Another_Fan

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    The only speed reference that you have is my Blaster vs. whats-his-name, the guy that's ridiculously hard to kill for everyone and extremely resistant to lethal damage. Giant rock fellow on Monster Island. Pretty sure no tank is about to stomp him without temps, pets or inspirations.
    There were some examples posted to the tanker boards just after bruising got added to tanks.

    Quote:
    And obviously my Blaster has Incarnate stuff. Are you trying to imply that having Incarnates is a bad thing? Why even mention it? Everyone should have Incarnates at this point.
    So there is a consistent point of comparison. If you need to take the incarnate abilities to accomplish these things its not an accurate comparison to compare to something that isn't
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post


    Did you just say "you can't do it" and "it doesn't matter if you can do it" at the same time? Wow, I can understand the need to cover your *** around here, but that's just silly man. And yeah, sure poor people can do the same thing on Brutes- That is, stomp large spawns efficiently. Granted. I have two unpurpled Brutes meant for recreational spawn stomping. But those poor people Brutes can't solo GM's on the same build without pets, temps or inspirations. So it makes sense to me. I can beat the game on one character, and it's a fun and engaging build with an active playstyle. This makes me happy, and it makes it worth the investment.
    no I said

    Quote:
    I have no doubt that a fully incarnated blaster can manage this
    I believe you are wrong about the poor brutes/scrappers soloing gms. As things stand tanks can solo GMs and at about the same speed your blaster does.


    Edit: Out of curiosity have you tried a pylon challenge, no temps no insps no incarnates with that build ? That would provide a nice baseline of build strength against the histroical data available
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    Do you seriously not know about s/l cave maps? It's not a build designed for farming, it's designed for everything but also happens to be good at farming. I can ticket farm and PL very efficiently on my Blaster. Keeping one small purple running isn't exactly rocket science, and I don't see why you'd find anything difficult about keeping Drain Psyche saturated on a farm map. "You only have resistance to the three most common damage types" is silly. I actually have about the same s/l/e res as my TW/FA Scrapper on my Blaster. Same defense outside Shadow Meld too. Building res to the most common damage is logical, so I'm not seeing what possible fault you're finding. My Blaster solos 54x8 Malta and Carnies and GM's too- I'm not sure how you could possibly find a build that softcaps everything with a small purple and has resistance to the 3 prevalent damage types to be in any way lacking. Especially when it has rain of arrows and the ability to regenerate over 100 hp/s.
    Didn't think I would need to highlight this

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Another_Fan View Post
    I could imagine creating something in the AE that would work with this but can't think of anything in the wild.
    So you have basically confirmed what my thought was, you are farming customized enemies in the A.E.. That isn't a criticism just an observation about your build and it's capabilities. It is what it is. If you like I can give you a mission that will shred your build in the A.E. all either does is make a statement about the nature of A.E.


    Quote:
    My Blaster solos 54x8 Malta and Carnies and GM's too
    Anyway you need to take the soloing 54x8 carnies with a blaster claim up with arcanavile the last time someone made the claim his/her response was derision at the possibility. I have no doubt that a fully incarnated blaster can manage this I just don't see the point of the claim. It is only relevant in regard to the amount of effort it takes to prepare a blaster to do this. When you can build other ATs that do the same things at 1/5th the effort and don't have to take special effort to accomplish these tasks it just points to a problem if both are meant to have similar jobs

    Edit: Just saw the president Uruguay disputes your claim I would listen he also invented monopoly pricing.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    Two Headed Boys build post link only for the sake of brevity
    What is it you farm with this build exactly ? Far as I can see you need a continuous small luck to maintain a softcap but you you also need a continuously saturated drain psyche to maintain your healing and the only vectors you have good resistance to are smash, lethal and energy. Almost everything that does lethal has def debuff, Smash has lots of stuns and your energy numbers aren't great.

    I could imagine creating something in the AE that would work with this but can't think of anything in the wild.
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
    An old saying applies here- the map is not the territory.
    In this case the territory is a map.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Garent View Post
    Regeneration doesn't get more powerful the more of it you have though, unlike defense and resistance, so there's not going to be a greater benefit in building for it in the future than there is now.
    Actually regeneration does get more powerful in nearly the exact way defense and resistance do.

    The difference is there isn't a fixed goal.

    Your time to live is going to be TTL=HP/(Incoming_DPS-Regeneration). As your regeneration approaches the incoming dps your survival time vastly increases.

    The curve is the exact same form as regen and defense.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
    Which AT should be at the bottom?
    None of them.

    They all should have things they are good at and bad at. The problem is blasters when you look at them aren't best at anything but are the worst at more than a few things.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rakeeb View Post
    DS blasters who build for defense don't have any issues surviving the 1.3 seconds of aggro they need to get the full benefit and, typically, they get the ability off before mobs realize that a Blaster is about.
    Against the right enemies. All it takes is a spawn doing a damage type they don't have defense against and they drop like a rock.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
    A bit of anecdotal support:

    my range softcapped ar/dev can happily breeze through about anything in the game at +0/x6. He can go higher on both fairly easily as long as I cherry pick my opponents. Before I softcapped him he wouldn't have dreamed of attempting X6 anything, because he'd have been mezz'ed and face-planted by the first spawn he came across.

