Hardboiled Hero

There are a lot of things I love.. My Family, My Country.. I love those things as they are, warts and all. That doesn't mean I don't want those things to grow and change. I love myself.. I'm not perfect. I want to grow and change too.. that's part of what it means to be alive. Also, I don't really expect the Devs to do any of this.. But it's an interesting topic to think about.. an interesting discussion to have. Wanting to think about something and have conersation with/about that thing.. isn't that love?

And this is exactly why I started my poll in general, so that we could continue the discussion with less "assumption". While no one over there has outright said they would leave, even though I specifically asked, the vast majority so far would be against any change to survivability at all. Then again, most of them seem to view the question as an attempt to change the power level of the game, but I actually like the games power level. Like you, I want to be able to feel like a superhero.. but I want to get that feeling from AT's and powersets that aren't appreciated right now. I don't think we need to make anybody feel "less" in order to make others feel "more".. (Unless those players are getting their fun specifically because other players are "less") In my poll, I'm specifically trying not present any arguments, complaints, or "fixes".. because I want to get the opinions and feelings of others without trying to sway anyone.. what we learn there is really meant to be used in other discussions.. like this one. However, that means that I can't really explain to them how and why I don't think a change to defenses would really mean a change to survivability, as I did in my previous post here.

Because I don't actually believe it's an "issue with one set".. I only gave one example here, but there are plenty of sets that go under-used and under-appreciated. This is a thread about sentinels, after all.. sentinels don't even have Force Fields powerset, so clearly I'm thinking about more than just Force Fields.. In fact, more than half of the AT's in the game have vestigial defensive sets, which are relics of a bygone era in which people without defensive sets would have lower survivability. Now many defensive sets have no real value. Also, I'm not recommending "Broad, sweeping changes.." If any changes were made, it would likely have to be several small targeted changes, some of which would be "nerfs" and others of which would be "Buffs".. However, I would recommend implementing these changes all at once, so that you don't end up giving up on them half way through, getting a ton of needless "buffs" without the "nerfs" that were designed to have those "buffs" make sense, or vice versa. In fact, the reason I would recommend making changes to power pools is specifically because those changes wouldn't nerf the character types that are actually supposed to have good defense. Another issue with powerpools is that, while defense is relatively easy to get from them, resistance is much harder. So let's say I'm trying to build my Tanker and I need to decide on which Defensive set to take.. Now what I really want is for my tanker to have "Super Reflexes".. but as things stand, That's a bad choice because I can easily get capped defenses if I take "Invulnerability", but my resistances would be much higher (with invuln). It's not even a matter of "theme", because if my "theme" is having an agile melee character I can accomplish this by either taking "Super Reflexes", or by taking "Weave", "Combat Leaping", "Manuevers", etc... The theme can be accomplished either way, but one of those ways is subjectively mechanically worse unless, for some reason, I have other power pools that I specifically want. So the problem could also be addressed by adding more/better options to power pools.. probably starting out with some options to close the gap between resistance based defenses and defense based defenses. either way, power pools, I believe, are a problem. I also believe that, if power pools are going to make squishy characters substantially more survivable, then they need to make survivable characters have substantially better damage, control, etc.. (I know there are a few such powers in the pools, but not many, and they're not very good.) I also don't think these changes would really mess with the average player's survivability or their perception thereof IF there were also certain buffs to go along with them.. for example, in my experience Dominators and Controllers are most likely to die from an alpha at the beginning of a fight (when they go to cast their first control) What if they those AT's would generally have lower survivability than they have now, but they would also have access to a click power that would greatly increase their survivability for.. I dunno.. something like 5 seconds.. The idea here being that the Dominator/controller would actually be more likely to survive the beginning of the fight, giving them MORE time to gain control of their enemies.. The role of the Sentinel would then come in if some enemies break off toward the dom/'troller while that clicky is still on cooldown.. the thing is, the Sentinel would also need to be buffed so that they can either reliably pull aggro, or somehow kill/control the mob before it gets to the "squishy". But I also wouldn't necessarily want people to need a sentinel in a group. If that same dom/'troller were in a group with a Bubbler instead of a sentinel, the bubbler could be increasing the Dom/'trollers survivability to it's current levels.. and also doesn't FF have some sort of control in it as well? So the Dom wouldn't actually die any more often than they do now.. and they can still feel like a god, but now your sentinels and support characters get to do more and feel more like gods themselves. Additionally, the Dom/'troller might actually be better at soloing because they have a little more time to get initial control over their encounters.

