Arcanaville

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Regardless of whether or not the 1/3 buff to the SR passives was intentional, it was an improvement to a low-powered set, which for me at least made the game feel a touch more fun.

I don't go planning my set out perfectly in advance, I create on concept, but it seems to me that nobody who plans the perfect set wants to touch these powers.

*sigh* I'm way off topic, aren't I?

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I take them. I'm not a min/maxer, but I also advocate taking them as well. Although many SR scrappers would dispute my opinion on their worth, not many would call it an uninformed opinion. So you can add me to the nobody list if anyone asks.

Especially for stalkers that are often stacking both hide and stealth on their SR defenses, not taking the passives is bordering on insane.

Not that I don't think SR needs a buff, but I'm not going to lie about my opinion of the strength of the passives to try to get one.

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Q. Will this help us hit MoG'd Paragon Protectors?

Speculate the answer is:
A. No, because it is a change to critter accuracy, not player accuracy.

Is that right?

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Yep.


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Q. Does this mean that Accuracy enhances will help us hit MoG'd Paragon protectors (and other very high defense PvE critters) but toHit buffs will not?

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Backwards. High tohit buffs help against high defense more than high accuracy. This is true in I6 now: 3-slot acc doesn't do much against MoG PPs, but focused accuracy cuts right through them. I7 doesn't change this.


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Q. Is it now completely pointless to say things like "3 slotted tactics is the equivalent of an accuracy enhancement in every power" because really that is only the case at certain values of defense, and for higher or lower values of defense, tactics is either more or less helpful than that?

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Yes, this is true now. It was also true yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and the day before...


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Q. Will there ever be a case where we get Accuracy buffs beyond the Accuracy enhancements in a power? We have many to-hit buffs but no actually Accuracy buffs, right? BuildUp says it increases accuracy but it really increases toHit, which you know because it takes toHit enhancements.

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The game uses the term "Accuracy" to refer to "Accuracy" and "tohit" interchangably. The rule is if it affects a single power, its accuracy. If it affects all your powers, its tohit. Aim is tohit. Accuracy enhancements are accuracy.

There are accuracy "buffs" beyond accuracy enhancements. The weapon draw bonus in some sets is an accuracy bonus (it affects each individual power specifically, and obviously doesn't affect *all* your attacks: it doesn't boost brawl, for example). The sniper bonus is also accuracy. The heightened "accuracy" in all radiation attacks is accuracy.

However, to the best of my knowledge, no buffing power buffs accuracy. And if you think about it, if the rule above is canonical, no buff should: all "accuracy boosting" buff powers would buff all of your attacks, because its a buff on you personally, and that means the rule says it should be a tohit buff.

The rule isn't cosmic law: the devs could change this at any time. But for now, accuracy buffs are generally confined to inherent attack bonuses and accuracy enhancements.

See my Guide to Defense, linked in my sig for more details on the workings of accuracy.

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Actually, upon re-reading it, it looks like he just was checking the numbers, which may have been changed in error - especially since he didn't know about the changes in his first post in that topic.

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That would be a reasonable interpretation of what happened.

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I read the guide a few pages in this thread but have a stupid question. Am I right in that this in no way affects the double ding that acc debuff and to-hit debuff powers get (as level increases your power loses it's effect and the critter to-hit increases)?


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Yes, this is the effect of the purple patch: your tohit drops when attacking higher level critters, which reduces the chance for a debuff to land in the first place (unless its autohit), and reduces the effectiveness of all your effects, including damage and debuff strength. These effects are completely unaffected.

Critters got 50% tohit and some accuracy - like accuracy enhancements - to compensate. This has the *side effect* of improving the scalability of defense. But no actual mechanical change was made: everything "works" as it did before.

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Just to confirm, so the acc and to-hit debuffs are straight applications to the formula you've included in your guide? That is, assuming an even con / no purple patch side effects, a 50% to-hit combined with a 25% to-hit debuff is altered to a 37.5% to-hit and then used in the formula (same for acc debuff)? I'd like to take the work you did and make a quick spreadsheet for the values for minion/lt/boss/av and scale it with level (0, +1, +2) to show see how the values end up.

