Dammit_Man

Now you're talking.

I think Statesman's rather white-knuckled grip on his vision for the game is very detrimental. The game's greatest strength is the character creator, the ability to let the player tailor his own hero to his specific tastes and desires. The ability to pretty much, at least visually, create the hero you've always wanted to be is extremely powerful.

Then once you get into the game, it takes a 180 degree turn. Everything else about the game is designed to make you play your hero a specific way, regardless of the type of hero you've just created for yourself.

This is a huge, huge mistake.

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Sorry you got all upset. You should leave and cool down maybe. Sounds like you had a bad day, and I won't comment any more on it.

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My post wasn't upset, i'm sorry it seemed like that. Most people read me that way since I really, really don't like using smileys.

I was serious in my last post, i'm not being mean. I don't think this game is for you. Not bashing you, i'm just giving you advice that this game is probably not the game you want to stay loyal to, and there's no shame or hate from us if you leave.

You seem to be impatient about changes coming... you have to realize that the devs are human, and work regular hours: it's a lot more time consuming than you think to make new content, to even change existing content so it's not broken.

I suggest going elsewhere for a while, seeing what else is out there, but keep yourself up to date on what CoH is doing. If you hear some changes you like are coming, re-sign up. Your characters will be here.

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That is constructive.

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No it's not. Expressing distaste for the game, saying other MMO's look better, and saying all the content is boring to you is not constructive.

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Wanting things fixed is wrong? How I voice it to you is wrong? I am my own person and I am just stating how it is from my<--(key word) perspective.

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Having an opinion does not automatically equal being constructive. Okay, fix blasters. How? Saying how is being constructive.

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It is much harder now. I can't believe in these communities people accept bd changes.

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We didn't. People screamed about the SS and SJ changes and it almost immediatley got fixed.

If I were you, i'd just leave. This game is obviously not for you. If you find punching things in the face, clicking on glowies, doing missions and rolling up alts boring, that's all there's going to be for a long time. You don't seem to be too interested in the superhero genre, more interested in the MMO genre. If you generally like other MMO's, this game is pretty much designed around not making you happy. This is more a game for people who love superheroes first and foremost.

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3) Let me open your eyes to the many wonderful powers that can help blasters - Mass Hyponisis, Black Hole, Fearsome Stare, Dark Pit, Tenebrous Tentacles, Darkest Night, Radiation Infection, Snow Storm, Freezing Rain, Ice Patch, Night Fall, Whirling Hands, Whirling Sword, Spin, Soul Drain, Sun Mire etc. etc etc.


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You know... it'd kinda be nice if powers that helped blasters were.... you know.... availible to blasters. Yeah, that'd be awesome.

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The Dev's don't care about balancing a "Grouping" AT to match a "Solo" AT. Blasters are going to be compared with Controllers and Defenders for balancing, that's about it.

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Well, that's fine, except Controllers become a soloing AT post 32, and from what I hear defenders are pretty self reliant as well. So if what you're saying is true, then blasters are going to get a roughly one thousand percent buff.

The problem is that blasters combine an early controller's dependance on teams with a scrapper's role. You have to balance them both. In terms of what we're good at, what we're there for, we share the spotlight with scrappers. In terms of survivability, we share the infamy pile with early defenders.

That's why we're currently hanging on by a thread... our ONLY saving grace is we have AoE damage, and that's something no other AT can do on the scale we can.

You want a quick blaster fix States, one you don't even have to wait until the next issue to do? Alter the AT selection text to read "The blaster is the most team dependant AT in the game. Post 40, he is extremely weak and replaceable. Play at your own risk". There, problem solved. If you want a blaster's role to be anything other than that, you've got your work cut out for you.

Personally, I think it's ridiculousness to have a team dependant damage dealing class when you have a non-team dependant damage dealing class. The only way to truly fix blasters is to make them more solo-self reliant. Why only have one AT that can solo reasonably through all the levels? Scrappers could be "easy solo mode" and blasters could be "hard solo mode" not the "don't even try solo mode" that they are now.

I also think it's utter ludicrousness to have a damage dealing, hate generating class without mez protection in this game. Why in the world would you even PLAY blasters with knowing how prevalent mezzing is?