Oddly, you're the one properly using a "straw man argument" here. I haven't put forth any plans or proposals, so there is no "This" for you to be offended by. I've clearly said that I'm not really concerned with game difficulty, but I don't think it should be ignored, yet you accuse me of wanting to make the game more difficult. I've clearly said I want to make the game more fun, but it wouldn't be worth if it diminished the fun for others, yet you accuse me of wanting "Punish players who enjoy the game as is..". The thing is, I'm the one who mentioned that some playstyles/AT's/Powersets might benefit from changes to defenses, so even though you've gotten everything (I'm pretty sure it's been literally everything) I've said exactly wrong, and have tried to put words in my mouth where I've specifically remained quiet, I know you're talking about me. I would point out though, that even when I mentioned that some characters might benefit, it couldn't have been a "straw man argument", because it wasn't an argument.. and because a "straw man argument" is when you try to associate an argument with your "opponent" specifically so you can attack it, and I have no opponents here.

I can see now I probably should have added the line "Defenses are high, but I don't see how it could be fixed without causing more problems." Aren't we already too close to that? I saw a LFG message two days ago "Looking for Blaster, Defender, Corruptor, Scrapper or Brute." Clearly what these people meant was that they wanted more DPS.. Clearly they left out 2 primary DPS AT's. With that said, I don't see messages like that often (thankfully).. but it just caught me as being very wrong. Not only is this showing a preference for a certain playstyle (we only want DPS), but even some of the DPS AT's are being excluded (ins some cases anyway) Good point. In my opinion, when on a team, every single member of the team should feel like they're doing something of value. I used a Force Field Defender as my example, but what we absolutely wouldn't want is for the Force Field character to become a "necessity" on a team, especially at the expense of other characters who are currently valued in teams. Ideally, nobody should feel "lessened" by any possible changes. What I desire is to have literally any character be able to join a team and be seen as useful. Furthermore, a defense (stat) specific nerf would only "help" characters who are based around giving defense buffs.. As I mentioned, those aren't the only characters I'm looking at. A Pain domination character, for example, could only really benefit from a broad defense nerf if two conditions are met.. the first being that the PD's target doesn't die so fast that the PD can't respond, and the second being that the PD doesn't die when they try to get in range to heal/rez. When it comes to fun, perception is what matters. Do you think there's a way to have the community start perceiving FF's as being more useful? Perhaps some kind of message or alarm that says when someone else's power stopped the player's defense from being debuffed? I agree. I just wonder whether these are the only options.. and again I would say the same thing about Pain Domination and many other power sets. Even though I love Sentinels, I would even rather leave that AT as they are instead of angering other reasonable players who are just trying to have fun. People play the game as it is, so no change should be taken lightly.

First I'd like to thank everyone for all of the great responses so far. I'm loving them. please keep them coming. On the first point, I consider having different points of view.. not just on the "yes or no axis", but also from the perspective of different playstyles to be more of a "feature" than a problem. I think it's important to get as many different perspectives as possible. After all, any potential change would effect everyone.. for that matter, the lack of change would effect everyone as well. I also want to say that the difficulty of the game isn't really my primary concern.. it's certainly something that shouldn't be ignored and I know it's important to many different players of various types. Primarily though, I'm looking at possibly making some AT's and powersets "more fun".. like my example with the Force Field defender.. part of the fun, for me at least. is helping my team. If my team doesn't need defense, my bubbler isn't fun. Of course there might be other ways to "fix" this, by making it so that Force Fields are more versatile or something, but this doesn't only seem to be a problem for the FF powerset. Pain domination is another support power that just seems not to be of much use.. or.. for that matter, the entire Sentinel AT. Who cares if you have an AT that can possibly tank mobs that break off for the squishies, when nobody in the game is really "squishy"? So that's really where I'm coming from.. to me it's not so much a question of how difficult the game is, but rather it's a matter of trying assist supportive playstyles/concepts. Really though, I also think the question is very different depending on whether the character is in a group or not. A dominator in a group probably won't die as much as a dominator on their own, assuming they're trying to move at generally the same speed.

