Rigel_Kent

Using an example of a dark defender against an even level warrior boss.

Warrior boss has 20% smashing/lethal resistance. Damage resistance is also damage debuff resistance. So warrior boss also has 20% smashing/lethal damage debuff resistance.

So, if the dark defender uses Darkest Night+Twilight Grasp on the warrior boss, the boss will receive a -50% cold/fire/energy/negative/psi/toxic damage debuff as normal, but due to the boss's resistance, only a -50 x 0.8 = -40% smashing/lethal damage debuff. So, if the warrior boss hits with a smashing/lethal attack that would normally deal 300 damage, Darkest Night+Twilight Grasp only reduces it down to 180. Since warrior bosses only use smashing/lethal damage, this hurts! This is a fairly common nuisance since NPCs often have resistance to the same damage types their attacks use.

Now, the dark defender drops a Tar Patch, which drops the warrior boss's 20% smashing/lethal resistance into the negatives: -4%. Now Darkest Night+Twilight Grasp's damage debuff actually gets increased rather than reduced: -50 x 1.04 = -52%, thanks to Tar Patch. The same 300 damage attack gets reduced from 180 even further to 144, a significant help.

Note that Tar Patch also gets you within closer reach of the damage floor. With Tar Patch, Darkest Night+3 Twilight Grasps floors the warrior boss's damage, which can be done with about 86% recharge enhancements (i.e. no hasten or global recharge required). Without Tar Patch, it'd take Darkest Night+5 Twilight Grasps, which is completely impossible (you'd need to go beyond the recharge cap to pull it off). Remember this when damage flooring becomes vital, such as versus AVs and GMs.

Quick notes on my O2 Boost playstyle.

I don't really care about the healing effect, but I absolutely adore the status protection buff. Consequently I slot Golgis and spam it much like Clear Mind. For this type of usage, recharge reduction is optional (you're spamming it regularly but not faster than the 4s base recharge allows), while endurance reduction is important (the healing pretty much ensures you're getting no Vigilance ever). Recharge reduction is nice if you continue spamming during combat, and find you want to be able to throw out a fast O2 Boost as a heal between uses of it as a buff -- Storm has better panic buttons IMO though, so I skip the recharge slotting.

Also, this is minor, but if you have Stun or Sleep duration bonuses from sets, they should add a tiny bonus to some of O2 Boost's effects. Power Build Up too FWIW.

Though I love every Vigilance suggestion I've seen, I'm sticking to my first idea. Change inspirations to work like this:

Enrage

Effect area: Sphere
Radius: 25'
Entities affected: Friend
Entities autohit: Friend

Self:
+25% dmg(all) for 30 seconds if NOT used by a Defender

Target:
+25% dmg(all) for 30 seconds if used by a Defender

It reinforces the team-support flavor role of the archetype, requires no changes under the hood, adds minimal processing overhead, and benefits defenders of all types equally. Doesn't help us soloing, but there's no rule that says inherents have to be helpful soloing. (Especially if they're this good teaming.) The real drawback I see is noobly empaths slowing down missions with even more constant "gather" or "stay close 2 tank" requests.

Don't beat yourself up too much. Different perspectives. If you like messing with teammates' heads by squishytanking, defenders look better to you than they do to other people. If you like maximum healzoring at any cost, same deal. If your roleplay concept involves you digging deep within yourself to spend less endurance when your teammates are hurt, same deal.

Me, I'm a fan of certain defender secondaries, so that's my deal.

-unsurprised at the storm responses-

Yeah, get a good costume and roll a stormy.

Or dual blades is okay too, since not many play that anymore. Katana's a bit too overdone for my tastes.

Keep an eye out for the new Issue 16 Martial Arts and Super Strength animations.

Your math is correct. Because players often think of resistance debuffs adding a percentage to damage, the end result is as people expect.

Resistance resisting damage debuffs is another story.

It might be the case. I've hit the ticket cap on a small warehouse map with a team of 4. Custom enemy group, but the standard spread of minions, LTs and bosses. Our difficulty was cranked up, and we had a bonus from it being the 3rd mish of the arc, but I doubt we got 750 tickets halfway through that small warehouse.

Or maybe we did!

Either way, lower than 1500 or not lower than 1500, the ticket cap impacts me more than it does the farmers. I guess that's the take home message.

Re: Vigilance

Hardly anybody likes it, so you're not alone here. Not even close. I'm always glad to see another slip added to the suggestion box, but you should know that this is a perennial topic on the board, and just about everyone has a dozen slips in the box already.

Re: Power proliferation

The corollary to power proliferation--i.e. that powersets shouldn't make the ATs unique--is that ATs should be made unique by #1 AT effect multipliers, or #2 inherents, or #3 stat caps (e.g. max hp).

Defenders lose on #2 and #3, nuff said.

On #1, defenders do have some significantly better effect multipliers, but only on a small fraction of defender powers. A defender is likely to have lots of powers which deal damage, or mez opponents, or have some AT-unmodified effect like recharge buffing or regeneration modification, and relatively few powers with a distinct defender advantage, like defense buffs and resistance debuffs. For that reason, I'd argue defenders lose on #1 as well. Having a moderate advantage on just three out of your twenty-four lifetime power picks (using HA/HO/Fort from empathy as the example, assuming AP isn't taken) shouldn't be the reason to roll defender.

