BlackSly

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I haven't had time to get on test, but I was wondering what people are reporting about the changes to hurricane. Anyone have any stories?

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This is as good a place to put this, as any:

I checked in a few Hurricane changes today that QA is going to look at. In Theory, these changes should mean that for PvE, Hurricane acts Exactly as it did before the previous change, while in PvP, it should act exactly as it does currently. Hopefully this change will get a green light from QA -- I've spent quite a bit of time on it over the last few days.

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Uh, just a question here.
Will the Endurance cost be the same when used in PvP as in PvE? And if so, will it be the original cost of the power, or the 1/4 cost that matches the slower PvP pulses?

Just to toss in my short comment on this whole topic:

It is hard to consider a power "overpowered" when it is the only heal that can fail to work when you need it.

Stuck in Quicksand by Cot? Better survive until the QS drops (hard for squishies), because Aid Self won't help you there.

Falling after being hit by a -Fly power? Wait to hit the ground and go "ouch", because you can't use it while falling.

Hit hard, low on HPs, and you want to run away, around a corner, while healing so that the last burst of enemy fire doesn't kill you? Out of luck, because you have to stop to use Aid Self.

None of those apply to other self heals. Now, of course, in a "best situation", Aid Self is the strongest self-heal available. But it has both the costs associated with acquiring it (extra power choice, one power pool choice), and the extra disadvantage in that it can fail to work when you need it. And, usually, when you need it THE MOST.

I like heals anytime. But I NEED heals at some times... exactly when Aid Self is hardest to use. When I'm stuck in Quicksand, or in PvP when a Rad has his toggles on me, or when I'm down to 20% health and running for the nearest corner to break LOS. And it's exactly when I need Aid Self the most, that it's the hardest to use.

Just an addendum: Shadow Cloak provides Immobilization Protection, and +Perception, in addition to +Stealth.

- Firing last is better than firing first. Unless it's a mez.

- Things go easy exactly long enough for the team to speed up to a faster pace than is safe. At which point the +2 Quantum Boss appears.

- If it's too safe, it's too boring.

- Debt is like the nervous sweat after a good roller coaster ride. It's just a receipt for the fun you had.

- Every time a Kheldian aggroes a spawn that's only partially visible, it's mathematically certain that there a Q or a V in the hidden part of the spawn.

- Every time the game gets too boring, accept a blind invite to a PUG in the Hollows. Many things may result, but none will be boring.

- Travel powers are worth their weight in Influence. A teammate with Recall Friend is worth more than that.

- "HEAL ME" is codename for "I hope you're better than me, or we're doomed"

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That's kind of like a wolf complaining that eight well-armed sheep shot him on sight.

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Dude, if you're as good in PvP as you are on the boards, you're scary

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Aid Self gives you resistance to Disorient. And Health resists Sleep. Although resists arent protection.

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Exactly the point. Cutting mezzing from 20 seconds down to 10 doesn't help you survive at all. Preventing being mezzed, would.

Mez resistance only helps in PvE against "incidental mezzing" in a team, where you get mezzed and then the mobs leave you alone. Doesn't help when soloing, and doesn't help in PvP.

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Sure then give blaster mez protection also.

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Yeah, its called "Pool powers", ever hear of them?

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Dang, I missed the pool power that allows me to get Stun or Sleep protection on my squishies. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

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A blaster's melee damage was lower than a scrappers, for the most part? So Blapper's dont out scrap, scrappers.

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Blappers don't outscrap Scrappers. They outdamage Scrappers in melee, but damaging is only part of scrapping. The other part is surviving damage. Consider sending in a Regen scrapper into a +1 Hazard zone spawn, vs sending in a Blapper.

How much more incoming damage can a Scrapper survive than a Blapper? Easily 2x as much. Probably 4-5x as much. Do Blappers do 2x as much DPS in melee than Scrappers? No.

And that's completely ignoring the mez resistance that Scrappers have and Blappers do not.

It seems to me that if you lower Blapper damage to balance them differently with Scrappers, then you would need to raise Blapper/Blaster defenses. And I don't see that happening at all.

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Truth be told, kinetics defenders are tank-mages, and I'm tired of people denying it.

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Personally, I'm always going to deny that ANY AT without status protection is any kind of tank-mage.

Maybe mage. Maybe APV-mage. Maybe mobile artillery battery. Pick anything with a BIT of armor and firepower. But not a Tank.

