I was thniking on this for a bit, but thought that the feature patch might address relevant issues.
I’m not seeing any upcoming blog posts that sound like they touch on defiant though, so I figure I might as well post my idea.
As-is, defiant is a hard counter to crowd control (CC) that scales based on the # of players instead of the amount of CC. This makes CC largly irrelevant in many fights, and not worth heavily speccing into in many cases
But defiant is too overpowered, so only champs have it. This leads to CC spam almost trivializing other content
Instead; I would like to see it behave more like Might (although not as a removable boon), where more stackd makes it more effective, and each stack is applied by incoming CC.
Each stack would have its own duration, after which that stack expires. The duration would based on severity/duration of CC.
I.e. stacks from crippled might be 50% of the condition duration, but daze would apply 5x duration.
Different CCs would provide more stacks of defiant, in relation to their severity.
I.e a cripple condition adds 1 stack, an interrupt might provide 5, and a knockdown 10.
More stacks of defiant would provide increasing effect, to create diminishing returns on CC.
I.e each stack reduces net/cripple/frozen duration by 4%, and adds 4% chance of failure to interrupt/stun/daze/knock/fear/blind/weakness.
This make a target immune to CC at 25 stacks (which wear off over time) to avoid lockdown, but simply a bit more resistant to occasional CC. A boss monster could still generate 25 stacks just before a large key attack to make it un-interruptable.
Aside from making Cc more relevant in champ fights, this also frees it up as a mechanic for use besides champs.
I.e. players and elite mobs could gain shorter duration defiant stacks.
This would add more dynamic play for CC, and potentially allow it to be a focus for builds without becoming useless during boss fights. It could also reduce reliance on the stability boon, which not all classes have good access too (especially if you don’t count skills that grant stability, but block your own skills while you have it).
Adding in some defiance traits/sigils/runes allows far more counterplay vs CC across classes, which is itself countered by more effective/limited use of CC since the actual a ount od defiance is largely controlled by/visible to the attacker. Short term stunlocking or keeping people off points would still be viable, but you couldn’t keep it up indefintely. Spamming CC on a target would quickly lose effect.
