Arcanaville
-
Posts
10683 -
Joined
-
Quote:Blasters are not intended to be solely or primarily ranged. I clarified this over the years many times, but the final, authoritative word from Castle before he left was that the on-paper conceptual design for Blasters was that they were damage dealers. Not ranged damage dealers, not melee damage dealers, but just damage dealers. In fact, this is consistent with the inception of the archetype all the way back in 2003 when Jack said in his dev diary that the original concept for Blasters was Melee/Ranged. Melee/Ranged became Ranged/Melee which became Ranged/Manipulation to add utility to the melee attacks. But originally, Blasters literally had ranged offense and melee offense powersets.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Lets see, could it have anything to do with the fact that you told the Player they were getting a Ranged character and when they chose their powers they were mostly better suited to Blapping? Hmmm. I wonder.....
Its actually /Dev that is the odd one out having very little to contribute to melee offense, every other manipulation set shows its Melee offense roots intentionally. In fact, while most of the manipulation sets were really ports of Melee attack powersets from Scrappers and Tankers, /Devices was actually a conversion of a totally different thing: the Gadgets origin concept, which became the gadgets powerset which became the devices powerset. To this day, "Devices" is still known as "Gadgets" in the developers' powerset database.
In any case, Electric/Electric is probably the farthest outlier in this regard in having the highest percentage of short range or melee attacks and utility powers. And people have been making ranged electric/electric blasters for a long time. Every other combination swings further towards having more and better ranged options. Some combinations, like AR/Dev, have no blapper option at all. Some, like Fire/Fire, have an option but with no mitigation its a borderline suicidal one. And some, like Anything/Ice have a blapper option that is equally good at supporting a ranged option (i.e. Ice Patch is good for blapping, also good for keeping things at a distance). -
Quote:That is inf. I just don't like storing my inf in bids, I just leave large sells unclaimed instead.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
If you are going to do impressive things with the market INF is usually preferred
I also get nervous having all my eggs in one basket, so I have some alts just running around with close to two billion inf, some with large sells just sitting there, and a whole bunch I converted into a ton of prestige for four separate bases, which I then filled with storage.
In trying to figure out the best way to store inf, I mostly eliminated my need for inf. -
Quote:I haven't heard them acknowledge that particular error yet.Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
We still haven't convinced the devs how -maxHP works, though, have we?
-
Quote:How do you think he got up there in the first place?Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
Wait, that's not an MA/SR scrapper, that's an Energy/Energy Blaster.
And people say scatter is bad. Only when you do it wrong. When you do it right, the Tsoo speak your name in whispers for years. -
Quote:Would that be you summon a shopping cart and then push it around the city making vroom vroom sounds, or would that be you summon that guy to push you around in a shopping cart. While you sit in it making vroom vroom sounds.Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Also... Maybe this is a leak of the next travel power!!!
-
Quote:With an army of demons at her command did she really need to find a hero that could push her shopping cart around?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That just means that Desdemona's been shopping at the Paragon Market
-
Finally got to 1342 by running through all but the day job badge from I22, might as well say yay before someone starts the 1350 thread.
-
Quote:We tend to be a little better at providing stress in a time of comfort, but we can switch-hit in a pinch.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Welcome back Bill.
I hope your friends here in the CoH Community can provide you some comfort in a stressful time. -
Quote:That's ... an interesting thing to say to TopDoc.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Then you are very late to the party.
As to the OP and what to do next, I suppose the next thing to do is to see how many of these you can make:
I have ... a few. -
Yes, worse than Ranged Shot. Worse than Barb Swipe. Worse than detention field.
I give you: shopping cart summoning.
No wonder I had to go save this guy:
(This was a particularly weird weekend in City of Heroes.) -
Quote:I still believe the best way to adjust endurance drain effects is to add -MaxEnd to powers that drain end. -MaxEnd is in some ways identical to -recovery in that it will reduce the amount of endurance recovered per unit time. But unlike -recovery it will also reduce the size of the recovery ticks, and that's the key to reducing the number of attack options a critter has when drained but not fully recovery debuffed.Originally Posted by Leo_G
If I were redesigning Electric Blast, I'd have used one of my favorite spell effects in other games/fiction. From Atlantica Online, to Magic the Gathering to even WoW, I'd give electric blast the 'Mana Burn' effect.
