot out of Chimera (EB version. i dislike fighting AVs because they take half a lifetime if you aren't playing /Sonic).

I think TA/Sonic may be one of the strongest single-target builds possible, because of the insane amount of -Res you can stack (60% with TA, from double-stacked Disruption and one application of Acid, or 80% if you're using the Achilles' Heel proc in Acid; and minimum 60-80% with /Sonic, optimally up to 100-120% depending on recharge and cycle times and interruptions to the chain), but TA/Dark, properly built, is nothing short of amazing for AoE damage and not at all lacking for single-target output. I'll know more about TA/Sonic's performance when I get Ultrasonia up to the 20s or 30s.

I enjoy TA, but I also enjoy efficient and strong performance, and many other players like to know what potential highlights of different powerset combinations exist. Rarely does a TA or Archery discussion go by without at least one person asking for specific builds or explanations about what pairs "well" with a bow powerset, on the forums or in my PM box.

The point is whatever each individual player derives from the game. Some, dare I say most, of us are capable of playing the game and enjoying it for what it is (a comic book superhero/villain game) while also maintaining an awareness of the numbers and mechanics, without that awareness detracting from our enjoyment.

It's not about power gaming or min/maxing, it's about understanding what works, what doesn't, what to expect and which options exist. It's about avoiding mistakes which make the game less fun, and discovering new ways to use old powers, and learning how to do things from a different approach. It's about having fun with the game on all levels, not just the surface.

I'm not playing Archery as anything but a blaster at the moment. Except my existing TA/A, of course. I've gravitated almost entirely to TA in the last year, I find that I just enjoy it much more than I did previously. I like versatility and variety, and Archery, as sharp and pointy thwiptastic as it is, doesn't really do much beyond "make things dead". One power with a chance for KB, one Stun, and everything else is the same thing with different numbers.

So no A/TA corruptors for me. At least, not right away. Dark/TA is going to be versatile and fun, I know that from my experience with TA/Dark. Fire/TA will be interesting because, despite Fire being a "make things dead" powerset, it's something I've never played before so it will be a new experience for me.

And yes, I already have both of them completely planned, and the Dark/TA has a name reserved, along with IOs for everything up to level 25 and about 115 million infamy waiting.

Sorry, but social anxiety disorder prevents me from revealing personal details. The less people know about me, the easier it is to fight the fear.

What kind of mentality? Extreme enjoyment of a powerset to the degree of replaying it numerous times and coming up with both themes and justification for doing so?

My TA/Dark is the daughter of Hades and Persephone. Bows and arrows were very common weapons in ancient Grecian times, and it fit thematically to have her trained with a bow. Her /Dark powers are a gift from her father.

My Fire/TA is an ancient Egyptian priestess of Ra. Again, bows and arrows were common weapons in that period. Her ability to control fire is Ra's power channeling through her, and she uses a bow because she was trained with that weapon.

My Necro/TA is my TA/Dark's sister. Her powers are slightly different. She has training with a bow, but not as extensively as Parthenia's training, and the gift she received from her father was the ability to call upon the three judges of the underworld (Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus) the two aspects of death (Hypnos and Thanatos) and the ferryman of the river Styx (Charon), as well as a shade who was forever trapped in Tartarus when her husband disobeyed Hades' command not to look at her before he reached the world above (Eurydice, wife of Orpheus).

My Bots/TA is a native American woman who was murdered by an unknown group of operatives who attacked and wiped out her tribe. Her body was taken back to a laboratory, where she was fitted with reanimated, fitted with cybernetic enhancements and programmed to become a weapon against Longbow. The designers decided to equip her with a bow and some special arrows, partially because they felt that it would be easier to train her if they used a weapon with which she was familiar, partially because it would be a signature of a sort (bow used against Longbow), and named her Oxybeles (the first siege weapon in history). The programming, however, was corrupted when part of her personality and the memories of her last few seconds of life resurfaced. She escaped the laboratory before they could shut her down, along with a few robots which she became linked with through her wireless connection. To simulate having only partial control of her abilities, I loaded her TA powers with procs, every proc I could acquire and fit in a power, giving feeling of abilities randomly activating without her conscious control.

My Archery/Energy blaster is a "pure ranged" blaster, with only Power Thrust for melee purposes. She's an Olympic class archer (bronze medalist). Her father used to have a career as a superhero, so she borrowed some of his equipment, such as his gravity nullification belt (Fly) and an old costume with Kevlar lining (because bullets do hurt normal people if they aren't protected somehow).

My Archery/Devices blaster is a disgruntled former trainer of the Longbow Ballista corps. She felt that Longbow wasn't doing enough to keep the citizens of Paragon City safe, that they were focusing too much on the Rikti, the Rogue Isles and the "super" threats and ignoring the more common dangers, such as the Freakshow and the Council. After a heated argument, she decided that she was going to do what Longbow refused, go out and fight "common" crime and help ensure the safety of the normal people in the city. She spent a few months training with some of the best archers in the world, then raided the Longbow armory and took off. She calls herself Windlass, which is the name for the device used to crank a ballista, as a double reference to her being a former trainer and her decision irritating her "superiors".

Next time you decide to tell someone else that they're "dumb" for having a concept which calls for two powersets which you are incapable of thematically matching, consider your words carefully. You may not have the creativity, imagination or knowledge of history, mythology or various religions to make thematic pairings with dissimilar powersets and make it look completely natural, but that doesn't mean everyone suffers from similar limitations.

