Rigel_Kent

That proc weirdly goes to targets, not to self. Nice if you're buffing your teammates (like with Speed Boost), or in self-targeted powers (like Stamina). Not so nice in offensive powers, the proc will grant end to your targets!

Source: City of Data and personal embarrassment

Castle's opinion on what's out of whack may have changed lately.

-looks at granite+healer AE 54 boss farms: buffs and debuffs not welcome-

My gosh, it looks like WoW in there.

Now if only it would make resistance less marginalized, what with sonic and thermal buffs being near-extinct, most kins skipping ID, most stormies and dark defenders not slotting their stealth auras for resistance, etc. Since resistance = damage debuff resistance. Sure, damage debuffs aren't very common in either PvE or PvP, but with red and blue ink men, yeesh! It's nice to have some resistance in those special cases.

MrQuizzles:

I'd leave the ice tanker in. I have serious doubts about rad defenders surviving alphas from level 54 bosses, even with tohit reduced to 11%. The team would have to be lightning quick with the damage debuffs, and with heals from time to time. Even if the defenders survive the alphas, the ice tanker is good for the experimental model, since he'll contribute the same crowd control as the granite tanker does, keeping the bosses close together, slowed and range debuffed, for happy AoE blaster/scrapper/whatevers.

Also, how many minutes faster does the debuff-driven team clear the farm than the tank-and-heal team? Since brokenness implies a discrepancy in rewards, and I hope to gosh nobody's suggesting that Castle nerfs granite and empathy to bring them down to the current level of debuffers and mezzers against level 54 bosses. :yikes:

Re: Debuffs having higher base values than buffs

There are incongruities between buffs and debuffs that make straight number comparisons problematic. Some favoring buffs: having to reapply every spawn vs. having to reapply every 4 minutes, aggro vs. aggro free and usable between fights, mob resistances, and sometimes tohit checks. Some favoring debuffs: usefulness soloing vs. only useful on teams, covering all damage and defense types vs. covering them piece by piece, and sometimes stackability. So with all the incongruities, the -31.25% tohit on Radiation Infection may or may not be out of whack compared to the +15%+5%=+20% defense from cold shields and Arctic Fog.

Fixed.

Especially for the situation he was talking about (the 17 kin/arch AE bunny with Siphon Power and no other primaries). Even if you're not screening newbies, you do need to get an idea of which powers are going to be driving the team: mez? buffs and debuffs? heals? non-traditional utility e.g. Siren's Song? zerg and Vengeance?

Re: Robin

Interesting story about your stormy with medicine pool. Although there's some overlap with Aid Other and Stimulant, the sets must still have great synergy with each other, what with all the knocks and repels and range debuffing and recharge and tohit flooring.

Let's back up. Comparing hypothetical non-scaling debuffs to the current scaling debuffs won't get us anywhere, because we don't agree on the assumption that scaling debuffs are balanced as they are. You see the vast difference as horrible brokenness, I see the vast difference as a badly needed fix.

So let's get more concrete with this hypothetical. Apples to apples.

Let's say debuffs no longer scale down against +4s. Two AE 54 boss farm teams are recruiting. On team A, there is an ice tanker, two rad defenders, a kinetic, and four blaster/scrapper/whatevers, so, barring any slip-ups, the entire +4 boss farm's aggro is trained on one target they're too debuffed to kill, with plenty of SB and Fulcrum Shift to go around, plus a little extra gravy from AM and defense and resistance debuffs. On team B, there is a granite tanker, two empaths, a kinetic, and four blaster/scrapper/whatevers, so, barring any slip-ups, the entire +4 boss farm's aggro is trained on one target who's too buffed to kill, with plenty of SB and Fulcrum Shift to go around, plus a little extra gravy from Fort, RAs and AB.

Is team A more or less broken than team B? Will it clear the farm in 1 fewer minute? 1 more minute? With fewer deaths? With more deaths? ... Too close to call?

(With apologies for using AE 54 boss farms for the thought experiment. It's purely for experimental convenience, as a simpler model for more civilized activities.)

Ah, the high tech version of the layer cake. Good times.

It's good to have shoulders to cry on. Though I suspect you need not do much crying; I bet a good number of those blasters quit the team after you got kicked. If not quitting in solidarity, quitting out of plain self-preservation.

-31.3% tohit, -31.3% defense, -30% resistance, -25% damage? That sounds like darn good defendering to me, not brokenness, no matter what color the target's name is. You'll still have to actually get those +10 mobs down to 0 hp to get a reward. That -31.3% defense will help, but gosh, hope you've got a snack handy. And you'll still be xp-capped, getting the same reward as you would for about a +4 mob.

A change of 10x or even 1000x can be game-breaking, or it can be game-fixing. A change is not necessarily one or the other just because it's large or small.

