yobigleggdmama

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its good many don't liek doms-keeps demand high for those who enjoy 'em!

[/ QUOTE ] Where do you play? Maybe I need to move to your server. Demand for Dominators on my server is practically nonexistant. Most parties will take a Dom if they want more people for some reason, but I have never seen a broadcast of "Party LF Dom"

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Liberty, whihc I do consider to be an enlightened server. Its not like "LF for Doms" broadcasts go up-but my requests for teams or flagging for teams get answered as well as any other toons. For me-i guess I suffered through the same issue with Trollers 2+ years ago. No one could figure them out. hard to get teams. Eventually peopel wised up and realized their role. The same is true for doms-people will come around. I am often pivotal on the teams I am on. WIth no realy "tank" there are many brutes afraid to wade in to take the alpha without a good healer on hand. Teams where MMs are the meatshield have no agro control so no one can us ae attacks. Enter the Dom and that all changes. You can do enough lockdown to keep the brute alive and teh Corruptors blasting without significant retaliation. Though DOms on the whole are weaker than controllers-their holds are needed more than ever with the lack of the powerful tanks and healers the heroes have in abundance... Deck, a /dark MM is plenty of healer for most of the teams I run my dom on....

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/signed

I wouldn't be rude enough to tell another player they rolled a gimp and they are just filling out the team to make it 8, but every time I'm rolling thru the early mish in CoV thats what I'm thinking about Dominators

Are they killing they're 3 mobs quickly (no)
Are they assisting the Brute tank (not really)
Are they taking/mitigating the Alpha (no)

Would I dump them in and instant for a Brute or Corruptor (yes)
Would I dump them in an instant for a Contoller or a Blaster (yes)

and the same is true for AV/Monster mish in the late game

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Hmm, got a question. Number 1 I understand, but it is and will always be true of a AT with a damage secondary.

#2 Are they assisting the brute/tank? In what way? If a boss is eating your brute alive and a dom holds him, isnt that assisting, as the brute/tank doesnt have to run? Further, early on, heals are weak, corruptors dont have many or any debuffs or holds, and brutes have poor defenses.

#3 are they taking/mitigating the alpha - from level 12, an ice dom can take the alpha using ice slick as long as they can place it using something to break line of sight, which is about 90% of the time. The slick stops return attacks, completely removing the alpha. Further, the dom can then lock down the most dangerous mob, short of a triangle AV/EB/GM.

Would you dump them? Sure, but that may be from your perception, not a fact of making the optimal team.

As for the late game, I agree that doms contribute less against AVs and GMs, because the dom main ability of bringing control has been nuked, while corruptor abilities have been kept the same or boosted.

Its much more severe in the case of the Lord Recluse SF, due to the multiple AVs. Corruptors debuffs tend to be AOE, and so stack on all the AVs at one time, while a doms are mainly single target, and so even if the dom can hold one AV, the corruptor is putting -X% damage/acc on all 5 AVs at one time, stacked with other corruptor debuffs.

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Yeah sure doms are useful but now you're just talking logic! Your the quote was from someone who admitted he cant even get a dom outta outbreak, so he must be the one qualified to tell us how much doms suck! You think when he plays his Brute he just charges full teams spawns and thinks hes so tough and thats why he lives? I love to see how fast most Brutes drop in a full team spawn without the help of a good healer, corr or dom. Unless there level 38 power is active...its a rapid faceplant.

In any case-its good many don't liek doms-keeps demand high for those who enjoy 'em!

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Why take a Tanker when a Brute can do just as good of a job takning and do good damage on top of that.

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Hah! Tankers Tank far better then Brutes. The Only way you would think that a Brute would be a better replacement for a Tank is if you think Scrappers can tank.

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Why take a one hit Stalker when you can have a Scrapper that can work multiple targets and tank too instead?

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Ah I see you do... that explains everything.

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People like playign the fury bar-otherwise it woudl be the BRUTEs that woudl be put out of business. They cant tank anywhere close to tanker levels. They have lower defenses/resists, lower caps and less HP. Their shields are scrapper level, with a few more HP. Scraps to far more everytime, average damage too. Nope-tanks role as the damage taker is secure, as is scraps role as damage dealer.

I dont think scraps would come close to putting a sniper class like stakers out of business. They are such opposite playstyles. One is hide, sneak, run. the other is wade in an deal carnage. Far more brutish. Are brutes putting stalkers out of business???

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that many doms throwing fast-cycling mag 4-6 (whatever it is) holds will cripple anything - mez protection, BFs, CM be damned.

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Yes, this is the point of Doms now. It's brute force. With Domination (and Power Boost if you've got it) we can drill through any mez protection. I was standing next to a Scrapper last night as he popped 1... 2... 3... 4 Break Frees before he finally escaped a hold.

With mezzing power like that, we tread a dangerous line in PVP. It's well known that these devs don't think being perma-held in PVP is fun. They have taken so many steps to prevent it, from limiting durations to adding BFs to adding suppression. So, try to look at Doms as dangerously close to crossing the line of "making PVP not fun" for those we are mezzing.

If we got any more improvements at this point, I firmly believe the devs would call a timeout and nerf our control in PVP, which is the last thing we want.

