Make Corruptors King of Debuffs

[arcane]

Honestly this kind of thread just comes from people overconsuming forum koolaid tbh. People actually argue that proc monster Defenders keep up with Blasters. Maybe closer than should be allowed, but still, complete hyperbole, people.

 

Both Defenders and Corruptors are in an excellent place compared to half the other AT’s. Support is in a great place.

[Naraka]

You *might* be able to convince some posters to increase some Corruptor offensive debuffs to be *equal* to Defenders but the rest of the suggestion seems to be ignoring a lot of factors.

 

 

[Marbing]

It’s funny, 2 years ago I tested the waters on discord with the idea that Corruptors do more damage than Defenders and was basically told I was wrong by several people. Here we are 2 years later and when I and others argue that Defenders do too close (even if we admit that Corruptors do a little more on average) to the same damage as Corruptors a lot of the same people are now saying that’s incorrect and that Defenders do far less damage. 🤣 

 

Ahh you gotta love the internet.

 

EDIT: Don't get my wrong, my opinion on this has shifted a little over time. But I still maintain that a Defender shouldn't get a 30% damage buff when solo, it makes no sense and defeats the purpose of a Corruptor a little. Still to this day, no one has made a legitimate argument as to why a defender needs a 30% damage buff when solo that can't be countered with "then why did you create a Defender if your concern was solo damage output?"

Edited April 10, 2022 by Marbing

[Haijinx]

It's almost like this game was originally designed for half as many ATs than it has now ... 

[Marbing]

41 minutes ago, Naraka said:

You *might* be able to convince some posters to increase some Corruptor offensive debuffs to be *equal* to Defenders but the rest of the suggestion seems to be ignoring a lot of factors.

 

 

I could see an argument being made for -res/-def (because those both support offensive output) but the rest of the debuffs should stay the same as they are. This is one of my opinions that has changed over time. However, if we are to keep Defenders as the premium team support AT, then they need to be premium at that in all cases. It is their primary, after all. 

 

Not to thread hijack but Vigilance needs a complete rework to help enforce this. Ultimately, I think that may be the place that needs the biggest change and provides the greatest opportunity for truly setting Defenders and Corruptors apart. Change Vigilance to something that actually makes sense and helps enforce the idea they are the premium team support. Much like how Scourge helps enforce that Corruptors are intended to be the damage support class and premium finishers. 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Marbing
changed wording

[Zeraphia]

19 hours ago, macskull said:

Meanwhile I'm over here wondering why anyone would pick a Defender over a Corruptor except in a few specific cases.

There are plenty of examples to pick a defender over a corruptor. Honestly, the two aren't really contending with each other and just have their own respective niches. 

 

Radiation Emission / Sonic Blast? Always go Defender.

Kinetics / Fire Blast? Always go Corruptor.

 

There's really only a few mixed cases where you could go either one depending on preferences. Generally, you pick defender if you want to offer more team buffing directly and are not a Kinetics user and you aren't picking Fire Blast. 

[SwitchFade]

7 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

There are plenty of examples to pick a defender over a corruptor. Honestly, the two aren't really contending with each other and just have their own respective niches. 

 

Radiation Emission / Sonic Blast? Always go Defender.

Kinetics / Fire Blast? Always go Corruptor.

 

There's really only a few mixed cases where you could go either one depending on preferences. Generally, you pick defender if you want to offer more team buffing directly and are not a Kinetics user and you aren't picking Fire Blast. 

What if I want fulcrum all the way down to lvl 27?

[Zeraphia]

48 minutes ago, Marbing said:

It’s funny, 2 years ago I tested the waters on discord with the idea that Corruptors do more damage than Defenders and was basically told I was wrong by several people. Here we are 2 years later and when I and others argue that Defenders do too close (even if we admit that Corruptors do a little more on average) to the same damage as Corruptors a lot of the same people are now saying that’s incorrect and that Defenders do far less damage. 🤣 

 

Ahh you gotta love the internet.

 

EDIT: Don't get my wrong, my opinion on this has shifted a little over time. But I still maintain that a Defender shouldn't get a 30% damage buff when solo, it makes no sense and defeats the purpose of a Corruptor a little. Still to this day, no one has made a legitimate argument as to why a defender needs a 30% damage buff when solo that can't be countered with "then why did you create a Defender if your concern was solo damage output?"