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I'm not sure what you mean. A 50% base tohit attacker that is hit by a 25% tohit debuff has a net to hit of 25%, assuming the tohit debuff isn't somehow resisted (and I don't know anything that resists tohit debuffs), or degraded by the purple patch. The I7 change did not change any of the math or how it works.

What it did was change the critters - the NPCs. Originally, some had base 50% tohit (i.e. minions) and some had 75% tohit (i.e. AVs). A 25% tohit debuff subtracted 25% from each, so the minion would be at 25%, and the AV would be at 50% net tohit.

In I7, those critters trade their inherent tohit buffs for accuracy. So the minion is still 50%, but the AV is now base 50%, and 1.5 acc (what some people would call +50% acc). A -25% tohit debuff still brings the minion down to 25%, but it now brings the AV down to 1.5 x (50% - 25%) = 1.5 x 25% = 37.5%.

Thats for AVs. If it was a boss, the boss would be base 50% tohit and 1.3 acc, and the debuff would reduce him to 1.3 x (50% - 25%) = 1.3 x (25%) = 32.5%

Tohit debuffs are becoming stronger against things that in I7 used to have higher base tohit, because the tohit debuffs get to act first, before accuracy.

Its important to note that only INHERENT tohit increases due to RANK and LEVEL are being affected by I7. "Buffs" and "Debuffs" in the conventional sense are totally unaffected by the I7 change. If a critter runs tactics, thats a tohit buff, and it works in I7 exactly the same way it works now in I6 (of course, because the critters now have accuracy, the tohit buffs of tactics would be modified by their inherent accuracy also = but the math works the same in I6 and I7). And it does nothing specifically to alter player tohit debuffs - they are exactly the same in I7 as they are in I6, its just that now they are striking critters with lower base tohit and higher accuracy, instead of low accuracy and higher base tohit. That makes their effects different (usually stronger) but tohit debuffs (player or critter) haven't themselves been touched or scaled in any way.


People are talking about tohitdebuffs "changing" in I7 and getting confused. Let me try to put this into perspective. In I3, prior to the addition of the intermediate floor in tohit, tohit was only floored once - at the end. It wasn't floored twice like it is now.

So, lets say you're a perma-elude or perma-MoG scrapper, and you have enough HOs to sink a ship, and something like 300% defense or something crazy. Basically, unless you face off against something else with massive buffing, your defense is going to drive their tohit past 5% and into deep negative territory. Now, the 5% floor will apply, so they will always have a 5% chance to hit you. But if they turn on tactics, that will turn -135% tohit to -125% tohit, which is meaningless. And if they 6-slot dmg/acc HOs, that will add 300% accuracy, on top of a negative number, so you'd just be turning -135% tohit into -540% tohit, making it actually worse.

In such a situation, I might say that ultra high defense turns off your accuracy, and turns off your tohit buffs. But in actuality, it does nothing of the kind. Your accuracy and tohit buffs are working exactly the same way they always worked. They just no longer do anything *useful*.

Player tohit buffs and debuffs are going to work in exactly, precisely the same way in I7 that they do in I6. They aren't being "scaled" in that sense of the word. Only critter base tohit is changing (everything is now 50%) and critter accuracy is changing (if they were higher than 50% in I6, they'll get accuracy to compensate). Tohit debuffs will be hitting critters that are different in I7 than I6, and that means - obviously - they will have somewhat different net effects in I7 than I6. But they are not changing. Their *targets* are changing. But a -25% tohit debuff in I6 is going to be a -25% tohit debuff in I7.

If you want to chart someting, you could chart the net effect of a -25% tohit debuff against minions, LTs, Bosses, and AVs, or against +0s, +1s, +2s, etc. The *net* effect will be different than I6, because of the critter changes. But just keep in mind when you are doing the calculations that the -25% debuff works the same way in I7 that it does in I6: base tohit minus 25%, and then times accuracy. In I7, base tohit and accuracy are different for critters than in I6, so those numbers change. But the tohit debuff and the way the numbers work stays the same.

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I'm really surprised that they removed the SR passive buff!

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As I understand it, they didn't buff SR and then change their minds; the patch that added the buff added it in error, and then the patch notes incorrected stated that the buff itself was deliberate and not an error: the 5/10 patch restores things back to the status quo.