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Well i dont get it. I dont have power boost. Dom is only up sometime. most times I'm out there iwth one modest duration modest recycling single target hold trying and failing to stack it-sometimes even on the squishies who have acro, buffs and BFs for when I do finally get enough stacked. I'm basically a target until I can get dom up, and on live now thats a beatch! Fingers crossed for the increased ability to build the dom bar coming in i7.

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Well this is one of the sillier comparisons I have seen. The OP corectly points out that Heroes have all of the major powers in the game, and you cite the villains ummm niche roles as if they matter? Stalkers are the best umm stealhters? great they can hide!

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Okay. So that team of four villains you can JUST make out, way over there? Is it really a team of four villains, or do they have a stalker or three tagging along, too ...? No way to know for sure, except find out "the hard way" - by which time, dependign on builds/powers ... you may already be sucking pavement.

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MMs are the Pet masters! Wahoo! as if that mattered since the superior damage and defenses of the Heroes make short work of the MM and then they pets fall dead as puppets with the strings cut.

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Helooooooo ... Bodyguard, remember? Put all six pets in Bodyguard stance, and suddenly I have an un-de-buffable 75% Damage Resistance - that, I might add, stacks multiplicatively with any damage reduction I might have from OTEHR sources. Like buffs applied by team-mates, or by eating some inspirations, etc.

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Brutes? Highest damage? In what world do you live in? firstly the DPS output of Brute is significantly lower than both Blasters and scrappers.

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I did specify "with full Fury". You know, that little inherent that gives them up to +300% damage?

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I dont really want to turn this into a he said she said, but you can't compare full time, 100 % , superiorities the heros have (Best dam, best buffs, best heals) and compare this to some situational sometimes comparisions of villains. If you read the boards, you will read a damage comparison and yes, a Brute at full fury "Slightly" edges a scrappers full time DPS-However a brute probably spends less than .01% of his time at full fury! personally, I dont think I've ever attained full fury... so generally with good fury management I'm running around at some % (70 to 80) of a scappers anytime damage. Oh yeah-In PVP-its less than tha and scraps dont need to pick fights with NPCs in the battle zones to do that damage either. MMs body guard has never been used, so no one know how it can and will function. One defender on a team is enough to undo the entire strategic advantage of the Stalker (stealth). I'm not saying villains are pathetic, but you dont have to be mining the statistics -just playing on both sides, to know there are substantial issues requiring boosts on the villain side. Bodyuard is a good step for balancing MMs. Better control/dam for doms (or a timed dom bar). Easy fury building for Brutes, to put them on par with tanks/scraps. Be prepared-these villain boosts are coming for sure.

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yeah yeah we all know that's the excuse the devs say all the time, you dont need to repeat it again

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It's not an excuse, it's the design paradigm - IOW, the very GOAL the developers are aiming for.

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Thats the stated goal, and its nice to say, but the way the two different sides are being designed is not leading to the stated goal.

1-1 heroes currently (I say currently because it might change someday) excell in every single area of the game over villains. The best healers are heroes, best damage dealers are heroes, the best damage takers are heroes, the best controllers are heroes, the best buffers/debuffers are heroes.

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The best Stealthers are villains (Stalkers), the best Pet-summoners are villains (Mastermind), the highest-damage-output characters are villains (Brutes in the full swing of Fury), and the best jack-of-all-trades characters are villains (Corruptors and dominators).

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If heroes excell over villains in every single category of the game, then how can villains SUDDENLY be balanced with heroes in a group environment, if all player skill levels are equal? They can't.

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One word: SYNERGY. To elaborate: the whole is grater than the sum of it's parts.

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If the members of a villain team are individually less capable of what their purpose is than the members of a hero team, that villain team is NOT going to be balanced against the heroes.

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No one villain is really intended to be "the" person for X, Y, or Z purpose within a team, however. A Hero team with a single member of each archetype, who loses the defender? They now have almost ZERO serious buff/debuff capability. A Villain team that loses ANY particular member, however? Corruptor goes down? The Dominator and, perhaps, Mastermind are still able to send out ranged damage. The Mastermind can keep up with the buffing/debuffing, and perhaps healing.

Villain teams don't have linchpins; they don't have single, clearly-defined roles on their teams. Instead, they blur the lines between archetypes, and between those roles.

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Well this is one of the sillier comparisons I have seen. The OP corectly points out that Heroes have all of the major powers in the game, and you cite the villains ummm niche roles as if they matter? Stalkers are the best umm stealhters? great they can hide! now only if that mattered since as soon as they are seen they are toast! MMs are the Pet masters! Wahoo! as if that mattered since the superior damage and defenses of the Heroes make short work of the MM and then they pets fall dead as puppets with the strings cut. Brutes? Highest damage? In what world do you live in? firstly the DPS output of Brute is significantly lower than both Blasters and scrappers. Additionally-the "burst" damage king is actually stalkers (with /em blasters using build up and aim probbly a close second). As for your Jack of all trades? Again you are mistaken-Doms for certain are no such thing. CONTROLLERS are the true jack of all trade-the best control, great heals, buffs, debuffs, and damage output for many builds-that with containment - superior to the Dom. I know-I have plaed 3 trollers to 50, and several doms (into the 30s) and the comparison is night and day...

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Maybe I'm crazy, but isn't telling a cold domination corruptor to skip a shield like telling a bubbler not to take a bubble? Ludicrous.....

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No shields for me either. I wanna play a damager/debuffer, not a shielder. My slows and holds will keep you safe, don't you worry.

