Arcanaville

Fair enough. I thought about ways to gain toxic resistance without heals, and the best I can come up with in terms of player powers without special inventions or incarnate powers that doesn't require ally only buffs (i.e. can be done solo) is a Sonic Defender with slotted Sonic Dispersion and Scorpion Shield from Mace Mastery (which you can't slot for resistance) can get about 41.3% resistance to toxic. That's also not too bad. I can't at the moment think of anything better using just slotted player powers and no ally buffs not castable on self.

Dammit I was just in the middle of posting my guess which was going to be 10% heal and 200% regen for 60 seconds non-stackable which would have been much more impressive a few minutes earlier.

I proposed that to Arbiter Hawk as well. Just in a completely different way.

That's true: I know that from a purely numerical perspective he was ok with the cosmically stratospheric DPA from Sniper Rifle, but things like "does it look bizarre with weapon draw" are exactly the sorts of things the powers designers have to factor in when Q&A gets their hands on it.

BaB did not think it was a good idea to have powers with only 0.67 of animation time for various animation reasons: the current animation team may have similar thoughts as well.

If it gets knocked to 0.83, that would mean 1.056 arcanatime and 2.61 DS/sec DPA, down from 2.99 DS/sec. Not bad. But as that cast time gets higher, AR's lack of Aim becomes increasingly noteworthy.

The costume contest is the devs looking for ideas.

Since you acknowledge that healing powers often provide resistance to toxic, wouldn't you say a set like Regeneration provides significant protection from toxic? Resilience offers 9.375% resistance to all, which is about 14.9% slotted. Reconstruction offers 15% res to toxic and I think it stacks and lasts 60 seconds: you should be able to stack it and get to about 30% resistance to toxic, for a total of about 44.9% resistance to toxic. That seems to be pretty high protection to toxic damage.

If electric lags Fire by 20%, and I'm not saying I've done calculations to show that, but if electric lags fire by 20%, it would not be because electric was nerfed relative to fire, but because fire was buffed relative to all other sets. The DoT fire gets in most attacks in lieu of any other secondary effect is about 40% more damage. Its that high because damage over time is not valued as highly as damage now, but when people calculate fire damage they usually include all the DoT in its numbers as if the damage happens immediately.

If electric lagged fire by only 20%, when Fire is given about 40% more damage than normal due to DoT, that would imply that intrinsically, Electric is actually the better offensive set unless you believe DoT is better than other secondary effects. If you do, then you should tend to pick Fire, no differently than if you think end drain is the best effect, you should pick electric, or if you think slows are the best effect you should pick Ice.

AR has the fastest "insta" snipe at 0.67s. Psychic Blast has the second fastest at 1.0s. Beam Rifle has "normal" timing (its cast time is slightly slower at 1.4s instead of 1.33 seconds, but arcanatime rooting is identical for those two times) but the aoe disintegrate effect.

Fire Blast has the hardest hitting snipe, but its also tied for the slowest insta-snipe, which makes its DPA almost identical to standard snipes (1.78 vs 1.74).

The lowest DPA insta-snipe is Archery at 1.49 DS/sec. That's still higher than almost all blaster single target ranged attacks (other than insta-snipes) and Archery does have the best tier 9 nuke, so I don't think people will be abandoning the set just because of the snipe change.

If you don't already take powerboost, which would make it relatively easy for energy manipulation to get there, I should point out that /energy is also getting an energize variant in place of conserve power. While its heal is going to be smaller than the melee version (and its regen increased to compensate), it will in fact have a heal that is enhanceable. And power boost buffs heals (not regen).

So powerboost will make it easier to insta-snipe, and boost the healing of energize. I would suggest looking for a place to put that power if you don't normally take it.

I don't think Castle ever invited the community to ask him anything about the game in an open ended setting. BaB may have once, but he also used to admit he sometimes made up the answers to questions not related to animation.

I have a feeling before the dust settles, Build Up will trigger insta-snipe for blasters without special build cost.

I'm pretty sure Arbiter Hawk meant to say that the change affects the same single target 40 foot ranged attacks in Dominator assault sets, where those sets contain those powers. I doubt *any* AoEs of any kind, cones or targeted AoEs, are getting *any* buffs as a part of this change, no matter what Arbiter Hawk may colloquially say to the contrary, unless he specifically and explicitly states so by power name.

I don't think Arbiter Hawk is saying the best use of the power is to not hit anything with it. I think he's saying the duration of the sustain effect was made long enough for players to have a choice whether to use it against critters or use it away from critters.

I didn't say Soul Drain wasn't problematic: I said it *was* problematic. But it is still stronger than Build Up, and prior to the announced sniper changes I considered it a plus that Blasters got anything like it at all when /Dark was proliferated, not a punishment.

I also said, and will reiterate, that Blasters should get better tools that aren't melee-focused in general.

That's not true. That's actually a statistically uncommon occurrence.

According to the stream, Lightning Clap will be usable without targets to get sustain, and according to Arbiter Hawk above ToF will still need a target, but is becoming an 80 foot range attack.

Lets just say I'm not worried about boost range at the moment.

He was sober when he made the changes, just crazy. He was clearly intoxicated when he decided to tell the community to ask him anything about the game.

I believe its debatable whether blaster ranged damage is high enough relative to defenders and corruptors. If both were increased in any material way, from my perspective the debate would be over for me.

You have that in reverse order.

Only if you believe melee attacks in general are inappropriate to blasters, which I don't think they are. The problem is that while BU and Aim have no real preference for melee or ranged, Soul Drain does, and that makes it a dangerous candidate for adding buffs which then synergize with the primary blast set which is ranged preferred.

Unless you're range exclusive, Soul Drain was the first time Blasters even got access to anything better than BU and Aim really, and lots of things are stronger than BU and Aim. Its just that mostly melee archetypes get them.

Something that is as strong as Soul Drain or AAO but would work at least as well if not better for ranged blasters as opposed to melee archetypes would be welcome, but I don't see one on the horizon yet.