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Shouldn't the devs be doing those tests, why hasn't statesman provided evidence for us that we take less damage at range then scrappers do in melee? I

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Well we do, if you look at it purely on paper: A rikti plasma bolt hurts way less than a rikti sword. A skull pistol shot hurts alot less than a skull axe swing.

This goes all out the window once the 40's roll aorund though, because of the oodles of ranged mezzes, which are deadlier than just ranged damage any day of the week. Not only that, but many enemies are simply as equally deadly at range as they are in melee. Gunslingers and Titans come to mind, as do almost every damned Nemesis enemy.

Statesman really sounds like a person who hasn't tried to play a blaster in a pickup group or solo beyond level 15.

I keep stating that 40+ is not a defense, but no one listens. Here's a math assignment for you guys:

Statesman believes that range is a defense. He beleives this because ranged damage is often less than melee, and this is true. A single plasma bolt hurts less than a rikti sword, on paper. Providing you keep the enemy using ranged attacks somehow, you effectivley have damage resistance, since attacks against you are doing less damage, right?

Satesman wants AT's to be balanced, correct?

Well, here's what you do: Take any blaster and an inv scrapper. Keep track of how much damage you take as the blaster, mainly trying to keep enemies at a distance. Include melee damage you take as a result of getting mezzed from range and then getting a beatdown. Also note the average time/how many attacks it took to take down each enemy.

Now, take the same villain group, same mission, and do the same for a scrapper. Write down how long each minion took to kill, how many attacks. Write down how much damage the scrapper took. Don't use invincibility, only rely on dmg resistance.

My bet? That when you classify range as damage resitance, and then compare that damage resistance we get to a scrapper's mez protection and killing speed, there will be no contest: blasters will get left in the dust.

Therefore, Statesman would have to see that his range is a defense idea is utterly wrong, and the blasters need some sort of buff to compensate.

Now Mieux, this is the first post I totally agree with you on.

As I play a tanker, yes... you'll pry my damage from my cold, invulnerable fingers.

I honestly believe controllers deserve whatever uber power they get at 32, they've earned it for slugging it out that long.

I don't agree that nerfing should never be done... I just think now is not the time. There are sets in every AT that need a buff badly, clearly, already. No datamining required to find out which ones.

Of course, this all goes back to blaster roles. If we're talking about usefulness post 32 when everyone has damage pretty much, I think it would behoove Statesman very much to lean at least a few primaries and a few secondaries towards being very solo capable. The one that aren't targetted for solo friendly builds could be tweaked to be weak against bosses, but very effective minion killers.

Post 40, I find I need a blaster not nessesarily for a defeat AV mision, but defeat all missions where I t would take me four hours to clear them all out (i'm looking at you, praetorian clockwork outside kill all missions).

It seems simple to me.... scrappers should flow from one powerful enemy to the next... the one who goes straight for the chief mentalist. The blaster's role should be the one who wanders up to the portal that's been open for 5 minutes and reams all the conscripts. Make it so that even if you have two scrapper on your team, killing all the spawns on a 6 man mission would take forever.... That's where blasters come in. I don't think we need MORE damage, just an effective way to lay the damage down quickly.

Of course, one thing I won't back down on is that blasters need some form of mez protection to make them useful in any setting, team or solo, since most mezzes are ranged. They need mez protection or every mob needs to be drastically altered: guess which one's easier to do.

I don't envision a toggle... something like practiced brawler, with a longer recharge to make it non-perma, but able to be used like a break free.

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I am OFFICIALLY making a complaint here.

If you agree with the Devs you can insult, belittle and slander as you want.

If you disagree you get editted.


How about editting some of these personal attacks on ME?

EULA and TOS.

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Yes, because you telling me to get a girlfriend wasn't a personal attack.

You deleted all your toons in a huff mere hours after I4 went live. That's not smart. You also said you'd leave, and that you're a man of your word. You're still here because.....?

You made the most inflammatory remarks towards the devs I personally have ever read on these boards. And you expect people to treat you with calm levelheadedness and kid gloves? Please.

