This post is more of a game design in relation to powers and how I have seen it implemented in CoX and other games. Specifically there has always seem to be a problem in game design with regards controllers and defender type player archetypes.
Premise;
In most games of this nature there are 2 basic functions of game play. 1) Killing things and 2) staying alive,
The different archetypes in the game fall between the two extremes. Mixed in with this is the risk/vs reward of the archetype play style. if it is easy to kill things with very little risk of dying you become the ubiquitous "tank-mage" that ends up not being fun long term and is not sustainable IMHO.
In most of these games the controller type archetype plays the role of damage mitigation and thus risk manager. They remove risk from the fight. They do it very well. A stun or hold completes prevents damage, or effects to the player or team. If controller types can do significant damage than they can become tank mages very easily. In PvP nothing is more aggravating than being held and helpless for long periods of time, without counter-measures in place.
There is an inherent conflict of this archetype if the game does not want to a requirement to have a "holy trinity" approach to the game and allow for soloing and teaming without trivializing encounters. In CoH, the controller started out as a strict support class that had difficulty soloing until they got pets and then over time become one of the most powerful classes for normal content. They still had significant difficulty against high level mobs that could easily resist their control or bosses types that were essentially immune.
Defenders
There basically 2 types of defenders in CoH and both types had problems and 2 different styles of play. Invariably the defenders came down to 1)buffers or healers types as 1 style of play and then there were the 2) de-buffers. The buffer/healer is also a class considered as a part of the holy trinity system and very weak soloists. Much like the controller there is a conflict with a game design that is trying to avoid a holy trinity type requirement while still allowing solo play of that archetype. As I stated earlier, basically all games are really about killing things, and the faster the better, a support class like a healer or buffer can become over-powered if they can deal significant damage, or they fall into a role of complete support class and have great difficulty in soloing and need a team to play the game. The other problem with pure buffing class is that normally for gaming reasons they have the danger of becoming buffbots and that is all they contribute to the game. Furthermore if the buffs are powerful, games typically do not allow their effects to stack because it can then trivialize encounters. This hurts team play because the game incentives only one to a team. Their benefits is that typically the nature of the power is that they are largely automatic because they are helping self/teammate and don't have any to-hit roles to make. It also takes an unselfish person to play a pure support role, creating a lower participant level of that class making pick-up teaming more difficult if they become a rare commodity.
Debuffers, the real meat of this article I want to speak with, This class is largely been a 2nd class controller. Their purpose is damage mitigation just like a controller, but often it is not as powerful as a hold or stun. They weaken damage or make a mob easier to kill, but their is more inherent risk as it is not totally eliminated. Slows, accuracy debuffs, resistance and armor class debuffs all work over time but is not near as powerful as a hold at pure damage mitigation and risk reduction. The big problem with debuffs in CoH is that the game made them largely worthless. Debuffs take time and often the mobs are killed so quickly the buffs actually had very little consequence in the battle long and short term, with one exception. They made a difference in boss fights because they often did last a long time, and the bosses could not be held so the damage mitigation was somewhat helpful. But guess what controllers got the debuffs too so between holds and damage buffing + damage of pets you could make a very strong tank mage with very little risk to the player in most game situations, and made debuff defenders less than optimum or desirable on the team. Now COH was easy enough that the game was still playable as a debuff defender, and a team of defenders became huge force multipliers when several were working together, but that was rare for the every day debuff defender.
So, City of Titans...whatcha going to do to balance these play styles? How do you make debuffs meaningful compared to holds and stuns? Are there going to be support classes in the traditional sense? Archetypes designed to be force multipliers, damage and risk mitigation vs damage dealers? To me for each archetype I think there has to be a slider scale. On one end you have damage output and on the other end you have damage mitigation. The more damage mitigation or force multiplication you give a class, the lower the damage output that class can do. A perfectly balanced class has equal damage output and damage mitigation. How the sliders slides based upon hit points, healing, holds, ranged damage vs melee damage is the devil in the detail that truly determines a fair balance of archetype abilities.
Winds of Change
In my perfect world guardians provide buffs to allies while controllers apply debuffs to enemies.
heals and shields and direct buffs to mechanics all count as buffs in my book.
