A "guide" as to why Title Level 7 Fixers are not cutting it (warning: very long post)

1 Introduction
2 What are fixers: the toolset
3 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in team pve
4 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in solo pve?
5 Pvp specific mechanics
6 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in team pvp
7 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in solo pvp?
8 The end conclusion
9 Addendum: How do the various parts of the toolset hold up?


1 Introduction
The purpose of this long post is to point out why exactly Title Level 7 fixers are in crises. I’m going to list how I and others feel how the TL7 fixer toolset is holding up in terms of both teaming and soloing in pve and pvp.

The bases of this is comparison: comparison between the toolset of fixers and the toolsets of the 13 other professions. When I compare a support toolset (both buffs and debuffs) I look at the profession list and think of what every profession has to offer to the team, then I see how many give better support and how many others offer worse support. As such this post is still largely based on personal impressions of me and people that bothered to give feedback, but it's the best I could do without giving a detailed description of each individual profession and their toolset (which would be way too much work).

I’m also going to describe the various parts of the fixer toolset and give a cryptic description for each part, this for benefit of the people who are not familiar with TL7 fixers and their toolset. Many parts of the fixer toolset may at first glance look good, but there usually is catch for which I give brief description in "9 Addendum: How do the various parts of the toolset hold up?". The descriptions are cryptic because going into greater detail would make this post even longer.

What I’m not going to do is explain how TL7 fixers came to be this way, nor am I going to suggest any specific miracle items or solutions to "fix” fixers.The point of this thread is to point out what is wrong with TL7 fixers, nothing else.


2 What are fixers: the toolset
A list of the various parts of the fixer toolset. The cryptic description I promised is found in section 9.

2.1 Fixer support toolset
2.1.1 Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- long hot 2904hpm
- short hot 5400hpm

2.1.2 Fixer non-healing support toolset:
- runspeed buff (+800 or +720/+680)
- RK only evade buff (+79)
- ncu buff (+500)
- Damage buff (+40)
- Evade debuff (-170 or -250)
- Evade debuff proc (-170)
- RK single target Roots
- RK area and single target snares
- SL single target snares
- RK only evac nanos and fgrid
- SL+self only garden evac
- tempory item creation nanos
- Program Overload
- random buffs for sneak attack, perception, breaking and entering and the indispensable trap disarming.

2.1.3 Support toolset in perks
- NCU booster (+70)
- Spatial Displacement: root+snare removal perks on target + tempory immunity

2.2 Fixer self only toolset
2.2.1 Defining perk lines
- Careful in Battle (or defensive stance ...)
- Acrobat
- SMG mastery
- Dark kin
- Spatial Displacement

2.2.2 Defining skills
- Good (cheap) evades, runspeed, smg, tradeskills, perception and concealment, treatment and firstaid
- Decent burst, full auto, fling various ranged weapon skills
- Bad other skills, including all nano skills and body development -> low hp

2.2.3 Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- Hot procs: 2196 hpm + 2535 hpm

2.2.4 Typical weapons
- 1/3 damage template above 1k attackrating
- Pvm: hawk mk6, hawk mk5+kmp, kmp+big burger/socom
- Pvp: hawk mk 5 + onehander, rarely hawk mk6+XXX hotswap
- 2 damage procs: +40 and +60 to all damage types

2.2.5 Defining items
- NCU hacker interface
- SWS 11 and lower
- artillery+support symbiants
- pvm: dustbrigade armor + ofab
- pvp: mostly combined sharpshooters


3 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in team pve
Teams are made up out of 6 players chosen out of 14 profs. It's the 13 others that fixers are competing against for a spot in the team (under the hypothesis that there are enough people on lft and people don't just have to pick whatever is available). So ideally I would have to do a systematic comparison of fixers in comparison to each other prof, but since this is simply too much work I'll just have to trust my and others their subjective experience here.

Disclaimer: Due to changes in the game a lot of the fixer toolset has gotten a lot less useful. Other things simply don't work because of game mechanics (evade debuffs don't work against mobs with only aad,...). For others there are simply better alternatives available. If I only keep the things that work everywhere, that long list in the second post is reduced to the short list below. The things listed below are what define present day fixers role in teams:

3.1 The core team toolset of fixers:
3.1.1 Fixer support toolset
Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- 8304 hpm from 2 hots
=> 8th best heal other profession if I'm not mistaken. This healing is so low that for most teams it’s not even worth mentioning or casting.

Fixer non-healing support toolset:
- runspeed buff (+800 or +720/+680)
- ncu buff (+500)
=> I rank this toolset as the 9th to 11th most desirable.

Overall I'dd rank fixers as the 10th most desirable support profession:
=> therefore I do NOT consider fixers to be a support profession.