Door's thataway----&gt;

Cuppa, thank you for your time and effort on theseforums. God only knows what your forum job must have been like these last few days, I don't envy you.

Heck, I ENJOY confrontation, and the boards were getting to be too much for me.

I appreciate all that the devs do for us. You continue to amaze.

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All this is posturing by Cryptic because they are being hounded by many players that say the game is NOT FUN NOW.

We won't play if its not fun.

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Then GO, Infernus. You said YESTERDAY you would quit, blah blah. You're not even a customer complaining anymore, so get out.

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So Statesman your joke about doooom when real troubles were being discussed was downright rude. I spent 800 HOURS of my life on a single tanker that was level 50 here. I deleted him and all but one of my other characters because of your cavalier attitude.

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Don't call Statesman rude because you were an idiot for deleting your toons in a huff. I remember your post, you flew off the handle about the SS issue, and INSTANTLY deleted all your toons, before even the reversal came down the line. You even made a post going "Oh well, I'm a man of my word and i'll go".

So GO. Stop your tinfoil hatting and tearing down of a good, positive thread.

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There's a flaw in your reasoning. 3 year olds don't post on the forums. Adults, however, do. And it's not an unfair request for people to *act* like adults instead of throwing temper tantrums like 3 year olds.

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Sometimes I love you Liquid.

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True. . .forgot about Fire Tankers and Spines Scrappers. I should have more accurately said the vast majority of characters and builds can't and don't do such.

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False. Every well built Fire, Inv and Stone tanker can do this. That's every tanker but Ice, of which there are like five.

Dunno about scrappers, I really don't play them much. My little experience with them has been such that I don't think they can do this. However, a majority of tanks can.

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I didn't pick the easiest class. I picked the solo class. Picking the solo class does not mean that soloing should be a walk through the park.

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Yes, you DID pick the easiest class. The reason scrappers are good at soloing is that they don't really need anyone else. Everyone else NEEDS someone else to do things as well as a scrapper does. Ask ANYONE who has played every AT, scrappers are the game on easy mode.

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Dammit_Man...your grasp of what is going on in this game is severely clouded by your own emotional reaction.

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Please. This is an internet argument board.

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Yes it is. You play a game for the challenge...to overcome obstacles. Asking players to self-impose gimpness to enjoy your game is idiotic. It's like telling a right handed teninis player to play left handed so he'll be challenged by your AI. I'll just quit and go play a game that demands I bring all my skills and abilities to succeed.

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Once again Mieux: You are not all players. You are not even a remotely large percentage of all players. You are leetest of the leet. I'm not asking for every player to gimp themselves for a challenge.... what i'm trying to TELL you is that lots, and lots of people (who aren't playing scrappers or tankers) are being PLENTY challenged. YOU might not be, but YOU are almost totally alone. You, mordirin_, and maybe cyclone jack. Instead of trying to make everything harder for everyone across the board, why don't you try to challenge yourself and leave other people alone who are having challenging fun right now? I'm not failing to grasp crap. You're the one failing to grasp that your percieved lack of challenge is the minority, not the majority. Majority wins.

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The other factor you fail to acknowledge is the disparity a player can encounter. My own missions are silly. Joining a TF with +4's is not. Nerfing my self to enjoy one aspect will preclude me from even being viable in another

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But you love dying and a challenge, Mieux. You should have a blast. I've got an idea, go buy some tranings, go play the game, and stop posting.

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You have a comprehension issue. I said I enjoyed the first 22 lvls the most...now the first 2x because of Striga. I didn't say they were the most popular.

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You undercut your own argument: If you say the first 22 levels are the most popular, you're simply wrong. If you say that the upper levels are the most popular, those levels, according to you, have the least risk, so you fail it again. All because you can't understand that the challenge you're looking for would alienate tons of other people.

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True...most people don't want to rise to the challenge. They'd rather complain. The fact is you experience an increase in difficulty. If you had just started playing, you wouldn't. Naturally people like you will complain.

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Mieux, since you love to bring up reading comprehension, i'm not the one complaning. My stance, in almost every argument i've gotten on this board save for blaster issues is that the game is fine, and the direction the devs are going is fine. You're the one peeing everywhere because you're not dying at least once in every mission with your easy mode scrapper.

