Njall

[...]Each class holds the line in its own way. As covered in Update 52, the monk absorbs damage to fuel special attacks through the use of accumulated Wounds. These attacks can stun, push, or weaken individuals or small groups around them. While monks have to be monitored to ensure their Wounds do not overwhelm them, they can absorb a large amount of punishment and hamper enemy movement on the battlefield. In contrast, the fighter holds the line the traditional way: by standing her ground, blocking opponents, and being infuriatingly difficult to knock out. Barbarians are designed to jump into the fray swinging wildly. Lacking the accuracy and strong Deflection of the fighter, the barbarian makes up for his lack of discipline through sheer speed, savagery, and abilities tailored for fighting groups of enemies.[...] http://eternity.obsidian.net/news/update-81-the-front-line-fighters-and-barbarians-

I'm not trying to be snarky here, but I guess you have some information I'm lacking, because I don't understand some of the arguments. 1) If you change from a fighter with defender pre-2.0 to a fighter with defender 2.0, you loose 20 deflection, alright. That's hitting hard I guess, but why wouldn't you compare the class pre-2.0 with defender to 2.0 with cautious attack? Thats a difference of 5 points in deflection and increases the damage taken from 17.5% to 22.5%. At the same time, a paladin in 1.06 can achieve the exact same value of deflection as a fighter with defender, which would mean that 17.5% compared to 22.5% would be the comparison between the paladin and the fighter in 2.0 if I did't miss anything. Arguing with a loss of 20 points when its actually 5 is a bit dramatic in my eyes. My resumee would be that fighters clearly loose deflection and are not the class with the most available deflection anymore, but the difference to the other classes doesn't strike me as so big it makes them useless. 2) I don't know how a wizard would heal himself. 3) I don't know why the multiclass talents are described so one-sided. If you give your fighter lore and invest in some ingredients, you can have a lot of those powerful spells at your disposal. That doesn't even cost you a talent. You don't want to argue that you need them every single battle, do you? 4) Multiclass talents include a charm spell, an accuracy aura, a small debuff to enemies defenses and a summon. To me, this is hardly useless stuff. As a short summary: I - agree fighters got nerfed - agree Defender might be kind of useless in the new version depending on AI - agree that fighters will be worse tanks - disagree that fighters niche is to be a tank, they are better suited to be an offtank - disagree that fighters will be that much worse overall because of the patch - disagree that casters are that much better off, given that there are scrolls available to everyone I will leave it (and the thread) at that. I can see the frustration, but for me its not that bad if you put it into perspective, especially given that there is so much stuff I still don't know (higher level fighter abilities, AI, soulbound fighter gear in the expansion, etc). By the way, I will probably start a fighter as a main for the expansion, which won't be a tank. 1)I don't compare it to cautious attack because deflection only mitigates a part of the damage intake; all of the other defenses just dropped by 5/10 points as well with this change, so it's either -7 deflection and -10 to each other defense with cautious attack, or -20 deflection and -5 to each other defense with the nerfed defender. Also, a paladin is already 6/8 points ahead of a fighter in terms of deflection, even with the current defender ( same starting deflection, +11 faith and convinction + 10 cautious attack, +2 deep faith, if you really want to push it, vs +15 deflection from defender ) and way ahead in terms of defenses anyway, because of faith and convinction, which leaves even the old defender in the dust as far as defense bonuses go. 2) Concelhaut's parasitic staff, Concelhaut's corrosive Siphon, Infuse with vital essence, Concelhaut's Draining Touch: first, second, second and third level spells respectively, so the first three are actually per encounter abilities at 11th level. Draining Touch might become per encounter at 13+ ( we don't know for sure yet ). 3) Dude, I don't want to be snarky either, but I don't even know what you're arguing here. I can already invest in lore and crafting, this has nothing to do with the relative value of multiclass talents or the power levels of the classes, why are you even bringing it up? Invest on lore with, say, your wizard, and you're still way, way ahead in terms of power and options compared to the fighter, and you'll also be able to find and exploit way more synergies between your class abilities and the scrolls themselves. 4)You seem to be missing the fact that what makes casters powerful isn't the ability to charm stuff, or the ability to hit from a distance, and it isn't even their AoE CC, their buffs, or their self-healing. What makes them powerful is having all of these options and being able to choose at their leisure which one to use depending on the situation. That's why the multiclass talents don't really cut it in this regard: they still only add a single option on top of the nothing the fighter has.