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I can't help but laugh at that post.

Join the teams I'm on and try saying your holds and slows keep the team safe because you'll be the first to faceplant then everyone else on my team proceeds to faceplant.

But hey, if slows/holds keep all your teams safe, then good for you but I always see a huge difference with shields. On the teams I do regularly with my VG, slows/holds wont save you.

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Well I'm with the otehr guy-I have to laugh at yoour post. Can the shileds help? Sure? Can you live without em-oh yeah. For two powers , a lot of slots, and a ton of end and time being a buffbot, you can provide some decent defense to a few things (S/L, en, neg) and some modest resists to fire/cold. I can provide greater protection than that just by applying snowstorm at the start of a battle (that -40% ish damage from any any all types of damage). Thats really just the base "slow" though the reality is - the way they try running away mitigates it further I think. Once you at the slipping and slows of sleet and ice storm to that, I've found that teams with me on it can handle large groups of purps fast, and often I can mitigate damage myself just with the medicine pool! WHo needs shields/heals when your not taking much damage. If you do have even a modest healer on top of that (dark MM. or any "healing corr" you can pretty much plow large groups of +4s fast and without much risk. Those groups are often unmanageable for healers as the "alpha" alone often can kill your " tanks" (be they brutes or a lotta pets).

If you have enough slots and powers to spare for the shields without sacrificing your better powers-then enjoy! I love my build without and have never really seen the needs.

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We've all seen a lot of back and forth in the PvP boards about Stalkers. We've seen complaints in the Stalker threads about needing improvement...I've noticed you seem very receptive to the idea that Stalkers might not be good enough. There's no point in debating about overpowered vs underpowered because it is largely a subjective discussion and offers little clarity.

One thing I think that has to be put on the table is that it would seem improbable for the devs to 100% nail the "balance" of the Stalker AT in PvP right out the gate nor would I expect them too. I realize there was internal testing and beta testing, but I do not believe the devs would contend that the data was conclusive or complete under those circumstances.

However, I am intereted in the devs providing the player base with a statement about how they perceive the risk vs reward for stalkers in PvP.

1) When the Arena first came out, Positron said he wasn't overly concerned with the 1v1 battles because it was too much of a rock/papers/scissors affair. How do we reconcile the dev philosophy that 1v1 can't be balanced and yet make sense of a toon that is designed for 1v1 combat? How does one side-step 1v1 balance on one hand and then appropriately balance an entire AT for it on another?

2) The Arena is a situation where neither toon can leave the battle. Players, blasters in particular, were using Phase Shift to effectively gank and escape and the devs put a stop to it. Clearly ganking was not to be tolerated. What is interesting is that the Stalker AT is predicated on ganking. Its speciality is the 1v1 battle with the escape. Why take that ability away from blasters in consensual battles but promote and endorse it in another AT in non-consensual battles?

3) I am unaware of any AT power that doesn't have some counter in another AT without resorting to power pools. Defender buffs are unresistable, but yet people can buff themseves beyond those debuffs a la Fort, Build-Up, etc. Blasters have some unresistable damage, but the majority of it is resistable. Every status power has some opposing power that resists it. Fear, Holds, Sleep, even Slows, have their counters within the players very powers themselves. Even Taunt in PvP is not 100%. And yet, nothing resists Placate. Yes, I understand you can knock someone out of it...provding you somehow manage to trigger an attack that launched before Placate takes affect and hits after (you can't honestly say this is an expected skill). Or, you can launch a PBAoE and hope to hit, provided you have one. But this isn't resistance to the statusing power like every other status power has. Are there plans to offer the other sets resistance to Placate e.g. Give Clear Mind, Integration, Practiced Brawler, Ind Will, etc?

(Btw, Assault offers no usable protection against Placate. Don't know if it is a bug, but I stood there and let one placate me...and I was not able to target them at all...and certainly not within the time for them to launch an AS after running around for a few seconds...and no...Assault wasn't detoggled).

3) It seems that the AT's in CoH have their foils in CoV. And vice versa. Who is the foil for a Stalker? Who can consistently solo defeat Stalkers who do not want to be defeated to the same extent that they can defeat any solo AT that doesn't want to be defeated? ...I'm reading that Stalkers can one-shot tanks in BB and Siren's with enough Rages. No solo AT can achieve the invisilibty of Stalkers, so should Stalkers be the only set that doesn't have to constantly be looking over its shoulder for fear of some hero?

Again, my question is not about is this too much or not enough, but how you and the devs perceive the balance and most importantly, how the off-setting weaknesses are actually substantive. What do I mean by that? Geko stated that one of the reasons that they turned IH back into a click is that they could not balance it as a toggle. They had meant for it to have a great healing benefit, and thought the huge endurance drain would compensate. But players proved they could avoid this penalty by six slotting QR and Stamina. So the penalty, though substantial...was not substantive. The same thing was said about Perma-Unstoppable. People were compensating for the crash, so there was not substantive penalty. It existed on paper, but was easily compensated for in-game. People talk about toons with damaging auras are proof against Hide...but I recall you explicity saying you were able to crit a Fire Brute...through BA and defeat him.

I think it would help a lot of the players if you explain how the devs perceive the AT is balanced in PvP and how that actually plays out in PvP...not how it plays out theoritically.