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They didn't give specific reasons why the rolled back all the minion upgrades. They said it was because they "weren't seeing what they were looking for".

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I will tell you exactly why they olled them back, because it was devastating to everyone and super cheap. Every single damn outcast in SC had fricking flight and hurricane. Every outcast rock minion had stone armor. If a mezzing enemy SAW you, there would instantly be little "held" icons all the way across the screen from your team name. It was a long time ago, but to me it was like there were no minions. Soloing anything was an impossibility for me. every minion acted like lt's do now, every lt. acted like a boss, and every boss was a god.

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I don't know what school of logic you went to, but your love of blasters has ZERO relevance to whether they are needed. Because of the proliferation of slots and hence the ability to slot for damage, no AT is really needed to do missions. I've done Respec without every single class.

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And that is beautiful. You should be able to do the respec without having to have every single class. Making every AT needed is not where we should go, because this is a game that is dependant on other people besides yourself. If you want to do a respec and one of each class within your level isn't on, you're boned. Does that sound awesome? Well, its' not. It's what other MMO's do, and it's what CoH needs to stray far away from.

When I form a respec, I would never go "we don't need to look for a blaster". Only idiots would say that, that's not my fault. However, when i'm looking for said blasters and one's not on that we can use, I can go "eh, a couple of scrappers will do instead". And it will do, and we'll win, and that is beautiful. I don't want my ability to do things hinging so direly on other people. Teaming should be fun in and of itself, not forced to such a degree that ever AT is required so you all feel like big important men now.

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DM, despite what you feel you should be able to do as a solo blaster, there is what the devs feel you should. The two don't match.

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You're calling for nerfing of tanks, which i'm disagreeing with. It really doesn't matter what I feel about the solo-ability of blasters. The devs apparently want blasters soloing days to be over post 35, and that's fine. Just make sure players KNOW this before they go 35 levels soloing and then get disgusted and quit.

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This is exactly what CoH has and the reason I enjoy it. I honestly don't know what post or poster you are referring to.

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You are complaning. You want things changed. You said that you want a game with a friendly teaming dynamic, which it has now. There's no need to change anything if the teaming dynamic is already friendly, yet you still want things to be different, which implies dissatisfaction with the current teaming dynamic.

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If no AT is really needed, than that AT doesn't have a role that is really unique or needed. The game has to make me feel like I really need a blaster, but still allow me to succeed without one.

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If you would, I dunno, not play a SCRAPPER, then maybe you would feel like you need a blaster a little bit more.

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Jesus man....Respec is supposed to be THE hardest mission at that point in your career. I was fighting +4's the WHOLE time...you know why I died? Only two of those deaths were actually in the Reactor mission...I was pulling for the team. Me, an /SR scrapper with ZERO AoE defense was Stealth/SS pulling +4 Assault bots. We had one person at lvl 28..the healer, and everyone else was below him...and you're going to tell me that the two deaths I suffered in the final run were too much?

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I'm not saying it was too much. You had admittedly, an awful team and i'm surprised you completed it. I'm saying you thinking those deaths you had were awesome is freakish and retarded. No one likes seeing their beloved hero decimated by small arms fire. No one likes failing... except for you. I was trying to get you to SEE that, that merely the fact you said that poves beyond a shadow of a doubt you are the 1% of the 1% of the player base.

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I got bored with my scrapper after I got SO's. Before that I enjoyed her immensily.

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You instantly and totally missed my point. You picked the easiest class, then complained it was boring when you got the things that made your class come into its own. Scrappers get SO's, which makes their defenses/attacks actually effective, and their solo abilities shine through. Next time, talk about challenge when you don't pick the easy class.

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Expecting players to self-nerf to be challenged is a fundamental flawed way to make a game. I think the devs know this.

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You does not = all players. A majority of players are already challenged quite well. The casual players, who are a majority of the playerbase. It's not flawed to ask the hardcore and the leet (of which you belong to) to nerf themselves to still enjoy a challenge in a game they love. Games have been doing it for decades. It's usually called hard mode, or beating the game in a certain time limit to get the best ending. Beating the game without getting hit/not getting certain items. That's not flawed.