My Dark/TA corruptor already has a theme and name waiting for her. She's an Arachnos researcher who was working on developing a new transportation system utilizing micro-singularities to create wormholes between points, allowing even faster point to point transfer than the Rikti teleportation system which Paragon City adapted for their hospital grid. She made a mistake, got too close to one and was sucked in, and for a moment, occupied all points in the universe simultaneously, shattering her mind and personality into infinite fragments, which later coalesced into a single body again. She also happened to practice archery as a hobby. Her Dark powers are manipulations of space itself and her TA powers are the last vestige of her original personality asserting itself.

I haven't decided exactly what the theme Fire/TA corruptor will be, but it won't be difficult for me to settle on something that is both thematic and appropriate. I don't have trouble putting powersets together and making them seem like natural matches.

That's the first time I've ever seen someone refer to playing any kind of TA character as "power gaming". Color me baffled.

There are many, many conceptually appropriate ways to pair TA or Archery with other powersets. Expand your imagination and educate yourself.

And the next time you decide to say something like "that's dumb", then say that it's not an attack, just don't. The next person you call out like this probably won't be as calm and reasonable as I try to be.

Pick up an NPC combat ally or three.

Experience the AI, specifically it's tenacity in pursuing enemies across entire maps.

Now imagine the difficulty of finding the trainer in a zone like Independence Port or Nerva Archipelago, then get the trainer to stop running around long enough for you to click and train up.

Stationary, noncombat trainers are just fine, thank you.

They already did. PvP is limited to the Arena and specific zones, which reduces the impact on disinterested parties to potentially zero.

Allowing PvP in PvE zones will never be a "minimal impact" situation.

For example, there is no feasible way to prevent spawn camping in this game short of massive zone design revamps or granting every player free teleportation powers which they can use to travel to different zones immediately. Those aren't the kinds of solutions that the developers are going to implement because they're dramatic changes which do not improve the game for the majority of players.

Another example: PvP players tend to congregate. This can be witnessed in every existing MMORPG with PvP, including this one. They gather in select locations and rarely leave those locations. So permitting worldwide PvP in Co* would do little more than shift the existing gathering points. This would, in turn, lead to extreme lag in the zones where these players are gathered, the same situation which has been a long standing complaint about costume contests, Atlas Park, the markets, etc. So there is no actual benefit to allowing those gathering points to shift, there is no overall improvement for the majority of players and thus it is not something the developers are interested in doing.

Positron has explicitly stated that the development team is focused on providing improvements and content which will benefit the most players and not interested in or intending to bring in new content or features which only a select few will benefit from or experience. World PvP is a feature that only a select few will benefit from, enjoy or experience intentionally. And this will redirect existing resources away from the development of new content and improvements to the existing mechanics and content.

We have the Mission Architect now because the developers didn't spend time, money or manpower working on a feature like world PvP. We have power customization and Going Rogue on the way because the developers did not spend time on a feature like world PvP. We have improvements to the game as a whole, powers being fixed, powersets being rebalanced and new content now and forthcoming because the developers did not spend time on a feature like world PvP.

Most of us are very grateful for that, and if a handful of players aren't... tough cookies. Majority rules in this game, and the majority of players don't want, need or have any use for world PvP. We do want power customization, power proliferation, MA, new S/TFs, new zones, further progression of the underlying stories upon which the game is built, new powersets, improvements to existing powersets and improvements to the existing PvP mechanics and situation.

So save the smack talk about our objections being a result of fear or unfounded opinion. We know what the developers said they want to do with the game, we know what kinds of resources it takes to make the changes which would be required in order to make world PvP "minimally impact" the majority of players, we know that it wouldn't result in actual world PvP (instead being limited to "fight clubs" in PvE zones and random gank squads camping hospitals) and we know that it wouldn't improve or add to the game for the majority of players.

If you want to campaign for something, campaign for PvP missions. That's something that's still technically unfeasible (per Castle, last time i brought up the subject), but would at least offer wider scale PvP without all but guaranteeing delays to content updates and improvements in the entire rest of the game, and which could, if implemented intelligently (read: not this idiotic deathmatch crap we have now), interest more players and result in growth of the PvP segment of the population, up to and including getting "strictly PvE" players involved.

This idea (world PvP) and thread are dead ends, don't waste your time trying to pump life into them.

A TA could... Immobilize... the thing which is... already in melee range... pounding on him/her...

So I could... Flash Arrow... the spawn which I already used Flash Arrow on... fifteen seconds before they mezzed me...

Yeah, somehow I'm not seeing this proposal as being an improvement over the current Vigilance.

You might find a few lumins in the guide linked in my sig.

Ubertruth.

That's about what it takes for me to burn through a spawn.

Technically, I can do two spawns at once every ~52s, one with OSA and another with TT + NF, but I'm lazy and don't use OSA as frequently as I "should".

How do you use effectively Electron Haze in the middle of a spawn? Don't you have to... move?

And TT with two level 50 Range IOs matches the range of NF, so you don't have to move at all, or get into melee range.

That's why I don't use Soul Drain very often (TA/Dark/Dark). -Res is highly beneficial to a build like this, +Dam less so.

