Arc_Salvo

Thanks for the short, but informative post, Pippy!

Answered a lot of my questions in an easy to read format.

[ QUOTE ]
I see the thread in the General PvP section is still going strong with all the melee talking points being trotted out.

It will all come up here again too I am sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

Meh, let the debate start if it's going to. I for one, am not getting sucked into it again.

As far as I'm concerned, _Castle_ and the other devs in charge of balancing know our issues, and will work 'em out after I7 and probably by I8, I'm thinking.

I really do hope they listen to our more reasonable suggestions.

For instance, 20' attacks to 50' and 40' cones to 60' (and a minimum range of 50' for any "ranged" blaster attack) wouldn't break anything, and would almost definitely fix a lot of stuff.

I don't know about you guys, but I trust _Castle_ to fix our issues the way he fixed Stalker/Scrapper issues.

If new Claws (which I'm actually excited to play now) is an indication of anything, I'm betting we'll see some positive changes to the more eyebrow raising problems with our sets.

Of those characters listed, I only know Bayani, and LiquidX's Omega Ranger, now that Liquid's announced that it's his characters.

So congrats, Bayani and LiquidX! You two are the only guys I actually know (know of really) in that cameo!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Sorry, just rambling.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's OK, I prefer your rambling to the peanut gallery calling me a troll.

~Gabriel

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, don't worry about 'em. Either got agendas they're trying to forward, or have honest differences in perspective that are valid, that you may not be seeing, or they aren't seeing your perspective.

In any case, Pilcrow's talking about how Kinetics isn't as good as other defenders at preventing incoming damage from killing you IF the enemies are powerful enough that Kinetics/'s heal and debuffs aren't enough to keep the team from dying before they can use the uber damage buffing to wipe out the spawn.

In those cases, another Defender with more powerful team damage mitigation would be better.

You seem to be talking about how Kinetics/ is superior to those defenders when the team has enough surviveability already (including what Kinetics/ provides) to where the damage buffing can actually kill the spawn before damage over time becomes a factor.

By Pilcrow's definition (I believe) he's excluding your ideal situation for Kin/. He's not arguing that damage can't be mitigation, just that damage is only mitigation if you can survive long enough to use it as mitigation, as I said.

As for Blueeyed, he's a guy I respect and like in general, but I think he took your post a bit personally, despite its light-hearted intent, and your admission that Sonic/Kin is competitive with Blasters with potentially more versatility and surviveability.

I honestly don't think that this topic is getting worked up over, because there are real problems in the world that are getting worked over about that I think more people should pay attention to, but that's just me. I also believe that we should try to be more civil and understanding towards each other than we are because I honestly think that most of the world's problems stem from the fact that people just don't care about other people as much as they should, and that everyone would be better off if they put more effort into caring for the people around them rather than trying to forward their own agendas.

Not to say that people shouldn't express or opinion or try to prove their points when they think that they have a good point to make, just that they shouldn't care about their opinion so much that they're willing to disdain or act maliciously against other people because they care more about their opinions than they do about other people.

I'm not trying to condemn anyone by saying this, just trying to express that the world'd be a lot better of a place to live in if our biggest priority was trying to help our fellow man or woman, and I guess by association, so would the forums.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's pretty weak at protecting teammates. Heals them well, but that's far from complete protection.


[/ QUOTE ]

You must be joking. This game is about damage - offense truly is the best defense. With Speed Boost, Siphon Power, and Fulcrum Shift (with Transference from time to time), a kinetics is arguably assuring the success of his team in ways unachievable by any other support character.

It all depends on how you define defense, I suppose. Whether defended or buffed, the end goal is to kill things before they kill you. I'd rather kill things faster than kill them at the same speed more safely.

~Gabriel

[/ QUOTE ]

I somewhat agree, but have to qualify your statement by saying that Offense is the best defense if you can survive the incoming damage while you're killing them faster.

This can be as little as surviving the alpha strike before flattening everything but the Lt's (or sometimes even the LT's) on a good offensive team, but if you can't survive the incoming damage long enough to leverage your own insane damage potential, I find that defense > offense, which you see more in COV than COH.