No matter what the offense, long as you're succeptible to a single mez Holding you in melee range so that the Rikti swords come out as you're thinking "This could hurt a bit", you're not a tank.

I really have little problem with all of the squishy builds that outdamage any melee build, since they lack personal defense (defense that works all the time, no matter what the mob's location, position, or numbers are), and they lack status protection. Well, at least until someone shows me a FF or Sonic Resonance character who has "mage" offense.

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10% is 10%, no matter the AT.

100 health vs 140 health is defintely not the same, especially considering in most cases that 140 health is being applied to someone with a good deal of damage resistance. It means that the tanker with the same scale of heal will almost certainly survive longer than a blaster with a 100 point heal.

Surely, you agree with that?

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No, I do not agree with that. That is, the numbers are right, but then the Tanker and Scrapper OTHER defenses, such as Resists, should also be the exact same %, and Tankers should just get more effect out of them because of higher HPs.

In other words, it's not that Healing Flames doesn't match up with the most direct analogue in the Scrapper powersets. It's that it doesn't match up, while all the other direct analogues have the Tanker defense as stronger than the Scrapper. It is the one comparable power that is no better for Tankers than for Scrappers, while other powers are better for Tankers. In short, it's underpowered not by comparison with Scrappers but by comparison with how the other Tanker powers match up to Scrapper powers.

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Yes, there was a typo in the description of a blaster power that is now fixed.

There ya go, bug fix!

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Pilcrow casts Redname_Post at Cynicism
Cynicism takes 1 HP
Cynicism casts Witticism at Pilcrow
Pilcrow takes 1000HP
Cynicism has defeated Pilcrow

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That'll teach you to post on Invincible.

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Wait... so soul transfer is "counter productive" yet CoF and OG remain? I'm confused.

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Why do Stalkers need Build-Up? To boost Assassin's Strike.
Do Stalkers need CoF and OG to use AS properly? No.
What is the use of CoF and OG? To fight the survivors after delivering the AS to the leader.

Real questions that come up from this:
1) Will the animations be reduced, or at least the powers made unrooting? (as I recall OG at least should be rooting) If the plan is to have the Stalker fire AS then bring up the powers, they have to come up relatively fast and painlessly, or it's worthless.

2) What is Shadow Dweller? Sounds like Phase Shift to me. Interesting mechanism, if so, to go with:
Build-Up -> AS
Follow-up attack if target needs one more hit to go down
Shadow Dweller for safety
bring up OG and CoF, and fight

Again, if so, SD needs to activate fast. If a set is going to be based upon turning toggles on at the appropriate times in a fight, those toggles should come up pretty fast, not like poor Fire Tanks who get rooted for a long time as they bring up Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, and Acrobatics. They have the HPs to survive doing that, if Stalkers are going to be expected to bring up a portion of their defenses mid-battle, these defenses need to come up FAST.

Oh, and the self rez... suxx0rs?

Power Boost does double up the Sleep durations.

Also, a side note on Andrenaline Boost: Used with a good tank, it's possibly the ultimate single team-defense power. With it up and 6-slotted, a good tank is basically unkillable. If the tank is also good at keeping aggro, which becomes much easier with the +Recovery and +Recharge, that means that the enemies, up to the aggro cap, are taking all of their shots at an unkillable target. One single-target power, used on the right target, can protect the entire team.

And I do mean unkillable. Try having a Tank with this go against a +2 Psy AV that won't one-shot him, and see how well it works.

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So my theory is:
1) Whatever power you want to slot the Enzyme has another effect that allows it to be slotted, not the def buff/debuff apect.

2) Since def buff/debuff are the same thing (like end mods and end drains), its computing the debuff as a buff and giving you the 33% instead of the 20%.

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Given that any Def power will have an End cost, that makes Enzymes slottable in all Defense powers.

What you're saying is that I could slot an Enzyme into Focused Fighting (since it has an End cost), and get +33% as the Defense modifier since an Enzyme modifiers Defense Buffs/Debuffs by 33%?

Whoa. Just... whoa. If that's true (even if they drop the Buff effect to 20% once they realize this), that makes Enzymes actually USEFUL to people other than Radiation Emission and Dark Miasma users.

Oh, just an idea that may solve my concerns regarding ranged toggle aura that do damage:

If, like Phase Shift, the auras were time-limited so that you can't keep them up indefinitely, I think that would fix most or all of the exploits that I can think of.

