Squeezed out?

[Parabola]

Back on live I never was a fan of redside and so it was only the going rogue expansion that opened up the villain AT's to me. I became a big fan of them all and found myself rolling brutes instead of tanks, stalkers instead of scrappers and particularly corruptors instead of both defenders and blasters. Corruptors just seemed to be more fun than either; more survivable than blasters and more offensive than defenders with generally better power progression.

 

However I'm now struggling to roll a single corruptor on homecoming. The i24 updates have made blasters way more survivable (and fun) and with their inherent and particularly the ppm mechanics defenders now seem to be encroaching on corruptors from the other side. Every time I kick around ideas for a ranged character I think about making it a corruptor for a bit and then roll it as one of the other two.

 

Is anyone else finding this? Do corruptors need a bit of a tweak to make them stand out more? Scourge always seems to promise a little more than it actually delivers, perhaps there's room to do something with it?

Edited January 12, 2020 by parabola

[Frosticus]

one of the corr atos could improve when scourge kicks in. say up to 60% hp or something akin to that. 

 

I agree that defs are close enough to corrs in terms of offense and they are much easier to build that I lean toward defenders. 

[Call Me Awesome]

Unfortunately most Corruptor combinations are at least as good if not better as Defender combinations due to the higher buff/debuff values and the way the Defender inherent works.  Corruptors are still very good, they just don't have much if any advantage over the same Defender.

 

That makes me think that Scourge may need a tweak of some kind to differentiate the two.  What that may be I'll leave to the more mathematically inclined.  The main advantage of higher damage on a Corruptor is largely nullified by the better buff/debuff values of a Defender.

[Ukase]

The truth is, if you give Corruptors a buff, then what? Then, nobody has a reason to make a defender. So they give defenders a buff. and so on. 

The truth is it all depends on how you play and slot them.

I am very biased in favor of blasters, so I won't say anything about them. 

[Troo]

power creep, balance, actual variety vs re-skinning. it is a challenge.

[Frosticus]

corrs should probably deal a bit more damage than defenders before scourge, but they often don't once vigilance, debuffs and modifiers like aim/assault/souldrain are included.

 

what do you do? 

I'm in the midst of rolling a fire blast/storm/soul character. 

I can get the fender version to very high defense, resistance and deal quite a bit more damage than the corr which is lower in every category.

That said, "rain of scourge" is cool, but not enough for me to go with the corr.

[Troo]

On 1/12/2020 at 8:27 AM, parabola said:

Is anyone else finding this?

I'm the exact opposite preferring Corruptors over Defenders, Blasters, etc. Just play style, maybe.

 

I agree with:

8 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

The main advantage of higher damage on a Corruptor is largely nullified by the better buff/debuff values of a Defender.

 

[Darkir]

4 hours ago, Frosticus said:

corrs should probably deal a bit more damage than defenders before scourge, but they often don't once vigilance, debuffs and modifiers like aim/assault/souldrain are included.

Ok, so this is not true mathematically due to the damage scale difference. The more damage buffs you give a defender or corruptor the more ahead in overall damage the corruptor comes out. This is mostly true even with the differences in damage buff modifiers. 

 

Example:

 

We shall say that an attack has a base attack of 100 at a damage scale of 1.0, meaning a defender would do 65 damage and a corruptor would do 75 damage.

 

Now lets use nature affinity as our primary/secondary and load it up with buffs from enhancements, aim, assault, overgrowth, and soul drain. (using kinetics isn't really a fair comparison as it shines far more on a corruptor in terms of damage)

 

DEFENDER

 

Our defender will do 65 damage with nothing. Add defender aim (50%) 65x1.5=97.5. Now we add assault (18.75%) while remembering that damage buffs are additive 65x1.6875=109.6875

 

Now we add overgrowth (82.5%) 65x2.5125=163.3125. Now lets say a 5 hit soul drain (80%) 65x3.3125=215.3125.

 

Now lets add our damage enhancements (100% for simplicity sake but in this case even 70% would be enough to hit the 400% damage cap) 65x4=260 total damage because you have hit the damage cap. Even if we add vigilance or kinetics buffs or gaussian proc or vengeance, we cant get more damage.

 

CORRUPTOR

 

Our corruptor will do 75 damage with nothing. Add corruptor aim (45.15%) 75x1.4515=108.8625. Now assault (15%) 75x1.6015=120.1125.

 

Now we add overgrowth (66%) 75x2.2615=169.6125. A 5 hit soul drain (68%) 75x2.9415=220.6125.

 

Now lets add our damage enhancements (100% here it matters more because we are not running up against the cap) 75x3.9415=295.6125.

 

We could add more damage to the corruptor because it still has about 105% more damage buffs until the cap. At the cap the defender does 260 damage, while the corruptor does 375 damage.

 

 

 

As you can see, at no point in our damage numbers do defenders do more damage than corruptors. This is all without scourge.