Man, the second-rate or nonexistent buff-debuff/control/tanking in COV can make for some very inefficient or outright gimpy teams compared to COH.

And all these ignorant people saying "this mission's too easy, let's add 3 people who don't contribute any damage mitigation whatsoever, but tons of +con enemies AND increase the difficulty level"

...and then they're shocked when the first spawn kills the entire team, even with "pulling".


Sorry, just rambling.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyhow, have fun doing that, but realize that if you're ever on a team with a Blaster, by buffing him with stuff like Speed Boost, siphon power, and debuffing the resistance of the enemies, you're transferring all those buffs you're enjoying solo to him, and that Blaster has a 500% cap.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is that before or after he screams "heal me" as he's running for the nearest elevator with 6 +3 mobs in hot pursuit?

[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn't really happen all too often past the Hollows. Seriously.

Especially in the 25+ range. The higher you go, the more you're liable to find paranoid Blasters that won't even stay on your team unless they believe they have enough mitigation and aggro control to allow them to blast safely.

AOE types like Fire/ or Archery/ in those ranges are espeically paranoid about aggro, and will not attack a spawn unless it's been taunted or controlled enough to where they know they'll survive.

You probably got Lucky, People's Fist.

My Elude and Toggles and passives are all 3-slotted with defense SO's, and even with Elude up and -6- Extra Lucks, Elite Boss Chimera auto hit me every single time.

I ended up just popping 12 enrages to cap myself, and then ran in and beat the crap out of him as quickly as I could, and then healed myself with greens every time he popped me one.

Even then, it took 2 tries to kill him.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not even going to question you math.... because Simply put... I don't care. But if I were you I'd avoid public displays of how "geat" a power combo is. You're attracting the nerf happy goons who run this game. Now scrap all this talk of defenders almost reaching blaster damage levels and get back to bashing vigilance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, ZOMG, v1g1l4nc3 sux, u R msut BUFF D3F3nD4rZ, d3vz!1!!!!!111!


See what I just did? You've got to be doing more of that and less of this "my defender can do almost Blaster damage, and can self-heal, self-endurance heal, and have a second recharge buff besides hasten AND debuff his enemies"

Anyhow, I don't know that a Kin/Sonic can outdo all Blasters (AOE's are a factor that limit Sonic's potential, and a more efficient attack chain that Blasters can have + blaps can be a compensating factor)

But I do see that a Kin/Sonic can be very close to a Blaster (and better than some) with all the buff/debuff advantages you specified.

Heck, just when I read your title, I though about 3/4s of the stuff you talked about in your post before even reading it, given how prone I am to thinking of how to min/max with various sets, and how more min/maxed sets compare to less min/maxed sets and in what situations. And I agree with many of your points, and honestly believe that despite having lower hitpoints, a Kin/Sonic defender can quite possibly be a better overall soloer than a Blaster.

Anyhow, I don't know if the devs'll nerf either Kin/ or /Sonic for defenders, as those sets are balanced the way they are when combined with any other set.

Same way I know they probably won't nerf Fire/ or /Fire for tanks, even though a Fire/Fire Tank (or Brute) can give a Blaster damage a run for its money (Fire/Fire Brutes give BLAPPERS a run for their money, and with powerful aoe to boot!) because they're balanced when combined with other primaries or secondaries.

Anyhow, have fun doing that, but realize that if you're ever on a team with a Blaster, by buffing him with stuff like Speed Boost, siphon power, and debuffing the resistance of the enemies, you're transferring all those buffs you're enjoying solo to him, and that Blaster has a 500% cap.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

FYI: my first COH character on Live was (is) a Fire/Fire Blaster.


[/ QUOTE ]

GIMP!

[/ QUOTE ]

Aw c'mon, it's not gimp when you've got a good team! Fire Breath + Fire Ball + Fire Sword Circle does BI equivalent to Thunderous Blast, and all 3 attacks fit in the aim+buildup time window.