Nope, I don't think we're being overdramatic here. Let's see what 20 deflection means for a tank: Let's assume a dedicated tank's defense is 50 points higher than the opponent's accuracy ( which is not unusual, if you stack deflection ). What you end up with is a 0.175 damage multiplier (you're grazed on a 65+ on the combat table; thus, you take no damage 65% of the time and half damage 35% of the time, for a total 17.5% average damage ) before damage reduction. If your defense drops by 20 points, you're going to take( 17.5% + 20% = 37.5% ) average damage*0.375 instead. That's slightly more than twice as much base damage taken. Now, as I said, that's before armor, but it's still a lot more damage taken, and, in PoE, reducing damage taken is pretty important for a tank, because healing, with few exceptions, only affects endurance. Taking twice as much damage as the next tank is pretty bad, especially if tanking is pretty much your only niche in the game. As for fighters taking multiclass talents, that's not even remotely the same thing as another class grabbing veteran defender. As you said, fighters are, intentionally, a low manteinance class. This means that their power can be easily gauged and kept in check; the lower the complexity of a class, the easier the assesment of its power. Casters, however, aren't simple by design, quite the contrary, they're pretty much as complex as they get, they have a huge toolbox of skills that can adapt to pretty much any situation, and, what's more, their huge repertoire of spells allows them to find and exploit way more synergies than a simple class like the fighter. IOW, casters are way harder to balance just by virtue of having more options; you can easily create a subpar caster, but, as long as you know what you're doing, you can also create a caster that absolutely wrecks any opposition. The fighter's durability comes from four sources: his health/endurance pool, his armor, his defenses and his class abilities. His class abilities are (were) mostly about buffing defenses and self healing: defender took care of his defenses, constant recovery, unbroken and unbending took care of the self healing part. Now, anyone can access armor; sure, it costs some dps but you can still equip it ( and it's not like the fighter didn't lose anything when using armor, it's just that a full tank dealt pitiful damage anyway ); just about any caster class, with the exception of ciphers, can somehow heal themselves in a way that's at least comparable to the healing Unbending provides; also, they have their own defensive buffs. So, if you drop the fighter's deflection by 20 points and give the other classes 2/3rds of his self healing, suddenly you've got a character with decent survability (compared to the fighter's) and the wide array of options of a spellcaster on one side, and a class with good survability and pretty much nothing else on the other. However, if you give the fighter a multiclass talent, you don't get a character with good survability and a decent amount of options, you get a fighter with a magic missile.

As I said, the problem with this nerf, IMHO, isn't so much the fact that defender sucks ( and it sucks big time now ), it's more that fighters now fall behind in terms of defenses compared to the other dedicated tanking class of the game ( and not just them, they're also behind monks, and chanters at least ). So, again, IMO any changes made to defender should be made considering the broader picture. If the point was just that defender was over budget and needed nerfing,they should have compensated somehow, but now the class falls behind in terms of defenses, and good defenses was all it had in the first place, because it's an otherwise plain class without any strong point. The fighter suffers from the bad LFQW syndrome of the game already, and we're getting to level 14 with the expansion pack, which means that casters will get a new level of spells and, probably, will get to use their 3rd level spells as encounter powers (hi, circle of protection 4/encounter!), so it only will end up falling further behind the casters as the level cap increases; they're nerfing its weak cc and its damage with the introduction of immunities, it's a class without any real utilities ( just compare it, for example, to the paladin, another tank, who gets to raise or heal people while still sporting the best defenses of the game by a mile ) so it also falls behind tanks, they're giving out its unique self healing as a multiclass talent, further reducing the gulf in survability with the other classes and now they're nerfing its defenses as well. That's why what you propose is "not the solution we want to hear", or at least, it's "not all of the solutions we want to hear": I don't really care if defender gets nerfed hard because it's deemed to be out of line as an ability ( I don't think it was, TBH, but that's another matter ) as long as the class remains competitive, I care that the fighter is getting nerfed on multiple fronts with no good reason and without any explanation whatsoever and, generally, when a change like this goes through, it's quietly forgotten by devs and players alike and never corrected even if it ends up being a bad idea.

