Archetype Concept: The Bastion (Defense / Ranged Damage)

The Bastion

Bastions are to Sentinels as Tankers are to Scrappers. A Tanker fights on the front lines, gathering the attention of all its opponents, while the backline heroes such as Defenders and Blasters provide support. But if the Tanker is on the front-lines, who is protecting the backline? Enter, the Bastion. As long as you stick close to your Bastion, you’ll be protected from any enemy that the Tanker can’t keep occupied. Furthermore, the front line benefits too; the Bastion brings debuffs and crowd controls to the fight

A Bastion can fight on the front lines, but isn’t as effective as a Tanker in this respect. They are a bit less durable, and they can't taunt nearby enemies. However, if your backline is ambushed while your Tanker is away, a Bastion is still much better than nothing. Besides, they have ways of mitigating harm besides taunting; their innate power absorbs damage taken from allies, and they have better crowd control and debuffs.

Bastion Stats:

Survivability: 9

Melee Damage: 2

Ranged Damage: 6

Crowd Control: 7

Support: 5

Pets: 2

Inherent Powers

Shield Wall

A Bastion protects its allies simply by being near them. When within a Bastion’s shield wall (a 20 yard radius), you ignore a variable portion of damage dealt. This absorbed damage is reduced, either by 25% (for single-target attacks) or 35% (for AoE attacks), then dealt to the Bastion. This amount is calculated before resistance.

The amount of damage that can be transferred to the Bastion in this way depends on multiple factors:

• The lower your health is, the more is transferred to the Bastion.
  
• The lower the Bastion’s health is, the less is transferred to them.
  
• Shield Walls stack, but have rapidly diminishing returns.
  
• No damage would be absorbed that would put the Bastion below 10% of its health, and no damage will be absorbed at all by a Bastion past that point.
  
• No damage is absorbed if the attack would kill you anyways; otherwise that’s the Bastion taking damage for no reason.
  

Furthermore, allies with debuffs within the Shield Wall have those debuffs lessened. This stacks with multiple Shield Walls, but again has diminishing returns. It does not apply to self-inflicted debuffs.

Ranged Resistance

Bastions take a fixed 15% less damage from ranged, AoE, and non-melee PBAoE attacks, applied AFTER resistance.

Taunt

A Bastion’s attacks taunt enemies. This Taunt is a bit weaker than a Tanker's taunt, and can only be applied to enemies outside the Shield Wall radius. If an enemy outside of Shield Wall uses an ability on an ally within Shield Wall, they have a high chance of being taunted by the Bastion.

Both of these taunts have a lower priority than a Tanker or Brute's taunt.

Powersets

Primary Powerset: Defense

Just like a Tanker, a Bastion’s primary powerset is defense. Overall, a Bastion is a bit less durable than a Tanker, but more durable than a Brute.

Changes made to a Defense powerset are rare; they tend to apply to aura and PBAoE powers.  As the Bastion won’t often have enemies close to them, these may be modified or even completely reworked.

Secondary Powerset: Ranged Damage

A Bastion primarily fights from the backlines. Bastions have the same range as a Blaster. However, they deal less damage even than a Sentinel.

The following changes are made to powersets:

• Small AoEs are increased in size
  
• Powers that are Debuff/CC oriented with little/no damage will have their damage increased
  
• Powers that are damage oriented but have debuffs/CC will have those debuffs made stronger, but high damage powers deal less damage.
  
• Powers that heal allies or provide them with buffs will be reworked or replaced.
  
• High damage attacks deal less damage, even when accounting for the lower attack power of a Bastion.
  

For instance, a Bastion's Dark Blast may look like this: (abilities in bold come from the Dark Miasma powerset)

T1: Dark Blast (Stronger debuff)

T2: Gloom (Stronger debuff)

T3: Umbral Torrent (Stronger debuff)

T4: Howling Maelstrom (New ability similar to Howling Twilight; shorter CD but does not rez allies)

T5: Tenebrous Tentacles (Higher damage, longer range)

T6: Abyssal Gaze (Stronger CC and Debuff, slightly less damage)

T7: Life Drain (Less damage, stronger self-heal)

T8: Black Hole (Deals moderate damage)

T9: Blackstar (Stronger debuff, much less damage)

See My Other Suggestions

Love it, +1.