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I meant that, perhaps, they decided that the scaling change was more than sufficient. I dunno.

Alot of Stalkers seem to think that /Nin is better than /SR, and that the changes made to the SR passives was enought to make /SR as good as /Nin. I'm not a Stalker player, but a Scrapper player, but still, I can appreciate their logic.

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The SR vs Nin thing's been going back and forth since beta. What I know is that if you don't take the SR passives, then Nin *is* better than SR. If you do, I couldn't call a winner there, and I've played both.

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Of all the sets, SR was overpowered? *laughs*

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Maybe the new Defense scaling balances it? *shrugs*

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The I7 Critter Accuracy Scaler balances Defense. SR is not quite balanced against the other sets even against even-level minion-class attackers (i.e. 50% base tohit and 1.0 accuracy), so the I7 Critter Accuracy Scaler doesn't balance SR. It just makes it less unbalanced against higher Rank/Level targets.

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This seems the best place to put it.

According to the latest (5-10) patchnotes, the SR passives buff has been removed.

o.O

I was pretty happy with the buff. I wonder what made them decide to remove it. Wasn't it there to better balance it with /Nin?

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They never said why they added it. I have a bad feeling about this, though.

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I read the guide a few pages in this thread but have a stupid question. Am I right in that this in no way affects the double ding that acc debuff and to-hit debuff powers get (as level increases your power loses it's effect and the critter to-hit increases)?


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Yes, this is the effect of the purple patch: your tohit drops when attacking higher level critters, which reduces the chance for a debuff to land in the first place (unless its autohit), and reduces the effectiveness of all your effects, including damage and debuff strength. These effects are completely unaffected.

Critters got 50% tohit and some accuracy - like accuracy enhancements - to compensate. This has the *side effect* of improving the scalability of defense. But no actual mechanical change was made: everything "works" as it did before.

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I will say that a 100% toggle dropper had better have some serious sort of downside, or alternatively only given to a power set that barely has more damage than brawl, or its unlikely to be fair.

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Something along the lines of Storm's Thunderclap? Or Kin's Repel?

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Both of them have properties that in my opinion would disqualify them for high-frequency toggle dropping:

1. They are both AoEs
2. They both can be used too often (or constantly)


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I hate to even open the door to something along these lines - but Defenders definitely need SOMETHING. Maybe a very high % toggle drop in each of their Primarys might not be out of the question??!??!?!?!?! Maybe. Pick a horrible current power and give it some love. Black Hole for Dark for instance.

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Defender debuffs are unresistable. Additional improvements to defenders for PvP should probably follow and synergize with that. Defender debuffs could be made to last twice as long in PvP, lets say, or be stackable (in cases where they ordinarily wouldn't stack) against PvP targets.

In fact, that's how I think they should have fixed END drain for defenders: when they took away -END because it was too easy to drain to zero, they could have given defenders a longer lasting -recovery to compensate, so the targets aren't zapped to zero, but feel the effects of it nevertheless (it curtails offense, at least).


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The only problem with this is if you did it EVERYONE would start their justifaction threads why "X" AT needs a similar power.

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I assume this will happen every time I make a suggestion. I've never been let down before. I try not to let it bug me too much.

It seems that there are a lot of misconceptions and general bad tactics being employed by critters against players in EvP combat. I think it would be useful to the critters who really are the heart and soul of the EvP game to review some hard fought for facts and lessons about general tactics, how the various powers work, in both EvE and EvP combat, and what sort of decisions PlayerIntelligence tend to make when fighting critters. I'm sure after reviewing this carefully, a lot of critters will be able to greatly improve their performance, even if you aren't interested in EvP combat and strictly EvE.


1. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Look, I know they ain't heavy, and they ain't your brother, but if you see another critter knocked past you by a player, attack. Don't stand around and wait your turn: 99% of the time, a player that attacks critters nearby will target you and attack you next. Attack now, while numbers are on your side.


