Another_Fan

Buying PvP or Purple IOs with hero villain merits is the absolute worst way to obtain them.

Buying stealth IOs directly with merits is meerly a poor way of doing it.

The best way of gaining either in terms of time efficiency is earning inf and buying them.

Please compare apples to apples.

Edit: Asuming 30 minutes for 5 tips 36 minutes for 5 tips+alignment and dual boxing = 11 hours for a purple, 15+ hours for pvp io vs Several random purples/hr for a good farmer or 5 hrs/pvp io using MacSkulls wrong number of 1/60 kills

So all of the run speed IOs are more expensive than about 25% of the pvp ios ?

I can't spend Rands either. Unless you are arguing that its easier to earn merits and purchase directly, than it is to generate inf by any activity and buy from the market your assertion falls flat.

Stealth IOs are currently are in the 100 mil+ range you can regularly obtain PvP IOs and purples for considerably less.

Most people use Lightning rod and shield charge with a saturated aao. This allows the spawn to be shaped for maximum damage as well

Since this thread started I have been wracking my brain on how to the AT could be improved without wrecking it. One of the things I like about it, is that it is without doubt harder to play solo at any given difficulty level than anything except possibly a defender.*

My first thought was that if the devs actually did try and put in a risk/reward system into the game and weighted xp rewards, and drops appropriately it would go along way fixing the lack of balance between the various ATs. For teams there could be an overall weight. The problem is of course people would optimize the heck out of that.

So I find myself thinking the blasters description should be changed to the solo challenge AT. The inherent should be changed to work the reverse of defenders so the larger the team the more mitigation they would get. A small measure of ranged defense and maybe some sort of actual mezz protection, mag 1 or mag 2, that kicked in when the team hit a certain size. This would help with the problem of blasters dieing because they were doing their thing while a defender decided to get a drink, or my favorite the defender that just pays attention to the tank.

There are some other needs that have been blaringly obvious for a long time. Fix snipes for all that have them, Fix devices, adjust the damage sonic does upward, it pays for its secondary effect with higher endurance costs. Then maybe as QoL change drop the recharge on Aim and Build Up to 60 seconds blasters only.

So instead of taking 4 times the damage its only 3 times the damage its going to take far to long using the tier 1s and 2 to take the boss out.

Id really have to look at the build. Building for ranged defense has always been expensive slot wise



* Defenders seem considerably improved post the vigilance change, I just haven't leveled that many up, post change, to be sure.

When a toggle is suppressed it provides no def benefit. The hovering s/l blaster that relies on weave, the epic shield, combat jumping and or maneuvers loses all the def they provide. Just as a S.W.A.G. that is about 20% def gone.

So while the blaster and the SR have the same defense to the non positional, the SR still has its scaling resists,greater hp, ability to continue at full damage output, and it still has its defense to everything that doesn't bypass its positional defense.

I have a hard time taking seriously the idea that the barrier to soloing Shadow Shard Tfs or any of the TFs with simul clickies is just the simul clickies,

If someone wants to solo a shadow shard tf, deity bless em, and make way for them to climb their mountain.

Sorry you didn't catch it, I was calling Claws out on the overstatement. Most of the non positional attacks in the game are mezzing which I am sure he is well aware of, and have the effect of destroying a blasters defense.

Best Example: Carnie Bosses

I think you have completely proved your point re: the forums, or more accurately the forums have proved it for you.

As to soloing, people do this anyway, the only difference your proposal would make, is the soloist would not have to bother other people to do their thing. So the people who are arguing for not allowing tfs to be soloed directly are actually saying they want soloists bothering people to fill.

Either that or they are just arguing to argue.

There are no non positional attacks in the game you have 0 defense to ?

I would say I rarely see anyone picking anything but the first 7 to show up. The exception would be buff/debuff.

Supposedly blasters gave up survivability for damage. Well single target they arent even in the running and AoE its close enough that your results vary by the assumptions you use

That's way to close when simply put the survivability difference is off the chart

Edit:
Castle posted awhile back, in one of the threads that continuously popped up asking for stamina solution that they would never give free stamina.

And a note currently archery and fire have a bit of a dpe edge.

1. How much damage does an aoe do to something that is dead ?

2. The Fire Blaster has Aim and build up, the Shield Scrapper has Build up and against all odds

Build up recharges in 18 seconds at the cap, and is 1 second of not doing damage vs 2 seconds of not doing damage for (aim+bu)

In the case of the elec/shield

LR+SC+TS+FIREBALL all fit in the buildup damage window.

That Starts at 180% bonus (saturated against all odds+ buildup) and works down as things die.

Edit: This is why when people state aim or build up contribute x% to damage because they increase damage by y and have z duty cycle its a problem.

Edit2: Your shield charge number looks a little low.

No that is just why you can't use damage/cycle.

The at the recharge cap was just to make things as extreme as possible, in your calculations you assumed that there was no recharge and used the base recharges.

Actually my error on that, removing the wait time still doesn't help but the original chain I calculated the recharge from the start of casting not the end.

The correct chain is

Anyway why doesn't removing the wait add to the damage ?

Both fire sword circle and fire breath do 41 and 33 damage per the amount of time they take to cast.

Fire ball does 80. If in either of these if you delay fireball by more than 33/80 of a second to get an additional 33 damage you have lowered your total damage output.

I have several times, let me try again just using fire

We have a team of a fire/fire blaster and 7 kins. The kins only knew how to put 1 button in their tray, that's the button for speedboost.* The fire blaster has hasten on auto. The blaster now has a recharge rate of 500% the absolute maximum he can have

His best use of AOEs is

Hotfeat
Blazing aura
Rain of fire

{Fire Ball recharges in 3.2 seconds
Fire Breath Recharges in 3.2 seconds
Wait
Fire Ball
Fire Fire Breath} ^ N

Everything else becomes pointless because adding it in doesn't increase the damage output.




*The granite tankers fantasy

Edit: when you say it takes time to position for the smaller AoEs you are assuming that there is no taunt aura running and there is no slack time to do that.

The tank is so very very popular because most people don't have access to the required debuffs on demand but can usually scare up a decent tanker.

I am sorry but before we can go further you need to figure out for yourself why damage/cycle just doesn't matter.

That sounds like an insanely great team composition. About how much dps would you say are putting out and how much have you debuffed her rate of recharge ?

The scrapper has no other attacks they can use ? They couldn't do say, SC,lightning rod, epic aoe, thunderstrike ? Maybe they could repeat those two at the end ? fitting in the occasional chain induction and jacobs ladder ?

Off the top of my head I can't recall how many hitpoint's she has, but its a large number ?

And just what is the rate she fires that heal ? Often ?

Obviously

Edit: that was a direction I have been trying not to go

So let me show you why.

# enemies in range, Ghost widows chance to heal 10% to hit chance
1, .1
2. .19
3. .271
4. .34

That is why she has a good chance to get through the softcap if you have people in range
and that is why you don't want to bring much melee to a stf, if you do you can go forever and never overcome GWs heal.

Or really warped TF design.

And on the softcapped issue that's a bit misleading. She is at +4 and has a good chance of hitting through the softcap.

I can't say with certainty what predominant practice is, but in the past most blaster farmers I know tended to purple farm at negative difficulties.