It¡s very well written, surprised you haven't had more traction

EDIT:

Please post your other suggestions on the forums...maybe hey can get some traction from the community.  I'm a +1 for each of them (Tendril, Goliath (really like this ome the most), and Rapier (I would totally make a Zorro homage to that))

This sounds like a good idea that is easy to implement..

 

Changes made to a Defense powerset are rare; they tend to apply to aura and PBAoE powers.  As the Bastion won’t often have enemies close to them, these may be modified or even completely reworked.

 

Secondary Powerset: Ranged Damage

 

A Bastion primarily fights from the backlines. Bastions have the same range as a Blaster. However, they deal less damage even than a Sentinel.

Seems to me you have forgotten something with this AT... Solo.

In Solo there are no back lines, and you will often have MOBs close to you, especially with a low damage secondary. Your Inherent is built totally for grouping, it serves no function at all in Solo.

Side note

The Inherent is very complicated, and though these might be needed to keep the Bastion from dying from always being in Bodyguard mode, I think they would be a nightmare to code.

 

Seems to me you have forgotten something with this AT... Solo.

 

Side note

The Inherent is very complicated, and though these might be needed to keep the Bastion from dying from always being in Bodyguard mode, I think they would be a nightmare to code.

 

Solo: A valid point. That said Tankers and Defenders aren't fun for solo gameplay either (unless you build the Tanker for damage, which you could do with the Bastion too). Some ATs are just inherently not going to be good for solo play, and that's acceptable.

Complicated Inherent? I guess in terms of mechanics it is, yes, though that's partially because I tend to elaborate and go into detail a lot. The tooltip could just read that "the amount of damage shield wall absorbs increases as your ally loses health, and decreases as you lose health. Multiple shield walls stack, with diminishing returns," in that respect, to simplify it for the player. But as for the coding? It actually wouldn't be that bad, unless the City of Heroes source code is even more spaghetti than I hear it is. Finding a specific formula might require some fine tuning. I actually have a coding background so I'm not speaking out my ass here!

Please post your other suggestions on the forums...maybe hey can get some traction from the community.  I'm a +1 for each of them (Tendril, Goliath (really like this ome the most), and Rapier (I would totally make a Zorro homage to that))

I did, actually!

... they got ignored.

They did get a fair amount of feedback on Reddit though. Also, I did make a "table of contents" for my concepts in general, and may just make a master post here, soon.

Solo: A valid point. That said Tankers and Defenders aren't fun for solo gameplay either (unless you build the Tanker for damage, which you could do with the Bastion too). Some ATs are just inherently not going to be good for solo play, and that's acceptable.

One of the cardinal rules of the game that I have always like is that all AT's, and all Powersets have to be able to solo.  Now you might need to scale up or down your difficultly slider based on the particular AT and powersets you've chosen, but I have yet to find one that I can't slide at least to +1 lvl.  I've done all the AT's this way (except MM) and have had challenges sometimes soloing, but nothing that alot of Inspy's couldn't solve.

Please post your other suggestions on the forums...maybe hey can get some traction from the community.  I'm a +1 for each of them (Tendril, Goliath (really like this ome the most), and Rapier (I would totally make a Zorro homage to that))

 

I did, actually!

 

... they got ignored.

 

They did get a fair amount of feedback on Reddit though. Also, I did make a "table of contents" for my concepts in general, and may just make a master post here, soon.

Where at?  I'll totally go back and +1 one them and help get the ball rolling...

Oh yeah, a Bastion would bring a bit more damage to the field than a Tanker, so you could do solo play as one.

I am always game for more 90% resist cap ATs.

Against ranged and AoE attacks, that can (effectively) become 91.5%!

... still not a fan of how resist/defense is currently handled in CoH but I just have to suck it up