2. Phasers locked on target, Captain.

Because players are limited in their capabilities, the devs have given all players the ability to "target" you with an attack reticle. Amazingly, this targetting reticle will follow you where ever you go, even if you are out of line of sight, provided you are within a certain radius. And incredibly, any attack the player executes will automatically aim the player in your direction and fire if you are targetted, even if you are not within the forward line of sight of the player. Needless to say, this means moving above, behind, to the side, or below a player that has you targetted, without breaking line of sight, is totally useless. The ability for a player to snipe you while facing in the complete opposite direction has been /bugged, but appears to be "working as intended." If you want to prevent a player from attacking you, you must break line of sight or completely escape their perception range.


3. Consume is not a valid alpha strike weapon.

Many critters seem to think that certain powers, like consume, are reasonable weapons to attack players with. Testing has shown that consume does unnoticable damage to players. I don't care how you slot it. For critters, Damage is King: always lead with your highest damage attacks. Except: see #4.


4. Holds are not a valid finishing attack.

Holds and other mez are among the most powerful attacks in your arsenal. Not all players have immunity from mez effects, and preventing the player from attacking you in return is your best chance for survival. Why bother holding a player at the end of the fight when you can hold him at the beginning and save yourself all that damage. At least until they add damage badges for critters.


5. Don't be a victim.

You have defenses. You have resistances. You have stealth. So why aren't you running them? The sound of your toggles might be annoying, but getting killed for the two hundred and fifty seven millionth time can't be fun either. Slot for END reduce, and keep them up all the time. You lock the door of your car, right?


6. Indecision kills.

There are probably sixty two different ways to jump down from the upper catwalks to the ground below to attack the player that is sniping you. Pick one. Right now. By the time you figure out the *best* way, you'll be dead.


7. The friend of my enemy is my enemy.

I know union rules prohibit more than fourteen of you from attacking the same target at the same time. I know he just called all of your collective mothers a bad name. So take out on his friend there: the one with the lower health and the constant green glow from his hands. You'll be glad you did.


8. Talk louder, they didn't hear you in Brazil.

am·bush: to attack suddenly and without warning


9. Yes, I'm sure heroes ship themselves to villain warehouses in crates all the time.

...but we're supposed to be guarding this thing over here. I don't know why you keep needing to go off by yourself to "check behind those crates," and frankly I don't want to know. Just do it on your own time. Maybe if we all stuck together and actually *defended* the thing, we could defeat the heroes and all go home.


10. Just aim low and squeeze.

Players are tricky, and stealth seems to be one of their favorite weapons. The player that kills you might be the player you never see. But here's a tip: if you see a bunch of words floating in midair, and especially if they seem to suggest hostile intent (i.e. "just say when"), aim two feet below them and open fire. Its not like you have to pay for ammo. In fact, when was the last time you remember reloading?


11. You want me, come and get me.

One thing Players are especially bad at is searching the hollow spaces in walls, floors, and ceilings. If you hide there, its entirely possible they might never find you. And if you spot them first, just stick your gun out and start shooting: you'll be surprised at just how effective a defense one quarter inch of drywall can be.


Of course, there's no way to completely encapsulate all of EvP combat in just a few rules, but just remembering these tips should go a long way to improving your EvP experience, and you might actually bag a player or two in the process. Its been known to happen. Good luck.

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Would making the toggle drop for some powers one hundred percent and others at seventy-five be too much?


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Yes. There shouldn't be a guaranteed chance of a toggle-drop anywhere in PVP.

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In general, I would tend to agree, but I leave the door open to an exception: when the cost of the toggle drop exceeds the actual benefit of the toggle drop. I would not think it was necessarily absurd if nova, say, or the electric armor kaboom, had a high order chance to drop a toggle or two. Its rapid firing zero-cost detogglers - ironically, like brawl - that I think break the cost/benefit equation on toggle dropping.

Certain things should be scary even to melee, and toggle dropping adds a fear element to things like nova, which despite their high order damage usually put the blaster at a worse situation than their targets, if their targets are melee (of course, it kills squishies outright, but then again, since it does, I don't think they care much about being detoggled also). I think there are certain things even melee should ordinarily run from, and something like nova might qualify, unless they themselves are protected by *their* ultimate defense powers (since unstoppable can't be detoggled, the result of a blaster nova-blasting an unstoppable tank should be the tank braces for impact, then punches the blaster in the head - and that seems reasonable to me).