So the answer is always always always going to depend on the COMIBINATIONS accounted for. 

 

Fire / Kin Corruptor will always out-damage Kin / Fire Defender. 

 

Sonic Blast / Force Field Corruptor will never out-damage a Storm Summoning / Water Blast Defender.

 

The general rule is, all else held constant, even with the -res sets, corruptor will do slightly more damage than defender, and with non-resistance debuff sets, corruptor should do noticeably more. 

 

As to your edit, because well, Defenders being 0.65 on the Scalar, matters. Their damage at baseline is pitiful. It's worse than even Controllers because at least they get containment and pets. The devs implemented the damage increase to make up for how bad it really is. Corruptors have a slightly higher scalar, but they also get scourge crits, and they get this passive even when they're not solo, further they get an increased damage cap. So they are given this passive because they are both not good soloist ATs (generally.) I'm sure someone will point out their outlier storm summoning maxed out Defender or Corruptor with tons of incarnates, but that's not the typical level 35 Defender or Corruptor running around with Empathy or Pain Domination.

[arcane]

22 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

What if I want fulcrum all the way down to lvl 27?

Just what in tarnation is a lvl 27. 

[Zeraphia]

3 minutes ago, arcane said:

Just what in tarnation is a lvl 27. 

I thought the same thing, and I had to double check Defenders still got it at level 32.

[Marbing]

41 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

As to your edit, because well, Defenders being 0.65 on the Scalar, matters. Their damage at baseline is pitiful. It's worse than even Controllers because at least they get containment and pets.

Yes, but Controllers have very few attacks and thus struggle to put forth any meaningful offense outside of a few cases. Defenders have access to an entire Ranged DPS set complete with Superior/Extreme damage attacks and Nukes they can use roughly every 30 seconds to pair with their superior -res debuffs. A Defender is often going to outpace a Controller on pure DPS outside of a few exceptions, even without the +30% damage. The trade off is that Controllers can Control and Defenders can't (outside of a few exceptions).

 

Yes, I know there are exceptions, let me be clear out of the gates as I am trying to avoid the inevitable whataboutisms that spawn from making such a comment. (Not that I am accusing you of that, but I know some people will latch on and then its just an endless chain of "what about this... what about this... what about this..." ugh.)

 

 

EDIT: Also, the fact that some Defender builds can out damage some Corruptor builds is even more evidence that they don't need a +30% damage boost when solo. They do enough damage. 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Marbing

[TheZag]

29 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

I thought the same thing, and I had to double check Defenders still got it at level 32.

 

When u exemp you can use it at 27 is what he meant.

[Outrider_01]

5 hours ago, Marbing said:

Don't get my wrong, my opinion on this has shifted a little over time. But I still maintain that a Defender shouldn't get a 30% damage buff when solo, it makes no sense and defeats the purpose of a Corruptor a little. Still to this day, no one has made a legitimate argument as to why a defender needs a 30% damage buff when solo that can't be countered with "then why did you create a Defender if your concern was solo damage output?"

Because its a support set?  Like, who needs 30% when they can just buff your team and weaken the enemy, then you sit back and rake in the influence while having a Cuppajo 😏

[Marbing]

3 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Because its a support set?  Like, who needs 30% when they can just buff your team and weaken the enemy, then you sit back and rake in the influence while having a Cuppajo 😏

No sure I follow. 

[SwitchFade]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

Just what in tarnation is a lvl 27. 

Exemp 🥳

[Luminara]

5 hours ago, Marbing said:

Yes, but Controllers have very few attacks and thus struggle to put forth any meaningful offense outside of a few cases. Defenders have access to an entire Ranged DPS set complete with Superior/Extreme damage attacks and Nukes they can use roughly every 30 seconds to pair with their superior -res debuffs. A Defender is often going to outpace a Controller on pure DPS outside of a few exceptions, even without the +30% damage.

 

Is perma-Hasten an inherent power for defenders now?  Or did they lower T9 recharges to 30s?

You qualify controller damage output as being meaningless "outside of a few cases", but point to the outside cases of defender damage output as proving that defenders are superior across the board.  There's no parity.  You moot your own argument with that approach.