Basically, any foe with END above, like 75% (not much thought in that number...60% seems too low a gap and 80% wouldn't give you much opportunity) would either take extra damage, have their HP debuffed by a percent of their current END or be debuffed (probably -regen). Then you have the option of overloading their own energy to fight against them through 'over charge' or completely shut them down by draining all their endurance.
But I like the thought of burning off their high endurance bar for a chunk of extra damage...
It *also* makes the critter burn through their own endurance faster when using their own attacks. -
Quote:That's part of it. Based on what people are saying about testing and what the devs are saying about its mechanics, PPM procs aren't being crafted to be restrained, but to have a floor of performance.Originally Posted by Kosmos
It seems what Arcanaville expected (and so did I, though I have no idea where I got that idea) was that the PPM was the maximum the IOs would produce. And for all practical purposes they chose a formula for deciding the PPM of SBEs that makes that value pretty much the minimum they will produce in a single target power.
But its also how far you have to go to get there. Whenever the devs oversimplify a technical description and in the process drop a critical element (cycle vs recharge, for example) I get nervous. Because the usual trajectory for tech is someone designed PPM, then someone else assigned someone else to code PPM, then someone else was told how PPM works and assigned another someone to use PPM to design something. Colloquially fudging precisely what it does, and more importantly what its intended to do, doesn't just have the potential to confuse the players.
Testing seems to show PPM behavior is more or less reasonable, so I don't think something wild happened. But I would not bet cash that its currently doing precisely what it was originally intended to do.
Incidentally, basing firing percentage based on unbuffed cycle time causes some interesting skews when it comes to the performance of the PPM procs under high recharge. -
Quote:By being above them.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
I love Energy/Energy Blasting. I have a parked 50 with a great name (GM Approved "Zerg" - inspiration being the physics unit Erg, and not kidding). Sigh, lets get real, teams hate KB. And I have not gotten good enough to control it. I mean, the Ball is a explosion of KB, how do you even control that?
Alternatively, back in the old days I would sometimes switch out of blapper mode and do this thing where I would superspeed right around to the back of the group and then open fire, so the knock would push everything *towards* the group rather than away.
In any case, there aren't very many maps in which scatter is important, and yet you can't be hovering above the spawns.
Plus, if not for knockback, you wouldn't have things like this happening. This is the worlds most tenacious Tsoo. He won't let go, and he also refuses to be knocked off. That's the best kung fu grip I've ever seen. I had to let him live, because how can you kill that guy. -
Quote:I've never thought of myself playing my characters as I thought they *ought* to behave. I play my characters more like me if I was in their circumstances. But I think the critical issue is that I don't ask how the game expects me to play, I play as I expect me to play.Originally Posted by seebs
I am something of a method RPer, and I tend to play all MMOs by playing the character as I think the character ought to behave.
-
Quote:Knockback or mez makes snipes usable. The problem is that using sniper blast is only marginally better than using jump kick over and over again.Originally Posted by Nos482
Imho snipe is OK as it is.
All you need is some knock back power and snipe becomes a wonderful part of your attack chain.
enemy gets close (happens)-> kb->snipe (reduce interrupt time is your friend here)-> kill -
Quote:Its extreme, but there is a kernel of truth in it I can't ignore: I find that trying to play Jedi as my mind's eye thinks of Jedi is almost the worst possible thing I can do. My counselor plays far better almost never touching her lightsaber, and leveraging companions tends to be just as important as whatever you're doing. I find when I stop thinking of it as a genre game and start thinking about it as a generic MMO, my performance gets a lot better.Originally Posted by BellaStrega
This argument was stupid when it was used in reference to Knights of the Old Republic 12 years ago, and it's still stupid now.
This is mostly a matter of personal perspective, but I find that its far more often that I'm forgetting I'm even playing an MMO when I'm playing City of Heroes than with any other game I'm playing. I know probably all the ways to game the AI in this game, and my knowledge of what I'm fighting is probably better than most MMO players for most games. But I tend to forget all that, or at least not really dwell on it most of the time I'm playing. I'm just shooting stuff. I know this because when I find myself in a situation where I feel doing the right thing is critical - say in a very tough mission or on a trial or task force badge run or something similar - its extremely noticable to me that I'm playing a completely different game. Or maybe the game is the same but there's a completely different me playing it.