    And he had nothing in the way of extra regen, certainly nothing like Drain Psyche. If he did....wowzers.
    I would love watching you try to leverage drain psyche on that build just to see the humorous deaths.

    It's a perfect example of why you can't always make direct comparisons of survivability.

    Ideally an AR/DEV can completely avoid melee with a spawn, just by dropping caltrops and a couple of saftey mines, and using web grenade as needed. Aggroing the spawn with drain psyche is going to get you killed nearly instantly.

    Whatever the numbers are on the new super spy power, they are going to be better for you than drain psyche because they won't depend on you aggroing targets to get the benefit.
  10. Did they ever declare a winner for the ICE/TA contest ?

    If the devs can't take an interest in their own builds on this forum what makes you think the players will ?
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post

    The question was: "where is the line of immortality for a S/L capped fully-Drain Psyche'd Blaster? Where is it for a blaster with 10% Defense and slotted health?" If you have a problem with the question, you should take it up with the person asking the question.

    The answer is it is a poor question.

    This isn't directed at you, its directed at the practice of using these type of numbers to make a comparison. Just as an example would anyone think a defenseless sonic/energy is 70 times less survivable than a single position softcap fire/ment ?
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    My rough estimate calculation goes like this:

    Blaster with slotted health ~ 200% regen (178% with 1.95 slotting and no other bonuses). DP saturates at about +1500% regen (+1463 with 1.95 slotting).

    All other things being equal, the DP saturated blaster can take 8.5x more damage over time (1700/200).

    On top of that, the soft capped blaster is getting hit 8 times less often than the blaster with only 10% defense (50-10 / 50 - 45). That means the soft-capped DP saturated blaster can sustain about 68 times more damage than the one with slotted health and about 10% defense, or about 70x.

    Doing the more accurate calculation instead of the estimate in my head, I get 73.75x more survivable.

    Edit: Incidentally, for reference my estimate for how much more dangerous a +4x8 spawn is relative to a +0x1 spawn is 60-80x more dangerous just in terms of damage output alone.
    Theres 2 problems with these kind of calculations both the above Rakeebs.

    Mathematically they are fine but they are operating on incomplete descriptions of the situation.

    In order to get a fully saturated drain psyche the blaster has to spend 1.5 seconds doing nothing in melee. Second the enemies must not be able to mez the high defense blaster. A single mez to the high defense blaster will knockout roughly half their survivability.

    Both also completely discount dealing with spawns in a strategic fashion instead of employing methods that are suited for one build but not another.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Diellan_ View Post
    This doesn't make me feel better. How much will Blasters need to lag before they get revised? If Blasters get bumped up to second from last in terms of performance, is that it, no more buffs for three years?
    The really worrisome thing is that there isn't enough in the changes to bump up blasters a spot. So what happens if this goes through and the devs get distracted by the next butterfly that drifts through the window ?
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    In the same way that saying double stacking invincibility was broken omits the case of only having two things in its radius.
    Sorry not familiar with the double stacking invincibility issue.

    But clarifying this, You are saying drain psyche is a lousy power when not used by power gamers that have maxed it out and then found situations where its faults can be maximally exploited.

    Well in context of the powers that blasters have had up to now, it's pretty nice for anyone. The power was the only blaster heal power available and it provided recovery. You may wan't something instead of these moderate benefits but that hardly makes them bad or undesirable. Personally I always found the power a no brainer pick compared to scare. Even on SOs.

    In context of the new powers that we don't have the stats on yet it may be pretty bad.

    I'd be considerably more worried about things hitting the caps if they weren't so poorly implemented to begin with. You really don't want a resistance/defense/regeneration cap so much as you want a total mitigation cap. The recovery cap seems both strange and pointless. The movement caps were just expressions of the limits of the engine.

    Worrying about the -regen on that power is once again worrying about the tiniest and least important detail you could imagine. Blasters are a long long way from encroaching into defender space
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    There's also the question of intent, which Arbiter Hawk's comments do not address but would be relevant to a more general discussion between the powers. There's no question Light Form does what it was intended to do as a defensive power. There's no question that neither the players that have difficulty making it work at all as a PBAoE, nor the players that min/max the power to be perma-saturated, are generating the nominal intended result. That makes it doubly broken, as the power contains no credible moderate middle for average players to leverage.

    The problem with Drain Psyche is not simply that its overpowered. Its really that its overpowered in its optimal use case and overburdened in its mechanical use requirements. Its mechanics strongly discourage moderate usage. You have people claiming both that its very weak and that its very strong and both are situationally correct. That is a fundamental flaw in the power's design.
    That omits the cases where the average player finds 3 or 4 minions attacking them, or can use an endurance pick me up every so often. Drain psyche provides a level of benefit that scales against the number of foes you face.
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Debating whether a single power that caps out regen and recovery simultaneously is too strong is a debate best left to people with too much free time.
    True enough it would be best to look at all the /mental blasters running around breaking the game, farming and power leveling with drain psyche.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle View Post
    As Arbiter Hawk said, and as you seem to be grudgingly acknowledging even as you attempt to skirt around it, the overpowered part of drain psyche is the gigantic -regen. Of course it doesn't hurt that the buff portion of the power is practically tailor made for farming, either.
    Farm on a blaster ? Why ? You are going to spend 10 billion + for a farmer that does considerably worse than a brute with a billion inf build.