 

To address the question at hand, yes, defenders did need the solo 30% Damage buff added to Vigilance.  They needed that because defender blast sets were designed with the understanding that some defender primaries had powers with -Res.  Some, but not all, and in fact, the defender builds which lacked -Res tended to find soloing a tedious and unpleasant experience.  That, that poor experience, is exactly why the solo buff was added.  Neither Cryptic nor Paragon had any intention of creating or enforcing a "team-only" archetype or power set, they always wanted players to have the option to log in, play by themselves and log out with the feeling that they'd made progress.  People playing defenders, on the whole, were not getting that out of the game, and they needed some kind of improvement which would impact all defenders without grossly overpowering the top end.  A simple +Damage was the easiest and least objectionable solution, because that +Damage counts toward their cap and it was made variable according to team size.  Solo experience better, high end not creeping higher, and team experience unaffected.  Job done.

 

If you have a superior, and preferably, as mechanically simple method of making the experience of playing a defender solo more enjoyable, by all means, lay it on us.  But if you simply dislike that defenders have the equivalent of a single -1 Damage SO added to their powers and pushing them closer to their already low damage cap (400%, of which the base 100% of an unenhanced attack is counted, leaving only 300% head room.  ~95% of that is achieved by enhancing (Damage SOs/IOs), so before they've used a single power to buff their Damage, they're already halfway to their cap), try soloing a FF/notSonic or Emp/notSonic with only two Damage SOs in each attack and see for yourself what a ponderous crawl it really was.  Even with the Vigilance buff, playing a defender is an exercise in patience and perseverance for most people, because their damage output doesn't become impressive until they've spent the extra time necessary buffing/debuffing before going into battle.

 

And no, we can't simply decide that some sets "aren't solo sets" and remove the 30% buff, because that's contrary to the intent and design of the entire game.  All archetypes and all sets have to be capable of soloing and the experience of doing so not similar to rubbing a cheese grater across one's forehead.  That's what Cryptic decided when they created the game, that's what Paragon decided to stick with and that's what the HC team is continuing to promote.  No-one is forced into a team-only role in Co*.  The player can choose to only play on teams, but the game has to continue to give them the option of going it alone and making that experience enjoyable.  That's one of the core philosophies of the game.

 

And this brings us back around to the original topic.  Reducing the debuff scales and modifiers to controller values doesn't just slow debuff-focused defenders down in combat, and it sure as shit doesn't impose anything remotely resembling balance, it utterly negates their purpose, their reason for existing.  There's no point, at all, taking a controller-scaled TA defender on a team when that team could take a */TA controller instead and have comparable or better damage output, superior damage mitigation from the controller's primary, and identical debuff stats, to make one example.  This kind of change wouldn't just put a dent in defender play, it guts it for all debuff sets.  That's half of the entire archetype excised in a single stroke, and numerous hybrid buff/debuff powers which would have to be revised or replaced to compensate

 

That's the net effect of nerfing defender debuff scales.  Debuffing defenders would be relegated to solo-only play, or pity fucks by players who feel sorry for the idiots who selected debuff sets.  I lived through the result of having impoverished debuff numbers when I was playing TA on the original servers, being a debuffer with jack shit to offer teams, I know how it would play out.  As I said in my first response in this thread, it's a bad idea.

[arcane]

14 minutes ago, Luminara said:

And no, we can't simply decide that some sets "aren't solo sets" and remove the 30% buff, because that's contrary to the intent and design of the entire game.  All archetypes and all sets have to be capable of soloing and the experience of doing so not similar to rubbing a cheese grater across one's forehead.  That's what Cryptic decided when they created the game, that's what Paragon decided to stick with and that's what the HC team is continuing to promote.  No-one is forced into a team-only role in Co*.  The player can choose to only play on teams, but the game has to continue to give them the option of going it alone and making that experience enjoyable.  That's one of the core philosophies of the game.

Defenders don’t need +30% damage to solo effectively. Maybe to solo quickly and competitively at +4x8, but no honest person believes Cryptic/Paragon meant those maxed out settings are arbitrary standards when they said you shouldn’t have to team.