3.1.2 Pvm damage dealing
- Smg mastery in combination with hawk mk5+kmp5 or kmp5+socom
- 2 damage procs: +40 and +60 to all damage types
=> Because fixers have no support nanos to cast in combat they can fully concentrate on dealing damage, but this does not mean they are great damage dealers. This depends on a lot of factors, but in most situations fixers are about 9th if I recall everything correctly, ranged damage and not reliant on pets which has its benefits, I'dd say about 3/7 from the ranged profs.
=> I do NOT consider fixers to be a damage dealing profession.

3.1.3 Pvm tanking
- Best evades
+ low hp
=> Fixers combine having the best evades of all profs with very low hp and no other means of damage mitigation. Fixers have no large taunts and only have mediocre damage available for agro control.
=> I’m unsure where to rank them, but anyways: NOT a tank.

3.2 The sum of parts
Tl7 fixers are not support, no damage dealer and no tank. So fixers are a hybrid. Being a hybrid doesn't necessarily mean the profession is not desirable, but since fixers don't excel anywhere and are outclassed by a lot of the other profs in more than 1 of the categories (often all, see Cour’s post below for an example), and a team only has 6 spots: fixers are a last minute filler and nothing more (except for first DB instance).

3.3 An example of how fixers are completely outclassed by another profession

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cour

A support toolset comparison that really bothers me is Fixer vs. Soldier just to give an example:

Soldier: Defined as being Tank+DD class, often the key element of a successful group

Fixer: I think is best described as half DD+ half Support, more of a filler or let's say "6th man", you invite a Fixer when the core of the team already stands

Soldier Support Toolset:
- 25-30% Reflects meaning damage done to all team members is greatly reduced
- damage aura usually 99 or 107 +damage (overwrites highest Fixer Damage buff starting with Heighten Fight, a level req 100 Nano) = damage done by all teammembers except NT is notably increased
- Supressive horde Perk is a special that gives a big boost to +damage to all team members (+220 at level 220), it only runs shorty but is on a short recharge, and if you got more than one soldier in team you can cycle the special, meaning it will be up almost all the time = great damage increase for all team members (except NT again :P)
- Full automatic targeting = minor AR increase for everyone that wants/needs it, not a huge thing but it still will make things slightly easier and might push some teammembers over the limit needed to perk bosses, might also mention that AR/RE/pistol Mastery has the same effect for some other profs, also worth mentioning is Riot Control, for helping classes like pistol docs/advs to reduce burst cycle/ increase burst AR
- Offensive Steamroller, definately not a very important buff but still I've always seen this wanted by docs.
- Guardian Perk: Reflect transfer special, that might save a Tank/Doc if things go bad... this perk is especially "supporty" in my eyes ;o

Fixer Support Toolset
- NCU Buff: More place to store buffs for all teammembers, sure it's nice when buffing for raid/tower pvp encounters, but most people don't calc NCU buff in when deciding on NCU setup, so with NCU buff the usual situation is that everyone but the Fixer / some profs like keeper that have it really rough on NCU will end up with alot of unused free NCU space, and this is no benefit at all.
- Hots: I guess they can take a little stress off the healers, and are nice if you have no "real" heal profession available, but fixer is like Josephina pointed out nowhere near the top of healing table, and usually the HoTs don't do anything at all in an "oh sh*t" kind of situation. Generally people don't really seem to care if a Fixer casts long hots/team hot/any hot at all, because it doesn't seem to make much of a difference I guess.
- Runspeed: Everyone just wants GSF and then runs off with great speed, it's really not a reason to actually team with a fixer. It seems like FC tried to change this with SL RS auras but I can't say they succeeded.
- Team transportation: I have to point out that this ability can be occasionally very nice, f-gridding+meeping a 17.7 quest team is very nice imo, I felt useful. It's generally a nice and useful ability on RK, in SL tho, where alot of the teaming in AO happens, fixer can't "grid" teammembers, MP/Eng got the team transportation Nanos. Also team evac in BS would probably end up with the Fixer on 5 new ignorelists. ^^
- Damage buff +40, like mentioned gets overwritten/outperformed by level req 100 soldier nano.

Running out of time to post here, but my point is: Why does Soldier, a prof with better Tank and DD ability than Fixer, also have better support for the team? This just seems to be very wrong to me. (Don't mind any spelling mistakes please :P)

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4 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in solo pve?
In solo pve there's no direct competition between professions for a spot on a team, but there are huge differences in performance so certain professions are more suited for soloing then others. Most of the endgame soloing in AO is done against easy grey mobs, but what I’d like to try and establish is that fixers are in fact a bad choice if you want to roll an endgame soloing profession (to solo any of the larger challenges).

Disclaimer: Due to changes in the game several parts of the fixer toolset have gotten a lot less useful. Some simply don't work because of game mechanics (evade debuffs don't work against mobs with only aad,...). If I only keep the things that work, that long list in the second post is reduced to the short list below. The things listed below are what define how tl7 fixers solo. A cryptic description of their usefulness can be found in the addendum.

