Why I think Corruptors are taking a back seat to Defenders

[Solarverse]

20 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Solo they'll live long enough for Scourge to have a chance to kick in.

Sometimes, but not often in my experience. They still only seem to Scourge when they would have died otherwise. It's simply just not consistent enough for me to feel like Scourge was a very well thought out inherent IMO. I'm not saying it never Scourges, but most often it only Scourges when my target would have died regardless outside of a Boss fight on max diff, as Bill had mentioned.

[ForeverLaxx]

1 hour ago, Vanden said:

Solo they'll live long enough for Scourge to have a chance to kick in.

In my experience as a solo player, those "trash" mobs only seem to have Scourge kick in when they would have died from that attack or its followup regardless and ends up being a huge amount of overkill. I feel the complaint that Corruptors have "no inherent" against anything that isn't a boss or higher feels right from what I've seen. I'm not sure if Corruptors really "need" to get appreciative use out of their inherent against minions, though.

[Dahkness]

Don’t nerf my defender cause of this thread 😞

[kiramon]

2 hours ago, Hops said:

Don’t nerf my defender cause of this thread 😞

Buff Corruptors!

 

 

[Dahkness]

5 minutes ago, kiramon said:

Buff Corruptors!

 

 

^ yeah. "I have spoken"

[ShardWarrior]

18 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

...Except your example of Kahn and Reichsman is all about damage, just indirectly.  The debuffs that are useful in Kahn are the ones that help you do and keep damage on Reichsman.  That fight isn't all that hard from a survival perspective, so I don't know what your point is.  

My point was fairly obvious.  As I said, the Reichsman fight can be a long, drawn out slog or not depending on what debuffs are used.  I said nothing about survival.  My thought was more about debuffs supporting a faster encounter time and more efficienct battle than just raw damage, but feel free to look at it however you like. 

[Omega-202]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

My point was fairly obvious.  As I said, the Reichsman fight can be a long, drawn out slog or not depending on what debuffs are used.  I said nothing about survival.  My thought was more about debuffs supporting a faster encounter time and more efficienct battle than just raw damage, but feel free to look at it however you like. 

Your example was about a fight that can be made faster via -res and -regen which are both debuffs that simulate and equate to increased damage.  You can take a Defender with -regen and -resist doing half the DPS of a Scrapper, where the Defender's debuffs result in a 10% DPS increase for the whole team and in the end, the result is the same as if you took that Scrapper.  

 

So your example was an encounter where damage is all there is to be concerned about and then say "simply pointing out that damage is not the only metric to be concerned about ".  Your example was bad for the point you were trying to make.  

 

But go ahead and get snippy and insist that your point made sense.  

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Omega-202 said:

Your example was about a fight that can be made faster via -res and -regen which are both debuffs that simulate and equate to increased damage.  You can take a Defender with -regen and -resist doing half the DPS of a Scrapper, where the Defender's debuffs result in a 10% DPS increase for the whole team and in the end, the result is the same as if you took that Scrapper.  

Except without debuffs it takes longer.  That is the point I was making.  A team can do a lot of damage quickly or a lot of damage over a long time.

 

1 minute ago, Omega-202 said:

But go ahead and get snippy and insist that your point made sense.  

Made perfect sense to me. 

[Omega-202]

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Except without debuffs it takes longer.  That is the point I was making.  A team can do a lot of damage quickly or a lot of damage over a long time.

Except that's not how it shakes out for Reichsman and debuffs.  He has AV standard debuff resistance AND an extra level of Reichsman specific debuff resistance.  He eats debuffs for breakfast and in practice, taking another heavy DPS is pretty much equal to taking a Rad or Dark Defender.  A -300% regen debuffs against him gets neutered to double digits.  

 

If you had runs that worked out better with debuffers, it wasn't just because of the debuffers. 

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Omega-202 said:

If you had runs that worked out better with debuffers, it wasn't just because of the debuffers. 

Except the TF did take (a lot) less time with debuffers than without.

[Omega-202]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Except the TF did take (a lot) less time with debuffers than without.

I stepped on a crack outside and it started raining.  Correlation meet causation.  

 

I've had debuffer-less runs go really well and debuffer runs go poorly.  A Scrapper doing 900 DPS will outperform a Defender doing 200 DPS contributing debuffs neutered into dirt by his debuff resistance.  

[ShardWarrior]

7 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

I stepped on a crack outside and it started raining.  Correlation meet causation.  

 

I've had debuffer-less runs go really well and debuffer runs go poorly.  A Scrapper doing 900 DPS will outperform a Defender doing 200 DPS contributing debuffs neutered into dirt by his debuff resistance.  

If you say so. 😁

[ZacKing]

17 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

I stepped on a crack outside and it started raining.  Correlation meet causation.  

 

I've had debuffer-less runs go really well and debuffer runs go poorly.  A Scrapper doing 900 DPS will outperform a Defender doing 200 DPS contributing debuffs neutered into dirt by his debuff resistance.  

yeah not every team has high powered DPS man.  debuffs can and do make things go smoother with Reichsman. 

[Coyote]

38 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

in practice, taking another heavy DPS is pretty much equal to taking a Rad or Dark Defender.  A -300% regen debuffs against him gets neutered to double digits.  

 

I don't know about his special -Regen debuff resistance... but -Resist debuffs always work as listed on the can (other than being lowered for level differences). A Tar Patch or Enervating Field will always increase the team's damage by what the power's debuff is supposed to be. Well, unless you reach the -Resist cap, which in practice wouldn't happen with almost any team. Unless it's a dedicated Dark/Sonic superteam or something like that. So adding a debuffer with good -Resist should always be good... TA, Poison and Cold are some of the best options, but Dark, Rad, Traps and Thermal also are solid and provide -Regen.

