To begin with this is an excellent game and is very much fun, and what went into the game, specifically the various classes clearly were highly considered and addressed.
As I look at the game's original classes Tanker, Scrapper, Defender, Blaster and Controller, clearly follows the Gary Gigax teaming concept. As a result the pros and cons of these classes were defined by the developers, based on this old time team gaming concept.
Disclaimer: I may often refer to blasters, defenders and controllers, but my suggestion are also meant for their villain counterparts such as corruptors, dominators and brutes.
So far so good...
When City of Villains was released, new class sets with new balances were made available, and the developers had all the lessons learned on the problems from the first batch of classes to build upon and improve.
The developers did a fine job at making very robust classes, and the foundatins for departing from the Gary Gigax concept, and example of this good evolution is the enhancement to the tanks, brutes, scrapper's self heal, self recharge abilities which allows them to operate in both solo and group situations with out much dependency on support, not that the services of support are not appreciated. When I play my fire/axe tanker for instance, especially post incarnate, I can do a 50 mission and not sweat the odds, often I am in groups now with out support classes, and not miss them much. This is not a criticism, it is a compliment! Because it relieves the TF or mission organizer the burden of trying to balance the team for survivability purposes. I no longer see the mandatory we got to have an empath healer anymore statement which was ever present during the live days and the entire group was waiting for a healer to sign up, this is great for flexibility but sad for the empath healer whose services are not as valued as they once were.
Once I again, this is not a criticism, its an observation of a trend that I very much like, a trend that gives team organizers a lot of freedom, which is great for all players.
So if we are going to depart from the hard core Gary Gigax frame of mind: Tank takes the hits (Warrior), don't hit hard (this is changing "brute" and incarnate), Defender keeps the tank going (Cleric), Blaster/Controller puts the damage and controls the battle (Mage), and Scrappers sneak in a deliver killer damage (Thief). Do note that the other classes follow same concept Blaster/Corruptor, Controller/Dominator, etc.
So how can we work on the support classes, so they can be more likely that players would actually be just as happy to play them as opposed to a melee type? After all, check the trend on team compositions from the "live" days to today's, and you will notice a decrease in the support numbers, after all why play them, when there are more robust classes to be played? For example I had a choice between a blaster and sentinel? I had an energy/energy blaster in the live days, so I wanted to reproduce the character for nostqalgia purposes, but then I stumbled on a new class call sentinel. Lets see, Blaster hits hard, wow hard, but even a menion with status effect can lay the blaster low, you hit one minion, and then the status effect spam goes-off at the blaster (at one time selected mobs had ranged effects, now just about all of them do in some form or other), the blaster is, as expected, stunned, held, or whatever and a few moments later dies. Not a heroic picture here. Then good gravy! a Sentinel hits nearly as hard, and has status effect protection! I can really have fun kicking baddies left and right! So I went with the sentinel over the blaster, it frankly was a no brainer. The damage over time of a sentinel smokes the blaster for there is no status effect avoidance down time or run for your life practices and come back for second shot or inspiration "junkie" dependency.
So how to envigorate the Blaster/Corruptor?
For myself the main reason I stirred away from the Blaster was the total helplessnes to status effects (not a fan that I have to have a tray full of break free inspirations in order to play, when this is not a consideration to many other classes). On the other hand, I do want to keep some semblance of game balance but not in a Gary Gigax mentallity, in other words give the servitude clause on support classes their retirement papers because their "live time" role truly no longer exists as it once was.
So for the blaster, they have AIM which temporarely boosts their accuracy and damage, why not say their focus is so great that they get comprehensive status effect while under these conditions, thus if you run accuracy you have say a LT's MAG status protection which last the entire recharge duration.
The question what about balance?
Good question, here is how balance works:
Tank and Brutes get toggles, they are on and don't have to pay much attention to them to be protected, so nice.
Scrapper/Stalkers get usually a single activation power that they can place in auto if they are smart, not bad but some attention to it is requried.