For all the Pro-Stalkers posters out there. I like Stalkers. I like the element that the AT brings to CoH. The joy in defeating them is almost as enjoyable as beating blasters. I also have defeated Stalkers with my Scrappers 1v1, so I'm not even protending that Stalkers are invincible. My lvl 33 has defeated a lvl 40 Stalker in Warburg...several times. But each and every defeat of a stalker was only a result:

1) they simply chose not to use enough Rages to one shot me.

2) They stuck around for the fight.

and usually,

3) I was playing a /regen

In absolutely none of those situations could I have defeated the Stalker if they had decided to check out early. And ...I was defeated far more times by Stalkers that stuck around than I defeated. So it wasn't like I sailed to victory. I'm not asking for any changes. I'm asking for an understanding from the devs for how this AT fits within the context of PvP from a substantive Risk vs Reward model.

I don't believe for a second that it is an easy task to balance this type of AT for PvP, so I'm certainly not recusing the devs even one bit, I am trying to understand it from their perspective.

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A lively discussion, but the Op is pretty far off base-due ot lack of information, and evidently lack of actually playing a stalker. To answer the numbered items:

1) In every game, there are always toons that are better solo, and others better in group. Just because the devs dont want to design for 1v1 battles doestn mean they wont occur and that some builds won't be better at it.

2) Theres a logic flaw here. Ganking was eliminated from pool powers becuase you cant balance ALL Ats against the ability. Any AT coudl gank with the old PS. You can however balance for one At to have ganking. Almost every game out there has had this type of class. This is nothing new.

3) Incorrect again. I am knocked out of placate all the time. Any attack from another source will do it. Aoe adn non-targeted attacks will do it (caltrops, rains, PBAE auras). This is patently untrue.

4) There a plenty of Foils for the Stalker. you must not play one or you would know. Tanks and scraps who are too tough to be taken down fast. Anyone with auras that foil your AS. Storm trollers and Defenders are particularly annoying. ANyone with +perception powers. I would argue in fact the opposite of the OP! Stalkers are substandard in all departments if they cant get off their AS, And every good group out there has them wired and neutered already. hurricane, Stacked acc/perception auras. its sucks. A few weeks into the game and i'm already depressed that all I can do is gank a couple strays I find in a few hours of play, while my heroes were useful full time in every battle.

Believe me,your experiences to date are only because you must be new to PVP. ANyone who has been out there fighting has already nerfed the one trick pony that are stalkers....

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Hmm, no Water AT or Magnetisim AT (guess the latter got scrapped completely), and no talk of the Epic ATs. Interesting post.

I am eager to find out wha the "theme" is gunna be for I6.

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If its any consolation, "magnatism" superpowers I have seen in the comics play a lot like some of the existing powersets. Grav in particular. Concentric rings of "energy" that you use to hold opponents, throw them, lift and "propel" objects at others. (most of the propelled object are metal ones too!). For my magnatism Hreo, I added sonics, which although the "sound" effects dont fit, the concentric rings animations work great as well as ability to project magnetic "shields" , repel objects... I think a real magnetic powerset would be too similar to the existing ones and they probably want something more unique for a new powerset.

Well my update on the issue: I had hoped that defiance would have a decent impact on my blaster, and the answer was-that it did not . In about an hour of play-My 35 AR/Dev probably unleashed a handful of defiance boosted shots (no idea what % boosted-couldnt watch the bar that closely). It felt like popping a red inspiration now and then. Unfortunately, my expereience was overshadowed by the loss of defense (cloaking) and offense (Full auto), the loss of which I noticed almost every battle as i took increased damage (the first barrage of which was offset by increased HP) and less damage output (I only have an attack chain of 4 powers, and since I can't survive battles that take long enough for FA to recycle, I now have only 3 attacks to cycle which really stinks. Less offense, less defense, I feel squishier than ever. Sorry devs-I've defended the I5 boosts to blasters on the boards, but the truth is the two nerfs actually exceed the two bumps for a less-favorable playing experience.

On the other hand, my baby blaster noticed the boost quite a bit more. Mobs dont hit as hard at lower levels, and theres no debt so i ran around Atlas "in the yellow" shooting anything that moved with my defiance boost and extra HP-that felt pretty good!

So just to be explicit- I have supported the changes to def for tankers and scrappers (I have inv and ice tanks and an SR scrap and feel the hurt there. For the tanks, I still have way more defense than I need for soloing so that it felt more like just giving up some of my surplus. On test, I need group support more to function in a group-whereas before I was relatively self sufficient in many groups. However, I do not think that defenders/troller/blasters should be seeing these changes. Squishy classes beg, borrow, and steal trying to get 25 to 40% defense to get SOME survivability (and by default some ability to avoid status effects), and taking this away is gutting these toons.