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You've made an error in logic here. Saying the he game is popular because of the challenge in the first 22 lvls is logically different than saying that people play the first 22 lvls because is the most popular. If the game was as easy from 1-22 as it is from 28-37, I think this game would fail....my opinion.

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You said the first 22 levels were popular, which is flat out wrong. You are literally the only person, on this board or otherwise that I have talked to that prefers the early game. If the early game was popular, you wouldn't have powerlevelers trying to get past it. Time and again, I hear the opposite: "I am so sick of the early game, I wish I coulld just start at Striga". If I had ever heard anyone else say they love the early levels alot, you might have a point, but as it is, you are pretty much standing by yourself. Your opinion holds very little sway, as it has no other voices behind it, i'm sorry.

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I have no knowledge of what % of people feel the way I do. Doomy would say its 42%. More importantly, neither do you. Add to this, the fact that Jack himself has acknowledged the game is too easy in the 30's. What do you think all those minion/lt/boss changes were aimed at? Do you think they spent all that time and energy to satisfy a minority of players? A vocal minority...maybe.

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Not exactly sure what changes you're referring to... Because if you remember right after I2, enemies were RIDICULOUSLY hard, there was a huge outcry, and they were rolled back. Around I3, bosses had boosted HP and all that jazz, and that too was broken, unfair, there was a huge outcry, and it was rolled back. I'm not puling things out of my rear here... My experience with others in the game and on the boards, and the trend of enemy changes has shown that people really, really don't like enemies being made harder. Like someone else said: dying is just as boring and un-fun as not dying.

The I3 bosses were the sole reason by blaster hit the debt cap: It was before the little addition the the difficulty slider where if you had it set on heroic, you didn't see bosses. So here I am, faced with un-deletable DE missions set to heroic that were filled with lesser devoured that could one shot me either from range or in melee. Meanwhile, their boosted HP meant that even if I were invincible, it would take me not seconds, but minutes of constant firing to come close to taking one down. I'm sure your boring scrapper would have loved it: my blaster on the other hand, who could before then solo with caution, now could not solo, period.

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Blasters weren't meant to have those tools because other people did. The problem is by the high lvls, everyone is so powerful, they don't need blasters....they can all do damage. I'm all in favor of nerfing damage (by a reasonable amount) for everyone but blasters.

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Rubbish. I love blasters whenever I team, no matter the level. I do think blasters tend to do better in small teams rather than large, but blasters are still very much awesome in a team setting. I routinely team with a competent AR blaster, and I would kiss his Full Auto right on the mouth if I could.

Now, retards might think they don't need blasters and that blasters are useless, but that's not my tanker's damn problem. Leave him alone.

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I'm looking for a game with a good teaming dynamic, but is not so two-dimensional as Counter-Strike. I enjoy the casual intelligent player and routinely refuse SG invites.

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You need to go play other games if you honestly think CoH doesn't have the friendliest team dynamic you ever saw. Virtually any ragtag group of powersets and AT's can accomplish their goals, providing half the team isn't a vegetable on the keyboard. If an AT isn't availible for a mission, no big deal. You can do fine. I would absolutley utterly hate this game, and many others would too, if your missions were hard to do if you didn't happen to have a controller availible, or if there were no blasters in your level range currently LFT.

If we had to spend an hour getting a competent team together to do anything, this game would instantly cease being fun.

EDIT:
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Three deaths on that TF...that was awesome.

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Mieux, I hope to god you aren't so far gone as to think that line of thinking is anywhere near normal or anywhere near what anyone remotely likes. Please tell me you're still enough on this plane of existence to where you realize you are a weirdo for thinking that.

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The reason I quit playing my lvl 37 scrapper is because it got boring.

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You like challenge, then pick a class which, by definition of being best at soloing, needs no help. OF COURSE you got bored with your scrapper.

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I just got done playing a mish with a stone/stone lvl 22 a lvl 21 Grav/Emp a lvl 22 fire/fire blaster and my lvl 21 Ice/El. We did the Tanker's Striga mish on Invinc. Not a single death. The blasters moved some...but the tanker spent FAR more time running around holding aggro and using taunt. Not a single death. The tanker probably had all SO's...i'm almost sure of it. His health probably never went below 90%. But we should not have been able to do that mission that easily with DO's. Mine are all yellow.