Edited April 10, 2022 by arcane

[Marbing]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

Is perma-Hasten an inherent power for defenders now?  Or did they lower T9 recharges to 30s?

You qualify controller damage output as being meaningless "outside of a few cases", but point to the outside cases of defender damage output as proving that defenders are superior across the board.  There's no parity.  You moot your own argument with that approach.

No. I didn’t. Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here. Controllers struggle to do meaningful damage outside of a few exceptions and Defenders typically outpace them... I didn’t point to outside cases.
 

Also, it’s not hard to get a good number of nukes down to around 30s on a Defender. Maybe closer to 40s on some nukes but, still. That’s big boom every spawn.

 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

To address the question at hand, yes, defenders did need the solo 30% Damage buff added to Vigilance.  They needed that because defender blast sets were designed with the understanding that some defender primaries had powers with -Res.  Some, but not all, and in fact, the defender builds which lacked -Res tended to find soloing a tedious and unpleasant experience.  That, that poor experience, is exactly why the solo buff was added.  Neither Cryptic nor Paragon had any intention of creating or enforcing a "team-only" archetype or power set, they always wanted players to have the option to log in, play by themselves and log out with the feeling that they'd made progress.  People playing defenders, on the whole, were not getting that out of the game, and they needed some kind of improvement which would impact all defenders without grossly overpowering the top end.  A simple +Damage was the easiest and least objectionable solution, because that +Damage counts toward their cap and it was made variable according to team size.  Solo experience better, high end not creeping higher, and team experience unaffected.  Job done.

If you wanted more damage solo, should have rolled a Corruptor.

 

Defenders didn’t need a damage boost and I never said they were designed for team only. I said they were fine before the buff because they were, never had an issue soloing with one before the buff. I said Vigilance should be changed to something that leans into their strengths as the superior team buffer/debuffer. Not that they should be a team only AT. But that is their strength, so even in their current state they are better in a team than solo.
 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

If you have a superior, and preferably, as mechanically simple method of making the experience of playing a defender solo more enjoyable, by all means, lay it on us.  But if you simply dislike that defenders have the equivalent of a single -1 Damage SO added to their powers and pushing them closer to their already low damage cap (400%, of which the base 100% of an unenhanced attack is counted, leaving only 300% head room.  ~95% of that is achieved by enhancing (Damage SOs/IOs), so before they've used a single power to buff their Damage, they're already halfway to their cap), try soloing a FF/notSonic or Emp/notSonic with only two Damage SOs in each attack and see for yourself what a ponderous crawl it really was.  Even with the Vigilance buff, playing a defender is an exercise in patience and perseverance for most people, because their damage output doesn't become impressive until they've spent the extra time necessary buffing/debuffing before going into battle.

 

I already said Vigilance needs a complete rework. What that rework should be isn’t something I have fully settled on but it certainly isn’t simply removing the damage boost. It’s not that I dislike it, it’s entirely unnecessary and wasn’t required to begin with. If you wanted to be a support toon that does more damage, you should have rolled a corruptor. Period. Easy. And I have rolled a FF/Energy defender, is it slower than my blasters? Sure is! Do I care? No. You wanna guess why? Because I am playing a defender. Guess what else is super slow, mind/poison on a controller. I’ve done that too, is it slower than my defenders? Sure is! Do I care? No. You wanna know why? Because I know the controller has other strengths. Still not a good argument to give defenders more damage. “Because they are slow” doesn’t work, something is going to always be the slowest DPS. But they have plenty of positives to make up for it.

 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

And this brings us back around to the original topic.  Reducing the debuff scales and modifiers to controller values doesn't just slow debuff-focused defenders down in combat, and it sure as shit doesn't impose anything remotely resembling balance, it utterly negates their purpose, their reason for existing.  There's no point, at all, taking a controller-scaled TA defender on a team when that team could take a */TA controller instead and have comparable or better damage output, superior damage mitigation from the controller's primary, and identical debuff stats, to make one example.  This kind of change wouldn't just put a dent in defender play, it guts it for all debuff sets.  That's half of the entire archetype excised in a single stroke, and numerous hybrid buff/debuff powers which would have to be revised or replaced to compensate

I agree with most of this.