Unlikely, IIRC the text mentions that your deflection is lowered when using the modal, it'not just the modifier itself that's different.

I was referring to the one that frightens your opponents. That's a -10 accuracy for all mobs affected, which translates into a +10 to all defenses for your allies ( also, -2 dexterity, which further reduces damage because it affects attack speed ). I'm not sure if it affects spell accuracy, however.

TBH, however, I still don't understand why people deem the current instance of the class ability ( pre-beta ) to be OP. It shouldn't be compared to other modals, it should be compared to other class abilities, the likes of paladins auras, which cost a single class ability slot and stack with pretty much any other modals without drawbacks, or the whateverisname chant that frightens all opponents effectively giving everyone in the party +10 to all defenses all day long... cautious attack and the other modals shouldn't even enter the picture, all that should be evaluated in this instance is if the fighter's defenses were out of line when compared to those of the other defense-oriented classes. Don't evaluate the modal in a vacuum, put it in context. Now, if the ability was unfairly competing with the other fighter class abilities then I could see them nerfing it, but they should also give some kind of defensive buff to the class, which they don't seem to be doing. Really, the focus of this tread IMO shouldn't be "was defender balanced with the other modals?". That's a question that should be asked later on. The first question that should be addressed, IMHO, is "did this class ability make fighters too good?".

Maybe they think + 2 engagement limit is fine and they don't want it to add to deflection? Why would focusing your attention on multiple units not reduce your ability to more effectively defend yourself? Thematically, it makes sense. Honestly, my only issue is the fact that they won't allow players to negate it with Wary Defender (+5 to every defense except deflection). I don't see a good reason to pick up Wary Defender if that's all it adds. Honestly, why even bother with defender in the first place? It costs you a class ability instead of a talent, it eats up your active modal and thus doesn't even combine with cautious attack. Just grab hold the line and, while you'll engage fewer foes, your deflection won't suffer, and you can even use savage attacker for +20% damage instead of cautious attack and still be more survivable than with defender, and the difference in stickiness will be negligible.

Nah, I avoid social media like the plague, I'll just see how it goes. I care, but while I care enough to discuss this on the forums, I'm afraid I can't be arsed to make a twitter or tumblr account just to pester a dev. It's just that I've endured this kind of nerfs for years on various MMOs, but while I can understand them in the context of a (sort of) competitive multiplayer game, PoE is a single player game. I just don't like the idea that, whenever I start to like something, the next patch may come and take it away because of some arbitrary rebalancing going on. Patches and expansions should improve on things and add exciting stuff, you shouldn't be worried that they may come and take away the stuff you enjoy and on which you've invested your money and time, especially if you can't even opt out and keep your game unpatched because you bought the game on steam or want to play the new content the expansion offers.