That's a definite concern, sure. ATs with lots of debuffs would benefit more than ATs with relatively few, so AT-to-AT balance would need double-checking. Set-to-set balance, too; for example, the slows and debuffs from ice tankers would get a big boost, but granite tankers don't get much of anything.

But I'd say you can be sure the +4 boss farms will still demand tankers and dps even if defenders finally have something more to do other than spam heals, a bit of blasting, rezzing (though controllers rez just as well), and limited types of buffing such as +recharge +recovery and +damage (though controllers do those buffs just as well too). (And ice tankers have something to do other than scrap and avoid too much Gauntlet aggro, for that matter.)

Turbo claimed that non-scaling debuffs would break the game against +4s. In my response to her, I said, and meant, healers, as part of my criticism of the current one-dimensional "non-broken" game wherein mainly only healers and an occasional buff are currently wanted against +4s.

Though I still agree with your conclusion, giving the hypothetical defender a pool power while restricting the hypothetical tanker to his primary undermines your argument. Yes, self-buffing defenders would be too much, but not that too much.

Perhaps, perhaps not. If one spends the whole game doing AE farms, one may very well come to a reasonable conclusion that kins don't heal or buff. I mean, well, have you seen the kins on AE farms?

My blaster has Vengeance on auto. So when anyone asks for a healer, I can say yes, and I have my AoE heal on auto.

Don't be. The damage is solid, anything that doesn't die is in the deepest circle of tohit debuff hell (Defender Blackstar is without peer for that), and Dark Consumption gets you right back into the fight.

Dark Consumption is good for the reason stated above. Dark Embrace is okay for an extra layer of damage resistance and damage debuff resistance, but it's yet another toggle to retoggle after you nuke, and as a dark miasmist, you really don't need more layers. Keep it if you like the look of the aura or for concept reasons, otherwise, it's not necessary.

Ditto for Maneuvers; if you need Karma for knockback protection, leave it in Shadow Fall, which remains a handy stealth toggle. Assault and Tactics have more worthwhile buffs if you can stand retoggling them every couple of minutes. Take Vengeance if you're going to dip that far into Leadership anyway.

Life Drain is iffy. Twilight Grasp is up more often and does about the same thing.

Howling Twilight but no Dark Pit? True, Howling Twilight has that autohit goodness, but Dark Pit recharges much faster, and the two stack together nicely.

Some may wonder why you have Petrifying Gaze but not Darkest Night, but I approve of your choices. A hard mez is sometimes needed for PvE, as the AI cheats and can use powers such as teleportation, heals, and pet summoning even when feared. And Darkest Night is largely unnecessary once you get Fearsome Stare, except for damage debuffing AVs and GMs.

Speaking of Fearsome Stare, some may wonder why Fearsome Stare is being put off to 26. Without Darkest Night, Fearsome Stare is going to be the backbone of your team and solo defense from level 12 all the way to level 50.

Level-unscaled debuffs aren't any more broken against +4s than level-scaled ones already are against +4s. (Ever try to get a non-empath onto a level 54 boss farm?) Or any more game-breaking than buffs are against +4s. So I'm of the opinion debuffs in general (not just from defenders) shouldn't scale with level. Keeps debuffs easier to balance with buffs that way.

Also, isn't game-breaking the purpose of buffs and debuffs? I don't know what a "non-broken" game looks like, but I suspect it looks a lot like tanks drawing aggro, dps doing dps, and healers racing their hps versus the incoming dps all day. (Ooh, there's that level 54 boss farm again.)

It's a thought, but case-by-case nerfs as an approach to game balance is like dixie cups as an approach to firefighting.

I'd rather see a more global rules-based change. I'd set the damage caps of ATs, and pets summoned by the same ATs, according to the amount of self damage buffing their primary and secondary sets typically have.

So brutes retain their massive damage cap (Fury and Build Up too), blasters move up to 600% (Defiance plus Build Up plus Aim), stalkers and scrappers retain their 500% cap (with Build Up), EATs and tankers move up to 500% (also with Build Up or Rage or Mire), corruptors drop down to 400% with defenders (with Aim), and masterminds controllers and dominators drop down to 300% (lacking Build Up or Aim in most sets). So, yes, you get the 300% damage cap for controllers you wanted, plus Kheldians blasters and tankers get love, plus proliferating Kinetics to masterminds isn't nerfbait anymore.

Defenders neither win nor lose under this scheme (except by comparison to controllers, corruptors, and masterminds), but defenders at the current damage cap do well enough in my opinion.

Also, I'm not sure who posted this, but:
This is enlightening. The fact that buff/debuff and damage is a strong negative correlation, while defense and damage may actually be a slight positive correlation, is an eyebrow raiser. My eyebrow is duly raised.