    If they consider the -regen overpowered they need to take a look at some of their basic assumptions. The enemies where its important make up less than 1% of the game and it's very dangerous for blasters to try and use it against them. Yes it does allow blasters to hunt GMs and AVs, but that is something every other AT gets to do, including tanks. If anyone is concerned about debuff on a team they are still going to ask for a defender/corruptor over the blaster with drain psyche.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    The only thing that worries me about this is a possible Drain Psyche nerf. I'm personally a fan of the current risk/reward balance and the investment required in order to get it perma/take full advantage of it. I do agree that the other secondaries need to be buffed to have the potential to perform as well as /Mental though, I mentioned that forever ago and I'm glad the Dev's seem to be moving in that direction. I just hope /ment doesn't suffer because of it.

    It really kills me to see people call drain psyche overpowered, especially devs. Then again it also really kills me to see things like blaster improvements tied to +to hit.

    Fully slotted for heal, Drain psyche provides 7.34 hp/sec/target hit. 7.34 hp/sec mitigation for every target aggroed. In order to get that you have to place yourself in a position where every attack they have can hit you. If you don't have 75% or better mitigation to the attacks minions are doing you are deep in the hole.


    Against strong hard targets it's nothing the primary benefit being -regen.

    What makes drain psyche look O.P. is that it can be backed by a factor 17-18 reduction in incoming damage. Of course anything that you have that kind of damage reduction for is going to look over powered drain psyche or no. The second you are away from your safe zone of damage type/position you crumple like wet cardboard.
  19. The one thing you can say is it would be nice if the Devs made a definitive statement about this proc. It would also be good if they actually stuck with their position.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by JayboH View Post
    Yeah, testing is needed, no doubt. We already know that something will be done to Time Bomb so let's just be patient - no reason to take the Targetting Drone benefit away or water it down so other sets can do the same thing though.
    I really wouldn't mind seeing this particular benefit exclusive to devices, but only as part of an overall improvement to devices. Right now on blaster combos with have devices as a secondary that is far on the low side of the scale. The snipe change rehabilitates devices but at the cost of making water, sonic,dual pistols, and ice very low performers.

    Making the fast snipe a function only for devices would still mean the snipeless would take a relative performance hit but only when paired with devices.

    Edit: And I really really don't want to see the devs overcomplicate themselves to the point where they can't or just don't want to finish fixing blaster problems.
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
    But that is irrelevant. Blasters deal more damage under the same conditions is what is relevant. We are not going to change the value buff/debuff brings so pointing at it isn't likely to be helpful, but we don't need to bring 8 buff/debuff characters to have a good time and to finish game taks in reasonable time frames. Blasters need to be fun, they need to have a distinct playstyle from corruptors and defenders (and other ATs), and it seems it is important they are reasonably survivable as well.

    While I think blasters should deal the most damage, I don't think they need to massively higher once we start bringing all abilities to bear, there is value in being able to bring the pain without also needing to lay out a debuff first.

    I play on lots of duos with my wife. Two defenders is a small bit safer, but one defender and one blaster is almost always faster. On larger teams the buff/debuff gains some advantages, but on smaller teams, what blasters bring is valuable.
    I don't doubt that, I just think in that case the question should be how does the duo compare to a scrapper/defender or a brute/defender combo ?
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shubbie View Post
    The damage seems well liked the fact that cor's and def's leverage the effect better than blasters not so much.
    And the fact that for most blasters (by combination not count) its unreliable.

    Speaking of which anyone else notice that -to hit in the new trial ? event was -20 and insanely long duration ?
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by JayboH View Post
    Honestly, I hope it doesn't change, because we all know Devices needed a good swift kick in popularity to get anywhere near the top sets.

    Energy Manipulation is far superior especially with AR. Energy can provide the fast snipes as well, and provide longer cones, and has build up to make the whole shebang work together.

    /devices has problems, providing a crazy boost that doesn't address existing problems but completely changes how you play the set ? Somehow I don't think that will work.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shubbie View Post
    I have an AR/fire blaster and Im wondering if I need to reroll, Im looking looking looking at the numbers and there is NO way to leverage the new snipe effect, there just isnt enough +to hit availible without relying on yellows and thats... not good.


    Now If I do need to reroll.

    What would have better leveraging, Ar/dev or Ar/time cor.
    AR/Time should be really great

    But I wouldn't reroll just yet. The snipe changes look like they are uniformly disliked. Their final version may be different.
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    People have been saying this since 2006. Since that was six years ago, it would be more proper to say this game is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly dying.

    Anyone in 2006 who said the game was on a downward path, wasn't making itself appealing except to people that had it as an ingrained habit would now have compelling numbers to say "I told you so" with.