Adeon Hawkwood

Yes, it gets a fifth power that is a PBAoE Placate and resistance debuff.

Yeah, this is why I'd rather not see it linked to Domination. Linking it to Power Boost and Build Up would IMHO be a better option since at least all Doms with snipes get either one of those powers or a set-specific variant of it.

Not really but something to keep in mind is that the 40/60 split is based solely on the number of characters of each faction it doesn't necessarily follow that population splits are also 40/60.

And considering that the total inf value was off by at least three orders of magnitude (and possibly a lot more) I'm not sure ow much faith I'd put in that chart.

Or just watch the cutscenes on youtube .

Yeah that was my point. I was responding to Leo's post where he said:
Personally I consider the targets of the change to be Blasters, Dominators, Defenders and Corruptors. Given your posts it sounds to me like you consider it to be those four ATs plus Scrappers and Stalkers. I consider that to be a reaosnable viewpoint, I don't entirely agree with it but it's a reasonable viewpoint.

I have no clue who Leo considers to be the target of the change (hence the sarcasm).

Ok, so who WERE the changes targeted at? It clearly isn't Blasters and Dominators since they get a lot less benefit form the changes than other ATs. Obviously the snipe change is intended solely as a buff to Defenders and Corruptors that Blasters and Dominators happen to get some benefit from. Thank you for clearing that up. [/sarcasm]

I'd disagree there. NPC mezzes in this game are quite frankly insane. Changing how they work is a better long term solution than just slapping mez protection on every character. Giving Blasters mez protection would be a band-aid not a fix. It would "solve" the problem for Blasters but completely ignores the underlying problems.

And that is where we have a disconnect. Personally I consider the situation I proposed to be exaclty analogous to the snipe situation. Defenders and Corruptors are getting an awesome buff. Blasters and Dominators... aren't.

I guess if you want to be really exact then the analogy would be that Brutes get Total Focused reduced form 3.3s cast to 1s while Tankers and Stalkers get it reduced to 3s.

Stranger things have happened. I remember when people told me I was mad for requesting that the single target shields in Cold, FF and Thermal be made AoE and that doing so would break the balance of the game entirely.

Now don't get me wrong, when I ask for Snipes to be changed to Single Target attacks I don't mean keep them as they are and remove the interrupt, that would be to good. I mean remove the interrupt and rebalance them as a 12second recharge blast (which means dropping the damage and probably upping the cast time to around 2seconds).

Yes they repeat. After the first couple of times you will be utterly, utterly sick of them. You'll also learn which ones are nice and quick and which ones are extremely annoying.

I like situational powers, especially if they don't need much in the way of slotting. I'm less fond of situational attacks due to the large amount of slotting most attacks need and the fact that they rarely provide much advantage over just taking a different attack.

That being said I don't actually want all ATs to get Perma-FastSnipe, I wouldn't object to it but I believe it's a poor solution. What I want is for either the FastSnipe feature to be changed to be more even applied across ATs or for Snipes to be eliminated entirely and replaced with standard single target attacks.

Very well: Scrappers and Stalkers are slightly worse off than Blasters but better than Dominators. They only have Build Up for FastSnipe which gives them worse uptime. However they do have better self buff mods so they require less slotting in Build Up. Happy?

That being said I do not consider the needs of Scrappers and Stalkers to be critical when discussing Snipe changes. Snipes come in three types of sets: Blast sets, Assault sets and Epic Power Pools. Epic Power Pools are, by definition, intended to be weaker than Primary and Secondary powers so I think it's ok if they don't benefit to the same degree. I think that they should be considered but their needs are secondary to the needs of those ATs that have Snipes and Primary or Secondary powers.

But they are. They are targeted primarily at the four ATs with a snipe in their Primary or Secondary Powerset and to a lesser degree at the two ATs with a Snipe in their Epic Power Pool.

How do you think Controllers feel about the snipe change? Are they excited about the fact that they can take Tactics and Kismet and get FastSnipe mode? Of course they aren't.


Except that it's only getting certain ATs to use snipes. I don't consider it a total failure but I do consider it a failure. This is basically a major change to Blast and Assault sets that provides a much larger bonus to some ATs than others.

Let's use a counter example. People still complain about the cast time of Total Focus in Energy Melee right? Suppose that the devs announced that they were going to reduce its cast time... for Brutes. How do you think the Energy Melee Tankers and Stalkers would feel?

The change may not have been aimed at a specific AT but it sure as PANCAKE hit a specific AT.

Ignoring Scrappers and Stalkers from the moment (since they rarely use snipes) there are four ATs that are affected by this change and the change affects them all to a very different amount.

Blasters: No way to do it perma, have two powers that can potentially trigger it (but one requires a lot of slotting)
Defenders/Corruptors: Can do it perma with Tactics and Kismet at level 22, a few other options in specific sets, also have an APP with To Hit Debuff Resistance
Domiantors: Most sets have to use Tactics + Kismet + Power Boost to get it at all. One specific APP can do it perma with sufficient recharge.

So the question becomes is this the right way to change snipes?
Does it make sense to implement a change that has wildly different effects on different ATs?
If a change is implemented that affects different ATs differently how does it impact the balance between the ATs?
And the BIG one: is it going to encourage players to take Snipes on their characters?

So yeah for me I think that this change is a poor way to fix snipes. The big litmus test is whether it will make snipes worth taking for characters. Speaking for myself I think that while we'll see Defenders and Corruptors taking Snipes we'll see relatively few Blasters and Dominators taking them (except for Devices Blasters).

To me that means that the change is a failure. It's making snipes "more fun to use, less completely situational" for TWO ATs but leaving them virtually unchanged for the other two.

They are maxxed out level shifts NOW. I'm assuming that the later slots will contain MORE level shifts. At that point the Alpha/Destiny/Lore level shifts would be considered the "basic" ones that you earn early in your career and the later ones would be the more advanced ones that you earn later.

I've never claimed to be a perfectly rational player. There are a few things that I really hate and two of those are missing and not being able to see enemies. Targeting Drone takes care of both of those for me on a permanent basis which makes it a lot more valuable to me than Build Up.

Technically Freezing Rain + Tactics + Kismet would be better than Targeting Drone in most situations (the exception would be in the presence of strong ToHit Debuffs which TD resists and Tactics doesn't) but giving up the higher To Hit Buff and the To Hit DeBuff Resistance of Targeting Drone would still be hard for me.

Regarding the character concept thing I'm tacitly assuming that each set gets a thematically appropriate Freezing Rain clone .

There isn't a specific announcement most weeks, there is a general sticky for it though:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291218

Old price for MMs: $15 per month
New price for MMs: $15 per month or $15 single purchase or free perk for spending a certain amount of money.

In general for a VIP you get more stuff for your monthly sub than you did Pre-Freedom (with the option to pay extra to get even more). Someone who was a subscriber and is now a Premium player gets less but also pays less (potentially $0). And you know what, I'm ok with that.

They have already stated that they will do this.