And you can pull off thi combo at level 16 with both aim and buildup for preternaturally good AOE damage, although unless you have a Tank and a Controller Backing you up, you usually end up dead if you try it.

Anyhow _Castle_, if you're still reading, any opinions about the idea to give Blasters range in their primary? 20' attacks to 50' for example.

Howabout my idea to add one SO's worth of recharge to every single target ranged attack (or most of 'em anyway) to allow for easier chaining, given how Blasters can usually only get 3 non-situational single target attacks (not counting aoe fillers) to chain pretty much period?

I'm of the opinion that a range buff to the 20 footers + a recharge buff would solve many of our "we don't have range!" complaints, along with much of the "our ranged damage sucks because we don't have good ranged attack chains" issues.

Awesome, thanks for the public response, _Castle_! Now I don't have to write out what you said in your pm to me (in respone to me pointing out my Snipe idea thread), because you've given out that info (plus some details) here.

Anyhow, more thanks once again, for all your hard work!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, there was a typo in the description of a blaster power that is now fixed.

There ya go, bug fix!

[/ QUOTE ]

Pilcrow casts Redname_Post at Cynicism
Cynicism takes 1 HP
Cynicism casts Witticism at Pilcrow
Pilcrow takes 1000HP
Cynicism has defeated Pilcrow

[/ QUOTE ]

You know Pilcrow, if you didn't suck because you're an Illusion Controller, stuff like this wouldn't happen.

But you do suck because you are an Illusion Controller, so this stuff does happen.

That just goes to show you, kids: never make an Illusion Controller so that you don't end up getting defeated by Cynicism like Pilcrow does.

Oh, and also so that you don't suck because you're an Illusion Controller, and in Soviet Russia, Illusion Controllers suck because they're you.

(The More you Know!)

Well Mizery, I spend entire levels out of debt... but then again, I almost never solo.

I like teams with at least one tank, backed up by at least one controller, and prefer having 1-2 more Controllers/Defenders to make absolutely sure I'm safe.

At the very least, I like to duo with a Tank, who tends to keep the aggro off me, while I nuke the hell out of what they're fighting. I particularly like /Fire Tanks, and especially Fire/Fire tanks, as their AOE's combine synergistically with mine to make annihilating up to +2 (and sometimes +3) Lt's easily doable in just the alpha. Fire/Fire/Fire Tanks FTW.

Makes for some fun Tank-Magery, albeit with two AT's (Specifically, A Tank and a "Mage") instead of one.

Anyhow, like everyone else has said, I must admit that I'm also shocked that the devs have taken so long to do something about our issues. At the very least, I would've expected them to take the taunt auras out of our secondaries and replace them with something useful, and then do something about /Fire Manipulation by now.

And hell, they aren't even giving us any useful info on if/when they will do anything, if at all, though I'm sure that they have been planning to do something about Blasters for some time now.

edit: Anyhow, I just hope they're going to do something about our well-known and well-publicized issues.

I still think that most sets just need some subtle tweaks here and there to be fixed. Well, subtle in my opinion anyway.

[ QUOTE ]
The 14-16 in my sig is from the "Issue 4 sprint to 50." At some point around level 43 or so [I don't remember exactly] I started counting how many times Boltcutter, my Scrapper, died, vs how many times Aurora Forge [my wife; Fire/fire blaster] died. She died 1.14 times as much as I did.

(She did spend a WHOLE lot more time staring at her screen, mezzed, than I did. And I agree that that is a problem.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Was she soloing, or duoing with you? If she was duoing with you, it's a whole different ballgame than if she was soloing. I plan to get to 50 with Arc Salvo by teaming only. I really just don't like the vast amounts of mezz so many 40-50 villain groups have.

Oh yeah, and I guess my other point is that ED's nerfing of our damage made us a lot less surviveable.

I guess I wasn't clear on that either.

I had much less trouble surviving solo with my Blasters when you could 4, 5, and 6-slot for damage. Damage was a big part of my defense, as killing them before they can kill you is very powerful.

Heck, on my lower level Scrappers, I sometimes find that frontloaded damage is a better defense than anything I can grab in their secondaries at the time.

