Another_Fan

IIRC master illusionists spawn pets which considerably increase their numbers, so you wind up with a master illusionist, 2 illusionists and a dark servant out of them.

Either way 60% chance of getting a 30 second mezz out of a spawn is more than enough to ruin a blaster's day.

Well that is one way of looking at it. The other is you get 50% more annoyance of being trapped in mez before you die.

It's hardly an either or situation.

That would be every other mezz chain and with 2 illusionists it would be 3/4 of the time.

It lets blasters take more but look at what it means in terms of practical survivability. When you get mezzed in a high stress situation, you go from lasting 6 seconds without the sustain, to maybe 9 with the sustain.

It's funny because I would say I run at the limit, or maybe a little beyond my build's limits. Rebirth is for me, a more satisfying power to use because when I use it I have actively saved myself. But, I am relatively sure I get more from Clarion and Barrier because, they prevent the need to actively save myself. Clarion means I don't get those panic situations of making an emp and then hitting rebirth, barrier just keeps me in better shape most of the time.

It's a good strategy, think of it as playing a mastermind.

So true, anything where you have to play the game to play the market means you just aren't making good use of the market and to borrow your phrase, "You aren't working the market, the market is working you"

Don't know how x2 to x8 came in. I was talking about the benefit when fighting full size spawns and build's that were already in the ballpark.

What are you using as the mez duration ? Aside from my own experience which is highly biased, I have looked over the shoulder of the wife while she plays. Mez from full size spawns is overwhelmingly what kilsl her, and that confirms my own experience about blasters getting killed while mezzed.

The sustain regen buff amounts to roughly 30 hp/sec (400% regen, ~1500 hp blaster). Regen isn't a goal for my builds but they typically run in the 200% range and 16 hp/sec regenerated. So if I am fighting a spawn that will kill me in 30 seconds that is roughly 66 hp/sec past my shields. The sustain power would increase my survival time to 75 seconds, but if I take a mez or lose the shield that would increase the dps I am taking to 330 + less the passive regen and would mean death in about 6 seconds.

Edit: Depending on your build barrier may also provide better mitigation than rebirth. I don't dislike rebirth but I mostly use it as a giant respite that is available every 2 minutes.

Edit: You wouldn't be hoverblasting would you ? That considerably changes things

It's definitely minor. If you don't have something to reduce your incoming damage from full spawns, even using health inspirations as fast as you can won't keep you alive, and on blasters you will likely not even get the opportunity thanks to mezz.

I don't dispute this, but very few blaster combinations come close to this and almost none of those using older power sets. Sustain makes them a little better but the people playing them are left with suffer or reroll.

Compared to the other classes that don't have mez protection or even Dominators that do have mez protection and incredible overall mitigation as well ?

Well I think you are going to have that even without the I24 changes.

From a completely non scientific sampling there are considerably fewer people who are willing to argue that blasters don't have problems and are unaware of the problems than there were when I started arguing for blaster buffs in I12. Back then when I would point out blaster weaknesses I could count on at least a couple dozen people vehemently arguing the greatness of the blaster AT or its unmatched potential. Now you see very few on that side of the argument and a few names that have stuck around have differently nuanced positions. I would guess that most people who roll blasters going forward will have a much better idea of what they are getting into than the old description of the AT ever gave them. They could still stand having their numbers on the rankings adjusted but that is minor.

You know you can stack enough clear minds to get better than mag 100 protection (esp on a toon that already has some protection). I wonder if that could be used during a keyes trial to attack Anti during the time stop.

Thanks

That sounds like a near complete skip then. Just another case of the Devs realizing where the blaster's big problem is but dancing around it rather than addressing it.

What is the duration of the protection ? At 480 I still could see it being a game changer. I would have no trouble bringing that down to once every 120 seconds while still having significant positional and typed defense on a blaster. At 600 it is probably a skip.


The sustain powers are nice but from everything that has been said they are small potatoes compared to blaster difficulty with mez. Losing 15+ points of defense when blasters get mezzed really hurts them much more than the sustain is going to help.

For an extreme case just take a blaster on a mother ship raid and note how much time you are spending mezzed because you just happened to be standing to close to the actual target.

Well blasters certainly are getting changes but from what I have seen the changes make me want to play corruptors/defenders even more than I will want to play blasters.

The sustain feature is really nice and with the exception of /Mental should free up slots in everyone's build or at least provide some flexibility.


Well with the numbers you are stating for it and without the duration, at the low end of the recharge range it sounds quite good and the high end its moving to exceptional effort to make it not that great.

The ranged changes as announced really do favor buff/debuff charcters more than blasters. Of the three changes there is only one that blasters can get significantly more out of, that would be the range increase for T3 blasts. Even in that case only Energy Manipulation can get more out of it by using boost range. The crashless nukes let buffer/debuffers maintain their toggles through a nuke, and all their combos can access a power boost type power. The snipes have a double benefit of actually increasing their damage more and being easier leveraged.

The passive buildup power depending on its chance of happening looks more powerful than regular build up simply because it doesn't require activation time.

Really need to see what the chance of build up is but some combinations come to mind.

Dual Pistols/MC
Teleport In, Hail of Bullets, Teleport Out, fire off cones.

AR/MC
Throw Sand, Full Auto, Bean Bag

Beam Rifle/MC
Stacking Stuns for dominator like play.

Fire Blast
Good single target damage, fast casting attacks to leverage the new proc, Good combo of teleport and inferno.

Rad Blast
Stacking Stuns, teleport for the PBoE nuke.

Sonic Blast
Stacking Stun with nuke and teleport to aid deployment.