 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

That's the net effect of nerfing defender debuff scales.  Debuffing defenders would be relegated to solo-only play, or pity fucks by players who feel sorry for the idiots who selected debuff sets.  I lived through the result of having impoverished debuff numbers when I was playing TA on the original servers, being a debuffer with jack shit to offer teams, I know how it would play out.  As I said in my first response in this thread, it's a bad idea.

I also agree with this. I had a TA defender on live and he was always sad. Might as well have been named Eeyore.

 

 

I get the points you are trying to make, but you aren’t talking to someone who has no experience with defenders. They were my main AT back on live along with Controllers and I still play them today, I’ve more recently started adding Corruptors to my mix. Hence why I currently have more lvl 50 Corruptors at this time than anything else. But I’ve played nearly every iteration of each since live and know their strengths and weaknesses very well. The fact remains Defenders never needed a damage buff. They were fine. Sure they cleared slow but so do Controllers, and they were still usually faster clearers than Controllers because they actually have a Ranged Damage set.
 

It’s okay if you disagree. I respect your views on the matter, regardless.
 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Marbing
Fixed some grammar

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

To address the question at hand, yes, defenders did need the solo 30% Damage buff added to Vigilance.  They needed that because defender blast sets were designed with the understanding that some defender primaries had powers with -Res.  Some, but not all, and in fact, the defender builds which lacked -Res tended to find soloing a tedious and unpleasant experience.  That, that poor experience, is exactly why the solo buff was added.  Neither Cryptic nor Paragon had any intention of creating or enforcing a "team-only" archetype or power set, they always wanted players to have the option to log in, play by themselves and log out with the feeling that they'd made progress.  People playing defenders, on the whole, were not getting that out of the game, and they needed some kind of improvement which would impact all defenders without grossly overpowering the top end.  A simple +Damage was the easiest and least objectionable solution, because that +Damage counts toward their cap and it was made variable according to team size.  Solo experience better, high end not creeping higher, and team experience unaffected.  Job done.

 

 

I'd sooner attribute Vigilance's damage bonus being added as Paragon viewing their own mistake after designing Corruptor.  If anything, Corruptor is what Defender should have been but since they were locked into Hero vs Villain, they couldn't just copy it. The villain ATs were just seen as better (Stalker being the exception) than their hero versions for a long time until proliferation and side switching started happening. Heck, they still don't know what to do with Vigilance.

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, Naraka said:

 

I'd sooner attribute Vigilance's damage bonus being added as Paragon viewing their own mistake after designing Corruptor.  If anything, Corruptor is what Defender should have been but since they were locked into Hero vs Villain, they couldn't just copy it. The villain ATs were just seen as better (Stalker being the exception) than their hero versions for a long time until proliferation and side switching started happening. Heck, they still don't know what to do with Vigilance.

Who is this they you’re referring to? Pretty much Vigilence is what it is and don’t see it changing by HC. Part of HC’s philosophy I thought was to stick as close to the original design of the game and make little QOL tweaks along the way. Again I don’t see them changing vigilance. Ever.

 

Cause honestly what would you replace it with?

Edited April 11, 2022 by golstat2003

[Luminara]

11 minutes ago, Marbing said:

No. I didn’t. Not sure how you came to that conclusion.

 

8 hours ago, Marbing said:

Controllers ... struggle to put forth any meaningful offense outside of a few cases.

 

8 hours ago, Marbing said:

Defenders ... Nukes they can use roughly every 30 seconds

 

You specifically emphasize poor controller damage "outside of a few cases", meaning edge cases.  Then you submit defenders using a 145s recharge power every 30s as your example of defenders being the superior damage dealers, but you're not getting to 30s on those powers without Ageless, Agility/Spiritual, perfect IO set slotting allowing perma-Hasten.  Edge cases.

 

This is pointing to the bottom end of controller play and comparing it to the top end of defender play.  The comparison is invalid because you refute edge case controller builds and use edge case defender builds.

 

43 minutes ago, Marbing said:

it’s not hard to get a good number of nukes down to around 30s on a Defender.

 

At level 50+, with ~275% +Recharge from perma-Hasten and Ageless, and Agility or Spiritual, and maximal Recharge Reduction in the nuke... or an absolute shit-ton of +Recharge buffs from teammates and/or temp powers.