I referred to it before you did, I included it in the total of three out of the supposedly "endless threads" which you insisted are on the forums but which do not exist, and the player's complaint was found to be exaggeration, not an actual problem.

"It doesn't FEEL like it's a lot" is not a valid complaint, argument, point or piece of evidence because it is 100% subjective and can be applied to every power in the game.

Therefore, the thread in question was not being dismissed, it had already been accounted for and proven to be unacceptable.

The usefulness and usability of the inherent is debatable in every situation, teamed or solo, and therefore is not a complaint about the difficulty of soloing defenders but a complaint about the inherent itself.

It was because his defender wasn't soloing well, and he also listened to the suggestions and advice and resolved his issues instead of starting another thread with falsified data, wildly exaggerated claims of difficulty and demands for entire powersets or the AT itself to be buffed to tankmage status.

And the thread ended relatively quickly, without the multitude of struggling solo defenders that you claim to exist having shown up.

I will remind you that one person experiencing problems does not equate to the entire player base experiencing problems, or the AT being flawed, or the powersets being poorly designed, and I will also say that this post belies your statements because it proves that the players who are having trouble are asking for, receiving and following advice which alleviates their woes. All of the things you don't do, in other words.

Which only highlights how desperate you are and how little you understand what you've been talking about.

Not even remotely. That thread was intended to find a way to make defender FF different in some way from controller FF so there would be less "sameness" between the two. That's what the word "differentiate" means. To make different from something similar.

You aren't trying to differentiate defenders from any other AT, you're trying to get defenders buffed so you can play tankmages. Not the same topic, not the same approach, not the same suggestions, not even the same goals.

Five threads, only two related to your assertion that there are "endless threads" from players complaining about defenders struggling while playing solo, one of those two debunked before ten posts and the other was a single player asking for and receiving advice, not pitching a hissy and demanding buffs and insisting that defenders are broken in solo play.

Five threads, five strikes, and I still have yet to see your "endless threads".

Other than the ones you've started?

Third time you've said you don't have time for this, third time you've come back and done it anyway.

Guess you're not that busy after all.

Three of those threads have as much to do with players experiencing difficulty while soloing defenders as the Hong Kong stock exchange does. One of the remaining two was started by someone who proved to be overdramatizing his problems. The final one was not a complaint, but instead a request for assistance.

I say, "Where are these endless threads of people complaining about defenders being terrible for solo play?"

You say, "Bananas are tasty."

I say, "That doesn't answer the question."

You say, "Stop twisting my words! I didn't say bananas are tasty, you took my statement out of context and twisted it!"

And you're doing so well at this.

Or you change everything you say so frequently that you can't remember what you said and don't know any other way to cover up your immense failure with this thread other than to accuse me of being dismissive and mean.

In other words, you're taking your ball and going home again, and you really mean it this time, for at least five minutes.

</mitigation definition debate>

Already addressed this one when I was doing your work for you. Post #9 in that thread reveals the OP to be "pulling an Ultimo".

This is a thread discussing the usefulness or lack thereof of the inherent, not a thread about the ease or difficulty of soloing a defender. Entirely different topics.

Thread by a player asking for build advice so he can improve his solo performance. I don't see the hordes of suffering players filling that thread that you insist are real.

Current Defender Issues is a collective list of bugs, anomalies and potential problem areas with specific powers, not a thread created by or for defenders who have difficulty soloing.

Trying to use this thread to support your "endless threads" statement isn't even a stretch, it's pure BS.

You picked an 18 month old thread started by PK, the forum-acknowledged "voice of" and consistent supporter of FF being "great just the way it is", to discuss potential ways to tweak FF specifically to differentiate it from controller /FF, not to get it buffed, and you think that somehow equates to defenders complaining about not being able to solo?

Your list is bogus and your claim of "endless threads" of players complaining about defenders being to difficult to solo is bogus, just the same drama mongering and hyperbole that you've used throughout this thread.

So you came back after telling us that you were finished with this thread, to tell us that you're finished with this thread?

You refuse to clarify anything you say, to the degree of deliberately obfuscating your statements by completely turning around and saying the opposite of what you said one post earlier, then you blame everyone around you for not agreeing with you (ironically, because as i said, you can't even keep your statements from conflicting, so anyone who might have agreed with you at one point would've been disagreeing with you the very next day when you changed your mind again).

Incorrect yet again. I quoted you word for word, line for line, point for point and responded to everything you said in context. In the few cases where I did not address a point, such as your comment about being able to play with Brawl, I did not take part of that point and address it, I excised it completely.

At no time did I take part of a sentence, separate it from the qualifying remarks and address that while excluding the qualifiers. That, sir, is what "out of context" means, and it didn't happen here. You threw that claim out as another weak and futile attempt to pull some kind of "victory" out of this ridiculous debacle that you started, and just like everything else you've said, it was wrong.

I have not insulted you. If you interpret anything as an insult, it's a reflection of your own opinion of yourself, not mine.

And you have earned every iota of condescension, derision and sarcasm with your use deliberately flawed testing methodology to create biased results, dissembling, threatening people and fabrication of information on a whim. You have ignored facts, attempted to goad others into attacking you so you can make good on your threats, accused others of using dirty debate tactics (such as personal attacks, or addressing points "out of context") and attempted to portray yourself as possessing knowledge and experience superior to that of everyone else despite never having even used many of the powers you reference.

