Arcanaville

Oh goodie, one of these; always a time saver for me:

Since you're now saying you're not saying what you were saying, there's no longer anything that needs to be discussed. Like I said: time saver.

I would buy one hundred million super packs and then hope one of them has the Black Wolf.

Also, I would quit working so I could play more. I'd probably also want to upgrade my gaming system a little:

If I ever became a dev, I don't see what the point of being called anything other than "Arcanaville" would be, because it seems unlikely that could be kept a secret for very long.

On the other hand, if they let me design my own signature character... let's just say there's a lot about the powers system players would learn is possible when I started showing up in Pocket D and stomping on everything in sight.

Heck that would almost be worth applying for a job all by itself. I could take on other devs' super-alts in Atlas Park and it would be like watching Green Lanterns duke it out only more colorful. There'd be Kronos Titans summoned to fight Warwalkers and unresistable damage unleashed on unhittable targets while things kept going in and out of phase and clone duplicates made it impossible to figure out the right one to kill while Storm Elementals and Rikti Heavies blotted out the sky.

So like if one day you see someone in Atlas going all Brad Pitt in Troy calling out Positron and Zwillinger and then yellow mitos start showing up all around them, it might be because I decided to move to Mountain View.

Actually, why Black Scorpion hasn't done this yet I'll never know. "You want to see a decimal point error? Oh, was that supposed to hit for 100? I'm sorry it hit for 10000, my bad. You don't think buffing recharge on pets is overpowered? Well say hello to my 500% recharge Gremlins. Who else has a problem with the powers spreadsheets; show yourselves you cowards."

For the most part, the problem with Positron's reaction to the AE issues was they he did too little, too late, not that he overreacted.

During beta, I made a rather passionate plea to the devs to be very cognizant of the fact that they only had one real chance to make a first impression with the AE, and it was better to delay it than launch it with critical flaws. The first impression would grow to dominate people's attitudes and opinions about the AE for a long time to come.

My greatest regret regarding that is that I made that plea for something I thought was pretty important, but failed to realize the devs were not already thinking this exact thing about exploitive behavior which I thought was too obvious to mention. If I knew then what I know know, I would have spent all of my energy back then advocating to the devs to delay the AE completely until the exploits were removed, knowing full well just what the ramifications of what I was asking were in a production sense.

Claims that Positron overreacted are to me incredibly darkly amusing. He did far less than I would have done, and he did it with far less technological firepower than I would have mustered.

I justify Natural origin enhancement the same way I justify all enhancement. Even Tech enhancements don't make sense: we obviously aren't carrying around dozens of those things. I assume the enhancement is a metagame to represent general improvement. So tech enhancements are really the metagame way of me improving my technology through invention or construction, not necessarily mapped directly to the trinkets represented by enhancements. Conversely the same slots that represent technological improvement on a tech character represent human ability on a natural character, such that experience and study eventually allow me to unlock those increments of potential and increase my ability.

In fact, the metaphor for natural enhancement is actually pretty similar to that of mutation enhancement.

But I see slots as potential. Leveling unlocks potential. Slotting achieves that potential in a particular way. Natural human potential, Technological potential, Magical potential. Which is surprisingly close to what people are probably thinking when they build in Mids. I have so much potential slotting available, and I need to harness that in the best way possible.

Taking leadership doesn't make Scrappers the jack of all trades archetype, since those aren't Scrapper powers. Nor was that argument presented with any credibility in any thread I recall. "I have maneuvers, I'm a jack of all trades" is something I would have remembered. And screencapped for posterity.

Also, aside from the fact that none of that is relevant to Kepler's laws of motion, which required Tycho's observations, as I stated. Kepler had access to *other* data which allowed him to do all those other things, but that data was not accurate enough to formulate a precise model for planetary motion. It was that lack of accuracy that stymied Kepler, and by his own actions he illustrates the importance of that accurate data, by pursuing Tycho for years just to get it.

If Kepler's models actually worked, he would not have needed Tycho. He needed Tycho because he realized his data wasn't good enough to make a good model of planetary motion. Because good models require good data to base them on.

I have no idea whatsoever what you mean when you mention Ptolemy. Why would he need Tycho's data to invent epicycles? Epicycles are what you can get away with without sufficiently precise data. Tycho's data contradicts epicycles, not encourages them.

Twisting of scientific history indeed. I often wonder if you happen to exist in a place where you're convincing and that encourages you to attempt the same thing on the internet, or if you don't happen to exist in a place where you've convincing and that forces to you attempt this on the internet by default.

In theory that would work, but in practice that would be difficult to do with any sort of precision.

Also, the goal should not be to improve the survivability for a single fight, but survivability across an entire mission. That's not precisely the same thing: when survivability is altered randomly, you do not get exactly the same result as you would get if the average benefit was spread out evenly throughout the mission. Variability generates lower survival than that. So a random effect that on average allowed a blaster to kill a spawn 10% faster, say, would not equate to the same overall survivability as something that always allowed the blaster to defeat every spawn in 10% less time all the time. That makes it even trickier to balance such an effect, if precision is intended. If its just about generating a buff of some kind that didn't need to meet a specific requirement, that would work. To this day most people don't know what the SR passive scaling resistances actually do, because they are so complex to analyze. I'm pretty sure even the devs don't know. Everyone knows they do something, and sometimes a lot, but overall? I don't know anyone besides me that's actually looked at that question in detail. But I also don't think the devs were aiming for anything specific, so that wasn't a concern.