4.1 The toolset of the soloing fixer:
4.1.1 Fixer survival traits
Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- 13035 hpm in the form of 4 hots

Fixer non-healing survival tools
- best evades
- capped runspeed
- Evacs both in SL and RK
[- RK snares and roots]
[- SL snares]
+ low hp

4.1.2 Pvm damage dealing[/b]
- Smg mastery in combination with hawk mk5+kmp5 or kmp5+socom
- +40 dmg buff
[- 2 damage procs: +100 damage]

4.2 How does it hold up?
Fixers still have low damage and are now missing the “add damage modifiers” that greatly help out fixer damage dealing in teams: Fixers solo relatively slow.
Survivability is also relatively low because fixers are extremely bad equipped at dealing with any kind of burst damage (or just one single hard hit). Against hard mobs fixer crowd controlling is pretty much none-existent. Apart from the unreliable evades fixers have no means to decrease incoming damage other than kiting. Kiting is not profession specific however.
The only things that sets fixers apart from everyone else is the ability to evac when needed, which allows fixers to "reset" the fight (mob has full hp again by the time the fixer gets back) without losing outside buffs in case of an emergency. I don't consider this very useful.

All in all I would say there's 8 other professions that have both better soloing survivability and damage (my opinion is mostly based on how I think everyone fairs against SL dynas and AI bosses, it's not an exact science just yet). Fixers do have an advantage in some instances over some of these because of being ranged: kiting.
3 other professions have better survivability but somewhat lower damage. I don't know how the upgraded traders hold up now in terms of survivability+damage, nor do I have a clue on how engineers survivability compares.

4.3 The sum of parts
If you're looking for a soloing profession, then look elsewhere.

5 Pvp specific mechanics
In the pvp damage calculation mechanics there are a few differences between pve and pvp. I’m going to list them here and give a short explanation on their effects on fixers.

5.1 Attack Rating much more important
Unlike in pve AR is very important in pvp. Unfortunately for fixers they now have relatively low special AR (even when counting the evade debuffs). The hawk full auto, with a ~90second recharge, has such low AR that you can consider yourself lucky if you can hit an elephant with it.

5.2 Aimed Shot
Aimed Shot (AS), originally the great pvp equalizer exactly because of the AR problem. Potentially large damage with no defence check. If in pve the mob is aware of your presence you cannot AS it, however, there is no such check in pvp. As a result AS is significantly better in pvp than it is in pve.

5.3 Pve damage is halved, but not really halved
The problem with this mechanic is that it is not the same for everyone. Even when all pve damage is halved, special hardcaps are still only applied after the damage was halved. The effect of this is that the importance of large damage specials (FA, AS, SA and dimach) is even larger in pvp than it is in pve. For fixers in specific this unfortunately means that their damage is really halved (apart from 1 full auto every ~90seconds that has to hit in the first place), while many other professions are still happily doing massive damage. During the last year several professions have received additions to be able to deal with this kind of damage, leaving the professions that couldn’t deal this kind of damage in the first place behind. Fixers are hurt particularly bad by this since their damage performance in pve wasn’t all that great to begin with.

5.4 Crit chance is more than halved
Crit chance is halved before crit reduction is applied. If you have 20% crit chance, and your target has -10% crit reduction (albtraum and some other items made this easy to obtain), then your chance to crit is 20%/2 - 10% = 0%. Because of this you can pretty much assume that you will not crit in pvp anymore.

5.5 30% hp cap
Thanks to the 40% and 30% hp caps on hits fixers used to be able to obtain respectable survivability in pvp. While fixer healing was insufficient to deal with pve damage, a purposefully low hitpoint setup allowed this bad healing to be enough in many pvp situations. 3 (and later 4) capping attacks would instantly kill the fixers, but since this required coordination of 3 (and 4) people, back when AS/SA/dimach was still the only reliable capping special, it was understandable.

Unfortunately there is now much more weapon damage that caps on fixers (soldier FA+burst, new AS weapons, more add dmg for everyone -crit decrease items did not benefit fixers-), higher AR and thus more normal hits and new dots and nukes. What’s even worse and by far the most game breaking thing for fixers: Izgimmers Triple. Whatever the claims of some people, it does easily hit a fixer in a normal setup for 90% of his hitpoints. A single player semi-reliably killing another player in a matter of seconds (and with one "shot" in group/mass pvp: it is impossible to constantly maintain 100% hp as a fixer, in the end you’dd go mad from all the itemswapping alone) from long range, over and over again, is beyond frustrating.

5.6 Damage absorbs and multiple damage types
In pve split damage types only matter for your damage output (you can't twink two +dmg modifiers as high at the same time, as you can twink out a single damage type) and if you're shooting mobs with partial reflect shields (in this case split damage is a benefit). Absorbs are extremely uncommon in pve and thus don't effect the damage output.

In pvp however, absorbs are a lot more common and this further negatively effects fixer damage. Fixer weapon damage is energy or energy+projectile. Fixer perks are projectile, chemical and poison damage; all relatively low damage. Each one of these is absorbed separately and it doesn't really need explaining what it does to fixer damage.