Keep in mind that there are pretty certain toggle droppers even in PvE - the high order END drain powers. END drain was significantly weakened in PvP (another really popular decision by the devs) for balance purposes to prevent everyone from running around with no END and no toggles, so in a sense toggles did get a change in PvP designed to protect them from being completely taken out of the equation under certain circumstances. Its things like that that make me understand that the situation with the *addition* of the toggle-dropping mechanism - which I'm on record as saying I don't tend to like - is not quite so cut and dried. Eliminate toggle-dropping powers altogether, and put END drain back on the table at full strength, and I think the situation becomes *worse* for melee toggle-runners in general. So in one sense at least, the devs did make some effort to protect toggles: toggle dropping is the one step back after the END-drain two steps forward.

I say this mainly to say I don't think I have very many "absolutes" in terms of how toggle-dropping should work conceptually, because its in my mind intertwined with a lot of other issues with equally tricky balance questions.


I will say that a 100% toggle dropper had better have some serious sort of downside, or alternatively only given to a power set that barely has more damage than brawl, or its unlikely to be fair. One possibility currently dancing around in my head: unhidden assassin's strikes. The cost-benefit of using AS while *not* hidden and therefore without the AS critical (or for that matter without any stealth) might make unhidden AS a balanced tactical option for a stalker engaged with a melee target.

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I spend an hour or two on test each night and I have noticed that accuracy against NPC's is off compared to PvE zones. It's why I mentioned it. I'm wondering if the acc penalty is somehow trickling over to NPC's? A lot of the other people I've teamed with over the past week or so have said they notice it as well.

Some of them I know have hero stats. I'll have to ask them if they are tracking it at all.

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Is this a test server only thing, or do you see this behavior on live as well?

I haven't specifically noticed it myself, but I haven't specifically conducted accuracy tests in the PvP zones either. I may do one just to see for myself if I have time.

I know what the I7 Accuracy Scaler is *supposed* to do. That doesn't mean its actually doing that correctly now. Could be another bug.

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I wanted to make something clear. By no means do I feel any amount of defense should go below the 5% mark.

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Accuracy of +3 AV in I7: 1.95
Base tohit vs zero defense: 97.5% (95%)

Net tohit of 100% defense: 1.95 * 5% = 9.75%
Damage mitigation of 100% defense vs +0 minion: 5% / 50% = 90%
Damage mitigation of 100% defense vs +3 AV: 9.75% / 95% = 89.7% (just slightly under 90% because the base tohit was capitated at the 95% ceiling)

Damage mitigation of 100% defense if allowed to floor to 5%: 5% / 95% = 94.7%

Allowing high defense to ignore the intermediate floor and drive tohit to 5% does two things: it makes high defense scale higher against harder targets, something resistance is not allowed to do, and it makes accuracy enhancements have no effect in PvP.

The thing you want to change to make elude and MoG reach the 5% floor in I7 was put in I4 to *prevent* them from doing so against high accuracy, very specifically. Its not a bug, side effect, or error. MoG and Elude are doing in I7 what they are doing right now in I6, they will just be doing it more often, and they're doing it because the tohit system was explicitly changed to make them do it.

Changing MoG and Elude to be able to reach the 5% floor consistently isn't a "fix" its a fundamental change to the way the tohit system currently works. It doesn't even work that way now in I6. People only think it does.

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This change does not affect PvP.

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Just out of curiousity, are there any plans to address Defense in PvP on a future date? I'd really like to see a solution that isn't an across the board accuracy nerf.

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In a sense, Defense works fine in PvP: ever since they changed the base tohit in PvP from 75% to 50%, Defense has been scaled right.

The problem is really that tohit buffs are too strong. But balancing *them* seems to be a sticky problem. Its more complex than it first looks, and on top of that the devs seem to be reluctant to mess with them.

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True, but I wonder if changing the base % on all DEF powers for PvP might have worked better? I mention this because there are NPC's in the PvP zones as well. It seems kind of silly to me that toons may miss NPC's in PvE zones infrequently, yet as soon as they enter a PvP zone, they miss targets more frequently with the same slotting/powers.