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So you would like there to be multiple deaths on invincible no mater what? You like dying? All right... You should probably trying playing without a tanker sometime, if you would like a challenge. Seems to me like you're doing everything in your power to protect yourself, then complaning it's too easy.

Go do everything you can to challenge yourself before you come back here with nerf calls.

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The low lvl game is so much more fun because it is a struggle. Because you need blastesr...you need defenders, you need tankers...you need controllers.

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Barring the fact that at high levels you still need all these classes, this game would be vomit if you needed every AT to get anything done. This game would be utterly ridiculous if you had to get together an even reasonably sized team to accomplish anything. Then, this would be alot more like EQ and FFXI, which, and I hope you're keeping score at home, is a bad thing.

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Right now, the best part of CoH, imo, is lvls 1-22 where the game is the most challenging. Guess what...everyone plays those lvls and look how popular it is.

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You are super, super wrong if you think tons of people play 1-22 because it's the best part and the challenge makes it popular. It's popular because people like trying out new AT's and powers and you HAVE NO CHOICE but to start at early levels. I'll tell you right now, if I could skip to level 20 immediatley, I would never start another toon from scratch again. This is why this isn't done, by the way: Everything before Striga would be utterly deserted.

By the way, the best TF in the game is the Hess TF, followed closely by the Eden trial, both of which are far, far outside your "funnest part ever" range, so you fail it.

Mieux, you need to realize you are part of a very vocal minority. This game is casual friendly: holding true to that is not just a minor decision, it is vital. If you make the game hardcore gamer hard, you are going to alienate the much larger playerbase that likes to log on, mess around for an hour or two with a team, maybe not with a team, and then log off.

I'm firmly convinced that you are in the wrong genre of game if you want challenge and bareknuckle excitement: This isn't a twitch arcade fighting game. This isn't a reflex shooter. This isn't even a wacky platformer.

This is an MMO. That means that for the most part, your skill really doesn't matter. Stats matter. There are some skill things you can do like breaking line of sight, knowing what your powers do and how best to use them, and stuff like that, but it's not rocket science. MMO's are many things, but no one will ever accuse any of them of being hard. Once you know the rules, this game consists of pushing buttons that do things to an enemy, and whether you hit or miss and how much damage you do is done by a computer's equation, not by how skillful you are.

You're not dodging shots. You can't even crouch to avoid fire. Hit or miss is based on math, not you doing anything. No matter how you tweak numbers, no matter how much you kick tankers in the balls, a tanker's job will never be more complicated then "leap into middle of group with taunt aura on, throw taunt at stragglers".That's what a tanker was designed from the ground up to be. Anything else requires a complete wipe and revamp of the entire class.

The reasons blasters are failing is that people have to play them like some kind of FPS hero where FPS rules don't apply. If an enemy starts his shoot animation, your stats will determine whether you get hit or not, not your skill at ducking or dodging. Sure you can do stupid things like kiting and jousting, but that's more akin to cheating the game engine's rules than just sitting down and playing a blaster by the book. Doing that kind of weird crap shouldn't be required to survive.

This game's challenge comes from knowing what your powers do and using the appropriate tool at the right time: the Blaster's problem is that in the late game, he simply has no tool to pull out to defend himself against the oodles of mezzing he'll encounter. The only tool he has is... well.... someone else, or failing that, a break free.

If you're looking for bare knuckle action, Mieux, you're in the wrong game. Wrong genre. You're looking for something like Ninja Gaiden or F-zero. Turning CoH that requires the level of practice and dedication those games require would be the worst thing in the entire world: the legions of casual parents, their children, girlfriends and co-workers would simply leave.

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And bonesmasher, a melee attack that hits as hard as a snipe, has a significant chance to disorient LTs, and (/en) blasters can get at level 10, unlike TF which you have to wait till 38 for, is...? If we are only allowed one, and its total focus, no melee until 38? Or do we get total focus at 10? Or do we get bonesmasher at 10 and we don't get to have total focus at all?