5.7 Why the onehander is nicknamed the craphander
Aimed shot damage is determined by a base damage number and the AS multiplier: base_damage*AS_multiplier

Calculation base damage for onehander, http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=144062
MBS: 1233
Max damage: 121 (AS only uses the max damage number)
Crit damage: 121+584

You use normal damage calculation on this:
In case of no crit: 1+(1000+1/3*233)/400*121 + "projectile_damage_modifier" = 447 + "projectile_damage_modifier"
In case of a crit: 1+(1000+1/3*233)/400*(121+584) + "projectile_damage_modifier" = 2604 + "projectile_damage_modifier"

In pvp this damage is halved, hence /2.

But there is a problem with crits in pvp: crit chance is halved before crit reduction is applied. If you have 20% crit chance, and your target has -10% crit reduction (albtraum and some other items made this easy to obtain), then your chance to crit is 20%/2 - 10% = 0%. Because of this you can pretty much assume that you will not crit in pvp anymore.

Calculation of AS_multiplier:
Each time you AS the base_damage is multiplied by a multiplier. This multiplier is a random natural number between the lowest possible multiplier (formula unknown to me) and the highest possible multiplier (CEILING("AS_skill" /95)). [ceiling = rounded up to the nearest natural number]
This roll is not 100% random but weighted with a higher chance to roll one of the lower multipliers: see http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=445153

So if you have 1900 AS skill, your highest possible AS_multiplier will be 20, your lowest 3?. The median of your mutlipliers will be 5?.

Median_aimed_shot-damage = (447 + "projectile_damage_modifier") /2 * 5
Roughly 50% of your ASs will do less damage than this, 50% more.

If a fixer has +400 damage: The median of his AS will be 2117, against someone with rrfe this becomes 1482 damage: utter crap at TL7. And that's why the onehander is called the craphander.


6 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in team pvp
Teams are made up out of 6 players chosen out of 14 profs. It's the 13 others that fixers are competing against for a spot in the team (under the hypothesis that there are enough people on lft and people don't just have to pick whatever is available). So ideally I would have to do a systematic comparison of fixers in comparison to each other prof, but since this is simply too much work I'll just have to trust my and others their subjective experience here.

Disclaimer: Due to changes in the game a lot of the fixer toolset has gotten a lot less useful. Other things simply don't work because of game mechanics (evade debuffs don't work against mobs with only aad,...). For others there are simply better alternatives available. If I only keep the things that work everywhere, that long list in the second post is reduced to the short list below. The things listed below are what define present day fixers role in teams:

6.1The core team toolset of fixers:
6.1.1Fixer support toolset
Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- 8304 hpm from 2 hots
=> 8th best heal other profession if I'm not mistaken.

Fixer non-healing support toolset:
- runspeed buff (+800 or +720/+680): gsf does not require you to be teamed or close by
- ncu buff (+500)
- Evade debuff (-170 or -250)
- Evade debuff proc (-170)
- Program Overload
- Area snares
- Single target roots
- Spatial displacement perks
=> I rank this toolset as the 11th most desirable.

Overall I'dd rank fixers as the 11th most desirable support profession:
=> therefore I do NOT consider fixers to be a support profession.

6.1.2 Pvp damage dealing
- Smg mastery in combination with hawk mk5+kmp5 or hawk mk5+onehander, hawk mk6
- 2 damage procs: +40 and +60 to all damage types
=> Like mentioned above, fixers have issues with dealing damage in pvp. Onehander does very bad damage. Full auto from the hawk misses more than it hits and is on a very long recharge. Fixer perk attacks are one after another very low damage.
=> I do NOT consider fixers to be a damage dealing profession.

6.1.3 Pvp survival
- Best evades
- Capped runspeed
- Snare&root resistance and spatial displacement
+ low hp
=> Fixers combine having the best evades of all profs with very low hp and no other means of damage mitigation. After more than a year of LE evades aren’t what they used to be anymore in pvp. Evades are the fixers only defence protecting its tiny hitpoint pool, it’s such a shame that these are so easily negated. The only good defence a fixer has is running away, and even that won’t save the fixer from a nuke flying his way.

6.2 The sum of parts
Tl7 fixers are not support, no damage dealer and no tank. So fixers are a hybrid. Being a hybrid doesn't necessarily mean the profession is not desirable, but since fixers don't excel anywhere and are outclassed by a lot of the other profs in more than 1 of the categories, and a team only has 6 spots: fixers are a last minute filler and nothing more. Déjà vu?


7 Why do I think fixers are not cutting it in solo pvp?
Solo pvp is the combination of being able to stay alive and deal enough damage/pain to kill other players.