 

But that's totally not edge case play, since everyone is doing it, right?  That's not an example of extreme high end, top tier defender building which completely skews the comparison, right?  Right?

 

Yeah...

 

52 minutes ago, Marbing said:

If you wanted more damage solo, should have rolled a Corruptor.

 

If you didn't want people to play defenders solo, you shouldn't have allowed Cryptic to put them in the game before corruptors.

 

1 hour ago, Marbing said:

Defenders didn’t need a damage boost

 

Paragon didn't share your opinion.  Not only did they have metrics to guide their decisions, they also had the forums, and you couldn't go three posts without someone pointing out that Vigilance was utter shit when it was just an endurance discount for wounded teammates.  The buff was added in Issue 17, which means they started planning it no later than the launch of Issue 15, possibly as early as Issue 14.  Vigilance itself was originally added in the third quarter of 2005, so they had 4.5 years of data about how the inherent performed, player commentary and defender metrics.  They knew we hated it, and they knew it wasn't doing a damn thing for most of us, and they clearly saw a need to bump up defender damage in a manageable way, or they wouldn't have done it.

 

54 minutes ago, Marbing said:

If you wanted to be a support toon that does more damage, you should have rolled a corruptor.

Some defender primaries weren't available to corruptors when CoV launched, so the only way players could use those sets was to play defenders.  I don't know about you, but I wasn't particularly keen to wait until Issue 16 to play TA, nor could I predict that it would be ported to corruptors at that time.

 

1 hour ago, Marbing said:

Guess what else is super slow, mind/poison on a controller. I’ve done that too, is it slower than my defenders? Sure is! Do I care? No. You wanna know why? Because I know the controller has other strengths. Still not a good argument to give defenders more damage. “Because they are slow” doesn’t work, something is going to always be the slowest DPS. But they have plenty of positives to make up for it.

 

The buff wasn't granted because defenders were slow, it was granted because they were slower than Paragon considered acceptable.  Not because players were bitching about not being able to solo at +4/x8, but because the metrics had to have shown that they lagged significantly behind all other archetypes in leveling speed or reward acquisition.  They didn't make changes like that without investigation, consideration and testing.  They weren't haphazard or random in how they treated the game.

 

1 hour ago, Marbing said:

Sure they cleared slow but so do Controllers, and they were still usually faster clearers than Controllers because they actually have a Ranged Damage set.

You're attempting to make another faulty comparison, in which only the primaries and secondaries are used.  That's an impossibility in this game.  We have to take some pool powers.  Even if someone doesn't want to take pool powers, he/she has to take some in order to continue leveling.  Refusing to do so means they can't level up, because there's no "I don't want a power this time, just give me my next level" option.  Hasten is not part of any controller or defender primary or secondary, but you obliquely reference having it when you mention 30s nukes, so clearly, some pool powers are on the table, and if some are, all are.  And you're implying that these hypothetical defenders and controllers are restricted to ranged attacks, and since one of those has secondaries with Blast in the name, clearly, that has to be the better of the two, but in that implication, you've ignored every other possible source of damage, such as pool powers, pets, *PPs, and discounted the massive impact of Containment on controller damage output when those other damage sources are added to the equation.

 

Doubling a pitiful 0.55 scale does wonders, even with limited damage capabilities.  A controller using Cross Punch (Boxing and Kick buffs applied) on mezzed foes, and ignoring every -Res power available to him/her, can deal 10x more damage in 40s than a defender nuke fired on critters with 60% -Res, and do so in complete safety if the mez was a Hold or Stun (which all controllers have), whereas the defender may still be at the mercy of critter hit rolls or massive incoming damage because those enemies are still free to act.  Yes, that defender nuke will hit 3x as many targets in one shot, but that's one shot, whereas the controller is hitting again, and again, and again, 20 times before the defender can nuke again.  5 * 20 > 1 * 16.  Having blast sets doesn't make defenders better at dealing damage when Containment is a factor, and Containment should always be a factor in a comparison to controllers, since control is what they do.