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You're thinking too small. If you have TF, why do you need bonesmasher? Listen, I'd be more than happy to get rid of melee attacks if I just got some damned defense instead. But let's say we keep both those attacks. Do you ALSO ned energy punch AND stun? No, no you don't. Almost anything would be better put there.

Listen, blasters aren't going to get fixed with a damage cap increase and some unresistable damage. That's piddly. It's small potatoes. Secondaries need to be whole sale gutted and refashioned.

I know blappers are going to be upset, and i'm sorry. What it really comes down to is do we want to keep a broken AT so that a crazy minority subsection can hit things with a sword and then die, or do we want to have an actual viable AT that's not an utter joke?

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Here's a hint: since most */en blasters are not complaining about their secondary, we should leave it alone and go fix the ones with real problems first, then come back when we have nothing else to do.


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I said until things like stun and energy punch are removed, blasters aren't fixed. /EN blasters are still blasters. while they need to be done last, even they need to be fixed.

Argue all you want, but blasters aren't going to be fixed without some kind of minor self heal, minor defense, minor res, gutting of minor melee powers, and minor mez protection.

Not giving an AT that generates hate with no defense to mez is as ridiculous as scrappers not getting mez protection. Mezzes are ranged, melee class or not hasn't got a damned thing to do about it.

Statesman won't ever DO it, because he thinks that to be the weakest set, we have to rely solely on our damage and our tricks, which sounds nice on paper to someone who plays on broken test servers. He's wrong of course, we can still get some minor defense against damage and still be the weakest set. We can still have mez protection that's far lower than the powerful practiced brawler or integration, and not be tank mages.

Never mind that blasters need diversity bad. As of now, the situation is no one can be the human torch. Everyone has to sneak around liked a damned ninja. I see nothing wrong with having a set that relies on control, a set that relies on stealth, and a set that relies on minor defense in order to get some diverse heroes around here. Not everyone wants to be a mini-Sam Fisher.

Range is a defense, though States and I disagree to what degree it's a defense. I think if you gave us a minor shield and minor mez potection, that coupled with range would be equal to scrapper's greater shields and mez protection.

Look at it this way: Currently, a lesser devoured boss, orange con, would one shot my blaster. One hit, he's down. 50% dmg res would still mean half my health is gone, and it would still mean i'd want to get out of there in a hurry.

Three Statesman posts in the blaster forums, and all three of them are filled with talk about what a scrapper can/can't do. Super sad.

Stop talking about the damage caps: no one cares. Neither class is going to hit it without 400 fulcrum shifts.

Instead of bickering about scrappers like children, what you should be doing is verbally hitting States on the damned nose with a six-slotted rolled up newspaper for his "melee attacks are fine" garbage. Yes, ONE melee attack is fine, not SIX. A heavy damage attack like TF is fine and good: A low damage melee attack like frozen fists is nothing short of retarded.

Here's a hint: until those minor melee attacks are replaced, blasters aren't fixed.

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I think the best move the Devs could make to improve the survivability of blasters (and all squishies) would be to improve the villain descriptions to provide better indications of their specific abilities. I suspect most players don't know how the powers of the various Crey minions stack up. Or the Nemesis? I'd be stunned if half the player population of the requisite level knew what the flashing around their heads signified or how it go there. And how many know what each of the DE eminators do and which lieutenants plant them? Malta? Everyone knows what the sapper can do. But what about the rest?

People lose because they go in without knowing how to win. These are challenges that are meant to be overcome. All blaster secondaries can do it, even at melee range. Some builds simply require a bit of creativity in their application.

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Rubbish. Knowing that a Sapper is going to sap you, and operative are going to web grenade you where you stand and stun you until death don't make you anymore able to instantly kill three at once. Each of them equally deadly.

Sometimes enemies simply have more HP and abilities than you can deal with. Carnie bosses have ridiclous amounts of cheapness. Blasters need mez protection and they need more useful secondaries. More info won't help.

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Cloak of Fear didn't make it safe to stand in the midst of my enemies, unless they were white or maybe yellow. And I know, it's awful that a defensive set actually makes fights safer for those who have it.

The Cloak of Fear nerf makes Cloak of Fear practically useless until the 40s.