Mez, Slows/Roots, Confuse, and direct debuff mechanics all count as debuffs in my book.
As a crowd control enthusiast I hate picking through a heal set for the debuffs I want.. just a personal preference.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Everwind
I categorically disagree with your assessment of the roles and how they were implemented in CoH.
First off, let's examine the 4 possible roles in use in MMOs today. You can argue that Buffs and Debuffs should be 2 roles, but they are merely 2 sides of the same coin.
You have:
[b]DPS[/b]
Dish out the damage, everyone can to some extent, but those in the DPS role are the specialists.
[b]Healer[/b]
Replenish removed HP. Frequently includes rezzing the fallen.
[b]Control[/b]
aka CC or Crowd Control. This includes your tanks who control the flow of battle by directing enemy attacks at themselves as well as your strict controller type who immobs/stuns/holds/sleeps/etc the mobs.
[b]Buff/Debuff[/b]
Improves or disimproves any or all character/mob stats. When properly abused this role can turn wimpy characters into the gods of the game.
Your debuffs are not controls. Although the slows can be looked at in that way, most will disagree with you. As for the rest of the debuffs being controls, not even close. Debuffing enemy accuracy is not a control, same for defense, damage resistance, recovery, or regeneration.
Everwind, we have a very different view of the game. I completely disagree with this line here:
"...and made debuff defenders less than optimum or desirable on the team. Now COH was easy enough that the game was still playable as a debuff defender, and a team of defenders became huge force multipliers when several were working together, but that was rare for the every day debuff defender."
As a controller/defender/buff/debuff aficionado I never felt like I was contributing more than when I was debuffing the crap out of the baddies. There were many times I tested the waters on exactly how much I was contributing to the team by purposely not debuffing a mob or two. The difference in kill speed was drastic. I KNEW I was making a significant contribution to the team. Even more so if I was a pure DPS toon. My first 50 was a fire/nrg blaster, and I didn't feel like I was a critical cog in the group. Sure it was fun to kill 'em with FIRE! FIRE! FIRE...but I digress. We're talking about defenders here.
So if I ever came across a team that didn't value my debuffs, or thought it wasn't optimal or desirable, I counted my lucky stars that I didn't join that team because in my eyes, there was a poor leader at the helm.
There were countless times I joined a team on my dark/traps/kin/storm, you name it, and I would hear much rejoicing for bringing -acc/offensive Howling Twilights/bubbles/Fulcrum Shifts/and the many pronged benefits of stormies. That was the norm, rather than the exception, during my 8 yrs of play time in CoH.
To be honest, the only defender primary I didn't get to a high level was Empathy. I know it was sooo much more than a OMGHealzor!, but I just couldn't get into it. If I wanted to bring the shiny green numbers I would join on my Dark or Kin.
Overall, I think CoH did ALOT right in terms of CC and Buff/Debuff. I would urge the City of Titans Devs, and I am assuming they feel similarly, to keep the feel of controllers and defenders as close to the CoH feel as possible. No other game comes close to it.
Same coin, yes, but should be treated VERY differently.
Buffing is very rarely a single player buff. In MMORPGs single player (not self) buffs are impractical because of the nature of MMO combat (except turn-based combat). Instead, buffing generally aids multiple players over a span of space and time.
Debuffs however, because of their potency and potential for ruining other game mechanics (usually in games that provide no defense against debuffs) are usually much more focused and regarded as an aggressive (not passive) action and are thus much more harshly regulated.
The weight of the coin is very different on the two sides.
I agree with much of what you're saying but this distinction between passive and aggressive combat is very important to me in a balanced gameplay. If I buff someone it HAS to be passive because the action is still the other characters to take. If I buff myself it has to be active be active because I am the one taking the action. So many times games give too much in terms of self passive buffs and games become quickly imbalanced for both buff and debuff gameplay.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
My point of view was from a much higher altitude. Debuffs that affect mob accuracy (to hit), buffs that make you harder to hit, or boost your healing are essentially damage mitgators. The best damage mitigators is a stun or a hold because it is %100 effective. (Knockdowns and knockbacks are also damage mitigation IMHO). Typically accuracy or armor debuffs are not 100%, they are some fraction of 100%. Debuffs that lower armor class or resistance, which allows a player to kill faster, contribute to the offensive side of the equation directly. You can argue that they do influence damage mitigation indirectly if you kill them fast enough. Doing so lowers your exposure profile to damage.