FYI for this particular blaster, fully slotted cloaking device and hasten gave me I believe about 25% def. I typically hunt mobs I can lay the smackdown on fast. Groups of yellows (with an orange LT) are perfect. Trip min at the feet, flamethrower, FA, cleanup with two single target attacks. However, flamethrower and FA lock me in place for about 9 sec onds, unable to heal or take any evasive action. ON live, These mobs have about a 30% chance to hit me. I take about 1/3 to half of a bar give or take during this excersize. On test-they have about a 60% chance to hit. So I take 100% more damage with but 18% more HP to offset this. As you can surmise, I was going in the red a lot. I died twice in battles I win on live servers handily. My down time was higher. i could not risk bigger groups for fun-this was it. Whites were safer (and believe me-after blasting yellows in Atlas-no one wants to gain 35 levels to end up back at whites. I'm getting hammered on test, and this toon is by no means boosted in I5. I hope you read this and see the logic of what I'm putting forth here. Many of the global changes hit specific builds and classes very hard and I believe the defense boost may have "overreached" its intent. I DO believe you were trying to boost blasters, so I want you to know that mine is actually weaker on test. Play an AR/Dev yourself and verify My recommendations would be:

1) Dont kill the defense on any of the squishy primary/secondary powers. Do as you feel you must with the melee balance, but stealth/invisibility/def powers for squishies are not at all overpowering and are much needed (dont know any squishies that are anywhere near "capped" and would still benefit from force field help on a team.

2) No idea where the idea/need for the FA nerf came from-it hardly an overpowering ultimate power. I would say-this should not go live. IF you disagree, you need to compensate somewhere. Greatly lessen the "frozen" time (maybe 3 seconds top) or increase the damage. The DPS loss for me is brutal, for a build that already suffers from damage output compared to its counterparts, because the Smash/lethal resists on mobs far exceed the cold/fire/energy resists encountered by other blaster types.

Thanks and good luck to the rest of you. Keep up the testing and try to stay positive...

I'm only a low level Sonic, but my experience so far. its playable. a bit of extra damage is substituted at low levels for powers that mitigate damage (say energies knockback). The overall breadth and damage of the powers is underwhelming-you need the inherant stacked debuffs of the powers to match the DPS of some other lines, so I don't think its gonna be all that "overpowered". It basically feels like the /rad secondary defender line, substituting -res for -def of the rad line.

Agree with the 'strangeness" of the actual sonic sounds, for the first few powers I've heard....

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This is what I would like to see happen to blasters.

1. Impliment PvP damage resist bypass in PvE.

2. Increase the range of all primary powers to be greater than the Diameter of Foot Stomp. Greater.

3. Take all PbAoE status effects and toggles in Blaster Secondaries and make them summonable drops or target toggles. Other than cloaking device of course.

4. Make all current melee attacks have a range of 20 feet, either by changing the animations or just letting them have the range. Increase the damage on Melee AoE attack powers again.

5. (stolen idea) Give each single target attack a -10% res that lasts 5 seconds. This not only helps boost the blasters damage a minute amount but also allows the blaster to help a team. Thus encouraging teaming.

6. Swap the damage caps of blasters and scrappers.

7. Remove the rooting effect from blaster attacks.

8. Faster activation times on powers for blasters.

9. Making level 32 nukes into more useable AoE powers like Head Splitter or Full-Auto and less situational all end consuming powers.

Just my thoughts on where I would like blasters to go.

[/ QUOTE ] Okay heres when stupiditty shows his face,( swaping dmg caps) that just plain stupid I admmit blaster dmg dmg cap is lower than scrapps but theres a good reason why, scrapps are frotline fighters, and blaster stay on there sofa chair throwing power until the run away warning.You got to admitt that most of the time your safe and sound( I know that your feel not contributing to the group) but in my experience I find blaster can be more helpful if they last longer and the devs just make there attacks a little stronger( not swaping dmg cap beacuse thats kinda outrageous especially with scrapps that are losing there defenses and some are just broken) in the end as a scrapp and tank I still approved of the extra dmg upgrade and a little more defense( not defense cap of scrapps totally( universal meaning of defense BTW))

Of course Im always willing to join with any blaster no matter there build( eng not against it but a little problematic for me) good luck getting a better defenses and attack power(no swaping!)

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Spoken like a true scrapper (whithout an inkling of what the blaster life is). My friend, scrappers deal almost as much damage as a blaster, have a higher cap AND have massive defense in comparison. For a well built scrapper-, you will deal 90% of blaster damage while taking only 10% of the damage 9even whiel in melee). See the comparision? You can take 10 times the abuse, thus standing in battle 10 times longer, dealing almost the same damage. thats the disparity. Again, most savvy blasters are asking for a bit more damage, and a bit more diversity in the secondary to help mitigate damage. (ie give us more tricks and tactics to use). Since I have cited devices as a "complete" secondary, I will make the same comparison using them. WIth fully slotted smoke grenade and cloaking shield, devices blasters can eek out about 40% defense in the average battle. With targeting drone and an extra SO in each attack, he will eek out a net damage increase of about 10% (doing 280% base damage instead of 250%). WIth trip mines/time bombs, he has a tool he can use as a part of a strategy/tactic to survive a particually hard battle( large group/big boss). Yes it costs time to lay mines, but at least you can complete a hard part of a mission (something that other blasters find impossible shy of massive debt). These are the tools all blasters should have, but dont. Buildup is not a catch all and melee punches shoudln't be the solution-thats SHOULD be the scrapper solution.

As i said-this is not intended as whining but as constructive criticism to guide fixes. Making the squishiest of toons survive is a fun challenge for me, though hunting groups of blues/greens or orange solos to survive hardly feels "heroic" to me, when I seek large groups of reds/purps. or hordes of whites with other toons for a good challenge!