When The Matrix Online was being beta tested and then released, I mentioned how weird it was that replicating the *feel* of the movies was easier in City of Heroes than in MxO. That game tried to replicate the mental state of melee fighting with what I called "chicklet combat" at the time. The problem was that it didn't evoke the martial arts combat I think most people were expecting, and certainly not what I was expecting.
I personally think if you're going to use an IP for a game, the game should not just draw backstory from that IP, its gameplay should evoke something important about the IP. In many ways, Arkham Asylum is *all* evocation, and it seems to have done well there. And I think City of Heroes tries harder to evoke its powers concepts than invoke their mechanics (although it could do better), and I think that is to the game's overall benefit.
I think the best way I can put it is that not only do I like to play City of Heroes, I like to watch myself play City of Heroes. That's not always true even of other games I actually like to play. -
Quote:Your first stop should be to paragonwiki.com. Specifically Combat MechanicsOriginally Posted by 2xH3lix
I'm so sorry, please excuse my noobness, I've been trying to understand PvP for some time now and i stumbled upon this enlightening thread. So i just have 3 short questions:
1.Whats the difference between accuracy and To-hit?i thought they were the same.
2.Whats elusivity?
3.Whats the difference between elusivity and Defense?
Elusivity applies a (1 - Elusivity) factor on the end of the tohit equation (or the beginning, as the article shows; it doesn't really matter). Its a completely different thing; if you read the combat mechanics article Elusivity is sort of like Anti-Accuracy. Its a stand alone factor that reduces tohit just as Accuracy is a stand alone factor that increases tohit overall. Defense is the converse of ToHit, Defense subtracts from ToHit in the tohit algorithm (you'll have to scroll down deeper into the article to see Elusivity discussed). -
Quote:1. The effect I'm describing would work mezzed or not mezzed. So if you want to reduce the amount of mez that affects you shoot the mezzers. Preferably first. This is in fact superior to a mez-breaking solution because mez-breakers presume you get mezzed in the first place before they have any benefit. Counter-mez (and counter-debuff) can theoretically be used to prevent mez, and it adds an element of skill to that effectiveness.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
I'm not sure that I can get behind this. I'm sure it's numerically sound and I have no doubt that it could be tweaked to work BUT it would not be fun. Sure it may keep me alive, but while I'm mezzed I'm still playing a character that is level 2. That's not FUN.
For a mez solution to work for me I have to get the amount of mezzes that affect me (turn off/suppress toggles, lock me out of my 21+ other powers, prevent me from moving, etc) down to 5% or less (actually 2.5% or less since half of all the mezzes launched all ready miss) without dipping into the inspiration tray. Just like I can achieve with EVERY OTHER AT I PLAY.
...
I really don't see how you can get the % of mezzes down to an acceptable level with this idea without making the thing hideously overpowered while unmezzed.
...
I also can't see how this will significantly speed rewards gained, especially solo, if the blaster is still limited to an average DPS that is lower than a defender due to mez.
2. The key to balancing this is duration. Controller and Defender debuffs and control have long durations: it lets them hit targets with control or debuffs, and then go do something else for a while, or in combination with the fact that they also have AoEs with these effects, hit many different targets with those effects. Short duration effects essentially only affect the target with you're actually shooting at the target. Stop shooting at that target and they would then be quickly free to act. How *many* critical threats you could neutralize with this effect would then come down to skill, and build. Which is exactly what you want it to come down to anyway.
3. If it reduces the time spent mezzed, specifically by giving better options to prevent mez offensively and breaking chain mez when the situations encourages it, it'll improve performance. But as to this point specifically, the current version of the idea also includes a small damage increase in the form of boosting single target damage when splash targets don't exist. Separate from that, I would want to improve sniper attacks and better normalize tier 3 single target blasts, both of which would nominally improve offense and therefore overall performance. -
Quote:Actually, my main is Energy/Energy, and for years I focused on the /Energy and played it as a blapper (after first having played from launch mostly ranged), but as of I19 my build is very range-focused and I believe overall it plays a lot better as a ranged build. I do not believe I'm being penalized for being ranged.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Then again, most secondary effects besides -res, -tohit, and fire are useless. But sets with those are even harder to build for ranged than Electric. It is a problem of how small a corner do you want to paint yourself into with Ranged Blasters building. Which i am actually cool with, EXCEPT the Devs call it "Ranged" so that verbage will never cease to irritate me. If i am building it sideways (Ranged when you advertise Melee), thats my problem. But if I am building it "Ranged" DO NOT penalize me for it when you say it is "Ranged."