7.1 The toolset of the soloing pvp fixer:
7.1.1 Fixer survival traits
Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- 13035 hpm in the form of 4 hots

Fixer non-healing survival tools
- best evades
- capped runspeed
- Evade debuff (-170 or -250)
- Evade debuff proc (-170)
- Program Overload
- Spatial Displacement
- RK snares
- RK roots
+ low hp

7.1.2 Pvm damage dealing[/b]
- Smg mastery in combination with hawk mk5+kmp5, hawk mk5+onehander, hawk mk6
- +40 dmg buff
[- 2 damage procs: +100 damage]

7.2 How does it hold up?
Survivability: Still only evades (and all the issues following them) in combination with low hp and bad healing. They still can’t deal with neither consistent incoming damage, nor any kind of burst damage that ignores evades.

Killing prowess: Fixers still have low damage and are now missing the “add damage modifiers” that greatly help out fixer damage dealing in teams. They’re also still suffering from the attack rating and craphander issues. Fixers have some of the worst pvp damage.

If you can’t kill them with straight damage you have to outwit them, but with what? There is nothing in the fixer toolset that cripples the opponents enough for the fixer to overcome him, no large stuns, inits debuffs,... All that's there is evade debuffs (virtual AR increase, but it does not help with the crit problem) and roots+snares that only work reliably on a minority of the professions.

Low consistent damage alone, without much in the ways of burst damage, won’t kill much.

7.3 The sum of parts
From the looks of it TL7 pvp fixers have it about as bad as it gets. Low survivability when they’re not running away and a pitiful damage output when they try to fight.


8 The end conclusion
Both in pve and pvp, TL7 fixers are one of the least desirable professions for teams and one of the worst soloers (maybe even the worst soloer).

An easy obvious approach many other game developers take with balance is to make sure that when a class is outdamaged by another class, it offers better utility to the team. That way both have (within limits) their own kind of desirability to teams. But what do you when you have a class that is outdamaged (often badly) by a whole series of other classes, who also offer better support to the team than said class?

Another approach taken to balance, is to make sure that if a class excels at soloing, it is one of the worst teamplayers. Once again this logic was clearly not applied to fixers…

9 Addendum: How do the various parts of the toolset hold up?
Not a single element in the fixer toolset makes anyone go: “Wow!”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the sum of the various parts makes for a bad profession. In this section I’m going to list how the various tools of fixers hold up in today’s tl7 game.

9.1 Fixer support toolset
9.1.1 Fixer specific healing: heal over time
- long hot 2904hpm:
Best of its kind, but it is only very minor healing unfortunately. In teams most players will be topped of on hp all the time so this buff heals far less in effect.
- team short hot 5400hpm:
The lack of intermediate short hots, between the one with 809MM requirement and the top one, is a major setback for leveling tl7 fixers.
=> 8304hpm => 8th healing profession if I’m not mistaken

9.1.2 Fixer non-healing support toolset:
- Runspeed buffs:
PVE: 2 other profs can permanently reach the runspeed softcap selfbuffed, some others are close, runspeed buffs still have their uses today, but not like it used too (+720 when you have 800 means a lot more than +800 or the same +720 when you already have 1900). I still consider this the most useful part of the fixer toolset however.
PVP: In pvp Gridspace Freedom is the runspeed buff, it’s long duration means that while players want this buff, it is no reason to team the fixer. Even when it is a very popular buff, it brings no glory to the fixer. During wars tl5 fixers can easily cast it as well.
- RK only evade buff (+79):
Pretty small evade buff. Better buffs are available from a few other professions. Mostly a nice side effect of GSF.

- NCU buffs:
Noone really needs ncu buffs, certainly not when SL nanos made the need for ncu less and every prof can get plenty of ncu on their own with +128ncu memories. It is now possible for players from other professions to get sufficient ncu without fixer buffs. Players build their setups without calculating in the ncu buff, when they do team a fixer the ncu buff is now mostly redundant.

- Damage buff (+40):
Teamed: You can pretty much count on every team having at least 1 soldier, this buff is almost guaranteed to be overwritten.
Solo: Every bit counts and it’s not like your short on ncu. Mostly other players don’t ask for this buff, sometimes they don’t know it even exists funnily enough.

- Evade debuffs (-420):
PVE: Many mobs only have aad and these buffs suffer from the same problem as the trader drains before they drained aao as well. Even when the mobs do have evades these debuffs don’t do that much: most mobs die very fast; most mobs already have low evades; rarely it makes a difference and when it does, it mostly works like a minor crit buff for the attackers.
PVP: The high NR check makes the -250 debuff hard to land. Usually the problem of the fixer is not just hitting the opponent, rather hitting him hard enough. Because of crit decrease on players this buff does not increase the chance to crit, as a result the survival of many professions is unaffected by this buff. Still nice to have, but not profession defining.

- Snares&roots:
PVE: A problem with snares is that many hard mobs are immune against them or have capped range requiring the entire team to use line-of-sight if possible (this has never happened in AO for me yet). As such it is almost entirely a soloing tool. On RK: if you can snare/root it you’re almost guaranteed to be able to solo it toe-to-toe.
PVP: Snare&root resists at tl7 are extremely common now. The bad nanoskills of fixers means they are increasingly harder too land on the professions that are still affected by them. Pet professions can spam their snare/root remover for pets much faster than a fixer can spam snares. Other items are available without profession locks: motr, tacky hack, purifying rods,…

- SL single target snares:
PVE: Used only in the shadowlands, because on RK the area snare is still simply superior. This debuff comes with a few downsides: capped cast-time at 1s; on higher level mobs it has a 75% chance of casting a negligible snare instead; only 60s duration; the snare only takes effect after the mob stops moving; relatively high nanocost. SL snares can help with some SL dynas that don't have capped range + aren't too high in level, but I don't think there's many of those left and that can't be killed toe-to-toe yet.
PVP: Absolutely useless because of the short duration.
- RK single target snares:
Very hard too land in SL by design. Area snares debuff runspeed more. They do have a use in pve because they don’t have capped cast-time and also a lower breaking chance than area snares.
- RK single target Roots:
PVE: Very hard too land in SL by design. Pretty useless for a tl7 fixer (see above).
PVP: Nice against very few profs (see above).
- RK area snares:
PVP: this snare still has the most use because of the ease with which it can spammed and the pretty large debuff. Even though players have high snare resistance and NR, this nano is an area affect so you’re almost bound to affect some people. Not what it used to be, but still somewhat nice.

- RK only evac nanos and fgrid:
RK only: no SL, ends apf for the next 7hours,… These are buffs that rely on a consistent world of Rubi-Ka, since that is no longer the case, these buffs have lost most of their merits. It’s nice to go shopping or help a lowbie, but it has no prolonged utility and doesn’t convince anyone to team the fixer. For tower wars any tl4+ fixer available can give fgrid.
- SL+self only garden evac:
Soloing utility while in SL. Capped cast-time at 3 seconds and requires the fixer to be wearing the right garden key: not that useful, a major step back in comparison to the RK ones.

- tempory item creation nanos:
Utterly useless.

- Program Overload
PVM: Utterly useless.
PVP: 175% defence check makes it extremely hard to land. Players can defend against it by filling their NCU with expertises of the right schools. The only important nanos that can be cancelled by this are: Dance of Fools, Limber, Defensive Stance, Deceptive Stance and ncu buffs. It can land on advies and fixers (forget about landing it on MAs), it is majorly disruptive against fixers IF it lands.

- the random buffs:
PVM: Fluff that has no impact on solo or team performance in combat.
PVP: Minor perception buffs that stack with adventurers Stare. Minor conceal buff that stacks with leet.

9.1.3 Support toolset in perks
- NCU booster (+70):
Redundant for everything but twinking lowbies.
- Spatial Displacement: Root+snare removal perks on target + tempory immunity:
PVM: useless. If players do get rooted/snared, those debuffs usually fall outside the removed schools.
PVP: Fixers rarely need to unsnare/unroot themselves and can thus use the top 3 perkactions to help others. Not profession specific. Not helpful for everyone else because most professions already have their own way to deal with snares/roots.

9.2 Fixer self only toolset
9.2.1 Best evades
- Defensive Stance (= a slightly crappier version of Careful in Battle since it can be cancelled by Program Override): crit immunity
- Acrobat
- Dark kin
- Good (cheap) evades
- SWS 11 and lower

Evades have 3 different modes: 1) they work too good and you nearly don't get hit at all; 2) there are both hits and misses; 3) the evades don't work at all. In mode 3 you're toast and you have to try kiting. In mode 2 there will be strings of hits, in this case the rest of the profession’s/team’s toolset determines your ability to deal with the burst damage. In mode 1 you can go to Youtube.

PVM: The AR of a mob is entirely dependant on mob design. Mob damage also increases linearly (I think it's linearly at least) with AR, which means that the more chance a mob has to hit you, the harder the hits will be as well. Mostly grey and green content falls under mode 1. Old content generally falls under mode 2. Old very hard and any new hard content falls under mode 3.
PVP: All the aad means fixers are the hardest profession to perk, currently they can only be perked by perks that were designed to circumvent defence checks (f.e. Easy Shot) or with help of perks that were designed to nullify evades (f.e. Mongo Rage). Currently all professions fall in some way under mode 2, but there are still huge discrepancies amongst the AR of the various professions. AS ignores evades. Nanos only check Nano Resist at which fixers do not excel.

9.2.2 Damage dealing
- Smg mastery:
The best ranged weapons perkline in my humble opinion, shared with soldiers.
- kmp5 + bigburger/socom:
Kmp5 burst and fling, capped recharge. Bigburger or Socom FA, capped full auto recharge. Raising pistol is costly, but it helps a lot with damage. The Socom requires simply the best of equips possible (1875 full auto to cap recharge). Split damage types: setup benefits from a combination of +proj and +energy damage. Bad AR on the pistol. => Probably the best pve damage, useless in pvp.
- hawk mk5+kmp5:
Burst and fling: capped recharge. Both energy damage: benefits greatly of +damage. Ip-costly. Full Auto has a 90+ seconds recharge; mediocre AR; hits hard in pve; too low attack rating in pvp makes it unreliable on some professions, simply bad on others.
- Hawk mk5 + onehander.
PVE: inferior to MK5 or kmp5 + Socom/Bigburger, so I’m not going to discuss it.
PVP: Pvp specific game mechanics affect the performance of the onehander, I’ve discussed this elsewhere.

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A link to the thread with an explanation as to why I bothered writing this thing: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=531899

If AO revolved around RK mission blitzing, shopping for items off gms and tower griefing teams fixers would be the best prof by far.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Josephina

5.4 Why the onehander is nicknamed the craphander

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That'd be my fault :p

I saw this "age" coming so I jumped the boat long ago. I feel sad when I think of how fun it was being a fixer, how the best most fun profession in AO turned into utter crap in front of my eyes.

Very nice post(s) Josephina, as I read it I was thinking "wtf you read my mind a year ago".

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Originally Posted by Pafpuf

That'd be my fault :p

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*huggle*

Don't beat yourself up, you discovered projectile damage eventually. :)

Yeah 4 days after I started pvping *shrug* what's that have to do with anything ?

Thei might be the wrong place to ask ^^ [LOL] but i wanna make a pure PVP tl7lvl220 character and the only 2 proffs im thinking about is DOCs and FIXERs....any suggestion?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Galilei

I'd like to know what amount you consider low hp in team pvm tanking? I've had max 21k HP (rare occasions) on my fixer when tanking in teams and thought that was pretty high hp amount and with few more items that I can think of, my HP would have been even higher. ;)

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An example with made up numbers: If you have a player with 15k hp and a player with 20k hp; both get buffed by 10k; which of those two players will have the lowest hp? I'm also not speaking out about the actual difficulty of encounters, only about the relative strength of fixers in comparison to the other professions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pafpuf

Very nice post(s) Josephina, as I read it I was thinking "wtf you read my mind a year ago".

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You reminded me about something: it's just over a year ago that Albtraum and the 30% cap got introduced, time to celebrate? ;)

by the time you were done writing it you could've had a solja at 220.

but anyways. you aimedshot paragraph is faulty. look in the thread you copied it from for further detail.

and fixahs do have a taunt. it's called sl snare. taunts for up to 1,8k per snare. not much but still there.

It's been almost 2 years since I PvP'ed and I notice that much of what you're saying was still true all the way back then. I would add though, that it didn't stop us from being badass in pvp (i.e. being a hybrid, master of none, medium damage, mediocre healing, that stuff). All of that stuff in the parentheses was intended ever since 14.4 when FC finally started working on the fixer profession. The most enjoyable part about being a fixer in PvP was that you would have to use your own imagination to circumvent those obstacles...there are really few professions in AO that have seen as much pioneering as fixers.

I think where things go wrong is how general game mechanics changed. Personally, the reason why I don't play AO anymore is because of the way they reformed reflect and reduced max damage to 30% caps, and of course this paragraph by you masterfully sums up another major problem I have with the game:

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But there is a problem with crits in pvp: crit chance is halved before crit reduction is applied. If you have 20% crit chance, and your target has -10% crit reduction (albtraum and some other items made this easy to obtain), then your chance to crit is 20%/2 - 10% = 0%. Because of this you can pretty much assume that you will not crit in pvp anymore.

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My biggest beef with AO was that damage kept on getting nerfed, patch after patch after patch since launch. You can literally count on one hand how many times the damage situation got better for gun profs over the past 7 years of this game. The fact is that the 30% damage cap is nothing more than a free lunch for those PvP'ers who weren't innovative enough to find their own ways to reduce damage taken in pvp. Throw that in with the fact that just to freakin reach 30% damage ASes, fixers have to work even harder, even with reinforce slugs up thanks to the critdecrease items. This is the most rotten apple of them all. There is just no signature-AO out-of-the-box brainstorming that can get around the way the current pvp mechanics are.

I'd say this is a pretty textbook example of how 'adding more content instead of nerfing' is no different than direct nerfing.

Guys i had a nice fixer ai armor nice symbs good ai lvls and evades stil eni prof that reaches 2,9k ar or more kicks my ass evades suck sow baddd..... unles there are gimps that hardly scratch me but even thouse learn to use mongo rage or as chain.

Sow i reroled a agent he is 215 with not sow great ar or hp but stil kills a **** load compared to the fixer and he can take alot more damege thks to ch or tms (depending on fp) as for buffs long live fp fixer for gsf then use true profesion (maiking fixer buffs absolite)

My point is fixers are dead a loong time ago since fc gave them crap damege and crap evades ow btw perks suck even more neaw thks to the 1.3k layers at nt and enfo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wishstar

My point is fixers are dead a loong time ago since fc gave them crap damege and crap evades ow btw perks suck even more neaw thks to the 1.3k layers at nt and enfo.