The key is that Blasters will ALWAYS be a higher risk toon. Thats just how it is and what makes the AT unique. My level 48 fire/fire is sometimes a machine -Buildup plus INferno = lotsa dead oranges. With the same toon-I have also been killed by a yellow and a white (Stunned, then knockbacked and swiped before I could get off the ground by a -1 nemesis Boss and LT pair). Note that a tank or scrap will NEVER be killed by a yellow and a white. IN fact, most melees can stand amongst a group of 5 oranges , and not be at risk of death at all (its usually just a factor of how fast they can cut them down). The problem with this is not that they can stand in a group of 5 oranges ( i want that in a tank!)-its that they can cut them down as fast as my blaster! Ever watch an energy tank one shot and orange, then a yellow back to back? Ever watch a fire tank burn 30 whites and yellows solo? And scrappers do even more damage! If youive seen this then you know what I'm talking about.

So, assuming that the other Ats are balanced and only minor tweaks will be done to specific powersets, what you find is that blasters as an AT needs probably the most substantil tweaking in the game. Again a modest across the board dam and range increase, and a tweaking to secondaries. IF all secondaries were as diverse and effective as say, devices, then I'm sure it woudl close the gap for blasters...

I'm pretty sure that blasters will never get any type of mez protection. This is what makes blasters the ultimate "squishy", which helps define the AT. Besides-you can always pack break -frees for the tough times, and pop em like candy. However, the ultimate squishy in most games is also the highest damage dealer, and to me that is the crux of this discussion-blasters dont currently outdamage the other ATs. IN Sheer DPS, other ATs I mentioned previously (Fire/Ill trollers, most scrappers, some tankers (fire) and defenders (rad or dark), outdamage most blasters.

So, the only way to offset making this the least defensive AT is to make it the most offensive, and thats where the boost is needed. More dam, higher cap, better innate (unenhanced) range. These are the tweaks needed to bring blasters back to a point of equity with other ATs in the game.

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City of blasters was a myth? You either have no idea what you're talking about or that was supposed to be humour.

In Pre I2 days, blasters were king. No other AT even came close. Period. That's what they are refering to by saying city of blasters.

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No...it's a misconception. As someone above me noted, it was City of /dev blasters, on the strength of *one* broken power. There were a lot of blasters, but those were the early days. On paper, (ie with no playing experience) blasters look like the most fun to play. So a lot of people roll blasters. Slotting a blaster is pretty simple to figure out, too...all the slots go to offense, so in the early going blasters really are offensive juggernauts, especially compared to the other classes that have to split slots between offense and defense. Nothing about blasters as a whole has really changed since then. The environment has, as there are more mobs with ranged attacks and mezzes are more prevalent, and mobs will scatter if they can't get into range of their attacker, but City of Blasters is a myth, one that died without any significant changes to blasters as a whole.

Now you wanna say "City of /Devices Blasters, before the smoke grenade fix" I doubt you'll get much argument. But my fire/fire (played since day one, so i'm well aware of any changes to them ) certainly wasn't what people had in mind when people said "blasters are too uber" back then.

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This is not true. My own experience and thousands of post on the boards support the "City of Blasters" days. Its nitpicking to say that blasters weren't changed while spending the rest of the your post talking about major changes made to the game that greatly impacted blasters. As someone who was "there" i will take the next step further and state that the game changes were made to deal with blasters! It was City of Blasters. They were by far the majority, they leveled fastest and weilded the greatest power (/devices bugs aside). Changing mob AI so that they scattered, greatly increasing the number of status effects, and giving more ranged attacks-were made almost exclusively to impact blasters (some range attacks , such as wolves were made to slow down the herding, but thats the exception not the rule) None of those changes affected Scrappers at all, since they resist staus effects and dont work "at range'. That, as stated previously, how City of Blasters came to this-Blasters as second rate toons who besides being the most difficult to solo endgame, aren't even the best damage dealers anymore. Some builds still reign as the AE kings at least.

Don't get me wrong-blasters are now among the most challenging toon to play and level. they jsut are the most dangerous to play, WITHOUT the offseting ability to be the most dangerous damage dealers. IF that were the stakes-they'de still find many supporters. However, my tank (42 fire/fire tank), my trollers (50 ill/rad and 50 fire/kin), and my scraps all outdamage my blasters, and that just a shame. Hell with tar patches recent resistance debuff, my 44 D3 deals about the same damage as my blaster, and does it with several Holds, acc debuff and three heal/hold spamming pets on top of the damage!

Yes, I do think blasters need some lovin!

PS though they didnt make my sig, I have a 48 fire/fire blaster, 32 Ice/Energy, and a lowbie AR/Dev, so i do have a good handle of the blaster life. I generally only play them when I am ready for a huge dose of pain and debt-and prefer to play the other Ats when i want the mop up the floors with good sized groups of reds!

In my opinion, the issue is a verrrrry simple one: Blasters don't do enough damage. Its that easy. In the early game (pre-1) it was called City of Blasters, and damage was king, and blasters were kings of damage. The Devs responded with a series of nerfs to blasters, culminating in an overwhelming number of status effects lobbed into the game, forcing blasters to be almost unplayable in non-team situations. While I believe a slight trimming of status effects should be in order, the real issue is..Damage. A blaster should be able to deal enough damage fast, to kill a foe before they kill or hold you (which equal sure death). As it stands now-this works for about about 15 levels, and after that the mezzers in the Lost, Tsoo, Family...kill any blaster who dares fight them (there are some builds that have tricks to get around this-but most dont).