That's when you're not telling people off or ignoring them outright when they try to help you by offering advice for improving your builds and making it easier to solo. You treat everyone on these forums like morons and expect to be respected and honored in return.

You reap what you sow.

Ah. If you're proven conclusively to be wrong on every point, it must be because someone has an ego, not an interest in ensuring that new or inexperienced players don't read those unfounded opinions which you state as facts and make the mistake of believing that even one thing you've said could be true.

Yeah, ego, that must be it.

You fabricated numbers and discussed only the specifics which you wanted to emphasize while completely downplaying and ignoring everything else, up to and including other aspects of powers and the use of more than one power at any given point in time.

You refused to address that in every single one of your attempts to analyze defender safety, instead repeatedly throwing out extreme corner case examples of defenders being trapped in impossible situations caused by the lack of or failure to use any of the other powers available to them.

So no, you did not begin from the position that more than one power can be used. In fact, until this post, you did not even acknowledge that fact.

Again, every word you've set forth has been a matter of public record. Every post you've made refutes what you just said, and you can't even hide it by editing your posts because they've been quoted. Not out of context, despite your failure to grasp what that phrase means.

That's rich. You create numbers on the spot and try to shove your interpretations of those numbers down our throats, and when you've been proven to be wrong, it's someone else who is doing the mathematical manipulations.

So you'll be posting again soon, to try to "win" one more time and tell everyone that you're done again, right?

If you're educated enough to use English properly, there's no good reason not to do so. If you're communicating in a text-based medium, there are more reasons than can be listed why you should, not the least of which is clarity of communication. Being that English is a second language for you, clarity of communication should be even more important.

But if you prefer to try to impress 12 year olds and AOL/cellphone junkies/"gangsta" wannabes instead of presenting yourself as an intelligent, worthwhile contributor, go right ahead. It's a free world (mostly), and I don't give three stars on a rat's whatever either. Don't make the mistake of singling me out and telling me that I'm not contributing, though, because I'm not a 12 year old, I don't pretend to be a "gangsta" and I don't speak like a chimpanzee on meth.

I do occasionally speak like an lolcat, but that's an unfortunate side effect of owning an lolcat. And being mentally unstable. They're both habits I'm trying to quit (with varying lacks of success).

Then present a statement worthy of discussion rather than a pointless and inane attack on my clearly stated reasoning for disagreement with the suggestion.

So you're presenting yourself as an authority on the power and its effects from the position of not having even used it in "about a year", and directly contradicting other players who logged in last night to test it and found that your assertions were, as usual, untrue.

Shocking.

There's a bug with the AI which causes some critters to flee when they're debuffed, but it doesn't affect all critters, it doesn't even affect all of the same type of critters in the same spawn. So even that one possible reason you might see a critter or two try to run wouldn't cause entire spawns to scatter.

Three possibilities exist. First, that your memory, since you admit that you haven't used the power in a year, is at fault. Second, that you're just being cantankerous and insisting that it happens even though you know it doesn't simply to "win". Third, you're insane.

No it isn't.

See above and seek out medical help.

Of course, there would be a reason you couldn't actually test things before discussing them from a position of absolute authority. Of course, we can't expect you to even go to the trouble to look up the real effects and statistics of powers. You're busy, unlike everyone else who plays this game. The rest of us manage to find the time to test things and research our facts, while holding down jobs and lives, but you're busy.

Epic cop out.

I wasn't aware that Force Field defenders couldn't access a blast set. Someone should tell the developers.

First page of this thread, you admit to skipping Power Burst.

Now you didn't skip Power Burst.

Did you or didn't you skip Power Burst when you were putting together that bogus "test" to "prove" that defenders were having trouble soloing?

In the last ridiculously long post to which I responded directly to you, you stated that you took all of the FF powers except Detention Field.

Now you're stating that you didn't take all of the FF powers except Detention Field.

First point, AE is outside of the box, not relevant.

Second point, the low damage on your attacks has been consistently shown to be your own fault. Slot them with more than one Damage SO or accept that you have to use them more frequently to compensate for the lower total damage output.

The point being that you have a history of resorting to "I'm tellin' Mom!" behavior when you can't force an opponent to let you "win", hoping that you'll frighten the opponent into "giving up".

Nothing you have ever said or implied has made any of us feel threatened. Amused, perhaps a bit of eye strain from rolling our eyes.

Your post history says otherwise.

The same people who recognize your tactics every time within the first few posts and make it a point to inform every other reader that you're either deliberately trying to pull a fast one or so horribly wrong about what's happening in the game that your "evidence" isn't even remotely trustworthy.

You're demanding changes to the game mechanics, but you don't want to discuss game mechanics.

You started the thread by presenting numbers (from a blast which was underslotted, either deliberately in an effort to make it appear less powerful, or because you simply have no idea how to select powers and slot them), but you don't want to discuss numbers.

This is all "pointless bickering", but it's only pointless if it means you have to backpedal and change your story yet again, and it's only bickering if you can't goad anyone into insulting you so you can try to get the moderators to take them out of the equation so you don't have to defend a position that was indefensible from the moment you assumed it.

What is 20 + 20?

What is 25 + 25?

How much -Res does TA offer?

How much -Def does TA offer?

I'll give you a hint: the answer to both is more than 25%.

And you were ignoring values for powers left and right, willy nilly, while emphasizing the slotted values for the powers you wanted to use for comparison.

"20%, that's less than Tough!"

That's what you said. Just another fine example of your typical behavior, like that comparison you started this thread with. Slot the heck out of the power you want to look good, underslot, or don't even slot, the power you want to portray as weak and hope no-one catches you.

You listed individual components of certain powers, ignored other components and many powers outright and even managed to get quite a few of the numbers wrong on the parts you did list. Congratulations, you managed to bury your own crusade this time, with practically no assistance.

And defenders have higher buff/debuff values, so they can improve themselves and weaken their enemies more than the other ATs.

Strangely, those higher values work well for almost everyone... except you. But I'm certain you'll have some well thought out and intelligently composed reason why the AT or certain powersets are broken, bad or poorly designed and in serious need of being "fixed"... just enough to make a tankmage.

Everything you've said has been a straw man argument. You provide nothing, not one bit of real evidence, to support your statements, you simply throw opinions and fabricated data out on the table and wave the "personal attacks" flag when anyone challenges you.

How

quickly?


How

much

damage?


How

many

foes?


How

much

regeneration?


How

much

healing?

I have done it. It's not that difficult.

It's even easier if you're not standing in the middle of a spawn. But not standing in melee range wouldn't support your assertions of extreme incoming damage, so you obviously can't discuss that option.

Whether or not other ATs have access to Aim is completely irrelevant. It increases your damage output, and your complaint in this section was about how poor your damage output was with an Emp/Elec defender. If you're playing an Emp/Elec solo and not using Aim, you have no basis for complaint, and you certainly can't say that other ATs having access to it makes it useless or unusable.

And once again, you deliberately omit powers in an attempt to prove a point which was already proven untrue. HA and Regen Aura mitigate damage.

Try a mastermind or corruptor.

In your original post, you state:

In your second reply to this thread, first page, post number 7, you state:

Care to revise your assertion (again)?

Apparently your determination to comment as you see fit doesn't include consistency.

You seem to be the only one confused about what you'd like to see.

Then perhaps you should consider improving your slotting and power selections, because as has been pointed out repeatedly by myself and many others, the problem is not with the AT, game or powersets, it's with your decision not to slot your blasts for damage, your decision not to slot your mitigatory powers at all, your decision not to use more than one power at a time, your decision not to learn about what your powers do that makes your experience as a defender less than it could and should be.

I agree, no point trying to straighten out this tangled web of fabrications, backpedaling and denial that you've woven now. You'll never dig yourself out of the hole you put yourself in with this thread.

Your defenders. Not mine, not Hobo's, not Talen's, not Uber's, not the average player's, not even the new players', just yours, because you made your defenders that way.

I most certainly do. And I also know that they don't have as many as players can access, and that they're not designed to be chainable the way player attacks are, so there are gaps when enemies can't attack. And I know that well slotted Regen Aura + base Regen is enough to recover HP from 1% to 100% in roughly 23s, which means those gaps more than allow for an Emp to regenerate enough, in concert with HA, to be at little risk of defeat facing that big, scary Tarantula Mistress.

Yes, and I also realize that I can use more than one power, and switch targets, and move, which permits me to deal with multiple foes.

Try it. It works.

Meaning, you can't come up with any more Ultimo numbers that won't be instantly debunked, you can't find a way to dispute the fact that you should be using more than one power at a time, you can't support your statements if you're forced to take all of your powers (including your blasts) into account, you don't want anyone to know what you did to that FF/En build to make it so difficult to play, you can't reconcile your constantly changing story and you can't get to cross the line so you can report me to the moderators, so you're going to let this thread die, then start it all over again in a month or two.

I'll be around.

I still have yet to run into anyone who's actually playing and doesn't like KB. I've seen some KB haters on the forums, but never in the game. And I haven't been shy about using KB when I team.

For a couple of weeks, another player and I were running "Team Knockback" over on Liberty. We'd log in with characters with KB every night and team up, then recruit others and go completely spastic with the KB. Only comments we ever had were "Fun!" and "WOOOOOOOOOO!".

Also haven't been kicked for playing TA, or for not having a travel power. So I can only presume that all of these people who claim to hate all of the things I love must be hanging out together and not playing with the general population, and they're about as likely to team with me/you/anyone else as they are to sprout radishes out of their nipples.

For every player who might chastise you for using KB, at least ten others will play their way and let you play yours without comment or rancor.

And if you do run into problems finding teams, just poke your head into the forums and ask around, there are many, many of us here who love KB just as much as you do and who will be happy to team with you.

Supported by dozens upon dozens erroneous numbers presented by you, by your continued refusal to consider any more than one power for damage mitigation, by the power selections and slotting you betrayed in your original post...

Overwhelming evidence in support of a theory tends to suggest that the theory is correct. And you have certainly provided overwhelming evidence.

Disregarding and ignoring does not equal rebuttal.

I back up my statements with facts. I get my facts from real experience in the game, real research into the game mechanics and collective cooperative discussion to come to a conclusion.

You get your statements from bad builds and an attitude of superiority with little research, faulty data and frequently no experience at all in the game or even on paper.

No it doesn't.

Okay, the KB for Lightning Storm is mag 1.

It is shown in the game as mag 1.

It is shown in Mids' as mag 1.

It is shown at City of Data as mag 1.

Every player who has every summoned Lightning Storm will tell you that it is mag 1.

Mag 1 is not "significant knockback", and the fact that you continue to assert that it is emphasizes precisely why nothing you say is valid.

You're disagreeing with reality at this point.

As hard as you try to sell that "personal attack" garbage, no-one is buying it. The moderators aren't any more stupid than the developers or the dozens of people who have tried to help you understand how to play a defender.

You insisted that there are "endless threads" revolving around players grousing about how difficult it is to solo defenders, I called you out and insisted that you provide proof of those "endless threads". Then I went out of my way to go through the first three pages to do your legwork for you, proved that your claim of "endless threads" was as artificial as everything else you've said and requested again that you provide evidence of these "endless threads", reminding you for the umpteenth time that being dishonest, disingenuous or deliberately obtuse would not prove anything or emphasize any point you were trying to make.

That is not a personal attack, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that it is. Nor will you ever convince the moderators that I have attacked you. As I said, they are not stupid and they can recognize the difference between attacking a position and attacking a person. Your position has been the only thing under siege, and if that were not the case, I would have had a warning, either publicly or privately, at some point in the continuing saga of your personal crusade and my interactions with it over the years.

So you go ahead and refuse to answer, and pass it off as turning your cheek at a "personal attack". You and I both know that you're not going to make me meekly crawl away with your impotent implied threats of moderator action.

Wow. Great list. How long did it take you to find all 0 of those threads?

You already said on the first page that you skipped Power Burst, and despite your continual refusal to address or accept this, a defender is a character comprised of two powersets designed to work in conjunction with each other.

So once again, we add another point to the mountain of evidence that your testing methodology is either flawed or deliberately skewed in order to portray the results you want others to see. You took the ally-only bubbles and skipped a key power, the strongest single-target attack in your secondary, and came running here, "evidence" in hand and proclaiming as loudly as life that the AT is broken because you had trouble soloing with a build that wasn't designed for soloing.

You have a character which solos poorly because you ignored solo-friendly powers (notably Power Burst) in favor of ally bubbles, because you were running multiple toggles and without appropriately slotting them, because you didn't have Dispersion Bubble slotted at all, because at level 22 you still hadn't properly slotted your "best" attack, Power Blast (base damage for that attack at level 22 is 32.77, enhanced for 95% +Dam it would be 63.9015, you were dealing 45.31, indicating that you had less than 35% +Dam). Solos poorly because you either have no idea, at all, how to build a character, or because you deliberately make builds which will perform as poorly as possible.

But you can't bring yourself to admit that you're not the foremost expert on Co* mechanics (despite not even being capable of figuring out what powers do when you have Mids' and in-game descriptions available) or or character design, or that this is just another one of your historically typical attempts to con the developers into changing the game so you can have your tankmage, so you keep coming back and arguing with or threatening mod action against anyone who dares to use facts or reasonable advice to refute your self-imposed, imaginary problems.

Others were proven to be wrong, just as you've been proven wrong over and over again, but others also had enough sense to accept that they'd made mistakes and let it go whereas you categorically deny the possibility that you aren't a master of build design or more knowledgeable about the game than Arcanaville.

I have a better idea. You open Mids and look at TA's powers. Note the S at the end of that word "power". Powers.

You stated, and I quote, "Trick Arrow has a couple of debuffs to Defense and a couple to Resistance, to the tune of around 25%."

Acid Arrow - 20% -Res, 25% -Def
Disruption Arrow - 20% -Res, stackable
Oil Slick Arrow - 25% -Def

The more numbers you throw out, the worse you make yourself look.

Is there a point to your completely left-field decision to switch the focus to how to slot Tough? What does this have to do with your wildly inaccurate comment about TA's debuffs?

You were the one who started listing what you guessed each defender primary could do. Now that you've been shown to have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, you're attempting to sidestep the responsibility of finishing what you started by accusing me of being the one who brought them up.

Cute, but my IQ is greater than my boot size, so it didn't work.

Yet again, you are in error. Defenders share the same base HP with controllers and dominators, and all three have more base HP than masterminds.

Vacuum statement. How much damage, how much time, how much regeneration, how much healing? I already proved, mathematically, that an Emp/* with only HA and Regen Aura slotted for 95% +Heal each will recover more than 50% of the defender's HP within 5.75s, so you're going to have to do more than make another of your famous vague comments in order to convince anyone that that same Emp/* is at any risk of defeat from anything less than an AV or GM.

He also has a snipe which deals 194.5 damage when slotted with 95% +Dam.

And Aim, which increases the damage on that "most powerful attack" to 145.2 and the damage on the snipe to 244.4.

Tesla Cage has a base 10s recharge and 8s duration and is very easy to enhance well enough to keep two targets Held at the same time.

And as I stated in my previous post, and you ignored because it apparently doesn't suit you well when facts are brought into this discussion, that defender is not taking enough damage to be at any risk unless he is standing still doing nothing while a boss, EB, AV or GM is attacking, because Regen Aura and HA together will keep him alive against anything less, even if it's a team-sized spawn.

You still haven't grasped the fact that everyone, including myself, who disputes everything you say has soloed defenders successfully without ever encountering these outrageously extreme examples you offer up as normal, unless we're doing exactly what I've said, twiddling our thumbs while bosses/EBs/AVs/GMs pound us into the ground. We fight +0 through +3 spawns, solo-sized and team-sized, daily and none of us see your imaginary situation of "can't survive and can't deal enough damage".

