Luminara

Multiple defenders benefiting from increased damage mitigation due stacking from different sources (MOAR DEFENDERERSES), thereby keeping their HP at or near full and denying themselves the benefit of +/-Special scaled by HP losses, would be "more overpowered"?

There's a bit of temporal overlap that leaves some wiggle room. Phillip II (Phillip of Macedonia) folded significant territories into Macedonia's control, including the whole of Greece, and led to the Hellenistic era of ancient Greece. Not much later, Alexander III's (Alexander the Great) successes cemented Greece as the foremost nation of the region. This empire forged by Greece interacted with and was later consumed when the Roman Republic (preceded by the Roman Kingdom, and precursor to the Roman Empire) conquered Greece in 146 AD. For centuries before and after Greece ruled the Mediterranean region, Greece was the center of the enlightened world. A hunger for knowledge, and trade routes, spread Greek influence throughout the region, bringing travelers, intellectuals, philosophers and even kings and other notable people to Greece, and sent Grecians all over the known world, too. So there are actually several hundred years during which it wasn't unusual, or even uncommon, for a Greek person to be in Rome, or a Roman person in Greece. The two countries are only a stone's throw across the Med from one another (so to speak). And, of course, all of this eventually culminated in Rome's dissolution of the republic and formation of the Empire, the process of which was responsible for the death of Cleopatra VII (yes, that Cleopatra), who was Greek, a direct descendent of Ptolemy I Soter, who assumed the throne in Egypt and declared himself pharaoh, very shortly after Alexander died. Around the latter half of the last century BC, Greek, Roman and Egyptian histories are all intertwined so tightly that they become one. It's fascinating to trace the threads of each nation through the tangle that crops up in that time, forward and backward, and see how events influenced one another and led to the world we live in today.

City of Data shows it as auto-hit, too. For @Captain Powerhouse's sake, I hope it's a bug.

Well, to begin, I note the use of a single shoulder item on the side opposing the shield. Nice. I do that with most of my weapon- and shield-using characters, too, so I'm delighted to see that I'm not the only one making good use of that new feature. I go a bit further for the Shield characters and use the Barbarian Leather shoulder item on the shield arm, to prevent chaffing when the shield rubs against the upper arm, and a fingerless glove to give better grip, whereas my archers use the Small Gladiator on the arm not holding the bow and Small on the arm with the bow, plus glove options to reflect modern protective gear (specifically the arm guard, either the Dragon or Cloud bracer on the bow arm, and a glove of some kind on the draw hand to protect the fingers, because drawing and releasing a bow without protective gear is painful, and can rip the skin right off of your arm and fingers if it's powerful enough). 👍 Since we're obviously not reaching back to the most ancient of Greek history, I'd say we're working around the beginning of the Iron Age, before they were swallowed up by the Roman Empire, when the hoplites were the premiere soldiers of the region. The cheapest, and most common, was simple linen armor, called linothorax, but only the lowest ranked soldiers wore that. Hoplites, which is what your character would be, wore bronze armor, either a heroic (muscled) cuirass or a bell cuirass (the Black Knight cuirass without the StarkCo arc reactor). They had greaves (lower leg armor) and helmets as well, so you're good there, but they didn't use armor on the forearms or shoulders. So for historical accuracy, you'd have to go with bare arms and shoulders, and tint the chest, legs and helmet bronze (near gold, not the stained bronze common in modern sculpture. shiny and bright). Sorry, I really hate telling you not to use the asymmetrical details, but you did ask. 😞 Cavalry soldiers wore lighter armor, but we don't have horses. And we're not looking at the commoner in linothorax, so we'll move on. Under the armor, they wore a simple long tunic or toga, with long sleeves. The tunic would cover their butts and groins, like a skirt, but they wouldn't have had the leather Roman skirt we use. You might try a different skirt option, or see if the toga in Unique Tops allows the use of the cuirass detail pieces. But if you decide to keep what you've got, match it to the color of the top undergarment and it's fine. The shield should be round. They only used the hoplon (large round shield, from which the hoplites took their name, also called an aspis) in ancient Greece. It was the single most important piece of defensive equipment they had, because it protected not only the bearer, but also the people near him when used in formation (the phalanx). You can still use that shield, though, simply add a line in the bio to explain that it's the remnant of a hoplon broken in battle and repaired to be used again without restoring its original shape. Ancient Greeks were no less superstitious than anyone else (even today), and it wouldn't be unimaginable for a highly decorated veteran to continue to use a broken hoplon if it continued to serve its purpose, especially if it saved his ass from certain death. I like the belt, too. It's not standard military issue for ancient Greece, but it damn well works. It's a shame we can only use a single chest detail, because a simple bandolier would really bring the entire look to perfection. Since we can't, and you need something to hold your gear, a belt it is. All of that is assuming you did mean Greek, not Roman. Roman armor is comparatively accurately depicted in the game (could be better, but could also be a lot worse), and you could just stick with what you have for a Roman general. As for the rank of your character, I believe what you're looking for is the polemarch. Each polis was independent and self-governing, and had their own customs, social hierarchies, laws and perspectives, but one of the things universal to all of ancient Greece was the concept of military leaders, the polemarches. Polemarches were appointed leaders of armies, basically generals in the modern sense. There were several in each polis, they weren't supreme leaders or singular overlords of armies. They were extremely powerful men, like modern generals, and part of the elite in the social structure of every polis, so they were both citizens and upper class. They weren't Caesars or Alexanders, they weren't the rulers of their people, they were men doing a job. Your character wouldn't be a Spartan polemarch, though, because the upper class of Sparta were legally barred from doing any work other than fighting as soldiers. They didn't value land or money, they valued physical prowess, and they didn't work the fields during times of peace, they were supported by the metis (the middle class), the lower class and serfs, slaves or subjugated people. Pick any other polis if you want your character to be "landed gentry", Sparta would be off that list. In summation, lose the shoulder and glove armor, change the color on the chest, helmet and legs to bright bronze, slap a skirt on that bad boy (if there's a decent one available, if not, work with what you have now) and call him a polemarch of PickAPolis and you'll have a reasonably accurate interpretation of an ancient Greek general.