So you may or may not be aware that I've been trying to test an Archery/Invulnerability build to the point where I can actually feel competent giving people advice about it. Part of that though, has to be getting familiar with other "similar" builds.. so.. would anyone like to suggest a /invuln build with a primary other than archery that they think would be good and/or fun? what power sets do you think compliment invulnerability the most?

I'm curious on where other players stand on this. Especially whether people feel strongly enough about this issue that they would leave the game if one decision or another were made. I've been thinking about it a lot over the past few weeks and I feel like there may be a big problem with how survivable player characters are right now. This issue came up when discussing how "worthless" Force Fields is as a support set. I also feel like it rolls into why the Sentinel AT has some problems fitting into the game (AKA doesn't seem to have a clearly defined role). P.S. I realize the answers can get relatively nuanced.. perhaps defense is too low for tankers and too high for another AT or whatever.. I'm asking for a general impression in the poll, and maybe give a more detailed answer below.

I've seen people say that mobs usually run from fire damage unless they are also taunted.. Is this because fire damage usually comes with a DoT? would this be the same as any other debuff, or do DoT's have a bigger effect than most debuffs? Or is it something else altogether?

Hmm.. Sentinel: A soldier or guard whose job is to stand and keep watch. As I play them, I really keep coming back to this thought. I really feel like the intent for the Sentinel was to have an AT that stands between the melee and the "squishies" at range, so that when mobs break aggro from the tankers and brutes the sentinel can pick up the aggro and keep the "squishies" alive, without dying themselves. This seems like a fine concept. The problems as I see them are primarily that mobs don't break off of tankers or brutes unless the group is being really careless.. and groups are often careless like this because nobody in the group is afraid of dying.. like.. nobody.. ever. We've already discussed that Blasters can get defenses from pool powers which can give them enough survivability to be on such wreckless teams.. Likewise Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Dominators all have methods they can use to stop themselves from getting beat down, even without needing to resort to pool powers. In other words, there are no "squishies" in the game, so who is the sentinel meant to protect? A second problem is that Sentinels have no mechanism to draw aggro to themselves. Trust me, I've tried playing Sentinels with taunt from the presence pool.. it doesn't work. Most mobs that break away from the tanks are either controlled or dead before it even matters. Others get taunted and start running toward the sentinel, but as soon as a defender throws out a heal, or a controller uses their control, the mob is running after them (which I assume is because the Sentinel has not been taunting through the whole fight, so they haven't built up their taunt magnitude). Finally, a Sentinel's defenses might be better than any other ranged attacker, but they're still not good enough to actually tank anything that's a real threat. I honestly feel like the "problem" isn't so much with sentinels, but that most of the other classes could use some serious nerfs/reworks. I love Dominators and I recall I used to complain often about having all of my controls resisted.. when running solo or without a decent tank, that's a serious issue, but in a team with a good tank it's a non-factor.. so we need to try to find a way to make dom/trollers decently controlling when solo without making them overpowered in teams. The defenses in power pools should probably be nerfed significantly, or some even removed altogether. Start by making it so maneuvers doesn't stack. Maybe just make it so power pool defenses don't stack with power pool defenses. (Admittedly, I also think this needs to happen so that FF defenders/corruptors might be considered to be useful again.) I imagine there would be a lot of players complaining/leaving if a change like that was made though.

That's actually what I was thinking too.. "web-slinging", if not completely unique to Spider-Man.. is at least unique to spider-themed heroes, of which Spider-Man is the most prominent. Or at least that's what I was thinking when I wrote that post.. It's kind of ironic though, given that the effects of "web-slinging" aren't really unique at all. Spider-man uses his "web-slinging" to create swing-lines and ropes to tie people up, as well as nets to entangle them. He wraps web around peoples' eyes to blind them. or around their weapons to disarm them, or around their feet to stop people from running. All of these are things that people have done with rope and nets for thousands of years. Considering how often people have been asking for a more "natural" control/manipulation set, it seems odd when I think about it, that there isn't a rope/nets set in the game. Given that Spider-Man is hardly the first character in history to use such methods of control, it actually seems unlikely that it doesn't exist because of any fear of copyright problems.. I actually wonder if they were more concerned about it being too "graphic", since bondage is a thing that actually exists in the world.. but then they have guns, which bother a lot of people.