 

Controllers are only slow if you play them that way.  Controllers only have to stay at range if you don't move them forward.  Controllers aren't restricted to one single-target Hold and single-target Immobilize for dealing damage.  And controllers aren't denied access to the same powers you use to increase defender damage output, like perma-Hasten, Ageless, Agility/Spiritual to get those nukes' recharge times down to something playable.  That may be how you choose to play controllers, but it can't be how you compare defenders to controllers because it's not transparent.  It's not accurate.  No matter how you spin it, Containment, being a natural side effect of them doing what they do, gives controllers a massive boost in damage output, pool powers/*PPs are always part of the package, and you have to give controllers the same edge case options that you give defenders if you're going to make a reasonable comparison.

 

Controllers were given Containment because leveling them was absolutely grueling.  Defenders were given the 30% +Damage solo buff for the same reason.  Whether you or I had the patience to level something like TA the slow way is irrelevant, because we don't represent the average player.  The average player doesn't have that kind of patience, or dedication.  The average player isn't making an Emp/whatever with the Medicine pool, or FF/whatever and soloing, or TA/A back on the original servers, the average player was looking at defenders and saying, "Why?", before clicking on something that could move at a pace faster than a glacier.  Yeah, I could show the average player how to build a defender capable of dealing more total damage than a blaster, but when that player sees that it takes 10s to do it, and the blaster can blitz the same spawn in 3s and move on to the next, he/she is almost always going to pick the blaster.  That's why Vigilance's +Damage was added, so those people wouldn't spend ten minutes playing a defender and give up, make a character in any other archetype and forget defenders exist (other than to bash them on the forums).  It's just there to ease the leveling process for the average player.

[Marbing]

6 hours ago, Luminara said:

You specifically emphasize poor controller damage "outside of a few cases", meaning edge cases.  Then you submit defenders using a 145s recharge power every 30s as your example of defenders being the superior damage dealers, but you're not getting to 30s on those powers without Ageless, Agility/Spiritual, perfect IO set slotting allowing perma-Hasten.  Edge cases.

 

This is pointing to the bottom end of controller play and comparing it to the top end of defender play.  The comparison is invalid because you refute edge case controller builds and use edge case defender builds.

I wasn’t comparing bottom end vs top end. Again, that’s you twisting my words. I used an example of something a controller could never achieve vs something ALL defenders are capable of. It isn’t an edge case, ALL defenders get nukes, they are crashless, and not very hard to get to 40s or below. In fact it’s so common that a lot of people build for it. If you max out a fire/kin controller with all the +recharge in the world guess what they will never have… The nuke of a kin/fire defender. (I am not saying the kin/fire defender beats the controller in this case just making a comparison to the powers available, i know how deadly Kin is on a fire controller). Sorry if that wasn’t clear. The fact that defenders have access to nukes and controllers don’t is just one of many examples I could give that separate the two. Yes controllers get pets but pets don’t have the damage output of a nuke. Especially for burst damage.

 

8 hours ago, Luminara said:

A controller using Cross Punch (Boxing and Kick buffs applied) on mezzed foes, and ignoring every -Res power available to him/her, can deal 10x more damage in 40s than a defender nuke fired on critters with 60% -Res, and do so in complete safety if the mez was a Hold or Stun (which all controllers have), whereas the defender may still be at the mercy of critter hit rolls or massive incoming damage because those enemies are still free to act.  Yes, that defender nuke will hit 3x as many targets in one shot, but that's one shot, whereas the controller is hitting again, and again, and again, 20 times before the defender can nuke again.  5 * 20 > 1 * 16.  Having blast sets doesn't make defenders better at dealing damage when Containment is a factor, and Containment should always be a factor in a comparison to controllers, since control is what they do.

A Defender isn’t just going to stand there like a sap for 40 seconds, they have other powers at their disposal: rains, cones, AOE, snipes, etc etc. They ALSO have access to the same pool powers so… the epics are slightly different, though.

 

8 hours ago, Luminara said:

You're attempting to make another faulty comparison, in which only the primaries and secondaries are used. 

Again, no I’m not. Controllers and Defenders have access to the same pool powers. The Epics are slightly different. Mentioning they get access to a Ranged Damage set was, yet again, an example of an entire set of attacks that a Controller will never have. Not an edge case, and not saying only primary and secondary are used. 