Well, I'm just stating what I think are understandable reasons from the point of view from the devs. Feel free to disagree with them and critize the way it's been handled, but I think the changes they made fit the motivations I offered: 1) You may think its pointless, but it works as I described it. IF you want to make a tank fighter now, you WILL take cautious attack, whereas before you never did. You can't compare defender to cautious attack anymore because they make totally different things now, and as you can only maintain one at the same time, there is a choice where none has been before. 2) Well, understandably you are angry/dissappointed about the change. I don't know if 7 points of deflection really make or break a class, however. 3) I think it promotes the choice of diversity, because you only take defender now if you care about the engagement limit, whereas before you would've also taken it for fights against single enemies as the deflection alone made it valuable. Even if you wanted to only go for the engagement limit before, you couldn't. If a class had A and B and another class had only B, i wouldn't call them diverse, I would think B is strictly worse. If one has A and the other B, thats diversity because they are mutually exclusive. Thats exactly the situation with fighter, paladin, engagement limit and high deflection. Before and after 2.0. 4) I'm pretty sure the model will change. At the moment, you have a party of 6 and its totally viable to have one tank and the rest ranged DPS on most difficulties. If you increase damage taken enough, this will clearly shift to either requiring more tanks or more ressources into healing. Party setups and strategies shift that way. 5) I never said that this was a nerf to tanks in general. The attribute change is a nerf to tanks in general, thats about it. This change promotes cautious attack for fighters, which are the only class that had no reason to pick it up if they wanted to tank, so goal accomplished. As I said before, I don't think you are supposed to use defender against small to medium hordes of enemies but against a lot of small, light-hitting ones. Since you have cautious attack to fill the gap that the old defender left, not much really changes. Take cautious attack instead of defender and only take defender if you think that engagement limit is useful (which is debatable). Again, I'm sorry for your anger about this issue, but I think my arguments represent some realistic explanations for the changes. In the scenario where you'd be using defender gear and stats obviously matter, you aren't going equip your people the fighter is supposed to defending with heavy gear or pump up their RES/CON. Whether other classes can handle front line just as well is a different issue. The advantages fighter with have will be based on engagement, sustainability, and melee damage. Whether Defender will be any good with this change will depend on how important engagement is, which is probably too early to tell at this point. But you can grab Cautious Defender and Hold the line instead. Is one more engaged opponent worth 13 points of deflection?! Engagement wasn't important to begin with, now that opponents are smarter they'll just run around your fighter. Unless they decide to stop by and stomp him. Well, I'm just stating what I think are understandable reasons from the point of view from the devs. Feel free to disagree with them and critize the way it's been handled, but I think the changes they made fit the motivations I offered: 1) You may think its pointless, but it works as I described it. IF you want to make a tank fighter now, you WILL take cautious attack, whereas before you never did. You can't compare defender to cautious attack anymore because they make totally different things now, and as you can only maintain one at the same time, there is a choice where none has been before. 2) Well, understandably you are angry/dissappointed about the change. I don't know if 7 points of deflection really make or break a class, however. 3) I think it promotes the choice of diversity, because you only take defender now if you care about the engagement limit, whereas before you would've also taken it for fights against single enemies as the deflection alone made it valuable. Even if you wanted to only go for the engagement limit before, you couldn't. If a class had A and B and another class had only B, i wouldn't call them diverse, I would think B is strictly worse. If one has A and the other B, thats diversity because they are mutually exclusive. Thats exactly the situation with fighter, paladin, engagement limit and high deflection. Before and after 2.0. 4) I'm pretty sure the model will change. At the moment, you have a party of 6 and its totally viable to have one tank and the rest ranged DPS on most difficulties. If you increase damage taken enough, this will clearly shift to either requiring more tanks or more ressources into healing. Party setups and strategies shift that way. 5) I never said that this was a nerf to tanks in general. The attribute change is a nerf to tanks in general, thats about it. This change promotes cautious attack for fighters, which are the only class that had no reason to pick it up if they wanted to tank, so goal accomplished. As I said before, I don't think you are supposed to use defender against small to medium hordes of enemies but against a lot of small, light-hitting ones. Since you have cautious attack to fill the gap that the old defender left, not much really changes. Take cautious attack instead of defender and only take defender if you think that engagement limit is useful (which is debatable). Again, I'm sorry for your anger about this issue, but I think my arguments represent some realistic explanations for the changes. 1) who cares. You're still taking the better defensive talent, they just flipped defender ( a class ability, which should be competing with spells and other class abilities rather than talents ) and cautious attack. The button you're pushing to make you better at taking hits on the face doesn't make for better or worse gameplay just because now cautious attack is the more viable action rather than defender. It's a pointless change in that regard. 2) we're talking 7 points of deflection and 10 points to each other defense here ( aside from the engagement limit, useless as it may be ). 3)People will just go for cautious attack + hold the line, lower investment than defender + wary defender, less sucky choice. Here's your diversity. 4) Uhm, and tanking and spanking with 2 tanks helps how? Combats will just be slower, and the (lack of) tactic involved will remain the same, just with more tanks involved. 5) again, who cares what button they push to make themselves harder to hit. A talent doesn't need to be inherently useful for all classes and builds, if they are, all the better, but making all classes and concepts viable is far more important than stroking a talent's inexistant ego. Nerfing a class in order to make a talent viable is a bad idea all around. And nope, cautious attack does not fill the gap in terms of defenses, it just boosts deflection ( and less than talented defender did ). Also, cautious attack isn't free, and you'd have to take both (and you'd probably be better off just taking hold the line and not crippling your deflection in the process instead ). I don't doubt that you think those are the reasons behind the changes, I'm just saying that this nerf is off base if those are the reasons offered.