I actually think more blasters die because they aggressively go into melee range to use those tempting melee and PBAoE attacks without the experience to leverage them properly.
I can say that I accidentally started Graham Eason in flashback this weekend still set to x5, and got reminded how nasty green ink men are when there's more than two of them around at a time. Until I switched to hover blasting, whereupon they went from efficient blaster killers to whack-a-moles.
Range has problems, but that doesn't mean melee is the solution. -
I don't know if its a typo or it was changed from beta or there's some other reason why, but I ran Steel Savior today and the clock showed three minutes, not two. I finished it with 58 seconds on the clock and got the badge, so I'm guessing the badge awards if you finish before the timer runs out whatever it says.
-
Quote:What are the other 16,454,879,461,980,120,075,256,208,808,423,707,594 ,569,520,169,546,098,724,822,305,557,499,652,251,6 56,183,656,755,553,354,476,786,926,837,944,386,916 ,417,019,200 reasons?Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
And THIS is reason number 1323212121121 to 10th power, of why this game is STILL AWESOME after 7+ years.
Gratz to the happy couple. Gratz x (1323212121121!)! -
Quote:Worth noting: Blasters, Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors, Dominators, and Masterminds all share the same DR parameters for defense DR (last I checked). Those parameters place an asymptotic limit on defense of about 21.22% defense to any type or position. *Nothing* can buff you higher in a PvP zone. 1000% defense buff, one billion percent defense buff, makes no difference. You will rise towards 21.22% defense and then level off.Originally Posted by Sentry4
It's worth noting that the Scorpion Shield gives 10% Elusivity to S/L/F/C/E/NE/Psi (That's why Mids says 70%)
Let's assume you have 50% defense (to any postiton or type), that's DRed to 18.7% defense.
If I'm a blaster with Tactics and kismet slotted, I've got about 17% tohit. Let's first calculate the tohit chance.
=Base+TohitBuff-Tohitdebuff-Defense
=50+17%-0-18.7%
=48.3% (if they had 0 accuracy)
They need a minimum of 96.6% acc to get 95% chance to hit, but that's without DR and without your elusivity. With your Elusivity, they would need 107.3 Acc -after- DR.
On mids they'd need a total of 137% acc in their attacks of slotting + global accuracy to have a 95% chance to hit with DR.
A glad jav set gives 66% accuracy, meaning they'd only need 71% acc in global bonuses.
Most have a lot more than that, and even if you put in tohit debuffs, that's not factoring Aim/Build up, other souces of +tohit, how -defense would take it all away and the fact that you'd be lucky if a squishy had an 80% chance to hit you (on a good build).
tl;dr With ranged: 50% defense+10% elusivity VS Kismet+tactics+71% acc global = 95% chance to hit
Defense is for melee types only.
Note: Mastermind pets are critters, not player archetypes, and thus are still so far as I know immune to DR. -
Quote:Yeah, actually I've been saying that for a lot longer than that. In fact, I was signalling my intent to focus on control and secondary effects almost a month ago specifically:Originally Posted by Eldagore
Here is a copypasta of my post from page 2 of this very thread. LOL, it reminds me very much of my comments to Arcanaville in the snipe thread. Way to go Arcana! You fixed it again!! hahaha
From page 2:
IMO, mez protection for blasters needs a mega overhaul, to the point all the current inherent mechanics go out the window and something new comes into play. Just what that is is obviously a much contested issue.
that being said, if we come to find ourselves totally unable to remove our thought patterns from 7 years of history and simply cant think of a better way to do things then defiance, some other things should occur. if we remain true to the "use these 3 attacks while mezzed" idea, then IMO we should be allowed an immense increase in allowable custimization of the 3 powers we come to rely on so heavily. if, solo, i am to remain locked into a power bolt-power blast-power bolt-power blast-etc themed attack chain due to inherent mechanics, then I think i should be able to customize more then color on these powers.