[aethereal]

26 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

I don't know about his special -Regen debuff resistance... but -Resist debuffs always work as listed on the can (other than being lowered for level differences). A Tar Patch or Enervating Field will always increase the team's damage by what the power's debuff is supposed to be. Well, unless you reach the -Resist cap, which in practice wouldn't happen with almost any team. Unless it's a dedicated Dark/Sonic superteam or something like that. So adding a debuffer with good -Resist should always be good... TA, Poison and Cold are some of the best options, but Dark, Rad, Traps and Thermal also are solid and provide -Regen.

There is one way to make -resist debuffs "not work," which is give people overcap resists.  I have no idea if Reichsman has overcap resists, but it is not quite the case that you can always expect someone with -resist-all to add X% to team damage output.

Edited October 7, 2020 by aethereal

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

I stepped on a crack outside and it started raining.

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  I just put this motorcycle together!  DON'T RAIN ON MY FIRST RIDE!

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

There is one way to make -resist debuffs "not work," which is give people overcap resists.  I have no idea if Reichsman has overcap resists, but it is not quite the case that you can always expect someone with -resist-all to add X% to team damage output.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/5th_Column#Reichsman

 

When his Unstoppable is up, he has overcapped resists to most damage types.  His Unstoppable also has pretty decent up time during the fight from my experience.  

 

I really feel like a lot people don't know the details of that fight and are just making assumptions.  There are other fights in the game where -resist and -regen are huge helps, Reichsman just isn't a great example.  

[Solarverse]

10 hours ago, Hops said:

Don’t nerf my defender cause of this thread 😞

Quite the opposite. I have stated that Corruptors get a higher chance to Scourge starting at 100% health, and also suggested Defenders get an increase of base Damage that mimics what a Corruptors is. I would not request a nerf for Defenders. I love Defenders just as much as I do Corruptors.

[Vanden]

39 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

suggested Defenders get an increase of base Damage that mimics what a Corruptors is.

This is literally what the damage buff from Vigilance is for.

[Solarverse]

17 minutes ago, Vanden said:

This is literally what the damage buff from Vigilance is for.

That only works solo and decreases in value as you build members of a team.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Solarverse

[Dahkness]

1 minute ago, Solarverse said:

That only works solo and decreases in value as your build members of a team.

I hate Vigilance. I love my Defender thought. 

[RogerWilco]

22 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

As I said earlier, effectively, corruptors don't have an inherent unless a target is below 50% health.  Lieutenants and below emphasize the visibility of this, but the issue isn't that the inherent isn't useful on "trash mobs", rather than it's too limited in general.  Fury or Domination aren't restricted to only building up when attacking certain critter classes, or critters below an arbitrary stat threshold, to make an example.  Cosmic Balance or the endurance reduction of Vigilance require the player to be part of a team, but that's still a less stringent conditional requirement than Scourge's conditional restriction.

 

An inherent which can only be leveraged when using the slowest method of combat (DoTs), or on low health hard targets, isn't broadly applicable and useful in the same way all of the other inherents are.  It needs to do more for the player, rather than making the player work hard to get anything out of it.

I'm not a high level player, but to me, this sums up quite well why I don't like the Scourge mechanic.

I do like Corruptors, although I am nowhere near end game (level 33 max), so I can't compare them to other ATs.

The Scourge inherent just seems to add very little and is not an interesting mechanic that you can try to aim for in how you use your powers.

 

What I find is that on a Corruptor, I'm often making a choice between going for my damage powers and trying to kill the mobs before they kill me, or going more on the crowd control and debuff, and then slowly whittle down the enemies. I think Scourge would be a lot more interesting if it interacted with this choice, like giving more damage on enemies that are affected by my non-damaging powers, although that might make it much harder to kill those that I already struggle with, so I don't think that's the right solution.

[Solarverse]

1 minute ago, Hops said:

I hate Vigilance. I love my Defender thought. 

Yeah, I mean, what I am trying to figure out is two things.

 

A: Do Corruptors need a better version of Scourge that scales in chance to proc starting from 100% with a 5% chance to Scourge all the way down to 10% with chance to Scourge at 100%.

B: If Corruptors get this buff (which in my opinion is needed for class balance, not because the game needs to be easier) do Defenders deserve to to have their base damage increased to that of a Corruptor, just with no Scourge in order to keep them relevant.

If the answer to question A is a yes, then the answer to question B would logically also have to be a yes.

If the answer to question A is a no, and the majority of people feel that Corruptors are fine as is, then the answer to question B would be equally apparent.

That is pretty much where we stand right now.

The problem with Vigilance, is that it only benefits most when solo and does little to help with team DPS. I understand it has other benefits when on a team, but IMO those benefits do not hep a team much in end game, since most built characters do not have an issue with endurance anyway. So on teams, in my opinion Vigilance is not exactly a helping passive to the Defenders. It's very useful solo, but that's pretty much the extent of its usefulness IMO.

[Vanden]

23 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

That only works solo and decreases in value as you build members of a team.

Same as Scourge, no?

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/5th_Column#Reichsman

 

When his Unstoppable is up, he has overcapped resists to most damage types.  His Unstoppable also has pretty decent up time during the fight from my experience.  

 

I really feel like a lot people don't know the details of that fight and are just making assumptions.  There are other fights in the game where -resist and -regen are huge helps, Reichsman just isn't a great example.  

On the contrary, -res and -regen help melt him before he can really use any of his extra click powers. There's a reason speedrun teams always have a couple buff/debuff characters instead of 8 straight DPS characters.