Re: Inventions

Yes, IO set designs strike me as being from someone who's never played a balanced defender. Pure empath, sure, but not anything with damage+debuff combo powers, or slow+debuff, or endmod+anything. Heck, we had to fight for accuracy+heal.

Re: Going Rogue as the defenderocalypse in general

Powergamers have already left the defender AT in favor of controllers. The defender AT's playerbase mostly looks like this now: concept players, nostalgia players, newbies who minmax heals, whackos who tank with their defenders, and major whackos who actually like vigilance. Controllers can't draw those players away, and Going Rogue won't either.

(Not to say defenders don't need a boost, mind you. I'm just saying they're needing a boost regardless of masterminds going unrogue or not.)

Outdoor ambush sizes are usually affected by team size, though. So that may be one outdoor thing that's possible to adjust in Issue 16.

On second thought, let's keep the forum's new top page. It gives me nice flashbacks to 1994. Ah, the good old days. Wonder if I can find my 2400 baud high speed modem.

"Movement speed" and "slow movement" are shorthand for a group of related effects: run speed, maximum run speed, jump speed, jump height, and fly speed. Not all those effects are guaranteed to be present, though. Check the real numbers to make sure any individual effect is actually taking place.

If I recall correctly, the Gift of the Ancients "Increased Run Speed" bonus is run speed only. And, as mentioned above, it's 7.5% of your base movement, which is 14.32 mph, so it might be more accurately described as a 1.07 mph bonus rather than a percentage.

To verify the bonuses are working, die, get rezzed, and start running without any travel powers or sprint on. You'll see the 1.07 mph bonuses kick in sometime over the first ten seconds, so you'll notice small but perceptible boosts.

I feel your pain. There is indeed a navigation problem with the home page: it's all bare links with little to tell us what we're clicking on. (The fact that you've posted this on the wrong board may actually support your argument.)

But if vBulletin can be configured to add descriptive text beneath each link on the home page--and from the look of the sub-pages, it can--just have hyperlinks to each set of sub-boards embedded right in the descriptive text, and there's no need to go back to the old app. Even without hyperlinks straight to the sub-boards, descriptive text will go a long way to improving the home page.

I'd put off a final decision until Issue 16 goes to open beta and you can actually see what Eng/Eng, Psi/MM, Rad/Eng, etc. look like when color shifted to bright yellow-white. There could be some surprises yet.

Yep, definitely.

I agree with Shannon; though Darkest Night can be skipped, it's tough leveling up without it. And it'll always retain situational usefulness against stuff that can't be tohit debuffed as well as when exemplaring. If you must must must drop another primary, Darkest Night can be it, but at least take it the first time through low levels until you get Fearsome Stare + SOs, and only respec out of it on a second soloing build if you can.

Survivability? Not an issue. Debt doesn't happen* when a D3 is around. By not having to worry about debt, you can focus on jumping in head first and learning useful skills, like stealthing, herding, cone aiming, anchor selection, how to find good teams, and where to stock up on Break Frees.

Speaking of stealth, Recall Friend may be useful if you have a dual build dedicated to task forcing. Not for rezzing (just start thinking of Howling Twilight as an autohit stun rather than a rez -- remember, debt doesn't happen*), but for wraithing straight to bosses and letting your teammates help you pwn them.

Dropping Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall may be okay if you have a second build strictly for soloing, but on a team, cone blasts are a big help for keeping up with controllers on damage.

*Exception: Debt does happen when a teammate selflessly runs ahead to sacrifice himself on the next spawn, to let your blue bar refill with Vigilance and let you use Vengeance on the team. This is somewhat uncommon, though, and sometimes the teammate goes temporarily crazy, saying odd, angry, paranoid things and quitting the team, so don't feel obliged to save your autohit stun for such an occasion.

P.S. Note to self : Ask Vanden to correct the Howling Twilight icon to "stun" instead of "rez" in the next Vidiotmaps icon pack, to signify its proper use.

Rise of the Phoenix really shines when someone on the team makes your enemies immune to knockback. That way they're stunned by the Phoenix blast and stand there uselessly while they eat all three ticks of it.

You can it even do it yourself, if you toss a quick Electric Fence on the boss as you go down. Or position yourself so that Phoenix knocks stuff into a wall or corner.

Sorry if I'm reading too much into your post, but...

Sonic Attack and Mental Manipulation are both really good sets. I have a feeling that, unless you're skipping fitness or a travel pool or an ancillary pool, if you're looking to take another power pool, you might have skipped some worthwhile primaries and secondaries.

Between Leadership and Medicine, I'd pick Medicine, but between Medicine and almost any Sonic Attack or Mental Manipulation power (except the obvious stinker at level 35), I can do without the tricorder.

Always give the benefit of the doubt! Someone who runs ahead and gets himself killed might actually be executing a brilliant plan to uberbuff the whole team, since everyone knows I have Vengeance on auto.