I am not disparaging debuffs as a game mechanic. But the debuffs that REDUCE RISK are not as powerful and as useful as holds, stuns, knockdowns because they are 100% effective, whereas accuracy debuffs, slows, resource (power debuffs, e.g. mana drains) still allow those effects to occur. They are all doing the same thing with varying effectiveness with the hold being the most powerful.
Debuffs that are force multipliers like that remove resistance, or armor class WERE very powerful in COH, but they did not remove risk, they helped move the offense side of the coin.
In the end game most Controllers could out damage defenders and achieve it with less risk than defenders. In many ways they out-classed them for a majority of the content in the game. I played them both. My Illusion/Radiation controller was a beast! I loved my Storm/Dark defender, but it just couldn't compare to my high level controllers. I felt this was a balance problem as unless you played and EMP defender, you were much better off taking a controller on a team.
There were some very good reasons FF and Sonic defenders were pretty rare, In many instances debuff defenders that focused on damage mitigation were in competition with controllers for roles or slots on the team, and by design were supposed to be more effective at damage because on the sliding scale there damage mitigation aspect of the class was not as strong.
In the spirit of full disclosure I did have one controller that did struggle and that was my Grav/FF controller. He struggled to beat anybody.....
What does this mean? If you want to have a game that does not go down the holy trinity and that any and all classes can comprise a team and be reasonably successful, then everyone has to be able to do damage and have damage mitigation. That leaves the force multiplier and healing abilities to be spread around and not a focus of anyone class IMHO. The more damage mitigation a class has the less damage that class should put out in order to have balance.
Winds of Change
Many (in fact most all) posts on crowd control I've found in these forums have agreed that we do not want binary crowd control. You'll hear me talk time and time again that quality based combat systems are the only kind I'm really willing to accept in MOST cases (Stealth and Pets being the exception).
Just because you are hit with "Mez Points" should not mean you're automatically held. Sure you may be impaired and attack less efficiently but only at the top tier should you actually lose the ability to attack altogether).
For Example:
0-1000 Mez points = Slow
Explanation: 10 MP is -1% movement speed this is linear progression to 1000 MP that has is -100% movement. At -100% Movement speed the target is rooted
1000-2000 Mez points = Fatigue
Explanation: 1010 MP is a =1% attack speed and 2000 MP is -100% Attack speed. At -100% Attack speed the target is unable to attack *but can still use other casts*
2000-2500 Mez points = Stun
Explanation: Stunned targets cannot attack and they must break free of the stun to attack again. Notice that this is substantially shorter and capped meaning stunned characters will likely be able to attack again relatively soon when attacked.
Taking Hit points lowers the mez points on a target. Characters can stack "Mez Resistance" to make these thresholds much higher (or make the mez points drain more quickly.. whichever fits combat best).
Numbers in the above example are used as references only.
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Mix this kind of crowd control with debuffing the enemy and you can pretty effectively pacify an enemy. If you ONLY have debuffs they still attack you. If you ONLY have (small amounts of) mez they still attack you. Achieving 100% mitigation is possible (for people who specialize in it) but not at all as easy as casting one power and having the enemy be "a punchable statue".
And the trade off for this ability, is high Threat Generation, low Defense, and low DPS
Crowd Control Enthusiast
When playing a blaster or scrapper, it was amazing how much faster things dropped, and how much more I could wade through, with a defender or controller along. Night and day.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I sort of like this idea although it does semi-screw soloing Controllers who need to reliably lock down MOBs to survive. At least this "non-binary" scheme would make using Mezs in PvP a little more fair and workable.