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The PvP tohit change specifically affects the case where a player attacks a player: your tohit doesn't drop when you zone into a PvP zone. Your base chance to hit critters in a PvP zone is still 75%.


In PvE, your base tohit is variable because of the purple patch. Although we say "player base tohit is 75%" we really mean "player base tohit is 75% when attacking level level critters." In actuality, the purple patch dictates that the system in effect consult your target before determining your base tohit. If you are attacking a +0, its 75%. If you are attacking a +1, its 68%, and so on.

Essentially, what the devs did is add one more check: if you are attacking a player, its 50%. Your chance to hit non-players is still the same in PvE and PvP zones.

If you are specifically noticing missing critters in PvP zones more often than outside of them, I believe that would be a bug.

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The biggest balance issue with the i4-i6 toggle drop values were the ease in which mezzes could be applied to Tankers.

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Actually, the biggest balance problem with toggle dropping to me was the fact that at the I6 percentage rates, many toggle droppers could drop toggles faster than anything with toggles could put them back up (given the activation times and recharge rates of toggles) which means in a practical sense, a toggle dropper could force anything with active toggles to fight without them irrespective of what they did.

If tanker defense toggles had quarter-second activation times, and zero recharge, high-speed high-probability toggle dropping powers *might* make sense. But if a blapper could drop in 1.5 seconds what the tanker took six to put back up, in effect the toggles don't exist as a defensive option at all.

That greatly oversimplifies the issue, but its the heart of my problem with toggle dropping implementation (i.e. assuming it was going to exist at all).

If toggle dropping is infrequent, then when it happens it either gives the dropper a short offensive advantage while the toggle(s) are brought back up (because you can't attack during that time) or a longer defensive advantage if the target chooses to forego bringing the toggle(s) back up and continues to fight. Whether that situation is "balanced" has a lot to do with how frequent that event occurs, relative to the advantage it conveys. It was too often in I6, because the "event" could be almost continuously chained together. Whether its balanced now has a lot to do with figuring out if the net advantage of the new toggle drop capability matches its new frequence of occurance.

The fact that detoggling created a vulnerability to mez was a relative side issue to me. If none of the detogglers had any mez at all, I think the I6 percentages would have still been too high, for the same reason listed above: it created an equilibrum state of basically being totally detoggled (in at least many cases).

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On the whole this change is good. My /EA brute gets hit less on test than on live and it's great.

Where this becomes a problem is with higher accuracy mobs (AVs and such) that can no longer be floored to 5%.

To use a worst case scenario, Infernal. It takes slightly over one hit from him to kill my /EA brute. My main defense was to use overload so he couldn't hit me (unlike other sets this gives a +HP).

Now on test he'll get an AV and lvl acc bonus (the negatives of this are most evident in MoG). This will at least double the hits I'll take during the fight.

I propose one of the following to allow the tier 9 defense powers to operate at the 5% limit still.

1) No longer bound the to hit calculation at 5% before multiplying accuracy

2) Allow the tier 9 powers to get applied after the accuracy calculation (making them better than lucks and toggles which can't floor all oponents)

3) Have extra defense act as an acc debuff to allow asymptotic approach of 5%.

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So then with sufficiently high defense, you could get up to 94.7% damage mitigation against a high level AV. About the damage mitigation of a tanker with 90% resistances and dull pain and his extra inherent health relative to your brute.

You can ask, you just won't get it. Don't get me wrong, I used to enjoy it back in the perma-elude days, and I'll take it if the devs completely lose their minds and start handing it out, but I'm not really going to go out of my way to fight for that one.

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-res against a set with resistance is resisted. It doesn't result in a straight subtraction from their resistance. In other words, a set with 30% lethal resistance is not negated by Enervating Field.

-dmg is negated by an enhancement, one. I would consider that not working.

-def seems to be resisted currently by classes with self defense buffs. It isn't supposed to be but it seems to be. -acc works thankfully. Still, 3 out of 4 is a pain in the rear and two are not going to be changeing.


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-RES debuffs are resisted unless they come from defenders: those are supposed to be unresistable.

-DEF debuffs are supposed to be resisted by certain powers, like the defenses in Ice tanks and SR scrappers.