Here, it would likely be more of one, if the intent was to generate a specific survivability increase for performance purposes.

Honestly, for the best set of options, I would go with the classic Energy/Energy. Boost range can be made perma which gives longer reach on blasts and improves the cone on torrent. It also means when you knock them back you can still hit them. Or you can go blapper: energy punch, bonesmasher, and total focus are a good blapping arsenal (although I think /electric edges it out in total).

Alternatively, Energy/Dark and Energy/Mental would be potentially good choices. In fact, even if you do not want to build around Drain Psyche, Energy/Mental can be a good hover blaster because Mental has decent range for a blaster secondary.

I didn't say you said they *needed* to do it, I said saying "since I can one-shot things sometimes, there can't be a problem with making blasters one-shot things all the time" is false.

I'm aware of the BU calculation. You forgot to include the fact that your damage drops to zero during BU's cast time, which actually makes BU's average damage buff even lower than that. *But* when you get down to the difference between two-shotting and one-shotting, even if that only requires 1% more damage in points, that's doubling kill speed. And kill speed is ultimately what's balanced for, not damage points. Damage points are *usually* comparable to kill speed, but 1% more damage and twice the kill speed is not going to be seen as only 1% more damage. Its going to be seen as twice the kill speed.

Technically, though, I should have said its a three times incremental increase in kill speed. If you are killing things one-third of the time with one shot, and two-thirds of the time with two shots, then killing everything with one shot (of these kinds of targets) equates to an increase in net kill speed of 67%. That's still high enough to make the one not say anything about whether the other is reasonable.

Actually, I was just making light of the irony of Venture saying we are not an unpleaseable playerbase when he's already a lock for the forum curmudgeon lifetime achievement award.

So you say. And since all writers think like you, that means the Paragon Studios writers must have had an ulterior motive.

I wonder what my motive is for deliberately denying the truth: need or spite.

KB is not really a mez, but it is an example of an effect other than damage in which enhancing its strength increases magnitude not duration, and thus power boost, when it used to boost it, would boost KB magnitude and not duration.

Incidentally, no dev has ever admitted to me sticking a KB with duration into the game to see what it would do, even on the dev servers. I would.

I have a mind/earth dominator that uses knock a little less scattery. Levitate, Spears, Mallet, Heavy Mallet, Tremor, all deal knockdown or knockup. You practically have to commit suicide to die on that combo.

That's not even counting the holds, sleeps, and confuses she hands out.

It conflicted with my blapping a bit, but I used to love Bonfire. At one point, I decided to burn freespecs on my main by rotating epics every time a new freespec was going to be issued, so I eventually took them all. Bonfire was one of my more interesting phases. I especially loved "cornering" with it. You could just keep punching them with bonesmasher and total focus and they would just keep bouncing off the wall and right back to you.

Archery has higher AoE potential, yes. So does AR. Other Blaster sets have far less, such as Psychic or Electric.

That depends. Are you trying to see how good it can get, how bad it can get, or what the average likely is?

How good can it get? Sonic/Mental. Sleep, drain, repeat. Probably good performance right from the start, and on up through leveling. Sirens Song at 18, Drain Psyche right on cue at 20.

How bad can it get? Electric/Fire. Very little mitigation against typical leveling targets (drain is not an effective mitigator against minions and Lts usually), without the bonus of ranged fire offense. I think its the death trap of Blaster combinations for all but the most experienced players.

What's the average? Probably something like Rad/Electric or Psychic/Ice. Decent primary and decent secondary, no wild synergies or conflicts. Rad/Electric is the more balanced ranged/blapper. Psychic/Ice is a more ranged melee-avoidance combo.

For the average, sticking with the Energy Blast primary I would go Energy/Ice, or Energy/Electric. For the best case, Energy/Mental or Energy/Dark. For the worst case, Energy/Fire. Good luck making Fire work with Energy.

Fire's Dot is good for 40% more damage than normal, albeit on a DoT.

Outside of Fire, its unclear who does more damage. It comes down to number of AoEs and the DPA of single target attacks, depending on what you're looking at. And actually Scrappers and Brutes tend to have just as many AoEs: some powersets have more and some less. But they tend on average to have significantly better DPA these days since animation acceleration made them faster.

My guess is that the average blaster edges out the average Scrapper, but there's a ton of overlap across all the powerset combinations. Lots of Blaster combinations beat the average Scrapper, and lots of Scrapper combinations beat the average Blaster.

That's probably not supposed to happen if Blasters were properly designed.


Against zero resistance targets, up to the low/mid 20s or so. Then health outpaces torrent + explosive blast by just enough to make that iffy. I remember in the old days leaving things with a sliver in Talos once I got into the high twenties, and that hasn't changed much since then, even with Defiance 2.0.