I typically forget they're there until after I'm doing my best impression of a rug. If they were removed from the game entirely, I probably wouldn't notice unless I read the patch note.

Two things whipped out and shown off... this thread just went 18+. I approve. Continue.

This icon of a thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide until the beta begins. It'll leak if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

No, and if it were retained, I don't believe it should remain in its current form because it incentivizes bad play. A reward for allowing teammates to be and/or remain injured isn't evocative of "defending", or the kind of behavior the game should be prompting. We tried to explain that to Cryptic when they initially added it to the game, but they ignored us. In their defense, they didn't have anything like +/-Special at that time, but anything would've been wiser than actively encouraging defenders to fuck their teammates over. If defenders are uniquely impacted negatively by endurance costs (which i don't believe to be true), then there should be a balance pass on defender powers to bring the costs down to a manageable state, not a tacked-on effect which they can only benefit from if they're incapable of defending or deliberately withholding buffs/debuffs. We're not trying to build a power set here, the inherent doesn't need to be extraordinarily dense with options. Status Resistance and +/-Special interact with the primaries and secondaries well enough, interact with each other in a way which makes both worthwhile without taking the archetype into rare territory, and make the archetype better at what it does. That's enough for an inherent.

Resistance would work. It might need to scale more at the low end of team size, as smaller teams would lean more heavily on a defender, but I wouldn't have any objection. There wouldn't be any need for a lockout or a check interval if it were Status Resistance.

I've been surprised by how much I'm enjoying my Dark/Martial dominator. I just don't enjoy dominators, but I wanted something Batgirly, punchy punchy, kicky kicky, whizzing Batarangs, and nothing else in any archetype came as close as Martial Assault. I almost gave up on it at level 47, after fighting tooth and nail to make World of Disappointment work, but I eventually went back and revised the entire concept without Confuses. Much more enjoyable. Stare or Heart a spawn, jump in and start unloading the kicks and shuriken (i do use other Dark powers as necessary, but they're rarely necessary). I restyled her to a Huntress (Helena Wayne) look, including the purple (i never use purple), and now I'm playing her constantly. Martial Assault isn't great, it burns through endurance like candy and it took a pile of +Damage to catch up to what I can do with other characters, but it is stylish and enjoyable. And that's really all I wanted out of it. Anyone who wants a Bat family type of character should give it a shot.

Beast Run does that. Are you using Beast Run?

12.5% allows it to easily scale up to a full team. 8 * 12.5 = 100. I like keeping it simple, and varying the chance wouldn't be simple. Complex maths should be reserved for advanced character design and refinement, not basic play. A new player should be able to log in, make a defender, and just play without having to break out a spreadsheet and calculator to figure out what his/her chance to escape a mez is going to be every time the team size changes. As for when, it should check the character's mez state every 2.50s (most toggles have an activation interval of 0.5-2.0s and duration of 0.75-2.25s, so 2.50s lets the mez drop/suppress toggles and allow critters a shot at pwning the character/team. if it took 9 seconds to pop because the defender was mezzed 1s into the 10s timed check, the fight would probably decided by that point and the entire purpose of the effect would be moot), then, if the character is mezzed, roll for Break Free. If there's a need for a lockout, make the effect wipe the mez state on activation, rather than a continued override like existing status protection, then cancel itself and lock itself out for X seconds.

12.5% chance for a Break Free on the defender when afflicted by Holds, Stuns or Sleeps, increasing by 12.5% per living teammate; +/- ?% Special (Defense Strength, ToHit Strength, +Resistance (not -), Heal, Absorb, Regeneration, Endurance, Recovery, -Recharge (not +)), scaled by both defender HP and team HP (multiply one by the other to determine final effect). No-one sleeping on the job can be considered vigilant. The purpose of the Break Free effect, though, is not simply to adhere to a word. Words can change. The name of the inherent can change. That's not what's important. What's important is that a defender who's doing nothing but watching is a defender who's not playing, not participating, not engaging, not contributing. We log in to play, not to count the seconds while watching a critter beat the green out of the green bar. There's nothing participatory or engaging about that. It's not even dramatic or fascinating to watch, the enemies don't suddenly go into incredible animations or stop to monologue as we crumble under their assault, like a movie, it's just frustrating. And we want our teammates to contribute, and we want to contribute when we're teamed. A mezzed defender contributes diddly squat, making more work for the rest of the team, not only forcing them to fight harder and longer to finish, but also to protect or resurrect the defender. The defender is there for a reason, that reason is not to freeload or put an extra burden on others. Note that this is not true status protection, and it doesn't nudge the archetype out of balance. The Hold/Stun/Sleep has to occur before the Break Free effect applies, which means enemy-affecting toggles still drop, go into recharge and have to be restarted, and self- and ally-affecting toggles still suppress momentarily. It's also a very small chance when solo, so it's not like defenders will be emptying their inspiration trays of Break Frees, but it is still a chance, and because that chance scales with team size, it gives players a better encouragement to team than a shitty Endurance discount. It's not status protection, it's a chance to not have to sit out 5-10 seconds of mez, a chance to persevere despite having been mezzed, a chance to do something other than scramble for the Break Free key or Rune of Protection or... whatever. We might still have our large intestines removed and used as garlands, but at least we'll have a chance to go down fighting. But that's not enough, because simply being capable of acting doesn't imply defending. I've advocated stuffing some +/- Special into Vigilance in the past, so there it is. It fits the thematic nature of defenders, but in this case, it's also beneficial in both solo and teamed environments. It should scale with both the defender's health and the team's health to make it work that way. That makes it at least somewhat useful solo, but gives it real impact on a team, and reflects what a defender is and does. The odds are against the team, the chips are down, things are starting to look grim, and the defender is stepping up with stronger powers and helping the team turn the tide. Making the Special affect both buffs and debuffs is critical, though. It has to be as good for that Force Fielder or Empathy defender as it is for the TA. As buffs and debuffs use whatever scales and modifiers are in effect at cast time (unless they're pseudo-pets), utilizing the bonus would require re-application of buffs/debuffs reactively, and that requirement provides the necessary restriction to prevent it from being unbalanced. But it also provides incentive to use the secondary sets. Blasting with /Dark would impose slightly stronger -ToHit, /Elecs would drain a bit more endurance or impose slightly greater -Recovery, sets with -Recharge would delay enemy attacks by another fraction of a second or longer, et cetera. +/- Special isn't perfect in the case of secondaries, as there are some with flaming bags of dog shit for a secondary effect (like Archery), but it would give every defender something, either in their primary or secondary, that benefits in some way. And, again, that's better than shaving a couple of points off of the cost of powers which defenders had no reason to use, or couldn't use because they were put in a time-out for existing. Essentially, everything a defender is doing should, in some way, reflect being a defender. This would take a big step toward accomplishing that. Furthermore, since the defender's enemy-affecting toggles have dropped, even if they're on a full team, when they've been mezzed, that creates an advantage for the enemies and gives impetus to the defender's immediate action. Those debuff toggles aren't going to be recast instantly, but every defender has something else he/she can do, and this gives him/her both reason to do it and the expectation that it will make a difference. Fall back to plan B, whether that's using another toggle right away, or blasting and relying on increased debuff strength, or whipping out that Aid Other you've been denying you had in your build. Whatever the defender decides to do, it's going to have more weight, and it helps buy time until they can lay down the stronger effects. I have no issue with Vigilance as it stands, though. I have no issue with defender damage being the lowest. I have no issue with toggles dropping. I have no issue with being mezzed for a week or carrying 20 Break Frees just to play a character. I have no issue with buffing defenders being restricted in a way debuffing defenders aren't. What I have an issue with is all of these things collectively applied to defenders and corruptors. By themselves, each individual restriction is reasonable. All of them together, they're repressive and detrimental to both archetypes, and to the players, and to the long-term health of the game. Making Vigilance more appropriately reflect the concept of defending, as it applies in Co*, could be sufficient to resolve most, if not all, of my complaints about the archetype as it exists in the current game, and that scaling +/-Special should go a long way toward improving the archetype for others in end-game content, where a lot of complaints have been seen. Taking defenders over the top has never been my goal, I just want the act of playing a defender to stop feeling like a punishment for selecting an archetype still saddled with restrictions designed for an entirely different game. And if you want to shuffle off the 30% +Damage at that point, fine. I'm not going to grab my crossbow, chainsaw and meat grinder and start looking for people. I wouldn't have to, because even one fewer Break Free in my inspiration tray is one more Rage I can carry if I decide I need a little more damage. I can live with that.