Water Blast
Cone Stun + Ranged Stun Nuke.

I was under the impression it didn't have to hit any enemies.

Why not ask what needs to be true in order to make adding a the same tenth attack be of equal benefit all secondaries. If you think about it, it is nearly impossible have an attack that will be of equal benefit to all secondaries.

The simplest way to see this is to just consider the types of attacks. If the tenth attack is a cone /mental will gain less than other secondaries because if you want an extra cone you can now select it from the primary. If it is a melee attack secondaries with good melee capability gain less than those that aren't quite good at melee, and so on.

Now if you go to a direct comparison of three secondaries, and picking these to most dramatically demonstrated the point. Consider /Energy Manipulation, /Fire and /Dev and adding the tenth power of an AoE high damage mag 3 Stun. At minimum Energy gains a power that works better than the other 2 secondaries. Energy VS Fire the power simply works longer. Energy vs /Dev, The new power works longer and does more damage.

Another way to look at the question is to ask "Do /Energy manipulation combos gain more if the primary has a power boostable nuke than those that don't". The obvious comparison there would be is the new crashless nukes greater benefit for Energy/Energy or Psi/Energy ?

Agreed, but so far the only one the devs have only singled out /mental for special treatment. /Ice gets a different effect. That may be greater or may not be. What I can say is endurance can scale with endurance use, but a static recovery benefit will not.

Without seeing your calculations I can't comment. But as to the initial statement there is a very large binary benefit of having permanent snipe available. It means you can drop a ranged single target attack from your build. Edit or in the case of AR it means you actually have a full chain of st Attacks.


Dark also gains the permanent snipe and already has a a very large permanent damage buff. But it seems to be in the same position /mental is now. You can contrive situations where it performs spectacularly.

Once again this ignores the other changes, non crashing nukes with secondary and range increase in the tier 3s.

But not nearly as much fun as watching you opine on economics. I mean the privilege, we have the inventor of monopoly pricing on these boards.

He isn't interested in discussing this. Matter of fact he figures, if he uses the thread as his toilet, everyone who wants to will have to stop.

I should have realized, you were just trying to throw complete garbage on the topic and then shoot for it's all just opinion so nothing matters.

Sorry that is not the way things work. Objectively Energy Manipulation gains more from the changes than any other secondary. The only way that isn't true, is if one or more of the sustain gets considerably more than conserve energy does.

You can dance and jig all you like but at the end of the day /energy gets the 2nd easisiest snipe, and gets more from every nuke with a power boostable secondary effect.

It even gets more from the range extension for the T3 blasts. But why bother with little things.

Touch of Fear is mag 3. It can't 1 shot a boss, it can't 1 shot fear a boss.

Do you play /dark or are you just talking out your rear ?

469 replies in that thread nice short and concise. 47 by Arbiter Hawk some of which are themselves ambiguous and contradictory.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...95#post4281995

and this

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...10#post4282010

Prompts one to ask is water jet included or excluded from the 80 foot range. Which post is definitive ?


We both have to live with this if its done wrong.



You know I actually did the numbers for this earlier in the thread. For someone who insists that people who haven't sifted through the minutia shouldn't be talking or that don't have the numbers shouldn't be talking you seem to have no trouble resorting to the same when you want to make a point.

Unless you think Touch of fear is going to get your recovery above 6 end/sec good luck running the snipe chains.


You can do the exact same thing with any AoE hard controls you can stack.

That can do what ?




Let me see which is better ?

-60% to hit, and a free +78% -to hit in all your attacks that have it (which is more than you can get from)

Or having to franken slot every attack you have for -to hit.

Are you being deliberately dense or is mischaracterizing what I said all that is left to you ?

The original statement statement was :

[quote]
As of now, I'm perfectly comfortable stacking Touch of Fear, Penumbral Grasp and Smite on hard targets on my Rad/Dark. Everything else is likely dead in short order because Soul Drain + Death Shroud + Irradiate is that mean. I don't even have much defense on her and she's still pretty ridiculous. Would she be better with Power Boost? Of course, but not at the expense of Soul Drain and Touch of Fear.
[quote]

Yes I am sure you have something that works sometimes. I am really happy you have managed eating an alpha for nearly 5 seconds before you do damage without much defense.


So that would be like Build Up ? A power that doesn't do anything without other powers ?

BTW touch of fear best case without incarnate abilities is about -17%


Well first first I can have touch of fear which aggros and doesn't do damage or I can have a fast snipe which will kill what Touch of Fear will fear.

Oh that is a tough one. Let me see 150+ feet and dead, or 80 feet and feared. Have to think on that.

Not to put to fine a point on this

But the short outline talks about none of the information you are talking about.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291671


Yes because the devs have been exceptionally responsive in addressing problems with the blaster AT. [ /sarcasm]

We have some of the numbers and can certainly talk about what they mean.

Why do you have such a problem with this ?

If Cauterizing aura does provide sleep protection how valuable it is, is an interesting question. But, it isn't going to be answered by trying to shut down discussions.


Yes I understand how sleeps work. Do you have any idea how other controls work ?


You have completely missed what was said and failed to understand the mechanics.

The only way you can stack /Dark's -to hit with -to hit is with other powers that have -to hit. Seeing as you wanted to include blackstar in this, It does more -to hit for longer than the everything /dark manipulation has can muster. It isn't even a close comparison before power boost is tossed in.


You are comparing a single target melee range attack to attacks that can drop an entire spawns -to hit, and do so as a bonus effect in addition to doing damage to them ?

Glad to see you aren't using any false equivalences. [/ sarcasm]