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The lighting field cast on a enemy and hits his near by buddies. This would also to me apply to the slow toggle in the ice secondary and i think its combustion in fire that both effect enemies only when they get near the player. I think it could add alot to these two secondaries to have that changed.


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Forget lightning field. Added damage is nice but imagine if you could drop Hot feet down in an area instead of having it PbAoE around you. Now, that would be a good reason to take the Fire Secondary and a nice pay-off for a level 38 power.

Look at Frozen Aura. Bam, targetable ranged AoE sleep. Suddenly the power is actually usefull to the majority of blasters and not just to the select few who work around it's draw backs.

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Good points. There are some powers in the Blaster secondaries (especially Fire) that would work well as ranged drop powers:

-Burn at range would be great! Combine Ring of Fire and Burn.
-Hot Feet at range would be great also. Caltrops but with larger AE.
-Frozen Aura would be useful.
-Ice Patch is probably too powerful to make ranged.
-Time Bomb or Trip Mine as ranged wouldn't affect the power's strength but would make it nicer to use compared to asking a team to wait while you smoke and toe bomb.

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Stalkers... brutes, properly built slotted tanks, scrappers... all of these are easily squishy killers. The only difference being they need to get close.

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And when I get ambushed by any of these beside a Stalker (and I think that AS one-shotting is an idiotic design), I can run. They're suppressed. Maybe they kill me, maybe they don't, but they have a real problem in delivering their damage as I try to flee.

A ranged blaster that can deliver that much damage has no problem. 4 shots in about 5 seconds? Considering hang time, by the time you know you're being attacked, the second attack is finished and he's firing the third. Add in the fourth as you're retreating, and it's a killer scenario. And because he can deliver it at range, not only is it much harder to get away, but it's also possible to initiate it using Stealth, while it's much harder for a Scrapper to Stealth into melee range and attack me before I even see them.

Ice/* already can kill squishies in a salvo at range. Improving their salvo with a FAST attack isn't a good idea. If you make it a SLOW attack, with Impale's animation, it's fine. 1-2 seconds of animation time can be the difference between "fine" and "broken" in PvP.

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Aren't anchors supposed to drop if you break LOS? I thought that would deal with the problem of kiting around an obstacle to keep the aura up with no risk. I could be wrong.

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In PvP, if the target manages to make you lose PERCEPTION range to them, the toggles will drop. Not just for losing LOS like them stepping behind cover but still in range.

In PvE, you can maintain toggles on mobs that are out of LOS long as you're within toggle-range (300'?).

As for XP gain using it... I didn't say that it's a wortwhile means of gaining XP HUNTING with it. But it is certainly a risk-free method of engaging a +2 end boss that may otherwise own you. Getting that mission complete bonus with basically not having to fight the end boss, is not something that the Devs will allow. They will not accept hte possibility of reward at no risk even if the rest of the mission has risk in it (see Phase Shift).

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I suspect that thinking like this is why he said that SOME of the ideas might work and others definitely will NOT work.

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No, more like:

1: allowing a Blaster to put a ranged DoT toggle on a mob can allow you to risk-free kite a +4 boss around some indoor areas just by circling some large central blocking item. Or to DoT a SR Stalker who can't drop into Hide, and whose defense is useless (though I suppose they could make the DoT have to roll to hit).

2: making all ranged attacks 40+ range allows someone to chain 3 Ice Blast attacks with Charged Brawl, all with 1.5 or lower activation times, and with 3 of them at 4 BI or greater. In other words, you'll blow a squishy away at range after Build-Up/Aim, in about 6 seconds. At least now you have to worry about Hurricane, Repel, closing to where the pets aggro on you, etc.

Those are just the balance issues, not even looking at animation work. There are some ideas that are nice, but will require some sort of limitation... that's why I was looking more at an area-drop field than a mob toggle, and at 20 range for any secondary attacks that get range. Because otherwise, we will see some balance problems.

Possible solutions, BTW:
1: make all ranged attacks from the secondaries use animations such at the throwing animation from Impale, thus the slower animation makes them less effective at burst damage in PvP. Or at least have them fire fast, and block new powers for a second after. Anything that prevents them from creating a ranged one-cycle squishy killer.

2: make the toggle DoTs roll to hit, and have relatively short range... not just to apply, but have them drop the toggle if you go too far. Most of the exploits I can think of with them involve the extended range at which a toggle will remain, compared to the range at which you can apply it. For example, putting a DoT toggle on a boss, then Flying over their heads out of shooting range.