Tier one and two blasts do not grow enough with the character. Certainly, enhancment slotting grows them for a while, but as a character approaches lvl 25 or so, the powers are basically peaked out. Some alteration to function can be achieved with set bonuses, like excessive rech bonus or the like, but even this does not alter the animation times or rooting times or secondary effects.
Maybe those things should change as level increases. maybe animation time should slowly reduce for tier one and two attacks on blasters so that when mez becomes so common, you have grown those powers to compensate. maybe while defiance is in effect under mez, secondary effects of those powers should be magnified, or made 100% chance. More secondary dot dmg for fire, 100% chance of knockback for nrg blast, greatly increase endo drain/transfer on elec blast, etc. More effects, and animation time reductions. The higher level you get, the more important position becomes to survival, and reduction of cast time and root time would accomdate this.
basically, if the blaster AT stays the course on defiance/mez, then the blaster AT really should allow the tier one and two powers to grow to a power peak that is significantly higher then current, and significantly higher then other AT tier one and two comparitively as the other AT are not so heavily reliant on those powers.
End copy.
It's almost like I suggested the tier one and two attacks get better chance of their secondary effects(based on the set they are in) and are improved to help blasters win in a mez state, and also improve the defiance blasts in other ways as the character lvls up to help the blaster stay on top of their game instead of slowly becoming weaker in those situations as level iincreases. /sarcasm
And specifically mentioning adding it as splash effects in single target attacks just like propel. But how about I just offer up what I suggested to the devs directly, which I'm free to post since I'm not specifically reposting their replies:
But before anyone gets too excited about that wide open customization idea, there were some issues with it so I simplified:Quote:1. Improve the Blaster tier1/2 ranged attacks. Honestly, they are the bread and butter single target attacks, and they are the only ones usable when mezzed. But with the recognition that Arcanatime governs the actual damage over time of those attacks, I believe they should be sped up a tad. Not a radical amount, and not so much that the animations would have to be totally overhauled. Generally, just one or two frames of animation except in one case.
Right now, the "standard" tier1/2 ranged attacks have cast times of 1s and 1.67s, and recharge times of either 3 or 4 seconds for tier 1 and 6 or 8 seconds for tier 2. The most common case is 1s/4s and 1.67s/8s with damage 1 DS and 1.64 DS. In arcanatime terms, both have DPA of only about 0.84 and 0.89 respectively, and DPS over the cycle (without recharge) of 0.2 and 0.17. The 3s/6s attacks are worse: they average about 0.7 DS/sec in DPA.
I would like to see those attacks get closer to 1.0 DS/sec in terms of true animation time. You could do that by reducing the cast times of those attacks from 1.0 to 0.83 and from 1.67 to 1.4 for the 4s/8s pair, and from 1.0 to 0.76 and from 1.67 to 1.15 for the 3s/6s pair. This shaves one animation frame from the 1s/4s attack, two frames from the 1.67s/8s attack, two frames from the 1s/6s attack, and 4 frames from the 1.67s/6s attack. Only the 1.67s/6s attack has a radical reduction in animation frames, but this would increase those attacks to between 0.9 and 1.05 DS/sec in DPA. Keep in mind that many melee attacks exceed those values.
I know animation is tough to change, so you could get the same results by fiddling with damage. But then you fiddle with recharge, and that's a bigger disruption to players.
2. Improve AoE effects
I pretty much have given up on figuring out a way to make single target competitive with AoE: it just can't be done with all the restrictions and cottage rule limitations. But I can still try to make single target competitive with AoE by adding AoE effects other than damage - which don't alter the endurance or recharge of the power. My best idea so far is to add a Gauntlet-like effect to blaster single target ranged and melee attacks that doesn't actually do anything. It just applies a null effect. The reason for doing this is that you can then allow blasters to slot procs into those attacks that *would* affect multiple targets. So lets say Power Blast affected up to two additional targets surrounding the primary target. If I slot chance to hold or chance to end drain into Power Blast, while the damage would hit one target the proc would hit three (potentially). I could slot chance for knockdown into total focus, and it could knockdown targets surrounding the blaster. It would be a special form of power customization: customized AoE side effects (and my thought was 2 additional for ranged, 5 additional for melee - gotta be careful with ranged because you have things like chance for build up out there).