But when you factor in gear, stats and other abilities, the difference in durability usually isn't going to be close. Your cypher or DPS ranger isn't going to be wearing plate armor and a shield and will likely have lower CON and RES. Gear, stats and other abilities are a nonfactor; most other classes have an advantage in both utilities and DPS over a fighter, even when wearing heavy armor. Build them for defense and, if they're just as durable as a fighter as well as being better at DPS, AoE damage and utility, fighters are pretty much useless. They're already a class whose only strong point is defense, they're a second or third rate ( single target only )dps, they have a very limited range of utilities even for a tank ( look at paladins, who can heal and/or raise their companions and provide offensive or defensive party wide buffs, or chanters, who can provide a moltitude of buffs and summons, an insane high level AoE attack as well as AoE stuns and a slow party-wide heal ) and they're going to fall further behind as the level cap increases. There's really no need to hit their only strong point.

It makes sense to me thematically, basically the fighter is protecting others at the expensive of themselves. A fighter with -5 deflection is still going to have more deflection than whatever back row character the enemy would be attacking if it got past the fighter. There are already a bunch of attacking abilities that reduce accuracy, don't see how this is much different. Nope, a fighter with -5 deflection has the same starting deflection as a cypher or a ranger, and has only 5 points over a barbarian or a rogue, but the barb has way more HP. Yes, he has more deflection than an unbuffed caster, but considering that high level casters can keep their lower level buffs basically up all day that's not much of an advantage.

Personally, I think this is exactly the reason why the ability got nerfed - to not have a strictly better version of cautious attack, so that there is actually a reason you might want to take cautious attack. Since defender is a modal after all, you're probably intended to use it mostly against large group of small, weak enemies now, where it is assumed that you don't necessarily need the additional deflection. I get that everyone is upset because their precious abilities are nerfed (josh actually predicted that anything of the bigger things he will nerf after release will summon a reaction like that), but at the same time, consider the feedback the game got, especially here on the forums: Tank & Spank is an easy strategy that trivializes the game and CC/summons are way too strong, CON sucks. So what did they do now? Nerfing deflection across the board by changing the attributes while making CON slightly stronger, nerfing summons, nerfing afflictions partially, buffing party AI, nerfing strictly better talents for talents which have pros and cons. For a tank, you ideally want to have both a lot of deflection and a lot of engagement capacity. The paladin keeps his high deflection but has issues with engagement, the fighter stays on top with engagement (if you want that) but is now slightly weaker in the deflection department (and that is considering that in a way you metagame your paladin to get the highest bonus, the comparison isn't even against the average paladin). Personally, I think it's a good thing the classes have slightly different ways to go about tanking now. I think from josh's point of view, that's a very smart way to go about his balancing goals to have nontrivial choices in character building while making the classes distinct from each other. I don't think this was about 'Fighter as a tank is too strong, so we have to nerf him', it's rather 'Paladin and Fighter as a tank are too similiar, so we have to change them'. Sorry, but this nerf accomplishes nothing of the sort. First, nerfing a class ability + a talent in order to make another talent more viable is pointless, a heavier investment should bring the better returns; second, if the net result is to nerf a class, then you're doing it wrong. There aren't a lot of "cautious attack" fans around, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who like playing a good, viable fighter tank, and poured countless hours in a character they loved.So, if you're pissing off people in order to make a talent more attractive, you're off base. Third, this isn't a change that promotes diversity, all it does is make the fighter a worse tank, especially now that better monster AI will make engagement less valuable as a mechanic. Making something strictly worse is the exact opposite of fostering diversity. Fourth, if tank and spank is bad for the game, they shouldn't have promoted it in the first place by creating tanking classes that are as dumb as a brick and mostly passive, as far as tanking goes. Even if they nerf their survability now, the model won't change, you'll just need to spam more heals, you have to change the way the tanks are designed in order to make combat more challenging in that regard. That and better monster AI ( which they're doing already ). Fifth, this isn't a tank nerf, this is a fighter nerf, otherwise they'd have nerfed paladins and chanters as well, and this isn't a slight nerf either, since now a fighter that uses defender is more or less as survivable as a Barbarian. So, again, I'm sorry, but I don't think any of your points apply, in this case.