For heaven's sake, I soloed my TA/A to 50 before I7 and I never saw the situation you describe. I soloed a Kin/Elec using Air Superiority and Flurry instead of blasts and I never saw the situation you describe.

You just have no comprehension at all what you're talking about.

No, the question is, why do you play defenders at all when you so clearly do not enjoy playing them. The better question is why you play this game at all when it obviously doesn't support your desire to play tankmages.

You've flip-flopped on this every time you've posted.

This is a direct quote, your words, unaltered:

Every time you post, your "goals" are different. You can't even make up your mind what you want.

And the reason you can't decide what you want is because you want everything. You don't want balance, you want defender tankmages, and you assume that if you try enough times, and threaten enough people with mod action, and can invent numbers that stupid people can't see through like wet tissue paper, you'll be able to BS the developers into giving you your tankmages.

More damage! More HP! More survivability! NAO!

More flip-flopping, the Ultimo Two Step. In one post, you praise a powerset, in the next, you call it marginal, then later you come back to it and poo-poo it again.

You think four of the best primaries for solo and team play, not to mention being so ungodly powerful that they've become infamous for being abused by groups like RO (no offense implied, RO members!), need help?

I can safely say that no matter how much they were buffed, they wouldn't be any better for you. If you've proven nothing else, you have definitely proven that.

The problems are only obvious to you, and only because you're the one building solo defenders who skip good powers in favor of team-only ones, who plays with underslotted attacks and completely unslotted damage mitigation powers.

Is a good indicator that the defender should use a different power.

You do know you aren't limited to using only one power, right?

Hey, Ultimo, you can use more than one power. Did you know that?

Oh, by the way, you can use more than one power, Ultimo. Just thought I'd mention that, in case you didn't know.

Then do something else to it. There's a reason we don't have powersets comprised of nine copies of the same thing. Think about it.

And deal less damage than they would if that defender were in melee range.

You are aware that over a hundred thousand players have figured out how to use Hover to stay out of melee range and not only survive, but not even have to stop between spawns to use Rest, while playing ATs with even less damage mitigation, such as blasters. You do know this, right?

Force Bubble has a 50' radius.

Last time I checked, 50' was a little more than melee range.

Then you do something else.

You can use more than one power, you know.

Just in case you were wondering, you can use more than one power.

By the way, you aren't limited to using one power.

Is it starting to sink in, the fact that you can use more than one power?

No, I continued your use of Dark and Kinetics as examples and corrected the misinformation you were spreading.

It's better than Tough.

And it's a heck of a lot better when it's layered with the other sources of damage mitigation that Storm provides.

If I didn't mention it, you can use more than one power.

No, you wouldn't, because you would've regenerated the lost HP before that attack recharged, and she couldn't deal enough damage with her very limited number of other attacks to defeat your regeneration and use of HA.

Math says you're wrong.

Only your characters would have trouble with that kind of situation, because only your characters would be in that mission with unslotted defenses and attacks. Everyone else would have the good sense to enhance their powers or ask for advice on how to enhance them, instead of coming to the forums and starting a thread complaining that defenders are broken.

Yes, I read everything you said. Every wrong word of it.

You run out of endurance because you've got 1 Damage SO in your "best" attack, your "best" attack is the mediocre tier 2 power, you have no slots in your primary defense power and you're running two other (likely unslotted, given the previous examples of your slotting plan) toggles in addition.

As I've said repeatedly and will continue to say until it gets through that wall that you've thrown up, these problems are exclusive to you, created by you and a direct result of your own choices.

There is not a "ZOMG DEFENDERS RUN OUT OF ENDURANCE TOO FAST" pandemic in the game. The rest of us aren't experiencing your problem because we aren't making poor choices in our power selections and slotting. The rest of us aren't running out of endurance frequently. The rest of us aren't making solo defenders with only 1 Damage SO in our attacks and picking up team-only powers in lieu of powers which would help us progress solo. The rest of us aren't making blatantly obvious build mistakes and screaming about how bad the AT is. And when someone does have a problem, we offer advice and suggest possible solutions, and everyone except you takes that advice and goes on to solo much more easily and happily.

Fix your build and you won't have endurance problems.

On the contrary, that is the subject. Your refusal to accept that you can't make an exact duplicate of your favorite Marvel and DC tankmage characters led to you making a defender with a rotten build and trying to blame the game for your failure to progress at a reasonable pace.

It's always someone else's fault, isn't it, Ultimo. The game is wrong, the AT is wrong, the people who try to help you are wrong, the people who disagree with you are wrong, the developers are wrong, everyone is wrong, except Ultimo.

You come in here and try to sound mature, but despite almost having a decent grasp on the English language, you display an attitude one would expect to see in a spoiled child, never responsible for his own actions, never at fault, never expected to man up and accept the consequences of his decisions.

You chose not to slot your powers appropriately. You chose to try to solo at level 22 with one Damage SO in Power Blast. You chose to skip Power Burst. You chose not to slot Dispersion Bubble. You chose to add two more toggles to your build and further add to your endurance woes. You chose to play this way, but when the time came to accept that you'd made mistakes and needed to correct them, you came here and blamed the game, the developers, the AT and us for your problems.

