Cold Domination and the defender 'advantage'

[drbuzzard]

OK, I built a psi/cold corrupter and realized I didn't much care for the blast focused play style which I deem the AT to fit. I wanted to be more focused on my buff and debuff work. Thus I have created a new alt with cold/sonic instead so I'd be focused on those force multiplying aspects which I consider the key to the support ATs. A cursory examination shows that the shields are all 33% higher on the defenders as it should be, so I figured all was going to be good. Then I look at the major debuffs. You have benumb, sleet, and heat loss (yes, there are 2 more, but they are really just slows so meh). Benumb follows the proper relationship of corrupter (.75 effect) to defender (1.0 effect). The other two, however, are identical across the two ATs. I remembered that other resistance debuffing powers tend to follow this relationship, so I poked around and checked radiation, dark, and sonic (sue me for not checking every one). All the rest followed the corrupter = .75 of defender values (22.5% vs. 30% for tar patch, or disrupting field, or enervating field). Heck, I decided to check on Masterminds, which I thought had even lower values than corrupters, and once again sleet and heat loss are constant. 

 

Would someone care to explain what the heck is up with this? There is only once excuse I can possibly imagine is that when cold was ported to defenders, they decided that the resistance numbers would simply be too high so left the values at corrupter levels. However they also didn't want the pushback from corrupters over being nerfed (which is as it should be if the defender values are proper). 

 

Right now I have basically no desire to bother playing my cold defender as it is clearly the red haired stepchild, and I'm better off sticking with the corrupter I already have (more damage, almost the same debuff). This is rather a shame really, but I supposed there are other sets out there. I think this ought to be resolved in the sensible way of boosting sleet and heat loss by 33% on defenders (as corrupters are already uncommon enough, and cold is not the most popular set in any AT). 

[macskull]

Cold was originally a Corruptor set and the pseudopet debuffs (Sleet and Heat Loss, really) didn't get adjusted when the set got ported to Defenders in Issue 12 and Masterminds on the private server. Pseudopets have generally ignored AT modifiers since the beginning of time but it's something the HC dev team is starting to turn their attention to (non-Defender Dark Miasma/Affinity got nerfed with the page 5 update because of this). The concern at this point is whether the Defender version is going to get adjusted upward as it should be or if everything else is going to get adjusted downward as will probably happen.

[drbuzzard]

OK, that explains it. Thanks. Still not going to play the defender much for the moment. 

[Uun]

FWIW, on Storm, the defender version of Freezing Rain (which Sleet was cloned from) has 35% -res vs 30% for the corruptor and controller versions (doesn't follow the 0.75 relationship) but the same 30% -def. The defender version of Sleet should get the higher -res that Freezing Rain gets.