Then they should have 1)nerfed all the tanks ( which they didn't ) and 2)nerfed the high end builds ( i.e. shields, you don't become unhittable without a shield ) rather than a stance that's usable by off tanks as well. This aside from the fact that you can still grab cautious attack and only suffer like a 7 points deflection loss instead of the 20 points one this nerf brings. All this nerf does is killing defender as a class ability and make tanks switch to better modals (and make them more susceptible to status effects in the process).

Well, aside from the fact that hold the line seems to be unchanged, with defender up you're still going to be hit more often ( due to the increased engagement limit ) and/or hit harder ( because of your lower deflection ). Battlefield control is only useful when you have the durability to back it up, stopping three enemies and getting instagibbed in the process is, usually, not a good idea. Also, frankly, engagement is just a weaker form of CC; even if the new AI made engagement stronger ( and I don't really see how... against a full tank,a smart opponent is just going to eat a weak melee attack in order to disengage and get to the softies, which makes engagement weaker, if anything ) there are far worse offenders in the CC department than the weak battlefield control a fighter can sport with defender.

Then they should nerf shields instead, they're the biggest source of deflection and the biggest loss of DPS.

They are also nerfing deflection across the board, for example cautious attack is now +8 def instead of +10, and the ring of deflection is now +9 deflection instead of +10. Those are slight, sensible nerfs. This is a -20 deflection nerf to the fighter's main tanking stance (and a -5 to all their other defenses ) on top of the other nerfs.

Or they could keep it as it was, considering that the expansion is giving out constant recovery as a multi-class talent and that's going to make the other classes significantly more survivable, and that fighters have little going for them aside from survability.

butbutbut casters only have the ability to do everything paced out over the course of several encounters or all in one fight at their option! fighters get anywhere between 1 and 3 PER ENCOUNTER ABILITIES! THEYRE OVERPOWERED I TELL YOU In all seriousness, it makes me genuinely sad that PoE started with, "casters won't be able to do everything! Everyone gets magical abilities! Melee can have nice things!" and then turned into, "casters can do everything! Everyone else gets like one magical ability, late in their leveling tree! Melee has slightly higher stats though I mean until the caster self-buffs then melee is like kaput." They recognized the problem, and promised to fix it, and proceeded to do Not That. Well, if casters get 3rd level spells per-encounter at 13th level, the melee will probably need something really big to keep up at high levels anyway... we'll see.

Well, yeah, but you're comparing a class ability + a class talent to two talents: class specific talents/abilities are supposed to reinforce the schtick of a class and generally cost the same or less for a better/comparable result, respectively; if the class ability were worse than a comparable talent, it would have no reason to exist in the first place, why would anyone bother taking it? The fighter's eating enough nerfs as is in this X-pack, as I see it: pretty much all the physical DPS classes are going to see a (slight) damage reduction against some opponents ( due to the fact that immunities to specific kinds of damage are being introduced, and most physical dps classes lack the toolkit of full casters, who can just change their spell selection, while, say, a fighter or a rogue has to switch to a backup weapon ); if what I read in this thread is true, they're losing a fair bit of control due to, again, immunities to status effects (which, again, casters can overcome pretty easily ), and they'll see their only real strong point, their survability, take a hit now that constant recovery will be available to other tanks through multiclass talents. I don't see the reason to also neuter their defenses on top of that, frankly.