Just use the Find Contact button in the Contacts window. First and Night Ward contacts come up in that for everything I've played.

*issues @oedipus_tex parking validation voucher*

Steps 2 and 3 are the farmer's responsibility, you can't just foist that off on the riders, they could suffer exhaustion or something! Think of the children!

Talons of Vengeance are not Knives of Vengeance. You're most likely facing Knives of Vengeance in that mission. Go to the south end of First Ward or Night Ward and pick off some Talons of Vengeance there, see if your badge counter twitches.

Don't they already just stand there while the farmer does everything? What is it, two mouse clicks, one to exit the mission and one to enter, that's the sum total of effort they invest... and that's a hardship? Man, I feel sorry for those people. We really need to do something to help them. Maybe we can talk the HC team into randomly assigning a different AE building as the entrance for every mission. That would help them get some wrist and finger exercise so they'd be healthier and wouldn't be struggling with two mouse clicks. Our health is all we really have in this world, after all.

You specifically emphasize poor controller damage "outside of a few cases", meaning edge cases. Then you submit defenders using a 145s recharge power every 30s as your example of defenders being the superior damage dealers, but you're not getting to 30s on those powers without Ageless, Agility/Spiritual, perfect IO set slotting allowing perma-Hasten. Edge cases. This is pointing to the bottom end of controller play and comparing it to the top end of defender play. The comparison is invalid because you refute edge case controller builds and use edge case defender builds. At level 50+, with ~275% +Recharge from perma-Hasten and Ageless, and Agility or Spiritual, and maximal Recharge Reduction in the nuke... or an absolute shit-ton of +Recharge buffs from teammates and/or temp powers. But that's totally not edge case play, since everyone is doing it, right? That's not an example of extreme high end, top tier defender building which completely skews the comparison, right? Right? Yeah... If you didn't want people to play defenders solo, you shouldn't have allowed Cryptic to put them in the game before corruptors. Paragon didn't share your opinion. Not only did they have metrics to guide their decisions, they also had the forums, and you couldn't go three posts without someone pointing out that Vigilance was utter shit when it was just an endurance discount for wounded teammates. The buff was added in Issue 17, which means they started planning it no later than the launch of Issue 15, possibly as early as Issue 14. Vigilance itself was originally added in the third quarter of 2005, so they had 4.5 years of data about how the inherent performed, player commentary and defender metrics. They knew we hated it, and they knew it wasn't doing a damn thing for most of us, and they clearly saw a need to bump up defender damage in a manageable way, or they wouldn't have done it. Some defender primaries weren't available to corruptors when CoV launched, so the only way players could use those sets was to play defenders. I don't know about you, but I wasn't particularly keen to wait until Issue 16 to play TA, nor could I predict that it would be ported to corruptors at that time. The buff wasn't granted because defenders were slow, it was granted because they were slower than Paragon considered acceptable. Not because players were bitching about not being able to solo at +4/x8, but because the metrics had to have shown that they lagged significantly behind all other archetypes in leveling speed or reward acquisition. They didn't make changes like that without investigation, consideration and testing. They weren't haphazard or random in how they treated the game. You're attempting to make another faulty comparison, in which only the primaries and secondaries are used. That's an impossibility in this game. We have