Arcanaville

I'm pretty sure most blasters were not thinking if only the devs fixed nukes blasters would be fine. Nukes are a luxury to fix: blaster problems happen the other 99% of the time the nukes aren't available to fire.

I should have typed 22%, but the answer (with that correction) is yes.

TD slotted to 1.59 or better will get there, which you can do with four SOs or common IOs. Or you can slot the Kismet +6% proc, and slot TD with your eyes closed. Either way, you'll be at or above the 22% threshold, and your snipes will "insta-fire" (which doesn't mean they fire literally instantly, but rather they fire with the interrupt window gone: between 0.67 and 1.67 seconds depending on the sniper power) permanently.

If you're AR, yes. Everyone else's snipe casts a little slower.


When accelerated, Sniper Blast would become the second highest DPA attack in scale terms my Energy/Energy blaster has access to, and the highest DPA attack in absolute damage terms (beating out energy punch due to the higher ranged damage modifier).


The target for heal/regen effects is about 1%/sec, half enhanceable. That's about 1.5% h/s, which in regeneration terms is about +360% regen. So, imagine they gave us Fast Healing and Integration, minus the mez protection. Its about that.

She starts to feel unwell every time I see players use rez inspirations while critters with damage auras are still standing on them.

If the only think that will impress you is turning blasters into farming brutes, then I wouldn't expend any energy following blaster changes.

I believe nukes are still on the drawing board. I think they knew what they wanted to do with snipes, and they knew they wanted to add more sustainable survivability to blasters, and they knew they wanted to add that feature to secondaries. All that had well-defined goals. I don't think they've decided what they want to do with nukes yet, and I think a big issue is how to maintain the distinction between the crashing and non-crashing nukes if they get rid of or greatly attenuate the crash itself.

/Devices can make this perma. /Energy can, with the right build. For other blasters specifically, other secondaries will only be able to get this up maybe half the time (BU and Aim), which is still pretty good, but they can also take tactics and kismet, and let one small yellow put them over the top, much like many people build to 33% defense and let one small purple take them to the soft cap.

If I understand Arbiter Hawk's explanation of Absorb correctly (he himself has mentioned to me the special synergy with +res), yes.

Yeah. No. The penalty for being an idiot is lower in the standard game than the incarnate trials. But the number of times I've suddenly needed to go to the bathroom, or to lunch, or my grandmother's most recent funeral, or to walk my non-existent pet, or to cry myself to sleep, is high enough to make that statement at least highly questionable.

So long as it doesn't lag by too much, the fact that AR has more AoE than, say, Energy and Radiation would counter balance that. But its noted that this discrepancy exists: its noteworthy enough to analyze and test carefully, but I'm not concerned that there is an obvious problem yet.

Absorb works by basically putting up a shield in front of you, that the attack have to blast through before getting to the soft, chewy interior called you. If they can't penetrate that shield, you take no damage. If they can, once they blast through the shield you then start taking damage.

Absorb powers stick that shield up, and refresh it periodically. So the attackers have to break through the shield before its refreshed. So for absorb, there's a huge difference between 10 points of damage every second and 100 points of damage every 10 seconds. Both deal the same amount of damage on average, but if you have a 40 point absorb shield that refreshes every 3 seconds, in the first situation you'd take no damage. Your shield would take 30 points of damage every 3 seconds, and then refresh to full. But in the second case, you'd be taking 60 points of damage every 10 seconds as that 100 point attack blasts through your shields. In between those big shots your Absorb shield will be refreshing while already full, which means you aren't getting the full power of the Absorb shield.

So, for Absorb, the trick is to have lower damage more often rather than higher damage less often, so you get the maximum benefit from your shields. High resistance reduces the damage of each attack, making it less likely they will penetrate your shields. High defense, meanwhile, reduces how often you get hit but not how hard you get hit: full strength attacks while they hit less often will be more likely to penetrate the Absorb shield.

If you can put yourself into situations where the damage is less bursty and more continuous, Absorb will be more efficient. If the devs design Absorb on the presumption that the average player will see a certain efficiency, min/maxers who can beat that will get more out of Absorb.

One thing at a time. Well, four or five things at a time.

Its going to be about twice as good but up only about half the time. It will sometimes end up potentially lower than average in some pairings but significantly better in others. It may take more work to leverage but its maximum potential is vastly higher.

Which one of these properties specifically concerns you the most?

Maybe, but that's what testing is for. I think for most players, Absorb is going to offer comparable net benefit to regen and heal over time, because the devs are going to make absorb stronger to compensate for the fact that in normal play its much less efficient.

Now, a min/maxer that can focus on improving Absorb's efficiency (particularly its synergy with +res) will have opportunities there.

The toggle effects are supposed to sustain through mez, so I'm assuming any offensive toggles that get these sustain effects will no longer detoggle, but just their offensive effects will suppress when mezzed.

Regen does not "stack" in the way you're implying. Having existing regen buffs does not make additional ones any more valuable.

Regen *does* scale with +maxhealth buffs while heals normally do not, but I believe if Arbiter Hawk feels that's problematic in beta testing he'll do what I know he's doing with Absorb: make the HoT more enhanceable than the +regen by a small amount. Say, 65% enhanceable instead of 50% enhanceable.

I'm pretty sure the Heal over Time powers are going to have the exact same target Arbiter Hawk mentioned for health recovery sustain powers in general: 1%/sec, half enhanceable. The absorb powers are going to have a higher target, because of the mechanical issues Arbiter Hawk hinted at in the stream.

For lack of having Aim it has a snipe that is almost twice as powerful in single target DPA terms than most other blaster primaries. Until someone can show me all the other 3.0 DS/sec ranged attacks out there that I forgot about, I'm not going to worry about AR just yet.

+Regen and HoT is the same thing by different mechanic. Suppress Pain is better than Soothing Aura because it appears to be designed stronger for some reason.

In fact, regen *is* heal over time: we regenerate in big 5% health chunks, by default every 12 seconds. To make a regen power and a HoT power have the same basic survival strength, but with different delivery mechanisms, just requires a couple of seconds of math.

Not exactly. Snipes will skip their interruptable window and windup animations and as a result fire faster if the player has +22% tohit or more applied. Only tohit buffs count, accuracy buffs don't count, and they can come from any source.

Still? It didn't have one 21 minutes ago either. How about that.

None of the sustain defensive powers being added, to the best of my knowledge, require actually hitting anything. Arbiter Hawk made it a point to mention that in the session: powers that hit things now you can still use that way, but if you choose to stand off away from the targets, those powers will still buff you even if they don't hit anything.

The exception is Drain Psyche, which already exists and is not being changed: its already far more powerful than the sustain powers being added.

In the video Field Operative was showing as essentially +205% regen, half enhanceable (and it was enhanced over the ED softcap to +109% regen enhancement) for a total of 1.33%/sec of health regeneration, which is equivalent to a net +317% regeneration.

Those numbers are probably internal test numbers, because as EG mentions Arbiter Hawk has stated the target was about 1%/sec regen base, which is equivalent to +240% regen base.

My Energy/Energy Blaster is getting a single target ranged attack that deals better DPA than every blapper attack in energy manipulation except energy punch, and an energize variant.

Yep, that's all.

The standard snipe (2.76) deals 30% more damage than the standard tier 3 (2.12) and in every case except Blaze will be casting faster as well.

It isn't intended to be perma out of the box except for /devices, but min/maxers should find a way. I figured out a way to do it with BU, Aim, Tactics, Kismet, and Powerboost (which buffs tactics). On my build, cycling those three clicks generates 100% uptime for insta-snipes.