Thinking of Starting a Less Popular Defender

[Apparition]

Force Field does have one use at the level 50 end game, and that is AoE mez protection.  It’s very important for Rikti mothership raids and most Incarnate trials.  Oddly though, Controller and Corruptor FF have stronger mez protection numbers than FF Defenders.

[kiramon]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

Force Field does have one use at the level 50 end game, and that is AoE mez protection.  It’s very important for Rikti mothership raids and most Incarnate trials.  Oddly though, Controller and Corruptor FF have stronger mez protection numbers than FF Defenders.

That is pretty interesting, considering the other ones are all 25% stronger on Defenders (Clear mind variants). 

Even sonic is is 6.92 (cor, cont) to 8.65 (def).

 

 

OOpsie. Time to nerf Cor/Cont FF Dispersion to 6.92. 

[Apparition]

Just now, kiramon said:

That is pretty interesting, considering the other ones are all 25% stronger on Defenders (Clear mind variants). 

Even sonic is is 6.92 (cor, cont) to 8.65 (def).

 

 

OOpsie. Time to nerf Cor/Cont FF Dispersion to 6.92. 

 

For whatever reason, Dispersion Bubble has been like that on Controllers since Issue 0.  It was just copied over to Corruptors in Issue 25.

[kiramon]

1 minute ago, Apparition said:

 

For whatever reason, Dispersion Bubble has been like that on Controllers since Issue 0.  It was just copied over to Corruptors in Issue 25.

 

Personally I'm fine with it. I severely dislike the power that is put into defender (with Best Healing, Best Debuffs, Best Buffs, etc).

 

I know people like the "but its their primary!" but yeah, it encompasses too much. I still think (and it's not popular opinion) that CORs should have 25% stronger debuffs.  

 

 

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, kiramon said:

 

Personally I'm fine with it. I severely dislike the power that is put into defender (with Best Healing, Best Debuffs, Best Buffs, etc).

 

I know people like the "but its their primary!" but yeah, it encompasses too much. I still think (and it's not popular opinion) that CORs should have 25% stronger debuffs.  

 

 

 

Corruptor needs something since damage procs beat the AT up and stole its lunch money.

[Ankhammon]

This is Defender territory. We don't want none of them Corrupter sympathizers 'round these parts. 

 

Seriously though, is there some math to back up the corrupters getting shorted due to procs ascendency? Seems they would be getting proc awesomeness and then their scourge on the back end too. Is there like an overlap that happens? 

 

[kiramon]

7 hours ago, Ankhammon said:

This is Defender territory. We don't want none of them Corrupter sympathizers 'round these parts. 

 

Seriously though, is there some math to back up the corrupters getting shorted due to procs ascendency? Seems they would be getting proc awesomeness and then their scourge on the back end too. Is there like an overlap that happens? 

 

Procs dont scourge

cors need more sets/bonuses to get to caps

means less room for procs

 

thats Where the problem come from.

[Hjarki]

7 hours ago, Ankhammon said:

Seriously though, is there some math to back up the corrupters getting shorted due to procs ascendency? Seems they would be getting proc awesomeness and then their scourge on the back end too. Is there like an overlap that happens? 

There is no general 'math' because you have to do a case-by-case comparison. However, in addition to the issues of build flexibility, you've also got the fact that anything that increases damage will do so more on your Defender.

 

The one Corruptor I play is Archery/Cold - and that's because it's an almost perfect storm of a primary that's better on a Corruptor coupled with a secondary where almost all the key effects are the same between Corruptors and Defenders. But it's still very squishy compared to your average Defender.

[Frosticus]

A defender can much more easy reach def/res goals and then fill up on procs. 

From that stems the notion that defs > corrs and that defs get more from procs.

 

A proc loaded corr can put targets into scourge range very rapidly. When corrs are in that range they do significantly more damage than a defender. In fact they do some of the highest damage in the game.

 

I think we are over fixated on  soft caps and are discounting how potent a proc'd corr can be as they lean far closer to a blaster than a defender in terms of damage over the course of many encounters. That is probably worth giving up soft cap for. 

 

That said, my latest two projects have been a poison/fire and a cold/fire. I specifically went with the cold def because I wanted more survivability (6 damage types capped with rune up, higher -dam on benumb, and the defender ATO procs are amazing for cold) vs the corr. But I'm tempted to roll it as the same build as a corr just to see the practical difference. 

 

[Apparition]

10 hours ago, Ankhammon said:

This is Defender territory. We don't want none of them Corrupter sympathizers 'round these parts. 

 

Seriously though, is there some math to back up the corrupters getting shorted due to procs ascendency? Seems they would be getting proc awesomeness and then their scourge on the back end too. Is there like an overlap that happens? 

 

 

As others have said, it takes a lot more IO enhancement sets for Corruptors to reach softcap defense than Defenders, leaving a lot less room for damage procs.  The end result is that your average Defender now has superior buff values, superior debuff values, superior survivability, and superior damage compared to a Corruptor.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Apparition

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

There is no general 'math' because you have to do a case-by-case comparison.

This is the most important take away @Ankhammon.

 

There are only a handful of sets that are prime for pairing and truly bending procs in the most significant way on Defenders (about four or five primaries and secondaries equally). There are only so many sets that have a high threshold for proc utilization before things simmer into a pretty equal territory. Some sets (like Fire Blast) are fairly limited in their options, so there's no major difference if one goes Defender of Corruptor in the attempt of trying to build a surplus function (ie: more freedom with set bonuses). The full break down is linked in my signature (Defender Proc Monster) on what lays out to be optimal choices, and still several of them can be done (to an extent easily) on a Corr. As someone also already mentioned on the Scourge topic too (to reinforce), this is another big aspect of how a Corr can potentially deal with higher-difficulty targets more uniquely/quickly in some build comparisons. It all just depends on the nature of the design, the proc utility, and what the debuff/buff set does to support the blast set.