 

8 hours ago, Luminara said:

Controllers are only slow if you play them that way.  Controllers only have to stay at range if you don't move them forward.  Controllers aren't restricted to one single-target Hold and single-target Immobilize for dealing damage.  And controllers aren't denied access to the same powers you use to increase defender damage output, like perma-Hasten, Ageless, Agility/Spiritual to get those nukes' recharge times down to something playable.  That may be how you choose to play controllers, but it can't be how you compare defenders to controllers because it's not transparent.  It's not accurate.  No matter how you spin it, Containment, being a natural side effect of them doing what they do, gives controllers a massive boost in damage output, pool powers/*PPs are always part of the package, and you have to give controllers the same edge case options that you give defenders if you're going to make a reasonable comparison.

I never said any of this. I don’t know where you came to the conclusion that I was putting limitations on Controllers. I am aware their variety of power choices. Just like a defender has. I’ve played tons of controllers. I have slow ones and fast ones. I know all the different play styles. I’ve herded with a controller, I’ve face tanked with a controller, I’ve gone proc monster on a controller, I’ve built controllers for pure DPS, I’ve built controllers for pure team support. Again, you’re not talking to a noob here. I get that the damage output depends on play style but it doesn’t negate the fact that Defenders have the advantage over Controllers in DPS in most cases. Yes it heavily depends on blah blah and your whataboutisms have been heard here, but they don’t change anything. You pointing out the few cases that a controller will out damage a defender doesn’t make a difference. Because I already said there are exceptions. You may see it differently, and that’s fine.

 

8 hours ago, Luminara said:

The buff wasn't granted because defenders were slow, it was granted because they were slower than Paragon considered acceptable.  Not because players were bitching about not being able to solo at +4/x8, but because the metrics had to have shown that they lagged significantly behind all other archetypes in leveling speed or reward acquisition.  They didn't make changes like that without investigation, consideration and testing.  They weren't haphazard or random in how they treated the game.

Just to be clear we are talking about the same Paragon team that thought the i13 PvP changes were a great idea after testing them. So yeah, giant grain of salt on their opinions and testing. Because an AT is slower than another AT is not a reason to give it a damage boost when there are other ATs that exist to fit that role. Period. Defenders were fine. So, again, you wanted more damage solo you should have rolled a Corruptor. 
 

I look forward to reading your next wall of text. This is fun.

[Myrmidon]

21 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

What if I want fulcrum all the way down to lvl 27?

 

What if I want to swap Siphon Power for Fulcrum Shift?

[Frozen Burn]

On 4/9/2022 at 2:51 PM, macskull said:

Meanwhile I'm over here wondering why anyone would pick a Defender over a Corruptor except in a few specific cases.

 

I generally pick Defenders over Corruptors.  In fact, I generally pick most things over Corruptors.  They do less buff/debuff than Defenders and less damage than Blasters.  When I want to defend my team, I go with the AT that does it best:  Defenders.  When I want to do ranged damage, I go with the best:  Blasters.  The only reason I ever choose a Corruptor is for character concept (and i do have a few Corruptors - but more Defenders and WAY more Blasters).  

 

 

As for the OP, I get it - Corruptors are subpar "defenders" and their damage isn't to Blaster-level and you love the AT and want it better... But I don't think this is the way to do it.  This is starting to get into power/AT-creep and the Devs eons ago already ruined the difference between Brutes/Tanks with something similar, which the current Devs have tried to fix with recent Tanker changes, but it's still a negligible difference. 

 

Doing similar to Corruptors vs Defenders (and even Corruptors vs Blasters) is a recipe for ruin.  Corruptors are where they need to be:  Less support than Defenders (because it's their Secondary) and more Damage than a Defender (because it's their Primary) but yet still less than Blasters (because they have a buff/debuff set).  

 

A Corruptor's Primary role is Damage with buffing/debuffing secondary - so IF they are to get an update, it should be to the Damage output, but they still need to remain under a Blaster.  i would think buffing Scourge so it kicks in SLIGHTLY sooner and/or hits more often would do it.  ....but still, I think Corruptors are fine where they are.

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Frozen Burn

[kelika2]

There is already no reason to play a defender because the buff/debuff difference between corr and def is 25%.

So technically, they already are due to player population alone.

Edited April 11, 2022 by kelika2