 

BUT! All of this changes when we start to include procs into our equations while still maintaining softcapped defenses. Defenders have a much much easier time incorporating procs into their builds while still having great defenses. This advantage is enough to screw up all the former equations with the exception of being at the damage cap (unless the defender can be at the cap with an extra 2 procs the corruptor doesn't have). The question is whether this extra damage and scourge is worth it for the lower defenses and then we have to think about procs as well. I would say for the vast majority of powerset combinations, it isn't worth it, what little extra damage you can achieve with a corruptor can be circumvented with procs and better buffs/debuffs for the team.

 

I would argue the exception to this would be kinetics and time. With kinetics you get to be at the damage cap all the time (my FS recharges in around 14-17 seconds) and this allows you to use your extra damage scale with your higher buff cap to your advantage. Time offers you so much defense and tohit through farsight+power boost or clarion radial or both, that you can build a proc monster on a corruptor while maintaining everything else.

 

There are some other powersets I also like a bit better on a corruptor, /dark and /cold spring to mind, but they are more debatable if they are better defenders due to procs and modifiers.

 

I advise anyone to think about what they want to do in the game, what powersets they want to use, and if those powersets would be better suited on a corruptor or a defender. Given the way most powersets and procs are in the game, I could see buffing corruptors a little bit (like saying scourge scaled from 75% HP down to 10% HP or a damage scale of .8 or .85). The only way that I could justify this buff though, is that they are buffing tankers because everyone pretty much always rolls a brute instead. If I look at the flavor of the month post though, it looks like defenders and corruptors are almost equal in popularity at 50 (this is from September though). If I go on forum count, the defender forum has 70%ish more posts than the corruptor forum, but we cant use that as a reliable metric for how people feel about the power of the ATs. So, in the end it will be up to the devs to decide.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Darkir

[Frosticus]

37 minutes ago, Darkir said:

Ok, so this is not true mathematically due to the damage scale difference. The more damage buffs you give a defender or corruptor the more ahead in overall damage the corruptor comes out. This is mostly true even with the differences in damage buff modifiers. 

Except that it IS often the case until you exceed the defender damage cap, which few builds do solo (consistently).

You quoted me, but ignored what I said.

 

"corrs should probably deal a bit more damage than defenders before scourge, but they often don't once vigilance, debuffs and modifiers like aim/assault/souldrain are included."

 

How many examples would it take? I gave the example that I was examining - fire blast with storm summoning.

 

 

 

 

[Darkir]

1 hour ago, Frosticus said:

Except that it IS often the case until you exceed the defender damage cap, which few builds do solo (consistently).

You quoted me, but ignored what I said.

Sorry, I figured the statement was a general one about corrs and defs as the quoted sentence was separated from the fire/storm/soul comments with a full line break. Storm summoning is a bit different unlike a lot of other def/corr support sets, it is the main part of damage. The game and mids seem to believe that storm powers do the same amount of damage on both corruptors and defenders, but I remember reading in the defender forums that the defender version actually did more in testing (which makes some sense as it is a defender primary), but I could be wrong. Storm summoning will absolutely win on a defender against a corruptor, your fire blast will do more on the corruptor by a small amount even after freezing rain, but storm summoning does so much more and you spend so much of your time casting storm powers that I doubt its relevant. When adding debuffs into the mix there are some occasions where defenders do end up doing more damage, poison for example, where the disparity in debuffs is more pronounced. 

[Vea]

@Darkir Do you happen to have a run down of what power set is better on either Defender/Corr? You've mentioned a couple.. Kin/Dark/Cold on Corrs. Poison/Storm for Defenders.

 

I'm curious about the difference of -res powers and the actual in game impact. It looks like defenders -res powers are 7.5% more than that of Corrs. How would that affect your calculations above? E.g using corrosive enzymes?

 

Also I think there needs to be discussion around team buffs. Take nature (overgrowth) and assault for both Corr and Defender, the damage bonus is 20% more for Defenders, applying this to the rest of the team could exceed the DPS of increase of Corrs.

[Apparition]

Considering that a forthcoming nerf of procs has been alluded to (and that this very thread justifies such a nerf), I wouldn't count them into anything for use as a reason to buff or nerf anything.  Therefore, Corruptors are fine, and will be even better once the eventual proc nerf is done.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Apparition

[Parabola]

On 1/12/2020 at 6:46 PM, Frosticus said:

one of the corr atos could improve when scourge kicks in. say up to 60% hp or something akin to that. 

Yeah it would be nice to use an ato enhancement to buff scourge. Interaction between the ato's and the inherent has done wonders for stalkers.

 

20 hours ago, Ukase said:

The truth is, if you give Corruptors a buff, then what? Then, nobody has a reason to make a defender. So they give defenders a buff. and so on.

Well as it stands for most of the available buff set/blast set combinations rolling a defender is the default choice whether you want to solo or team, primarily blast or primarily buff. Each AT should have it's niche and at the minute corruptors seem to be struggling for this.

 

41 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Considering that a forthcoming nerf of procs has been alluded to (and that this very thread justifies such a nerf), I wouldn't count them into anything for use as a reason to buff or nerf anything.  Therefore, Corruptors are fine, and will be even better once the eventual proc nerf is done.