What really rubbed blasters face in this shortcoming, was the buffs given to scrapper damage in this period. Nothing I ever read in early posts by Devs, the manual...ever said scrappers should even come close to a blasters damage, yet wtih crits and raised caps they were back-doored into the roel of damage king. They were supposed to be hybrids-sub blaster damage, sub-tank defense. As its stands now, they are kings of the game-herding and killing herd with impunity. Statesman, I believe its a great misstatement to say that scrappers need higher damage than blasters cause they are in melee. They are in melee, taking at most, say 50% higher than ranged damage, while running shields that prevent or mitigate more than 80% of that damage compared to a blaster. Even a rudimentary test that my 4 year old runs on my toons tells him which is the toon to have. You'd think the dev team could figure it out too!

I'd say blasters need an across the board dam increase of at least 10%, and that scrappers need about a 10% trim, but given that a trim will never fly, I'd say blasters are due for a 20% boost. If were gonna be far and away the squishiest AT, we need to be far and away the higest damage AT. It doesnt compensate for the greatest achilles heal- the lack of status protects, but it would give blasters some chance in the post-level 15 world. A few tweak to the secondaries and to the animations times are in order too as fine points-but they wont be enough unless the elephant standing in the room is dealt with first.

Great job!! kudos (and COH Oscars) for writing, editing and direction!!

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BB

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I agree with this assessment , but its such a difficult thing to fix. In other games say DAOC, healing works much differently. You actually DID get exp for healing (if you healed someone who was in battle) you could get exp even if not teamed with them. Healing random folks on the streets is KSing though since you sap exp! Also, If you healed somone in battle, it generates agro. If you are healing more than others are damaging-healers would often get the agro of a full group! In this game-they cant give exp for healing-casue its healing without risk since you generate no agro....

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Tell me about it I played Cleric on Kay server lvl 50 in DAOC (Hejtmane) talk about agro I had a group instant heal button plus I had what was called wild healing which gave me a % chance to do a crit heal (double helath point heal). When things went bad that was the button the problem is you got agro not some but all. I called it my instant death button rlmao.

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Yep-When things woudl go awry I would I would usually shed a tear then hit my "Group Instant heal" key, knowing full well that my group woudl live, and 3 purps would beeline right for me and beat me to a bloody mess before any tank could get the agro back... Druid/Cleric/Healers were real martyrs in that game! At least we had decent armor!

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If a player is in a zone, did NO damage in a combat and has dead for more than a minute, he receives no XP.

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That's not a reasonable set of limitations to place on Defenders and Controllers (or even Tankers).

A Mind Controller might put the whole crowd of MoBs to sleep (doing no damage), and then get killed by the Boss who she failed to affect. By the time the team kills the boss a minute has elapsed and she gets no XP, even though she neutralized all of the minions for most of the fight.


As an Empathy Defender I might help my team survive for most of a long battle, then fall in combat withouit ever doing any damage. If I am down more than a minute I get no XP for the team's final success, even though my efforts kept them alive long enough to achieve it.

The damage requirement is very slanted toward the attack-oriented classes and insults the contributions of support classes.

I would be very irritated to see this set of parameters go live.

BB

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I agree with this assessment , but its such a difficult thing to fix. In other games say DAOC, healing works much differently. You actually DID get exp for healing (if you healed someone who was in battle) you could get exp even if not teamed with them. Healing random folks on the streets is KSing though since you sap exp! Also, If you healed somone in battle, it generates agro. If you are healing more than others are damaging-healers would often get the agro of a full group! In this game-they cant give exp for healing-casue its healing without risk since you generate no agro....

Has anyone ever tried casting vengence on pet corpses?

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It's not about the damage of Rage. Well, it is, in a way, but only secondarily, at least for me.

Rage is simply not fun right now

It has gotten to the point, after several more bad experiences with Rage in teams, that I have determined I'll only use my tanker for soloing from here on out, unless I'm teamed with other tanks and scrappers that I know don't need to depend upon my protection. This sucks. It goes against the whole philosophy of being a tank. But it's either that, or watch my teammates get slaughtered as I stand by helplessly.

I'm not a tauntbot. I refuse that role. I don't even have taunt. In order to keep aggro I am required to deliver a constant reliable stream of damage and (relatively) lots of it. I can't do that level of damage without Rage (both damage and accuracy buffs), and now, with the FORCED downtime of the power, I can't do it WITH Rage either. As such, whenever I get the urge for the crushing impacts of tankery goodness, I log in and comb Portal Corp's parking lot for a while solo, where I don't have to worry about the rest of my team dying because of the stupidity of the Rage penalty. This gets boring fast, however, and it's rapidly approaching the point where, even solo, the frustration of periodically sitting there whacking buttons ineffectually is steadily beginning to outweigh my urge for the crushing impacts of tankery goodness.

Rage needs to be made fun again by removing the enforced inability to effect anything but yourself, or Cryptic will have soon removed a paying customer from their game. This isn't meant as a threat, just a statement of fact. My tank was my favorite character. I've not enjoyed any character more than I did her, and I still don't. And if the changes to my tank are making me not enjoy playing her... what does that say about the rest of the game?

