PhroX

I probably wasn't clear. I'm not saying Kins should have to take SB. But these kins inevitably do have it. Yet thy don't use it. That's what annoys me. Not bad builds, or people skipping powers or so on, but players taking these powers and not using them. Even if I met a FFer who didn't take the bubbles an instead focused on knockdown/back, then I'd accept it (though, of course, I'd prefer one with bubbles). But if I met a FFer who had bubbles but didn't use them, well, thats asking for a kick.

Yep, seen several Bubblers not use their bubbles. Probably the worst was a MM (in RWZ) that would only bubble his pets and refused to bubble the team, despite the fact that the pets were almost never getting attacked due to us having two good tanks keeping aggro between them...

Same with Empaths and Fort (though they seem to be OK at using the RAs) and Kins and SB. The latter might keep it up on the Stone tank, but the chances of an AE'd kineticist keeping the whole group SB for most of the time is negligable.

Yeah, when you've got nearly capped def and res, you don't need much more protection of any form, so go for defenders that boost the team's damage - kin, rad, storm etc - over a "healer". Those three can all heal to counteract what little damage gets through, and the group in general kills stuff much faster.

The taunt effect has a tiny duration compared to other powersets. IIRC, it's something like 1.5 secs versus 12 sec.

I'm not going to get into discussions of how good individual powers are, but this bit made me want to reply.

Why should defenders be good at both soloing and teaming? Is there some rule in CoX that states all characters must be good at everything? Cos if there is, I've never seen it. Your only argument seems to be "I want a character like that".

On average, Defenders probably bring more to a team than any other AT ('trollers are a close second). A good kin, rad, TA, storm, cold, sonic will probably add more damage than a blaster (albeit indirectly), but also a lot more survivablilty to the team. Dark, FF and Emp multiply the groups suvivability by many maginitudes. For this power, there has to be a downside. In this case, it's slower soloing (some builds can solo incredibly well, but on average, defs are among the slower soloers). That is balance. If you're strong in one area, you're weak in others.

Note I said slower. Because that's all it is. Find me some solo content that a defender - any powersets - can't do. I'm sure you could come up with a build that can't do it, but if you put together a good, solo-centric build with any combination of pwersets, you will be able to solo anything that's meant to be soloed (ie non-TF/Trial missions, on Heroic) - and not just a 2 billion inf IOed build, SOs are fine. You might need some insps for the toughest mobs (EBs), but hell, that's kinda the point of them dropping.

And lets say you did get your wish. All Defenders become great soloers. What happens to other ATs? Lets take my scrapper. Not only will defenders provide more to teams than him, they'll be able to solo as well as him. Are you then going to suggest we boost scrappers - maybe make their damage scale based on the number of team members as defenders does. That sounds pretty balanced. And, I better be able to protect my allies, as defenders can do that, and it's not fair that my scrapper can't. And I want to be as tough as a tank, as it's not fair that they can tank and I can't... See where this is going?



Incidentally, I think there are some problems soloing at low level - based around end use - but this is not a defender thing by any means. Tanks are probably worse off, and even scrappers (except regen) suffer from it - it's not hard to solo, but it can be tedious pre-stamina.

It scatters EBs (can't remember about AVs) too. Not that noticable in groups, but solo it's horrible. I've memories of chasing Longbow EBs through half a base cos of that damned power....

Definately. Makes the mobs scatter and run around like headless chickens. Darn annoying.