It will be interesting to see what they do with this. It wasn't clear if it is going to be a large scale revamp or just an adjustment of some edge cases (proccing out epic holds etc). We will have to see if it has a significant effect on the balance between defenders and corruptors.

[Frosticus]

Solo: Most any set that has -res debuffs (more so if they stack) that have been properly adjusted to defender modifiers can edge out corr damage before scourge provided you don't exceed the defender damage cap.  Without procs. A bit more so with, due to the extra -res.

 

It's not a massive amount, but an amount none the less. 

 

Sets that we never adjusted properly likely favor the corr for damage. Ie dark and cold as their -res summons the same pseudo pet as defenders. Buff heavy sets tend to favor the corr for personal damage as you can start to bump into the defender damage cap without too much effort. 

 

In a team where the buffs/debuffs are being generated from a 3rd party that is advantageous to the corr due to higher base damage and higher cap.

 

Here are 3 examples where a solo def will do as much or more damage than a corr without procs and without stacking primary -res debuffs.

Storm/x/

65x 2.25 x 1.35= 190.1

75x 1.95 x 1.3 = 190.1

 

poison/x/using leadership assault

65x 2.44x 1.65 = 261.7

75x 2.1 x 1.4875 = 234.3

 

rad/x (just AM+EF)

65 x 2.5 x 1.3= 211.25

75 x 2.15 x 1.225 = 197.53

 

ymmv

 

[Darkir]

17 hours ago, Vea said:

@Darkir Do you happen to have a run down of what power set is better on either Defender/Corr? You've mentioned a couple.. Kin/Dark/Cold on Corrs. Poison/Storm for Defenders.

I'd say for the support sets that cold, dark, time, and kinetics are potentially better on corruptors.

 

Cold and dark don't have substantial differences in the -res numbers they deal due to using the same pseudo pets as Frosticus mentioned. You still get lower values on heat loss, Arctic fog, and shadowfall, but I think the trade for damage and scourge in a team is worth it with a properly iod out build.

 

You get higher numbers on everything pretty much in time as a defender, but the numbers are so high that I find they are wasted a lot of the time. Farsight and time's juncture allows you to become very tanky and then you can perma soul drain with chronshift+hasten (or you can choose to buff your team's defense and tohit further with powerboost and have soul drain on a 60 secondish timer). The huge amount of defense let's you build for procs or include rune of protection for mez protection or both. Of course, you can do this on a defender too with even higher defense numbers and higher -res in slowed response, but I think with perma soul drain it's better to go corruptor especially because you can proc out a corruptor time build too.

 

Kinetics buffs damage so much through fulcrum shift that you end up capping your team's damage either way. On a team, a defender will likely be at the damage cap after one good (8-10 mobs) fulcrum shift, but the blasters and the villain ATs will likely not be. So, you have an incentive to use fulcrum shift twice in 45 seconds even as a defender in order to cap everyone on your team, but a corruptor will also cap everyone's damage after two fulcrum shifts including theirs. The difference is that the corruptor will be doing much more damage than the defender personally, while the team is doing the same amount of damage with a corruptor or a defender. This goes double for blast sets with damage enhanceable dots (dual pistol fire ammo and fire blast) as all the dots benefit from the extra damage cap (I would need to look up if the damage scale applies to dots as well, but I'm pretty sure it does).

 

Basically every other support set is going to be better on a defender in a normal team (I'm not talking about niche teams like corruptor/defender only ones). The extra damage the defender debuffs give an entire team is insurmountable for a corruptor's personal damage to overcome. Even a difference of -5% res on an 8 man team is huge in overall team damage performance. 

 

In terms of the blast set differences they are what you'd expect, but I will say that you should always always always roll sonic blast on a defender even if you take kinetics.

 

P.S. hmmmmm after writing this and going over the support set differences, I would agree that corruptors need a change of some kind. At least something to differentiate them from defenders. An ATO that raised the scourge percentage (70% to 15%?) or increased the damage scale to .8 or .85 would be nice. Either of those changes wouldn't make up for the difference that most -res defender powers bring to overall team damage, but it would go a long way to making the personal damage differences better. Nerfing/changing procs alone won't make a difference really because procs aren't really the root of the problem. 

[Rokkeb]

On 1/14/2020 at 5:53 PM, Frosticus said:

corrs should probably deal a bit more damage than defenders before scourge, but they often don't once vigilance, debuffs and modifiers like aim/assault/souldrain are included.

 

what do you do? 

I'm in the midst of rolling a fire blast/storm/soul character. 

I can get the fender version to very high defense, resistance and deal quite a bit more damage than the corr which is lower in every category.

That said, "rain of scourge" is cool, but not enough for me to go with the corr.

 

I think what you do is change up Corrupter ATO's. Compared to the melee ATO's ranged ATo's are garbage anyway. Stalker ATo's change the way the AT is played, scrapper / brute significant buff.. cor/blaster .. chance for lame dmg. 

 

A scourge strike bonus the way scrapper crit works from ATO would help I think as a starter.