However, speaking as someone who's measured defense numbers to precisions better than a tenth of a percentage point, I have yet to be able to prove that the defense debuff resistance even exists at all.


-DMG is, however, just plain broken in terms of the way it was designed to work.

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However, I do not expect you to understand this as it appears you see the game in only black and white or static states as you statement would suggest.

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No, but I do see that reading comprehension is not among your skills.

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Here is another fallacy for you:

Ad Hominem: a general category of fallacies in which the author is attacked rather then the statement or arguement made by them.

Which is nothing more then what this next comment by you is.

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I gave you the benefit of the doubt that anyone with a penchant at refutation by paraphrasing, attempts to make counterpoints already stated in the post you're replying to, and overlooks even simple statements directly adjacent to ones they quote which are relevant to their reply is displaying the symptoms of illiteracy.

I concede that those traits are more likely the result of stupidity.

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However, I do not expect you to understand this as it appears you see the game in only black and white or static states as you statement would suggest.

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No, but I do see that reading comprehension is not among your skills.

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Nice strawman, but if debating please make on none fallacious point

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Okay. I think.


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There is a HUGE difference between having serious damage potential at melee (which blaster still do with their high BI melee and 1.0 and 30% unresisted dmg, etc.) and being able to be at melee with very little to no risk.

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Toggle dropping has little to do with blaster risk: its a (possibly overinflated) reward for being in melee range. The only way a toggle drop will suddenly mitigate blaster risk is if they toggle drop mez protection *and* land a mez simultaneously. Even with the (stupidly high) I6 toggle drop numbers, that wasn't exactly an automatic thing. Its probably specifically for this reason that powers like total focus, with a 100% mag 4 disorient, *can't* toggle drop.


Now, since I really hate it when people accuse me of using strawmen (I *never* use strawmen) lets take a moment to put this particular argument together.

There's no question that, toggle dropping or no toggle dropping, blasters are at greater risk in general in melee range than at range. That's pretty much ipso facto, and particularly true against melee ATs.

That predetermines blaster melee attack damage: to balance risk/reward on melee attacks, melee attacks hit harder. That too is a trivial consequence of AT balancing.

Since melee damage is higher, the only question is whether the risk of entering melee range is worth it, or not.

Since you say that:

"but they were not designed to have a melee effect so good they have little to no reason to use their range, or that their ideal position was melee."

If their ideal position isn't melee, it has to be ranged. There are no other positions. And if ranged is their optimal position, it has to be because the risk of entering melee range is so high, it outweighs the considerable advantage of the melee-ranged attack damage.

That means there's no good reason to enter melee range. Its a natural consequence of saying "the blaster ideal position is not melee." That means the blaster idea position is ranged, and entering melee range is suboptimal: a good player won't PvP doing suboptimal things.


Now, technically:

"No where did I state a blaster should only be at range."

is true. But you imply that there should be no good reason for smart blaster to ever be in melee range, because the only way for it to be not ideal, is for it to be such a high risk gamble its not a rational thing to do.


Another thing: a potential weak spot in the argument is that its possible there are *no* ideal positions for the blaster at all: that they have the same risk/reward ratio at range *and* at melee range. Recognizing that, I added the caveat:

"(Blasters should gain advantages *and* disadvantages at range, not strictly be at a disadvantage in melee, or that flapping sound you hear is a revival of the sport of kiting.)"

But to expect those two to be *perfectly* balanced is hope beyond hope. One of the two will be better, given the huge advantages and disadvantages being balanced against each other.


The term "strawman" comes from the practice of using straw-filled targets as practice dummies. But my visual image tends to drift to the Wizard of Oz. What did the Strawman want from the Wizard?

Don't do it again.

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I am not saying blaster were not designed to be effective in melee... but they were not designed to have a melee effect so good they have little to no reason to use their range, or that their ideal position was melee. A blasters weakness should be if a players is in melee range (expecially a melee toon,) not their strength.

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And now I lob yet another complexity grenade:

If the game was somehow engineered in such a way that blasters' optimal attack strategy is always to stay at range, and gains no advantage from entering melee range, then what would that mean for blaster vs melee fights, when the melee doesn't have range?