[ QUOTE ]
So with your MA/SR you went from fighting +3s ["red/purple"] to +1s ["yellow/orange" - or bosses with lots of insps] and with your AR/DEV you went from +3s including Lieuts (ie red and purple) to +2s and +1s (ie yellow and orange).

What am I missing?

[/ QUOTE ]

edit: Yeah, the other posters basically got it. My Scrapper fights more and tougher enemies than my Blasters with ease, and is in no risk of dying unless I do something totally stupid. With my Blasters, even fighting what I can "reasonably" deal with, I'm always in constant risk, and the margin for error is a lot slimmer, particularly when there's mezzing involved.

With my Scrapper, I actually spent most of my 40-50 time herding my (outdated) unyielding missions, although I never tried to herd more than +2's.

I would never think of playing that way with any of my Blasters.

[Original Post Below]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Eh, sorry, I was rambling more than I was explaining precisely.

The key factors in question are damage vs. survivability, right?

Well with Arc, I can and do solo up to +2's, but it's very risky, as if I make one false move and/or get unlucky I die very quickly, sometimes repeatedly.

Generally, I solo even cons and +1's, and if I have enough of the right kinds of insps, +2's, and if I have a lot of insps of the right kinds, +3's.

But I avoid bosses as I didn't take the blaps in /Energy, and thus have poor single target damage and mitigation.


On my Scrapper, I can fight up to +3's and +4's with regularity, but don't, because I only slotted 1 acc in all of my attacks, and find the number of misses I get when fighting +3's and +4's with my Scrapper to be annoying.

I also fight bosses, which I don't do with Arc, although I usually pop at least 1 luck to supplement /SR's toggles and passives, or just hit Elude to spare myself the trouble of micro-managing the fight.

Anyhow, my basic point is that Scrappers are still much more survivable than Blasters.

Note that I also believe that even after the nerfs, that I wholeheartedly believe that Assault Rifle/Energy (and Assault Rifle/non-devices in general) is still balanced very well vs. what Scrappers can put out. I may complain about other primaries and secondaries, but I dont' complain about Assault Rifle because buildup+flamethrower+buckshot (or m30 grenade) + full auto does 2 more BI than aim+buildup+nova, and is available every 45 seconds to me. No matter how powerful they are, individual Scrappers just can't even come close to that level of aoe carnage.

Anyhow, I also believe that with a few tweaks to primaries and secondaries, Blasters will be competetive enough overall vs Scrappers to where I'd say we'd be fixed, but I've said what I think needs to be done in enough other threads, I think.

[ QUOTE ]
Blasters lost 50% of their offensive output without a base damage increase (something Scrappers were given in trade when their defensive capacity took a hit) to offset it while gutting what little defensive capacity they could scrape together from the pools.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, I haven't thought about this in a long time, but this is true. Back in I5, even after the AOE cap nerfs, I pulled out Arc Salvo, and used a freespec on test to take him from a "decent" concept build (some on these forums would say borderline gimped) into a "min/maxed" concept build with 6-slotted Stamina and perma hasten, and 6-slotted Flamethrower with damage (it was previously slotted 1 acc, 4 damage, 1 range) to go along with 6-slotted Full Auto, and made other tweaks/adjustments to see what was the best I5 version of him I could come up with.

I remembered how I was impressed at how perma-hasten pretty much undid the nerf of Full Auto from 30 seconds to 60 (and imagining how it must have been for the 4 issues where perma-hasten dropped it down from 30 to 18 seconds, and with no aoe caps...), and how I was shocked at what bringing my non Full Auto aoe's from 4/5 damage slotting to 5/6 damage slotting did to my alpha capabilities, and what perma-hasten and Stamina did for my aoe and single target followup potential.

Well this may sound odd, but I honestly felt that the build was cheezily overpowered, and so dropped it and took a break from COH for a while, until the day I6 hit live, actually.