There's also an incarnate advantage here because I'm guessing Interface debuffs would flow into those targets as well for blasters.
Its AoE, and then again not AoE. Its more secondaary effect, although the secondary effect you can slot a proc for includes damage procs. The problem, of course, is that it relies on the invention system.
Both PMs date from 12/7/2011. Almost like I've been thinking about this for years, and not just a couple weeks.Quote:Throw out the inventions and give each blaster primary and each blaster secondary a designated special mitigation effect, even fire. Then add that effect to all single target ranged and melee attacks as a gauntlet-like special effect.
AR: chance for knockdown
Energy: chance for knockup
Electric: chance for sleep
Fire: chance for fear
Ice: chance for recharge debuff/movement slow
Psionic Blast: chance for stun
That sort of thing might work. I shoot him with power bolt, there's a chance the guy to the left and the guy to the right get knocked up. I Fire Blast that guy, there's a chance the two guys behind are momentarily terrorized. That would add survivability without defense and AoE effects without AoE damage, and doesn't rely on slotting or the invention system. But it could still *benefit* from the invention system for those that decided to use it.
It would need to be carefully tweaked so that it didn't stomp all over controllers, and you'll note I did not make the Ice effect "hold" because that's too hard a control: I'm aiming for soft-controls that have mitigation benefits here.
And even Fire/Fire would have some mitigation. By keeping the effect concentrated in single target attacks, you prevent blanketing everything with Blaster AoEs. And if it seems too unfair to players who have built focused on AoE, implement the converse: for AoE attacks, only the target of the AoE is affected by the secondary effect.
That has nice symmetry. Single target attacks with AoE secondary effects, and AoE attacks with single target secondary effects.
In any event, I did not suggest speeding them up with level because that's basically impossible (I did suggest to Synapse to reduce their cast times overall), and I did not suggest increasing their chance to generate secondary effects because some sets don't have any to increase, and in either case I did not think that would be enough effect anyway. So its almost like you suggested exactly the same thing I'm discussing, except for all the details being different.
Incidentally, the list of effects above was a brainstorm: I've changed my mind on some of it. Today I would suggest psionic's effect be Chance for Confuse and Fire's effect be Chance for tohit debuff, range debuff. And the chance for the effect to go off would depend on the size of the effect. If it was small and target limited to a small number of targets, close to or equal to 100%. If it was larger and could affect more targets, it would be proportionately smaller than that. In all cases, the rule would be that boolean mezzes would be short duration: on the order of 2-5 seconds. Debuffs would be longer, 4-8 seconds depending on the debuff.
As I've said, though, I've continued to evolve the idea. I've added the additional feature that if the splash has nowhere to go, the target is hit with more damage instead. -
Quote:Lets assume that sniper blasts couldn't be interrupted at all, so they could be used at any time. In that case, with no other changes, they would still have just about the worst DPA of any single target ranged blaster attack. Using them during combat would actually *lower* your damage, not raise it.Originally Posted by HardRider
If it aint broke dont fix it.
Snipe is fine, With Io's it can be used in most situations, either as first strike or to kill a runner.
Outside of normal combat, using it as an alpha and runner attack makes the power very marginal. Using it at any time other than the initial alpha reduces your damage as mentioned above, even if it is not interrupted. Using it to catch runners only makes sense when the runner is more than 80' away, less than 150' away, and will not break line of sight four seconds after you first activate the power.
Base running speed is 21 feet per second. In 4 seconds a runner can travel over 80 feet if they are running away. That's fast enough that if the runner runs in a straight line they will escape the range of snipe unless they were initially in the range of a normal attack anyway. Runners don't always run in straight lines, but they also have a tendency to disappear around corners. -
Quote:Praetor Duncan particularly.Originally Posted by Radio_Silence
I don't feel the NPC's here are stealing the limelight.
Incidentally, am I the only one thinking that every time that happens its totally hilarious? If I was a dev, I would be out roaming the servers just doing that to random players.