Well, the game isn't at fault, the developers didn't screw up your build, the defender AT isn't responsible for your endurance troubles and we didn't steal your damage output. You did all of it, and you're going to either learn to live with it or learn to swallow that immense pride you have and accept the help that we've tried to offer, because the game isn't going to change, the AT isn't going to be buffed in the ways you want, the good, decent people who have tried to help you aren't going to tolerate your behavior any longer and you're going to find yourself with no-one left to blame but yourself.

Hit points restored is just as good as damage reduced.

Stacks with itself or can be used on more than one enemy.

Knockdown/back is the second best damage mitigation in the game. A critter which can't attack deals 0 damage, which is a 100% damage reduction.

20% -Recharge, fewer attack coming at you. Fewer attacks coming at you is a direct reduction in incoming damage.

Team power, team power, not relevant to a discussion about solo performance.

Travel power, not relevant to a discussion about solo performance

An enemy with 0 endurance can't attack. 100% damage reduction.

Stacking, AoE.

You may as well stop playing, because you're not going to get 100% reliable damage mitigation with anything that still permits you to attack. You will always face some risk in this game, which clearly is not what you want to deal with.

While you're not compiling that list of "endless threads", be a dear and compile a list of foes with Repel/KB resistance so you can show me how dramatic the problem really is. Since you're so thorough, as you demonstrated with that list of "endless threads", I have no doubt that you can manage this.

I'll be especially keen to see this list, too, because after playing my Rad/Energy to 33 and not encountering Repel/KB resistant critters, and my TA/Dark to and at 50 with Torrent and not encountering more than a handful of late-game critters with Repel/KB resistance, I'm just dying to know what you're fighting that makes Repel "unreliable".

You backpedal, flip-flop and waver so much that despite all of your posts being a matter of public record, you have no bloody idea what you say, and when you do have to admit to a mistake, you turn around and deny it in your next post to someone else.

The only thing consistent about you is your crusade to get tankmages.

And you're wrong. Again. And backpedaling. Again. You've already agreed that Kin can provide damage mitigation at least twice, now you're insisting that it doesn't.

If I weren't reading what you said, I wouldn't be providing quotes of you doing complete reversals on your position every 24 hours.

Spin, spin, spin, you're only making yourself dizzy.

Because you slot your attacks with no or one Damage SO and run toggles with no Endurance Reduction.

It's a "whenever it's recharged" power that does improve damage mitigation and damage output and is not limited to use in EB/AV/GM fights by anything other than a stubborn refusal to use it in regular combat.

Your decision not to use a power does not equate to a power not being usable or useful. Your mistakes, your self-imposed limitations, your problems, not an AT problem, or a Rad problem, or an "endless threads" problem.

According to whom? Who says it can't be used as often as the player can get it recharged? The developers? God? No, just you.

How it relates to a blast is irrelevant, except that it's an excuse for you to try to say that it can't be used or is useless.

FUD.

No, you utterly ignored it other than to comment on the scatter effect, and you further blew your point out of the water by failing to note that the knockdown, the base 70% -RunSpeed and potential use of Snow Storm to assist in slowing enemy movement all but mitigates the scatter effect.

In other words, you did what you always do, selected one aspect of a power and tried to use it to portray it as useless or unusable in hopes that no-one would notice that you ignored or disregarded everything else up to and including the use of multiple powers at once.

And you've insisted that Storm is worse, too. Your position fluctuates so often that I'm surprised you even have a position any more.

Maybe you should campaign for the developers to allow us to do things like move, and turn, and attack more than one target at a time, and use more than one power at a time. I'm betting those solutions would probably go over well, and be implemented right away.

Last time, mag 1 is not a lot of KB. It's 0.26 more than KD, and it does not add up to a large distance of KB.

This is reality, Ultimo. If you dispute it, you're delusional and in need of medical assistance and I strongly recommend that you seek it out immediately. Not accepting reality is not going to make it go away or change, and you will hurt yourself.

Trick is another player. I'm Luminara. We're two separate people.

Flash Arrow.

Poison Gas Arrow.

Flash Arrow's -ToHit is almost identical to an equivalent amount of +Defense (all, including damage types with no Defense, such as Toxic).

Poison Gas Arrow's -Damage is almost identical to an equivalent amount of +Resistance (all, including damage types with no Resistance, such as Special or Unique).

For simplicity, treat these powers as though they were providing +Defense and +Resistance.

First good decision you've made since you started this thread. Make it a trend.

If it's constructive, intelligent feedback, let it move you in a better direction.

If it's vindictive crap, treat it accordingly. Flush it and forget it, because this "reputation" system doesn't work like the stars we're used to. One person can't go rampaging through the forums, leaving negative rep on a whim and all by his/her lonesome make it appear as though you were the worst poster in history. The rep feature has a safeguard built in. You have to "spread reputation around" before you can downrate someone who you've already given negative rep, meaning if some insignificant twit decides he/she wants to ruin your reputation, he/she has to do it by giving one or more other players rep for every time he/she gives you negative rep.

In short, the jerks who treat the rep system like a popularity contest or revenge tool won't find it quite as easy to abuse. If they do decide to try, they'll have to coordinate their efforts, and I suspect the mods can monitor that kind of thing even if they aren't stupid enough to discuss it openly on the forums.