The truth is, Spider-man is a solo character and therefore has to be able to fill every role at various times. I don't want to rain on your parade, but we all know that Spider-Man would be closest to being a dominator, since he mostly tries to do crowd control and uses both melee and ranged attacks as a back-up. He could get defense from both fighting and leaping powers.. but the reality is that too many people just don't want us recreating Spider-Man in this game, so we will never accurately be able to do that.

So I have an archery/invuln sentinel who is now level 50, but I haven't gotten too far with my Archery Blaster yet. Common wisdom is that blasters are better. Both AT's can only fill a dps role on a team, and blasters do more damage under more circumstances. With that said, I find the Archery sentinel to be a lot of fun. The "best" builds for them (IMO) has the sentinel with better cooldown reduction, more fluid attack routines so your basically always shooting. My sentinel has seven attacks on my 1 bar.. 3 of those attacks are only for ST and 3 of those attacks are only for AoE, 1 attack is so I can activate opportunity (In actuality I tend to mix up my attack types a little more than that). Another advantage to the sentinel is that their stunning shot does increased damage, making it one of their best attacks, where the blaster stunning shot is basically useless (at least for dps). On the down-side, the sentinel doesn't have a snipe power.. in fact sentinel attacks only have about 60% of the range that the same attack for a blaster has. The sentinel also doesn't hit as many targets in AoE as the blaster does, and doesn't have as good of a damage modifier. (but remember you're getting more shots in) So that's kinda the Archery half of your question.. even though they're both "Archery", they are different. On the defensive side of things.. well.. to be honest blasters can get pretty good defense, so I don't think that really makes a difference.. what CAN make a difference, depending on circumstances, is that Sentinels can be extremely resistant to control effects, which goes back to what I was saying about sentinels continuously shooting.. However, there's a kind of bad interaction here with Archery/Ninjutsu sentinels.. well.. maybe not "bad", but something to be aware of.. Ninjutsu is a "click heavy" defensive set, so the fact that your constantly wanting to click attacks means that you won't want to take the time to click defenses. With a /ninjutsu sentinel, you don't have a toggle CC resist, which means you're likely to get cc'd and have to take a moment to click your resist so you can then continue your attack chain.. it shouldn't disrupt things too much.. it's just something to think about. (and after all, the blaster doesn't have a CC resist.) In closing, while these two concepts seem like they should be very similar, they can actually play very differently.. so this is one question where I can actually say you should try both and see what you like.. you may actually want to keep both of them.. just be aware that the sentinel may be differently fun, but it probably won't pull the same damage as a blaster.. but still does enough to get the job done.

What? No water/bubbles? Yet another instance where Force Fields are thematically perfect, and yet the mechanics of it all just make them not worth mentioning. I gotta say though, Water/Cold and Water/Time are both also pretty thematic. Water has been linked to both Temperature and Time for ages. I think Time is generally considered better, but I always like an underdog, so go water/cold. Actually, as I look at corruptor secondaries, water could be in theme for most of them.. but you asked about /cold and /time specifically, so between those two go /cold.

Honestly, The specifics would depend on exactly how your friends are built, but in theory your team should be very beefy, but might need help on damage. While sentinel is my favorite AT, it's sadly not the best at DPS, on the other hand the sent will be able to survive a while if you don't do the best job tanking. So from basic group comp alone I'd saying putting a little more damage in your build than a tank normally would shouldn't be a bad thing. Willpower is a "balanced" defensive set and defense is generally easier to raise than resistance, but again this kind of depends on what your defender is doing. Ultimately, if your defender is buffing defense, it's probably better for you to worry about resist, if they buff resist than you probably want to get your defense up (because there's a defense cap). Also, if you're planning on working in a team all the time with these characters, then everyone in the team should strongly consider taking the Leadership pool. If you do that, you can probably either drop combat jumping or weave. I'm sorry, but I can't help much more than that at the moment.