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For once Kali, I agree. Dark Scrappers need lots of love.

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When I created this character I had a great concept. He'd lead the charge, stand tall, fire a bunch of shots off, and hope that he had nailed all his enemies to the floor. Now in reality, I cower behind a corner with invisbility, walk in very slowly, switch to stealth, shoot a mob, run back around the corner and freeze that single minion out of sight. Feels more like a villan than a hero to me. But I'm dedicated enough to work this blaster through the last ten or so levels. Then I'll put him away and move onto another concept character, but one that feels a bit more heroic (not that that's hard to do).

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Excellent point: You guys might be able to survive using tactics, taking stealth and superspeed. Blasters survive by being cheap ninjas in the night. That's admirable and a neat way to play if you're Solid Snake or Tenchu: Stealth assasin.

Unfortunatley, this is a superhero game, and you'd be hard pressed to name a blaster superhero who acts like that. Know why? Because once he starts acting like that, he ceases to be a superhero and starts being an assasin.

If you want to play like that, pick devices and be done with it. However, other blaster types should be able to play like an actual superhero, blazing down from the sky and destroying all. The Human Torch is a non-stealthed, non-superspeeding blaster, and he's not gimp. Cyclops, while he usually fights in a team, doesn't use stealth or invisibility either.

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they're full of breakfrees because the damned things last 30 seconds. something you said you didn't mind. In fact I said you wouldn't have room for other inspirations because of them and you pshawed me. said you had gifts left over from christmas.

Which is it man?

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My point was that just giving us back disciplines is thinking too small. We don't need to fill our trays with even one row of insps just to survive, we need mez protection in our powersets, because we are a damage AT that generates hate, and the level 35+ game is nothing but mezzing attacks.

I'm not disagreeing the proposed change to mezzing insps is bad, i'm disagreeing that it's a big deal. It's not. What IS a big deal is that we absolutely need them to survive.

My point was that ranged damage is USUALLY nothing. However, 35+ ranged damage also comes with a nice mez package attached, and that's what really messes us up. Ranged damage is bad enough, but we could get by if we were able to use respites and lucks and what have you. But we're not, because trays are full of break frees.

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Well, if you run past the boss and jump while using it, it does become a renged attack

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Well, you shouldn't have to cheat and finagle the physics engine of the game to do something like that.

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That was - and is - the reason why Blaster damage is capped lower than Scrappers. I did forget to add that the ranged attacks of mobs deal less damage (typically) than melee attacks - and the Blaster is generally the target of raned attacks.

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Dear Statesman: We are not worried about ranged damage. We are good about keeping enemies at range. We are worried about RANGED MEZZING, which negates EVERYTHING and which we have no defense against except break frees. And no, that's not enough, don't start.

We're talking about the 35+ game. Before then, you're fighting thugs with guns with the occasional eidolon or CoT mage. Range is a defense. Damage is a defense. Tiny machine gun bullets, pistol shots, and the occasional shotgun blast do nothing damage... at least, nothing that a few respites can't cure.

Post 35, you're facing armies of Devouring earth, each of which throws AoE mez bombs that instantly, totally render us helpless without fail. You're facing armies of earth thorn casters who immobilize and slow at range, constantly, without fail. You're facing Rikti mentalists, who chain mez you at great range, instantly rendering you utterly helpless, until minions get into range and kill you with one sword swipe. You're facing carnies who decimate even tankers at range, to say nothing of blasters. You are facing Nemesis, who notice you and fire at you from a greater distance than anything you can throw. You're facing Malta sappers who have the most debilitating, feared attack in the game, AND IT IS RANGED.

Please just stop it with the ranged defense argument. All it does is show that you don't play this game at its high levels with blasters. Range is nice, and kind of useful 35+ sometimes. That's it. 35+ it doesn't matter if enemies are next to you or far away, they're going to mez you and kill you.

We don't have to worry about mezzes if we literally carry nothing but breakfrees, but guess what? Bye bye lucks, accuracy, respites, or anything else that we normally depend on. We'd have to carry a full tray of breakfrees just not to be chainstunned and helpless, no matter what we do. A full tray just to not be annoyed and cheaped to death.