I guess the concern I have with a continuous numeric Mez scale is whether this would do away with the specific Mez types of CoH? What I mean is will there no longer be separate types/classes of Mezzing like Slow, Stun, Immobile and Hold? I could see that making the Controller powersets a bit more generic and/or vague in practice. Instead of having specific Hold powers, Slow powers and Stun powers I guess you'd have a "Mez that adds 100 points of Mez", a "Mez that adds 500 points of Mez" and a "Mez that adds 1000 points of Mez". By exchanging the "exact" Mez types for an indirect number system it might make it a little harder to determine exactly what each power is capable of doing.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
My solution to this is to have Mez points only be the measurement of which Mez powers use. There are still many different status effects, but they are weighted by the strength applied. Stuns and Confuses, for instance, are mechanically different.
If you proc a confuse instead of a stun, at tier 1 the mechanic being debuffed could be perception (Assuming this mechanic exists in CoT; you can normally see enemies 200ft away this goes down to 100ft at -100% perception. At tier 2, the mechanic works like a placate (a percent chance for attack to fail when used targeting placate's caster), and at 100% (aka Tier 3) the enemy is confused (all the enemy's allies become targetable enemies *THIS IS BASED ON TAB TARGETING*)
I also want to note that the "gate" for the tier may be very different for other Mez types. Confuses may take go up to 1500 MP at tier 1, 3250 at tier 2 and 4000 at tier 3.
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Of course I've not talked at all about Mez Resistance and how it could hypothetically work either. I'm simply saying that the binary system of crowd control (Meaning movement debuffs and attack debuffs NOT meaning Damage or Mitigation Debuffs) does not take quality into effect is simply not what I want to see.
The biggest question is, how do you keep Mez characters strong enough to get the MEZ points they want for the desired effect without making status effects completely useless to other classes (for instance, melee DPS really needs the ability to slow their enemies for PvP purposes (and hopefully smart AI makes it a required tactic for PvE too).
Secondarily.. will these mez points stack from multiple casters using them? I'm inclined to say "yes" but this comes with the condition that Mez Points be used in less AoE and require more targeting.
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The variety of powers in each set would not just be mez strength on the cast, but also whether it's Melee, Single Target ranged, Cone Mez, AoE Mez, Long Range Mez, Chain Mez, Contagious Mez, Mez Over Time (if it stacks). The idea is that weaker powers apply less Mez points in the database and stronger powers apply more mez points.
At the moment I am only thinking about Movement/Action Mez and Perception/Confuse Mez... I didn't add things like running away or being inturrupted. The reason for this is because for boss fights, I wanted a lower effect against bosses.
If bosses get "stunned" it only counts as an interrupt. If bosses get confused, they only run away (like fear) while still attacking. Instead of being -100% Attack speed they may have a cap of 33%.. you get the point. The low tiers won't really change too much but I am still against full CC being used on lair bosses. *Don't hate me my fellow controllers*
Can you think of types of Mez outside of the two systems I detailed (Slow-Root, Slow Attacks, Stun/Hold, Sight, Placate, Confuse, Interrupt, Fear)? Any pitfalls of the system I am not foreseeing?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Indeed. As I'd put it while playing my dark/dark/dark defender, "If the enemy can't even hit you, and they can't, why would you need to be healed?"
In response to the 1st type that Everwind described, buff / healer:
You say that the typical game mechanic of them incentives only 1 to a team, and that that is hurtful to team play. Then you also say that it takes an unselfish person to play that, creating a lower participant level.
Don't these things go kinda hand-in-hand?
In CoX, as a scrapper I was thrilled to be on a team that had a dedicated healer / buffer. It often didn't happen. Then when I started playing a healer / buffer, I was welcomed on MANY teams. Sure, sometimes teams already had one and I was turned down. I found another team that could use me. It's not all that hard.
Also, if extreme classes like this are eliminated, what's gonna happen to those who like to play them? Won't everything become closer to middle ground? Wouldn't it get more boring? Yes I've been on teams with a tank, two healers, and a controller. Progress was slow, but we did it, and it was pretty silly at times. We were just playing leisurely, far from hard core and balanced. I've also been on a team with 4 scrappers and a tank, and it was completely nutty, but turned AMAZING when a defender joined to play heal-bot.
TLDR: Wide variety is fun.