to take some pool powers. Even if someone doesn't want to take pool powers, he/she has to take some in order to continue leveling. Refusing to do so means they can't level up, because there's no "I don't want a power this time, just give me my next level" option. Hasten is not part of any controller or defender primary or secondary, but you obliquely reference having it when you mention 30s nukes, so clearly, some pool powers are on the table, and if some are, all are. And you're implying that these hypothetical defenders and controllers are restricted to ranged attacks, and since one of those has secondaries with Blast in the name, clearly, that has to be the better of the two, but in that implication, you've ignored every other possible source of damage, such as pool powers, pets, *PPs, and discounted the massive impact of Containment on controller damage output when those other damage sources are added to the equation. Doubling a pitiful 0.55 scale does wonders, even with limited damage capabilities. A controller using Cross Punch (Boxing and Kick buffs applied) on mezzed foes, and ignoring every -Res power available to him/her, can deal 10x more damage in 40s than a defender nuke fired on critters with 60% -Res, and do so in complete safety if the mez was a Hold or Stun (which all controllers have), whereas the defender may still be at the mercy of critter hit rolls or massive incoming damage because those enemies are still free to act. Yes, that defender nuke will hit 3x as many targets in one shot, but that's one shot, whereas the controller is hitting again, and again, and again, 20 times before the defender can nuke again. 5 * 20 > 1 * 16. Having blast sets doesn't make defenders better at dealing damage when Containment is a factor, and Containment should always be a factor in a comparison to controllers, since control is what they do. Controllers are only slow if you play them that way. Controllers only have to stay at range if you don't move them forward. Controllers aren't restricted to one single-target Hold and single-target Immobilize for dealing damage. And controllers aren't denied access to the same powers you use to increase defender damage output, like perma-Hasten, Ageless, Agility/Spiritual to get those nukes' recharge times down to something playable. That may be how you choose to play controllers, but it can't be how you compare defenders to controllers because it's not transparent. It's not accurate. No matter how you spin it, Containment, being a natural side effect of them doing what they do, gives controllers a massive boost in damage output, pool powers/*PPs are always part of the package, and you have to give controllers the same edge case options that you give defenders if you're going to make a reasonable comparison. Controllers were given Containment because leveling them was absolutely grueling. Defenders were given the 30% +Damage solo buff for the same reason. Whether you or I had the patience to level something like TA the slow way is irrelevant, because we don't represent the average player. The average player doesn't have that kind of patience, or dedication. The average player isn't making an Emp/whatever with the Medicine pool, or FF/whatever and soloing, or TA/A back on the original servers, the average player was looking at defenders and saying, "Why?", before clicking on something that could move at a pace faster than a glacier. Yeah, I could show the average player how to build a defender capable of dealing more total damage than a blaster, but when that player sees that it takes 10s to do it, and the blaster can blitz the same spawn in 3s and move on to the next, he/she is almost always going to pick the blaster. That's why Vigilance's +Damage was added, so those people wouldn't spend ten minutes playing a defender and give up, make a character in any other archetype and forget defenders exist (other than to bash them on the forums). It's just there to ease the leveling process for the average player.