I now have my Alpha power (Musculature partial core revamp) and I have all of my single target powers fully enhanced (with decimation set), but still workbench IO's in everything else. At this point I'm easily soloing +3 x2 radio missions.. I haven't tried higher yet.. but when I say "easily" I mean, in 10 missions my health dropped maybe 5 times.. and only got to less then 1/4 once when I was fighting arachnos and didn't realize I had some mobs go invisible on me when I started fighting the next group. So far invisible mobs seems to be my only problem at all. I'm having tons of fun with this character now, although I still haven't had a chance to see how much I can contribute in end-game TF's with my current set-up. Before I figured out the incarnate system and got my full sets in my ST attacks I went on a level 50+ ITF as the only dps (I remember it was 2 tankers, 2 trollers, a widow, and I think it was 2 defenders also) and we rocked it in just under 40 minutes.. so I think I should be okay in TF teams as well.

I disagree with that first line. Being internally balanced within the (sentinel) AT has a great deal to do with being (un)balanced against other AT's because, if you're going to balance AT's against one another, then you need to decide on some reference points. The current sentinel might not be balanced against a blaster no matter whether your talking about a fire/fire blaster or a DP/Martial blaster.. but if you were going to balance the Sentinel AT against the Blaster AT, at some point you'd have to figure out how your blaster AT should be balanced. Therefor, the first step in balancing the sentinel against other AT's, must be balancing each AT within itself. Alternatively, you could balance individual powersets against those same sets in other AT's, but that would involve unbalancing the Sentinel AT within itself. So it's impossible to balance the Sentinel AT against other AT's without either balancing other AT's within themselves, or unbalancing the Sentinel within itself.. these things are intrinsically linked. I don't have a ton of end-game experience, but I can see your point about sentinels always being a "weak choice".. all sentinels really bring to the table is damage (despite the fact that most attacks have a secondary effect of some sort as well).. even if their damage was "as good" as a blaster's damage, there would be no reason to choose a sentinel over a blaster (or Vice Versa). For that matter, if it's so easy to survive end-game, is there really any reason to take a scrapper or stalker over a blaster? Brutes can at least theoretically taunt and tank.. but what's the purpose to any other AT with a defensive secondary? There are even some corruptors and Defenders (I'm looking at you FF), that are pretty much considered worthless because no one doubts their survivability end-game. Honestly I've been starting to think the real imbalance issue is with how easy it is to get survivability from pool powers and other people's buffs, compared to the difficulty (perceived at least) of getting good offense from pool powers and other people's buffs. But in the end, even this doesn't really matter because a "weak choice" at end-game is still a viable choice from what I've seen.

Now the big questions: What are the good and bad points of each primary as it concerns Tankers? What are the good and bad points of each secondary as they apply to tankers? What primary/secondary pairings are particularly good for Tankers (or for which type of content)? What Primary/Secondary pairing are particularly bad for Tankers (or for what type of content)? Any other thoughts or concerns you have that might be helpful to new Tankers? So I'm really surprised that when I came to this forum, no one seems to have written any really in depth guide on tanking sets. Surely there must be some difference in how a fire/fire Tanker compares to a Mace/Invulnerability or Street Justice/Super Reflexes tank. If I've learned anything in this game, it's that sets don't always work as advertised. First a little bit of background (actually, I'll ask the questions first, as the background is a bit of reading) I have characters from every AT right now.. and honestly most of them I don't really care about whether they have the "right build" or not. My Energy/martial blaster is fun.. I try to be careful with the knockback, but honestly I think the KB can save my friends' lives sometimes. I'm enjoying all sorts of Sentinels, trying to figure out ways to make them good. I have a couple of corrupters, some defenders, and while I'm generally not a big fan of scrappers or stalkers, I'll just whip one up occasionally with powersets that I think will be fun, even if I don't think they'll be the most powerful. I even found a Controller that genuinely seems fun to play (Illusion/sonic).. but for some reason I always get really nervous about my Tankers. In fact, when it comes to making Tankers, I often come up with concepts and just as I'm about to hit the button to enter the game I think "You know self, this character would probably be better as a Brute." So I can kind of tell you what the problem is.. When my only job is to do damage, it doesn't really matter to me how good I am at that, because everyone in a team has the same job, at least to a small degree. Back on live, I used to make Brutes to tank and, while I love Brutes these days, I found that my SS/DA Brute (My first and would be "Main" character) had a lot of weaknesses and couldn't tank well, so I didn't play her much.. but at some point people stopped expecting the Brutes to tank, and the AT became much more fun to me at that point. Controllers, Dominators, and to a lesser degree defenders and corruptors, I feel like my non-damage contributions make a difference, but I don't really get as nervous when making/playing them. I mean, some controls and buff/debuff may be better than others, but rarely do any of them seem completely useless. (Admittedly I only have 1 controller right now, largely because they lack damage potential, imo. Dominators on the other hand are one of my favorites because they can control and still add some damage.) But with Tankers I feel like you're either alive and contributing, or your dead an not contributing. I don't feel there's a middle ground of "well I might not be the most useful tank, but I'm good enough." Now that perception of mine is also compounded by another issue.. Tankers are billed as being "unkillable".. or at least hard to kill.. but in my actual play experience I probably have had my tankers die more than any other AT (per capita at least.. I play Brutes way more often than Tankers). The thing is, the ability to kill quickly keeps characters from dying.. it also helps the character get through missions faster etc. So in my experience Tankers generally die more than other AT's and progress more slowly than other AT's, largely because they do so little damage.. Now I'm told that Tanker damage has been buffed recently, so I'm hoping I won't feel this as much anymore. I want to give it a fair go. and in case all this hasn't made it clear, I like characters with good concepts.. characters that are "fun".. but my "fun" is also greatly impacted by my feelings of value to a team and I get no sense of achievement from doing things "the hard way".. so I like "flashy things", but if those flashy things can't make it through content only slightly slower than other things, and without dying a million times, then my fun goes out the window.