[center][color=#0000ff][b][size=15]
Scrappy Cat - "That Guy" of Phoenix Rising
ditch - a safe place in an unsafe world[/size][/b][/color][/center]
Did you ever actually play CoH? If you did, you obviously didn't play a Defender or Controller.
For the majority of the games life Speed Boost was single target, as was Adrenaline Boost and pretty much every shield in the game. RI, EF, LR, DN, and Tar Patch are the first debuffs that come to mind that are AoE. There are plenty more on both sides of the coin that violate your stated idea of what buffs and debuffs are. I don't know why you differentiate between a self buff and a single player buff. It's still only buffing one person.
As for the specific potency of debuffs, that's a balance issue. The reason the holy trinity exists is because most MMOs make healing imbalanced (to powerful) in order to force teaming. A good portion of CoH's uniqueness comes from balancing de/buffs with healing.
Actually I did and think that the game mechanics of CoH (specifically for controllers) was something to be improved on. And still maintain that self buffs hurt game balance for teams. Why does a controller have less damage mitigation than a Tank if it can just Buff its own damage mitigation?
Self Buffing leads to Tank-Mages which the devs have stated to be a design goal to avoid.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
The whole point to a Tank is damage mitigation. Obviously many of their powers are going to be in aid of that purpose. How can a Tank become a Tank-Mage by just using the powers it was purpose-built for? That's like saying a Controller shouldn't be able to use Mez powers because that'll make him too powerful as a Crowd Controller.
As to why a Controller would start off with less default damage mitigation than a Tank I'd say why wouldn't it? Again damage mitigation is the Tank's main purpose. It's like you're upset that a D&D Magic User usually has less HPs than a Fighter AND they have a worse THAC0 too. Why not? The Fighter's entire purpose for existence in the game is fighting.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Then maybe do away with some of the limitations/AT ideas of CoH. :p
One of my biggest complaints with CoH was having the concept of say Thermal Corr, and not being able to shield myself with the Fire Shield.
Should never need a healer focused character in a super hero mmo. And if the UI is smart, healer should be the be all end all of agro grabbing. "WTF?! They have someone who heals these super powerful damage dealers?! Take them out NOW!"
You know, like players will generally do to NPC Healers. :p
People say they want a smarter NPC AI, let's make it happen by targeting those healer types first, especially if they're the spam the heals type.
I apologize.. I think Guardians should have the ability to buff themselves and teams as this is their role
I'm talking about self healing/buffing for other roles. I trust that power-sets/frameworks for tanks will be about mitigation and less about buffing themselves with more damage. Or Ranged DPS buffing themselves with more dodge/mitigation.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Does that mean you don't like the idea of a Range/Defense set Class?
What does Deadpool and Domino do? They shoot stuff while having a Defense set (regen, luck/agility).
Now I did prefer CoH's work around with powers...click powers, different recharges, build to recharge faster over CO, which I can grab two attacks total and not worry...as it allowed more visuals.
Get 4-5 attacks to chain with slotting is good, limiting them to one style of attack is bad. Set it up so we can go PUNCH > GUNS > SWORD SLICE > KICK or whatever combination, to allow more diversity in concepts!
In CoH it was pretty much PUNCH > PUNCH > PUNCH > PUNCH or ELEC BLAST > ELEC BLAST etc etc
*note: This isn't to say all builds are like that in CO, I have one that goes Force Geyser (TK attack) > Cold Blast > Fire Blast > Cold/Fire Combined Blast, and repeats the first three until that Cold/Fire Recharges. So this isn't to say CO can't vary up animations a bit, but my Dual Pistol for instance, while a very nice looking animation for both attacks, relies on 1 ST attack, one AOE Attack, and has 2 chain abilities, just for fun and don't use when doing harder team content as much.
First off, let's define the term "Tank-Mage"
The tank can take a lot of damage through any one of several game mechanics such as evasion, absorption, or ablation.
The tanks' secondary job is to mitigate damage to itself, usually through a self buff of some sort. If the tank can't buff its own mitigation it can't do its primary job of crowd control because it won't survive drawing all the aggro.
The mage's role in (A)D&D (where the term Tank-Mage originates) is primarily ranged DPS. Distance is typically the only defense the mage has.