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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.

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You know, if you keep responding to reasonable posts with little to no amount of flaming I may have to stop ranting. Think about where you'll be then without my rants.

(thinks about continueing the trend of good cop bad cop with Pilcrow continueing to play the good cop)

On a different note, it would be interesting to know what Ideas you thought were interesting Castle. You don't have to say why you didn't like some of the others but it would be interesting to know which ideas got a nod even if we don't know why.

If nothing else it will give us more food for thought.

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Actually, I want to know why for the bad ones, also. I don't need numbers as much as a knowledge of what the Devs are considering as "won't change design plans". If it's set in stone that the secondaries won't have more ranged attacks than the Immobs, then let us know so that we don't spend time thinking up solutions that involve those. Etc.

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I think some of you guys are being rude to SOCKERROCKER.

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I think he's asking for it. You'll note that he doesn't come in here to debate the topic. He comes in here to throw random points (Brutes? Why the heck are Brutes mentioned in this thread?), doesn't back up his comments, doesn't make meaningful replies when someone replies to him, etc.

In short, maybe not a troll, but certainly it's like he's posting on a separate topic from the rest of us, while ostensibly replying to us. And that's just rude. If he will join in the thread, he should look at what the thread is about. Nobody else is derailing it constantly like he is. In fact, if you delete his posts and the replies to them, this is one of the most constructive and straight-forward "fix Blasters" thread that I've read in months.

Regeneration Supplement:

While Regeneration is considered the "weakest" Stalker secondary in terms of the purpose of a Stalker (hide, hit, evade... repeat), it is also the strongest secondary in terms of scrapping it out.

As a teaming Stalker, whatever your secondary is, you're foolish to absorb the alpha strike (unless you're running the level 38 ultimate, or maybe Instant Healing). Instead, you're called upon to be ready to follow someone else's triggering the alpha, by hitting the boss or dangerous LT with an Assassination Strike. After this, you have two options:

1) retreat, wait to hide, and go in and AS again. This works very poorly with Regen since they can't avoid getting hit if they triggered any aggro.
2) remain in combat, since you're only pulling aggro from one mob at a time (unlike Scrappers who have more AEs and thus have to worry about multiple aggro), and scrap.

If you wish to do the latter, you're better served by Regen than by any other secondary. It takes a beating better, even if it's the worst at setting up a repeat AS. You'll be helped in this by using powers that stun, knockdown, knockup, etc... Air Superiority, and the later attacks in Ninja Blade are good for knockup/knockdown. Stun from Energy Melee also helps.

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I'm no god, just another guy with some ideas. Don't give deference to me.

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Trashes his Pilcrow Shrine, complete with Dancing Jesus and Penguins, and starts building a new one to Lady Athyna.

Say, that actually works well. She's a lot easier on the eyes. :P :P :P

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Ok... I don't really understand this post... Blasters are fine. They are one of the more balanced ATs. There are others that need changing more. When they major problems are resolved that's when these little things will be considered...

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I disagree with your assessment. I see 4 ATs as performing Sub-par:

[*]Dominators[*]Tankers[*]Blasters[*]Defenders[/list]
YMMV

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Two. Dominators and Blasters.

Some more have specific problems:
Defenders are great in team but really weak solo or PvP.
Tankers are great solo and play well in teams, but fail to have a "purpose".
MMs are really weak in PvP except for some very specific builds.

The Devs have acknowledged that Blasters have a problem for nearly a year now. I think that's clear enough to prove a point of some sort.

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So technically speaking, looking at all the melee attacks as being there "so that we can get into melee" isn't necessarily true, especially since they fall into our secondary which is labeled "support". You can call [censored] all you want on it, but it is logical. No one ever said that you had to run into melee at first because you have melee attacks.

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I don't think so. This would explain why there are melee attacks in the secondaries. Especially control-type attacks like Power Thrust and Bonesmasher and Freezing Touch.

It would not, however, explain why there are SO MANY melee attacks in the secondaries. Including pure-damage DoT attacks like those in the Fire secondary. Nothing there really screams "get off me" except maybe Hot Feet.

With like 3+ melee-range attacks/controls in all the secondaries except Devices, it's pretty clear that they are meant for a real set of melee attacks, not just one or two hits to escape trouble.