Blaster/Corruptor: They have to be really playing attention to AIM to keep it going, note that the pluss to accuracy and damage may be gone but the status effect protection persists, it could be toggled if the blaster is wise.
Second Balance perspective and the most important:
The pragmatic levels of MAG protection does not need to be the same either. I can't find the actual class status effect table that shows what MAG values each class has, but as I remember the Tank had a Mob Elite Boss level set of protection, and Scrappers have Boss level rprotection, so why not give the Blaster/Defender/Controller the means to attain LT mag level? In my case, for the blaster I suggested using AIM as a means to activate teh protection.
Lets talk about Controllers/Dominators...
You would think that a controller/dominator would know all the ins and outs of status effects and thus should be the hardest to be affected by them, and yet they are just as helpless as the Blaster and Defender class types. So how do we remedy that as proposed for the blaster.
I would propose that each time a controller/dominator uses a control power, they activate a temporary MAG level equivalent to a tank, it is rather short lived say 1 minute, but to make it fun, the time is stackable, so if they are spamming their holds or what not their status effect duration increases, so if in that one minute they spammed say 3 other attacks; hold, confuse, and slow for example their status effect timer would increase by 3 minutes.
One comment about pets, the fire controller is limited to 3 pets where there is no control over. A master mind has 6 pets or more with total control, a clear case of old thinking versus new thinking. At one time the controller could spawn 5 imps and if they have very fast recharge times, could have a second or even a third batch of imps, which quickly unbalanced the game. I get it. Why not give the controller her 5 imps back, and raise the maximum number of imps cap from 3 to 5? and maybe let the controller control the imps. A bif difference between the controller and mastermind is that the mastermind's pets actually have powers.
Other controller classes with pets such as illusion, should have their numbers revised along the lines of the Mastermind.
Lets talk about the Defender...
They actually have the same helplesness to status effects as all the other support classes, so how do we fix it and keep some sort of balance?
My suggestion is to remove the limitation they can't affect themselves. Thus the same buff they can give to any other class, they can give to themselves. The powers with area effect protection such as steamy mist and other like effects provide a full set of status protection, but only at minion level and are stackable.
I really could never get my arms around the concept, I know how to make you tougher and heal you, but I just can't figure how to do exactly that for myself. I suspect this was a Gary Gigax based effort to encourage Defenders to focus in being good team supporters which under how the game mechanics were was actually quite needed.
It may be required to ensure that the various defender powers that provide status effect protection mitigation be looked at, in order to ensure uniformity across the various subclasses (storm, empathy, kinetic) spectrum about LT level mag protection which are of course stackable. Thinking of clear mind, O2 boost, etc.
Lastly let defenders do full damage regardless if they are soloing or not, I get the concept that under the Gary Gigax mindset their damage was reduced as an encouragement to focus in being a good support character. With the new game's environment the encouragement to be support focused is no longer valid. Let me explain, why I believe it is no longer valid: A few days ago, I was playing my Emp/Water Defender, and thinking as I did in live days: "I am going to focus in healing and buffing". It did not take long before I was bored, there was not much healing needed, the tanks and scrappers healed themselves, their mag protections were so outstanding that my clear mind was not even needed. So all I had left to do to was to spam clear minds to other defenders, controllers, and blasters if any in my group, as a result the use of clear mind was hardly ever used. Eventually I gave up being a good healer/buffer and went into the aggressive, did any one died? No, no one died while I did this. Sure I kept an eye in the life bars, so I could stop attacking and do some healing, a mezzed player was instructed to in type in chat, held and they were a click on their name in the team menu away followed by a click on clear mind. So I do not see a logical reason to handicap their damage any further.
Now I spoke often in examples of blasters, defenders, controllers but the same suggstions applies to their corresponding classes and no slight to them was ever intended.
Thank you for reading and thinking of this
Dr Rocket