So the main beef against the Tank-Mage is that it is a character that typically has ranged, high damage attacks and a good defense. Of course this also stems from the somewhat obsolete convention of melee attacks doing more damage. As we have seen in CoH, that is by no means carved in stone.
Still, I don't know of a single Controller that could match the mitigation of a Tanker in CoH. Caps on those abilities pretty much ensured that even with the best of builds/IOs the Tanker was still usually more survivable than the Controller.
I'm not quite certain how we went from talking about roles to this, though.
The trick with Controllers wasn't ever to try to match a Tanker's "damage mitigation". Their trick was to never get hit in the first place. If you were worrying about mitigating damage on a Controller you were playing them wrong. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Well I'll be...never knew that there was a [I]How to Play a Controller[/I] rulebook out there.
*smh* at my loopy SG mates and myself for playing "wrong" for all those years as we traveled o'er hill-and-dale deliberately aggro'ing multiple spawns, sometimes petless, often on lowbie teams, often unslotted, or simply just playing without a tank, scrapper or other damage mitigation substitute.
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([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
Every Final Fantasy game ever made would like to have "a word" with you about the fundamental mistake you just made.
[i]Guns don't kill people.[/i] [b]SWORDS KILL PEOPLE!!![/b]
The hilarious thing about that is though that Americans live in a country that was founded [i]because of guns[/i] and therefore is very much a "gun culture" society, leading to the whole "don't bring a knife to a gunfight" mentality of most American gamers (and 2nd Amendment fanatics).
By contrast, the Japanese live in a country that was founded [i]because of swords[/i] (katana, specifically) and is therefore very much a "sword culture" society, leading to the whole "the sword is mightier than the gun" mentality seen in most Japanese games and gamers. Ironically though, the "artillery" weapon on the Japanese battlefield wasn't a "gun" or even a "cannon" but was instead ... archery, with a Daikyu ... which is why Samurai Armor has the form and shape that it does, because it was a protection scheme designed to combat (and foil) archery, first and foremost, because archery allowed for "killing from a distance" unlike fighting in melee with a katana.
So a substantial portion of the notion that melee is more damaging than ranged attacks has its roots in the Japanese gaming industry, and the way that promoting Swords was a way to appeal to their culture's prejudices and pride in their historical culture, while relegating "guns" to being a category of "also ran" that rarely challenged the superiority of the Sword. Evidence for this is everywhere ... from Final Fantasy genre games, to Voltron and the "classic" line of [b]Form BLAZING SWORD![/b] used to defeat the Monster Of the Week. You can even see it in modern anime like Infinite Stratos and its sequel, where all the harem girls get gun attacks but a couple of the stronger ones have melee weapons, and "hero boy" gets ... an energy sword ... with a gun as [i]a backup weapon[/i].
So the idea that melee does more damage, isn't an accident.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well at least we know you follow the rules of the "How to Generate Idle Sarcasm in a Forum Post" rulebook. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Originally it was in ALL games that melee did more damage than ranged. Now it's a bit of a mix, which is why I used the phrase "somewhat obsolete".
I'm thinking that this was a balance theory. If you're attacking at range, only the enemies with ranged attacks can return fire, at least until the melee types run out to engage you. If you have to attack in melee, the enemies with ranged attacks can hit you on the way in, hurting you before you can do any damage. So if an archer attacks a swordsman at a distance, with equal hit points and damage per second, the swordsman will drop first.
Another way I've seen of balancing this issue is the idea that "in melee combat, the archer is an unarmed man" (Sun Tzu? Can't seem to find it in my AoW...) which results in the ranged attackers damage dropping once they are engaged in melee. In WoW, until recently, ranged weapons other than wands and spells would not work at point blank ranges, and so hunters (and anyone else who could use ranged weapons) also carried melee weapons. I don't think this would work well for a superhero game, or any game with repeating handguns or other ranged attack that can be expected to work well in melee.
Some powers would let a melee character to mitigate the extra time ranged characters have to attack: Lunges, that move the melee character to his target; pulls or "knock-to" powers; stealth (although that's not typically a defender's power ^_^)...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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