Is perma-Hasten an inherent power for defenders now? Or did they lower T9 recharges to 30s? You qualify controller damage output as being meaningless "outside of a few cases", but point to the outside cases of defender damage output as proving that defenders are superior across the board. There's no parity. You moot your own argument with that approach. To address the question at hand, yes, defenders did need the solo 30% Damage buff added to Vigilance. They needed that because defender blast sets were designed with the understanding that some defender primaries had powers with -Res. Some, but not all, and in fact, the defender builds which lacked -Res tended to find soloing a tedious and unpleasant experience. That, that poor experience, is exactly why the solo buff was added. Neither Cryptic nor Paragon had any intention of creating or enforcing a "team-only" archetype or power set, they always wanted players to have the option to log in, play by themselves and log out with the feeling that they'd made progress. People playing defenders, on the whole, were not getting that out of the game, and they needed some kind of improvement which would impact all defenders without grossly overpowering the top end. A simple +Damage was the easiest and least objectionable solution, because that +Damage counts toward their cap and it was made variable according to team size. Solo experience better, high end not creeping higher, and team experience unaffected. Job done. If you have a superior, and preferably, as mechanically simple method of making the experience of playing a defender solo more enjoyable, by all means, lay it on us. But if you simply dislike that defenders have the equivalent of a single -1 Damage SO added to their powers and pushing them closer to their already low damage cap (400%, of which the base 100% of an unenhanced attack is counted, leaving only 300% head room. ~95% of that is achieved by enhancing (Damage SOs/IOs), so before they've used a single power to buff their Damage, they're already halfway to their cap), try soloing a FF/notSonic or Emp/notSonic with only two Damage SOs in each attack and see for yourself what a ponderous crawl it really was. Even with the Vigilance buff, playing a defender is an exercise in patience and perseverance for most people, because their damage output doesn't become impressive until they've spent the extra time necessary buffing/debuffing before going into battle. And no, we can't simply decide that some sets "aren't solo sets" and remove the 30% buff, because that's contrary to the intent and design of the entire game. All archetypes and all sets have to be capable of soloing and the experience of doing so not similar to rubbing a cheese grater across one's forehead. That's what Cryptic decided when they created the game, that's what Paragon decided to stick with and that's what the HC team is continuing to promote. No-one is forced into a team-only role in Co*. The player can choose to only play on teams, but the game has to continue to give them the option of going it alone and making that experience enjoyable. That's one of the core philosophies of the game. And this brings us back around to the original topic. Reducing the debuff scales and modifiers to controller values doesn't just slow debuff-focused defenders down in combat, and it sure as shit doesn't impose anything remotely resembling balance, it utterly negates their purpose, their reason for existing. There's no point, at all, taking a controller-scaled TA defender on a team when that team could take a */TA controller instead and have comparable or better damage output, superior damage mitigation from the controller's primary, and identical debuff stats, to make one example. This kind of change wouldn't just put a dent in defender play, it guts it for all debuff sets. That's half of the entire archetype excised in a single stroke, and numerous hybrid buff/debuff powers which would have to be revised or replaced to compensate That's the net effect of nerfing defender debuff scales. Debuffing defenders would be relegated to solo-only play, or pity fucks by players who feel sorry for the idiots who selected debuff sets. I lived through the result of having impoverished debuff numbers when I was playing TA on the original servers, being a debuffer with jack shit to offer teams, I know how it would play out. As I said in my first response in this thread, it's a bad idea.