Oh good, now there are even fewer reasons to play a full tank fighter. :/ because fighters and paladins needed moar pigeonholing amirite Sigh. This is a change I hope they revert before the patch goes live... it also hurts offtanks, makes fighters more susceptible to CC and kills build diversity ( seriously, unless a fighter off-tank whips out a shield he's going to be more or less as durable as a barbarian with Defender up now... ). Also, while talented defender used to be pretty good pre 2.0, it also involved a pretty hefty investment in term of resources ( class ability + talent ). I'd rather they nerfed shields instead, if they feel deflection tanks were too good ( and maybe reduce the accuracy penalty to compensate somewhat ). They already changed Perception from +deflection to +accuracy. This means minus 8+ deflection for most tank-builds and better accuracy for some enemies. Well, the defender/wary defender nerf is another net -20 deflection right off the bat ( now defender reduces your deflection, so i's +15 to -5 ). Harsh, probably unnecessary and frankly, IMO, the kind of nerf that, to me, feels out of place in a single player game ( I'm all for balance, but I'd rather see the devs focus on bringing the subpar options up to par rather than knee-jerk and double-nerf stuff to the ground ). YMMV, obviously.

Oh good, now there are even fewer reasons to play a full tank fighter. :/ because fighters and paladins needed moar pigeonholing amirite Sigh. This is a change I hope they revert before the patch goes live... it also hurts offtanks, makes fighters more susceptible to CC and kills build diversity ( seriously, unless a fighter off-tank whips out a shield he's going to be more or less as durable as a barbarian with Defender up now... ). Also, while talented defender used to be pretty good pre 2.0, it also involved a pretty hefty investment in term of resources ( class ability + talent ). I'd rather they nerfed shields instead, if they feel deflection tanks were too good ( and maybe reduce the accuracy penalty to compensate somewhat ).

Thx

Interesting thread you guys got going on here. This rule doesn't apply to Kotor, according to other posters on this board, the 2 sith lords doesn't come into effect until 2000 years after Kotor <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You're right, my bad... If so, I'll have to ask, though, why was Malak forced to be Revan's apprentice in Kotor 1?

Ok, I'm experiencing a couple of bugs... I was wondering if anyone could help me fix them First, my OS is win2k professional, with SP 4 installed. 1) It took me about an hour to install the game. Everytime the installation process should have required that I put the next cd in the cdrom reader, a message saying that I had inserted the wrong CD popped up, and, since the installation process could not be cancelled ( the message popped up as soon as I clicked on "cancel" or "ok") I had to start the installation process from scratch, once for any new disc. That is, the message popped up everytime any given cd was installed for the first time. This was very annoying, at least. 2)Swoop Races. I can't win swoop races. No, it's not like I' m not able to beat my opponent's time, it's just that no matter what time I get, I'm told that if I was not able to finish the race, I can't qualify. Needless to say, I finished the race... This happens regularly, and on every planet I visited. 3) Unless Mira is in may party, her exp won't grow to match the exp of other NPC's . This is quite annoying, since I' m forced to take her with me all the time unless I want her to fall behind in terms of experience. I played the game 3 times, and I regularly experience this bug. 4) I played as a LS character twice, and both times, in the initial dialogue with Atton, I said that Revan saved the republic. Despite this, the olocron in the sith academy won't work for me, and, while I stated that revan was a male, Kreia and Atton will often refer to him as if I told them that Revan was a woman. Not that I expected that they wouldn't, since they often seem to think that I am a woman too. Oh, well, I guess I should thank that I did not get Disciple in my party, instead of Handmaiden... Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance