Shooters vs. defender

Hey you Mk3/4 shooters with your 3-4 weapons, how can a defender out-damage you with her mere 2 in most games?! Not even bragging, I'm sincerely wondering since I actually believe I suck at aiming and don't really have high-damage weapons equipped (even though the blast cannon is quite nice).

 

Defenders aren't doing much on my teams lol.

 

I always assume it's because as defenders we only have two weapons to focus on(before mk5) so it's easier to be more accurate than a shooter who is just spamming bullets. That's the only reason I can think of because it is a common occurrence

 

Shooters who got outperformed by a defender are either bad shooters or they screwed up. Of course it's different if the defender got legendary weapons, but most of the time a shooter should do more damage than defender.

 

Shooters are better than defender in every way right now.

 

I never tought I would say this, but I disagree with Porthos. I myself am a shooter, but I play so much better if there is a defender in front of me distracting all enemies. The don't even have to deal lots of damage. Without defenders like that matches are alot harder.

But of course that's just my experience in the 2300 infamy range, I don't know how it will be in the 4000 range

 

Sometimes people have good matches, sometimes people have bad matches, 1 match doesn't really mean a lot

 

Defenders are helpful for body blocking shots, but more capable enemies can shoot around them, or just throw a few torpedoes their way. Defenders royally suck if abandoned by their teams, and take damage too easily to be efficient meat shields. In all seriousness, that wall really does make a difference. I've noticed that teams in my (low infamy) games tend to melt whenever they are caught out 4v5, even if their 5th guy is also helping, because they don't know how to avoid shots and don't have a tank to help them. My assumption is that this isn't so much a problem in higher elo.

I've found the best dps on a Defender to be double cannons, courtesy of another forumer here. I can out dps Shooters in the early game, but not now.

 

The problem with double cannons is you have to get pretty close to the enemy but your teammates might not want to, which forces the defender to separate from the team. If I ran defender, I would go with a cannon and mortar, or cannon+burn combo.

 

cannon+burn would be better than cannon+mortar. mortars are alright for shooting over walls, but they are primarily distance weapons. if anything, torpedoes are the close range item to use, alongside cannons. either way though, defenders are in a tough spot.

 

my combo mk5 is two triple torps (one rare with two dmg perks and one speed perk, one epic with two speed perks and two dmg perks) and standard cannon( all dmg perks) its worked real well.