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Yeah this is also a thing that should be mentioned. Fixer damage it split into too many different damage types (Burst, FA, Reg Hits = Energy, AS + SMG Mastery perks and CoLA perks = Proj, Conc Perks = Chem/Fire, Dark Kin perks = Chem/Poison), this makes our damage output against absorbs like Cocoon, NT/Enf Layers, NM absorb thingie, Shade absorb thingie very low.

Personally I only realised this in full extent when the new PvP killcounters were introduced, and I wondered why I didn't score any kills vs opponents that used some sort of absorbs. Takes a fixer ages to eat through absorbs while there are other profs that can oneshot a freshly popped cocoon with 11 sec specials. :P

Different damage types seem like a kinda random game element imo (especially when looking at our ai perks) that just happens to be a disadvantage for fixers in pvp.

Don't worry Cour try and atack a enfo with his new 500 heal from mongo you wont scratch him if he uses layers and with there 3k plus ar you wont survive to long if you chose to tank him he dosent need mr or perks to kill you

Playing my TL7 Fixer makes me incredibly happy in some aspects of the game...

And in others quite sad :( Probably why I wonder "if it's worth it" to finally ding 220, finish last couple researches, and pump hundreds of millions into him just to be pretty decent but not good enough in most of the previously mentioned aspects (solo SL/RK, teaming, PvP)

Thanks for pointing out the absorbs Wishstar and Cour.

I've added the following:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Josephina

5.5 Damage absorbs and multiple damage types
In pve split damage types only matter for your damage output (you can't twink two +dmg modifiers as high at the same time, as you can twink out a single damage type) and if you're shooting mobs with partial reflect shields (in this case split damage is a benefit). Absorbs are extremely uncommon in pve and thus don't effect the damage output.

In pvp however, absorbs are a lot more common and this further negatively effects fixer damage. Fixer weapon damage is energy or energy+projectile. Fixer perks are projectile, chemical and poison damage; all relatively low damage. Each one of these is absorbed separately and it doesn't really need explaining what it does to fixer damage.

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Hmm. coon is a big obstacle indeed.
Makes me wonder if a fixerish nano would be in place here.

nanocrystal Hack coon
Deactivates the defenders coons.
defend : nano resist 100%

It wouldn't be too easy to land, but would give us at a small chance of killing
adventurers, engineers, enforcers, keepers.

Currently it is that we simply cannot kill those 4 profs. Against good ones it is already very difficult to force them to use coon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zadamm

Hmm. coon is a big obstacle indeed.
Makes me wonder if a fixerish nano would be in place here.

nanocrystal Hack coon
Deactivates the defenders coons.
defend : nano resist 100%

It wouldn't be too easy to land, but would give us at a small chance of killing
adventurers, engineers, enforcers, keepers.

Currently it is that we simply cannot kill those 4 profs. Against good ones it is already very difficult to force them to use coon.

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Sorry to smash your hopes but advys got heal /heal perk/ evade perk and good ar and 2 caping specials sneack and dimach(also swaping as some of them) sow a advy if he int gimp and afk you wont kill.
Engeniers got blokers (that covers all couse with ower perks if you take out with his h delta and most are solitus that have another 500 hot 2k hp you are uber :D ) plus a engy will kill you with pets if you dont kite him like madd man and run away
Enfos can cast layers or just use imp mongo to heal you wont land a as on them more then 1.5k and the normal hits are crap, on the other hand a enfo when he gets near you you will notice him well actualy your hp will notice.
Keepers.... come on be f serius with there static aad and evades and heal perks and aura?? he can f sit and let you atack him

Ow and Josephina we are the only prof that has dumb perks come on ower prks do 500-1,5k damege neaw if that is dameget to hurt a 220 player with 15k plus hp (wich almost all have) then i think FC is stupid others got slice&dice that does 5k damege at least and painlance for 3k minimum plus there normal wepon does 1k plus in pvp damege while ower wepon does 600 (le wepon) 150 craphander.
Soldiers got burst fa and as capped as atack time plus good damege perks and nice nanos for agent (refering to one foo in the grave or RI)

As for pvm sorry but a shade has tons of more solowing capability then us they can get same evades us as or more decent thks tot he drains (think is -350 ar and +420aad a total of 720 almost as ower back item) they got uber heal perks for pvm TR line recharge 40 sec plus a hot that heals same amount (plus if you constanlty recast it it heals more) as ower hots...i sow a shade solo a zod capricorn sow f it... ower evades are **** i got 1.950 aad on fixer and maneged to get 2.4k evade close with perks dawn tried with evades up and cib perk up to fight a 260 mob (not dyna alb moob) i can tell you with 6.4k def aad and evade calculated he stil hited me until i had to run or die. Same thing happened with a soldier in bs true he mised alot but dam he landed some burst and fa on me after 30 sec max i had to run wich is wiered comared to his max 3.5k ar and my 6.4k def wth does 2.9k difrence betwen ar and evades mean **** neaw or what??

Hmm. I don't know about your fixer.
But having coon cancel would allow my fixer to kill lot more enfos, keepers, adventurers (not sure about engineers).