macskull

Except... it does matter. Those calculations assume the character in question is standing still and doing nothing to mitigate the incoming damage aside from relying on their resistance/defense - in other words, conditions which in no way represent what you would encounter during actual gameplay. Once I jump into a group of enemies, every enemy I defeat or otherwise render incapable of attacking me effectively increases that survivability time. Maybe I know a given group will kill my Elec Armor Scrapper in 15 seconds, so I focus on taking out the biggest threats first and the group never comes close to causing problems (and that's also ignoring the extra mitigation in the form of heal/regen Elec Armor offers). Maybe the SR Scrapper will die on average in 25 seconds, but there's no way for me to know whether I'm going to just die in three hits the second I jump in or if I'll be fine (and the SR Scrapper also lacks any in-set regen/heals to recover from the damage that does get through). But, let's humor you for a moment. Here are some survivability times from a Tanker standing in a group of +4x8 Council. Each armor set in question is using only SOs and running Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, Tough, and Weave. You'd expect the defense-based sets to be all the way at the top but as it turns out it's the hybrid def/res sets which win, even the ones which are nowhere near softcap. Super Reflexes, which is softcapped in this scenario, is solidly in the middle of the pack. Obviously the resistance-based/click-based sets fare worst since in this scenario the healing/regen/absorb of those sets is being completely ignored.

Luckily, these resistance-based Scrappers have their choice of at least... counts... seven different pool powers which buff defense to everything. Meanwhile, the defense-based Scrappers can choose between... well, no, they can't really choose because there's only one pool power which grants resistance to everything, and it can only be used 1/3 of the time. There's Tough as well, but it only gives S/L resist. And this isn't even getting into the world of IOs where defense bonuses are usually more easy to acquire in meaningful numbers than their resistance counterparts, though the set bonus tweaks in Issue 24 went a long way to address this. TL;DR: It is significantly easier for a resistance-based character to add defense through IOs and pool powers than it is for a defense-based character to add resistance.

Nah, this game is not hard. Doing silly things like jumping into a +4x8 mob on a squishy with no mez protection is fun because it's one of the only times in PvE where you might actually be at risk of dying.

You are assuming the Scrapper does nothing and simply stands there which is in no way representative of anything that will actually happen during gameplay.

You're misunderstanding what "multiple sources" means. In this context "multiple sources" is "multiple critters attacking at the same time." In that situation, while the defense-based build has higher survivability on paper, the more sources of incoming damage the more likely the defense-based character is to take enough damage to rapidly kill it.

For some melee characters, Force Fields was obsolete on launch day. For everyone else, it was made obsolete in 2005 when Cold showed up. The only reason it didn't totally go away is because you couldn't play Cold on heroside until I12. Further powerset proliferation and "any AT can be played redside or blueside" only exacerbated it. A set which only offers defense (yes, it does offer a few other things like... repel, knockback, and cage) is useful when defense is required but quickly loses its appeal once the extra defense doesn't matter. Meanwhile, there are sets which provide defense and other things so even if everyone has a bunch of defense those sets are still contributing something. Thankfully, CoH isn't "most MMOs" and certain ATs and powersets aren't required to complete any of the content in the game. Regardless, the situation you are describing (where only outside buffs could get you past a certain point) is not possible with the game engine. I'm not sure whether you're saying -tohit is or isn't affected by the purple patch, but if you're saying it's not, then you've found a bug. There should not be any sources of -tohit (or any debuff really) which are unaffected by level difference. As for the rest of this... sure, you could implement diminishing returns on certain types of buffs (see: issue 13 PvP changes) but then you'd run into the problem of not having anyone left around to enjoy your "newly balanced" game since they'd be going off to one of the other CoH servers which chose not to implement such a boneheaded change.

Believe it or not, Defenders actually have a secondary powerset which they are perfectly capable of using and which also benefits from their inherent, allowing them to deal damage/debuff at a reduced endurance cost if they've done what they can with their primary.

Attack damage is based on the damage scale and AT modifier, and damage scale is based on recharge time and areafactor (a weird calculation which takes into account radius and arc for AoE attacks, and which is equal to 1 for single-target attacks). The Blaster/Dominator secondary powers are "altered" in that they have higher recharge times than their comparable melee versions which results in higher damage scale and as a result higher DPA.

This has got to be one of the worst hot takes I've seen in this thread. Force Fields is in need of a buff because defense is all it does. If it were the only set which gave ally defense it would not be in this situation, but in reality it's completely outclassed by sets like Traps, Cold, and Time simply because those sets offer defense and other useful buffs/debuffs. -Tohit is useful to a point but unlike defense it's subject to the purple patch and archvillain resistance, meaning any value of -tohit needs to be absurdly large to still be valuable. If you implement a lower defense hardcap, -tohit is not magically improved but rather is completely unaffected. Calling this game "strategic-like" is laughable. A team of almost any sort of characters can be successful in almost any sort of content as long as the people at the keyboard aren't trying to wear their pants as a hat.

It's also worth pointing out the example you gave is an oddity because the Blaster damage scale for Snap Shot should be 0.68 as well. No idea why it's 0.84, which would be consistent with a 3-second recharge time.

Scale is irrelevant since it is based on recharge time and is not an AT-specific thing.

Adding elusivity to melee set armors is probably the simplest way to accomplish this - it does nothing to change defense but it potentially gives defense-based melee an easier go against higher-level/higher-rank targets. But again... extra work to fix something that ain't broken.

Why not? Sure we do, but that's not what this discussion is about.

Most comments on PvP videos on Reddit are usually something like "I can't tell what's going on" or "I don't like your UI layout."

It doesn't happen all the time but I've had it happen on a few occasions. Going all the way to the opposite alignment and then to the desired Rogue/Vigilante has fixed it every time.

You're missing one of the key issues: every time I jump into a mob of +4x8 enemies on my softcapped <insert character here> I'm taking a gamble. I don't know that I will survive the encounter or even the alpha - there's a not-insignificant chance multiple mobs get hits in and if I'm not fast enough on the inspirations I'm taking a dirt nap. This disparity gets worse on characters with lower HP (pretty much everything that isn't a Scrapper, Tanker, or Brute).

"Things that aren't tanks and brutes should have a lower cap on defense" is a poor argument because it completely ignores both differences in resistance caps and differences in base and max hit points. A Blaster with 45% defense is not as survivable as a Tanker with 45% defense, for example. In most cases, the Tanker would be at least 50% more survivable simply by virtue of having a much larger HP pool.

I think the point of this thread is really that Stalkers need their melee damage scale to be at least doubled.

Honestly I think Fire Blast needs buffs. Maybe some secondary effects and the ability to slot some damage procs would be nice. (Also, giving the Clobber treatment to mez powers on non-Sentinel sets, since they actually did that one right for Sentinels. It's mostly just the sets which give up a T3 blast or snipe in exchange for a crappy mez that are seen as weaker.)

About the only time it's actually worth using is for veteran levels, since XP boosters stop working once you hit 50. Maaaaaaaybe it's worth using once you hit the low-to-mid 40s but even those go by pretty quick.

Nah, if you watch the video the pylon goes down just about the same time as they start the animation for the second Freezing Rain after hitting Burnout.

To be clear, there's still no placate protection. Placate and taunt are the only status effects which don't have protection, only resistance.

And there we go!

One Scrapper if that, usually it's another Blaster and one of those three Corruptors is also another Blaster.

The good news is this announcement has not changed your ability to do that.