Then I respecced for I6, and was surprised at how much less soloable Arc was compared to how he used to be. His alpha strike capability used to allow him to handle up to +3's (including LT's) in large spawns with ease (with a couple inspirations), but now, medium (or even small) sized spawns of +2's could kill him if I made the slightest mistake, as could +1's if I got unlucky on top of making dumb mistakes. (like letting two minions close to melee... "Aw c'mon, they're only minions, how hard could they possibly hit!")

As for my MA/SR main, he did fine as long as I stopped fighting reds and purples, and downgraded to yellows/oranges, and made sure I had plenty of insps for bosses (/SR's main weakness) and I remembered thinking that "Hey, Scrappers still have defenses to fall back on now that they don't have as much damage, but for Blasters, the alpha-kill was most of the 'defense'"

[ QUOTE ]
They can't solo AVs anymore

[/ QUOTE ]

Nah, you can still solo -1 and -2 AV's. It can be pretty darn hard depending on the AV in question (heck, some AV's are just flat out impossible even at -levels to you), and it's boring as hell and takes a very long time, and you can die real quick if you get unlucky or make the slightest miscalculation, but it can still be done.

It just really isn't worth the effort, imho. I prefer to take on Elite Boss versions, or get a team.

Plus, how often is it that you outlevel an AV mission to the extent where you can spawn a -1 or -2 or even -3 AV nowadays, now that the AV -> EB patch has gone live?

Holy Redname-Post Necromancy, Batman! We're delving into this again?

Well, all I've got to say is that I expect them to get in some fixes to Blasters by I8. Issue 7 seems way too time-consuming for the devs even without adding extra fixes onto it, but I expect by Issue 8 they'll have enough time to fix stuff and add stuff COH side.

Pilcrow, might I suggest reposting your revised proposals in a new thread as to avoid newcomers to your thread being confused when they read your first post and assume that you haven't made any revisions?

Also: Thou doth sucketh because thou art an Illusion Controller. Yea.

I still like my quick and dirty fixes of bumping 20' attacks to 50' range, reducing the recharge of the ranged singles in Sonic/, Energy/, Ice/, and Elec/, by 33.3% (One SO's worth), and buffing these sets' aoe's a little (no more than 1-2 BI total for both non-nuke aoe's combined), and reducing Nuke timers from 6 minutes to 4.

Assault Rifle just needs the recharge buff on its singles, imho.

And for the secondaries, if we did something as simple as taking out the taunt auras and replacing them with any other useful power, that'd sure be a good start.

And approximately one DO's worth of damage in Targeting Drone would be good, if you could slot for it. It'd start at 16.66%, but you could slot it up to about an SO's worth.

As for /Fire, well, I'm sure the devs can figure it out for themselves, lots of people have posted very good suggestions.

[ QUOTE ]
I PM'd Castle about a week or two ago.

He's pretty busy with Blasters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Howabout some other devs? Hope he's sharing the burden if he can at all.

Anyways, I hope he has some news soon. I'm pretty sure the devs are aware that there are imbalances with Blaster primaries and secondaries, I just hope they care enough to fix 'em in a timely fashion, and open-minded enough to think that they should at all!

I just wish that there was a "challanged him to a duel, he won!" thingie in there too.

Arctic Sun looks a lot less like a Fox than I expected, in fact, I would even say he doesn't even look like a sun! More like a human in fact!

Ruin of Iron, hate to agree with you, because it makes for a very anti-climactic plot, but what you say rings true.

On the other hand, I've seen some very contrived stories in movies, books, tv. etc. wherein I WISHED something like what you wrote out would happen, because that's what would realistically happen isntead of what did, and plus, it'd be really funny.

Thanks for the quick reply, Troy!

I agree that only Sean Michael Fish knows for sure. I think Manticore's a complicated person, not easily pigeonholed into a "Batman" or "Archer" kind of role. He's like an amalgam of bits and pieces of several heros in such a way that he's his own person.

Kind of why we like him I guess, he doesn't fit stereotypes as easily as Positron (Man-bot in Freedom Force, anyone?) or Statesman (Super Captain America Man!) or others, although this is all a matter of opinion.