Balance is all well and good, but it should not come at the expense of fun. It's a game, which we play to have fun, not to deal with arbitrary penalties. And yes, it is completely arbitrary. Was Super Strength anywhere close to imbalanced? Even with Rage? Take a look at Fire tankers before you answer. Or any scrapper. The correct answer is no, it was not. And if Rage is made fun again and the ADD syndrome removed, it still will not be imbalanced.

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A tank without Taunt IS a solo build. If you have been teaming with folks, you have by no means been even close to average at the role a tank is supposed to have. The modest amounts of agro you get from being a punchvoker (which is a pretty new idea in this game) is nothign compared to the agro the blasters, khelds or scrappers will generate beating on the mobs-All have much higher damage curves. Get taunt and use it-or please stop compaining that your toon is broken. it works great-you're jsut asking it to do somethign it can't do unless you use the tools they gave it to do the job. Sheeesh, might as well spec my blaster by slotting only secondaries then complain on the boards about how Cryptic sucks because controllers out damage me!

Hmmm, Didnt know there were so many hotties running aroudn in spandex on our server. Well, heres one of me on a somewhat over the top halloween...

http://www.eshin.com/gallery/halloween2001/conanEnraged

http://www.eshin.com/gallery/halloween2001/combat

My two cents-rages 10 sec downtime is a fine penalty. In order to allow a tank to do his or her job, the expiration of rage should culminate with a massive PBAE taunt. following the train all of the "logic" thread in here, if I was a SS tanker raging right smack in the midst of a group of foes doing greatly increased damage, then I would think when they saw me slump down tired at the end of my rage and put my hands on my kness (metaphorically), they might preferentially choose to gang attack me! Woudlnt that solve the issue here?

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Rage needs to have more drawbacks.

Right now it only has a cost to activate, a 25% end drain when it's over, a defense debuff when it's over, and 10 seconds where you can only use powers on yourself.

How about we make police drones aggro you when Rage crashes, or possibly just give a certain amount of debt per activation.

This power does the job of FIVE inspirations! With great power comes great responsibility.



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My reaction

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Yeah I have to agree. I know there are some busy bodies that think rage was actually built into SS by design to compensate for a pretty mediocre set of attacks, and to bring it somewhere close to, but still behind several other tanker melees. Hogwash. I think that since it adds 80% to our damage-they only way to compensate this is to subtract 80% from the exp of everthing we kill when we use it.. ANy maybe 1 bar of debt acrrued upon activation. Something like that seems fair....

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It's my suspicion that you've become confused by my repeated use of myself as the subject when discussing why I don't pick Khelds as team mates. I've done so so as not to imply intimate knowledge of the decisions of others, be that or be that not the case. Make no mistake, my eye is on the ball and this thread is about what the role of a Kheld is in a team.

The answer to that final question is "To fill in the gaps where other AT's are missing" and my final assessment is that if the proper AT is not present to fill that role, then a Kheld will have to "suffice". This represents an issue, in my mind, that detracts from the appeal of having that AT in the team. If you want a role filled, you want the right AT to fill it. Khelds will do in a pinch, but we all know that if this was a stand alone, single player game where you had to assemble a team that the average person would drop the kheld the second the right team member became available to round out the team properly and that the only reason you'd want to keep one around is if the team was already balanced.

So what role does a Kheldian fill? Again, I say, they may fill the hole, but they don't fit the role.

As I've stated, if others like the AT, more power to 'em, but from a team point of view, they serve no real purpose. That's not to say that I personally won't team with them, as some have told me that they won't.

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Wouldn't it suck if everyone played cimmerian fist version 1,2,3,4,5.......


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Y'mean like some people who play the same character over and over and over and over in different incarnations but they're really all the same character? Yah, that would kinda suck, I find it hard to imagine how that could be fun or what kind of imaginative sink hole that person may be.


EDITED FOR SPEELING.

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This is a good a piece of misinformation as any on the boards. Mistaking your lack of knowledge about an AT for fact is hardly a good reason to exclude them from teams. IF had played one to the upper levels or understood the At, or heck-even asked one what they could do-you might actually be in a postion to speak about the AT. The reality is - that you should probably ask any Kheld what role they can fill in your team before they join because saying you're a PB is much different than saying you're, say a Spines/regen scrapper, where your Ae damage and good healing abilities are understood. Way too much diversity in EAT builds to be pigeonholed. However, they are NOT secondary, or subsitute teachers or spackling or whatever peopel have called them, by nature-its just that some builds are overly diverse/broad and may appear that way.

For my current build, I generally tell them that I am the best AE blaster in the game, and its pretty much the truth. With Nova form slotted up-I put out unrivaled steady DPS, and with conserve energy and end regen of Nova, I never run out of end. I can blast non-stop. So no, I don't have a blast that rivals 6 slotted inferno for the 'one pop' kill, but I guarentee I can apply several times the damage in the time it takes to use the power and get back up to speed and ready to deal more damage. Add to it that I dont need a healer to babysit me while I most folks find I'm pretty easy on a team. WHen I get agro, I can drop out of form for self heals or even tank anything that attacks me if there is no tank or controller to yank it off me. I'm pretty self sufficient, even on a team. When I have the luxury of good support classes, well, we all know how good a nicley balanced team can be.

Other folks playing EATs might have much different slotting and might tell you a very different role they can play on your team - try asking next time and learning how to play with the EATs rather than learning how to exclude them.

Good luck to you all!