and this is the common wisdom, that anybody can read for themselves in game, but do the numbers and actual experiences support this for this particular combination of sets? Furthermore, I've historically found tankers to be less survivable than brutes, specifically because they can't kill stuff as fast, and dead enemies don't do as much damage as living enemies.. so we need to ask, is the difference in damage, or the difference in survivability going to be more meaningful in this case.. and some of that of course depends on what your fighting. Now willpower at least says it doesn't have any real "holes" (I don't know if that's true or not, but it's how the set is sold).. it simply doesn't do as well against "Alpha strikes".. IE.. until you start debuffing/controlling/killing a mob, willpower should be a little iffy no matter what your fighting. Once the mob is being handled, willpower should be strong no matter what your fighting. I also expect that a Tanker would be able to handle that initial alpha a little better than a Brute.. and I'm pretty sure a living Tanker does more damage than a dead Brute.. so once again the question is "How much does the defensive disparity actually come into play?" On the other hand, as mentioned, KILLING/controlling/debuffing mobs will get your character out of that "Alpha" phase faster, so the damage difference can come into play in keeping your character alive, but street justice also has some controls and debuffs which might make a difference. In other words, while @Psyonico 's comment might be entirely correct, I think the subject deserves a more detailed discussion

That's because I just started my DP sentinel. 😛

I'm not normally a controller kinda person, but I made a Illusion/sonic controller that actually seems pretty fun. The character actually only uses 1 or 2 controls, but they are solid controls. Other than that it's a lot of buffs and debuffs. I was running with a group the whole time though, so I don't really know about solo potential.

It's not a matter of wanting to argue. Cold is resisted less than lethal, (because it's easier to keep a knife blade from penetrating your skin than it is to put a jacket on?) so making it cold damage would make it more powerful.

Which begs the question.. why are we talking about making changes to, what is quite possibly, the most balanced AT in the game? Shouldn't we be discussing changes to the AT's that are not balanced? How can we have a reasonable discussion about balancing sentinels against other AT's, when many other AT's contain elements which aren't balanced within the AT? Can sentinels really be balanced with blasters when the discrepancy between Dual Pistols or Archery Blasters and Fire Blasters is so great? For that matter, we've only been talking about damage. One of the reasons I like sentinels is because it seems like all sets can be built with comparable damage.. which means the actual crowd control and debuff effects on the primary sets becomes more meaningful, not as compared to blasters, but within the sentinel AT. P.S.: If they can greatly reduce the range on sentinel attacks alone, then they can greatly increase the damage on those attacks as well.

You mentioned that some primaries (like archery) don't really need their t1's (except maybe for activating opportunity), but which primaries do you think should incorporate 1 or both t1's into their regular rotation and which should only use them to activate opportunity?

so how do we actually go about getting a thread stickied?