But I will say the scatter from that is overestimated, and the mitigation from torrent and explosive blast is among the best multi-target offensive mitigation you can get as a blaster, short of Siren's Song. As long as you are not facing knock resistant targets.


I don't know the answer to the question of what the average rate of teaming is for Blasters. What I was told was that it was not *too* dissimilar to the average of other archetypes, but I don't know what that is, or what "too dissimilar" means.

I don't think the average blaster solos three times slower than the average player in general though. That would be extreme. I think its fair to say its worse that 20% slower, and better than one third the speed. But that's unfortunately a lot of ground, and I don't think I can be more specific than that.

Toggle Nova: You Can Have Instant Healing Back, Regens.

As far as I know, Matt does not draw a second paycheck for actually leading the Freedom Phalanx.

But he should probably watch his back now, since War Witch is now in production. She could put the death of Positron on the schedule, and then bam War Witch is now leading the Freedom Phalanx.

That's also why Sister Psyche had to go: only one spirit on the team at a time.

I don't know, but I don't recall that happening either four years ago (which would have been around Issue 12) or when Defenders first got Vigilance (six years ago during issue 5) or when Defenders got Vigilance improved (two years ago, during Issue 17).

The reward thing might have been an off-hand comment from very long ago, but I do not recall that ever being proposed as a serious possibility. I also do not recall any dev explicitly describing Scrappers as Jacks of all Trades archetypes, except possibly prior to Issue 1. Back before pervasive criticals were added, Scrappers were described as being "generalists" that were good at soloing because they had good defense and good offense. They obviously were not jack of all trades, because they had limited control and no ally buffing. Controllers were often described as Jack of all Trades archetypes: they had offense, damage mitigation, and ally support powers.

Perhaps its neither. Perhaps because they were Jack's characters, he was the driving force behind them by default, and when he left that left a vacuum. Now that he's not here, those characters became more vulnerable to being killed off not because of spite, but rather simply because the other characters have more advocates for future story lines, but those characters did not.

To be honest, though, I don't think Sister Psyche was directly targeted. I think it was a combination of the fact that it was actually Manticore that was targeted as being the renegade that the writers decided to make one of the center-pieces to the story, combined with the fact that the devs seem to be shuffling the pieces around surrounding the character and her alternate analogs, that painted a bullseye on her.

I don't know if it really can be attributed to spite: is it even true that any of the writers involved ever had a working relationship with Jack?

The difference between being able to do it one third of the time and all the time is essentially a three-fold increase in damage. Just because X is ok, doesn't mean 3X is also ok.

Also, for Build Up to be up a third of the time requires +200% recharge, or if BU is slotted at least +100% global recharge. That's not typical, and certainly not typical while leveling up.

Just because something exists, doesn't mean its valid to allow everyone to have it all the time. Right now someone somewhere is at the damage cap, the resistance cap, and the defense floor. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be game-breaking to allow everyone to have that all the time.

To be honest, though, I'm not fond of the phrase "game-breaking." Pouring lemonade into the servers is game-breaking. Many things violate the game design constraints without doing things the players would consider "game-breaking." Its a mostly meaningless term because players think anything that doesn't literally make their PC explode or their eyes bleed isn't game breaking. I only use the term to refer to things so eggregious they cross the line of excessive and enter the realm of the completely ludicrous.

The reason why "sometimes" is radically different from "always" is that when you can do something extraordinary sometimes, you still have to deal with all the rest of the time when you cannot. Allowing Blasters to use Nova is not the same thing as allowing them to use Nova continuously. One shotting a minion occasionally is not a big deal. One-shotting them all the time is essentially being able to negate their threat without them being able to react, and increasing kill speed constantly in a way that would radically increase the performance of the player.

Not consistently. One-shotting a 430 health minion at level 50 requires the equivalent of about 6.9 DS. Assuming slotting in the area of +100% damage, that would then require an attack of 3.45 DS to one-shot a minion outside of a critical. Only one scrapper attack hits that hard - concentrated strike.

For Headsplitter to one-shot an even minion at level 50 outside of a crit (which will only happen 15% of the time) would require a net damage strength of 2.65 - in other words 1.95 slotting, and then +70% damage on top. That's atypical, and there's not many attacks that hit even that hard.

Outside of criticals, which only usually happen 5%-10% of the time, Scrappers have the same melee damage modifier as Blasters have ranged modifier, and their attacks hit for similar scale numbers. Scrappers tend to have higher DPA due to having slightly faster attacks on average, but the amount of damage they do per attack per target is not that different from Blasters. A little higher on average maybe, but not enough to radically change the number of attacks per kill.

Unfortunately, professional ethics prevents me from wizarding myself game rewards.

I'm not a veterinarian, so a tranquilizer gun is perfectly fine.


You know what, nine separate attempts to get that badge all failed, and I haven't killed anyone yet. In the absence of a badge called Anger Manager I think that deserves a badge called "preservation specialist" right there.