Kaboom.

/runs off

(Blasters should gain advantages *and* disadvantages at range, not strictly be at a disadvantage in melee, or that flapping sound you hear is a revival of the sport of kiting.)

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I feel NO sympathy for you MOG guys and gals...

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MoG has real problems: its just that many regen scrappers are lashing out at the wrong thing this time.

MoG was broken in two ways in I6: its damage mitigation properties didn't make sense, in that they were too low, and it took advantage of the broken way Critter Accuracy scaled, which improved its performance somewhat.

One of the ways MoG was broken is being fixed in I7: it just happens to be the one that improved the power. Which to my way of thinking is better for Regen in the long run: without that covering up MoG's inherent problems, Regen scrappers have a much better case to be made now for fixing MoG. In I6, the one thing MoG *did* do was strongly scale upward in protection with higher level critters, something regeneration itself doesn't do (you might have been better off fighting +4s and +5s under MoG than IH, for at least a little while). The argument could be made that MoG delivered a capability otherwise lacking in the regen set as a whole.

Now that it doesn't do that anymore, the case for fixing MoG becomes much stronger, at least in my eyes.


Edit: fixed typo

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To put in my 2 cents worth... Dispersion bubble is a +DEF(All) and Personal Force field is a +DEF....
Deflectin shield, and insulation shield are both typed def.

so in theory anyhow, both DB and PFF should "defend" against even hamidon's attacks. Multiple, stacked Dispersion bubbles may even do some damage mitigation through superior DEF. the "castables" though will still be for naught against His Royal Jelloness.

Since the odds of getting a Hamidon raid together on test, are almost non-exsistant Just to test Dispersion Bubble effectiveness are lower than a Contaminated's chance of surviving in atlas park.....We'll have to wait till it goes live, to test :-(

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Def(All) is often used as a synonym for "Def(All types)" which is synonymous with "Def(melee/ranged/aoe/smash/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative/psi)". This is, in fact, the typing of power pool defenses, which were changed to this sort of typing to ensure they always stacked with whatever defense you might have.

I specifically discussed this with the devs. Base defense would work against Hamidon, typed defenses of any kind, including implicitly typed defenses (defense to all [types]) won't work, because in essence none of the "types" protected by the defense power "match" Hamidon (no type). Base defense is, in a sense, "untyped" defense, and because it literally works against everything, without regard to type at all, it would work against Hamidon.

All you have to do now is find something with Base Defense.

You don't need to organize a raid to test this. Just go to test, go to the Hive, and slowly approach the goo until you are in range of exactly one Mito, and let it shoot at you. Hamidon Mito attacks and Hamidon Nucleus attacks are both pure untyped damage, and if the Mitos blast through you, the Hamidon Nucleus will also.

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I think that as long as your total Magnintude of stacked holds is greater than the targets resistance, a "hold effect" will occur.

A few points:

1- Whatever hold has the shortest duration is often the limiting factor- whether it's cast first OR second (or third and so forth). If you are casting two holds to stack Mag on a boss, or a player in PvP, it is often better to lead with the hold that has a higher duration, since the weaker hold will be cast several seconds later.

2- If you have to stack holds, do it immediately after the first was cast. If you waste several seconds in attacking between holds the first hold's duration will largely be wasted.



I'm not sure exacylt how this works in PvP regarding toggles and click powers. But it seems that in PvE Bosses and Lts always have their Mag resistance active, and as soon as your mag is dropped below their resistance point the "hold" status effect will end. This might be true for clickies like Practiced Brawler, which I suppose is why they are often preferred in PvP.

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The basic minion/lt/boss mez resistance is an auto.

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Since we're talking about the technical details, technically this is boss mez protection magnitude not resistance. Resistance is the term used to describe the ability to shake off mez faster than normal. For example, Practiced Brawler gives me both enhanced mez protection (just one hold won't do anything) and enhanced mez resistance (that 20 second hold of yours? Lasts about 2 seconds on me.)

Things like Accelerate Metabolism, Health, and Aid Self, all convey mez resistance without any mez protection (to the best of my knowledge) so resistance and protection are not synonymous, nor do they always come together.