Deadedge

Ooo, Cryptic is now one of the great developers? I hope you're right Jack, you guys have been clawing your way up my favorites list.

I'd get a stupid PS3 for a blood omen/soul reaver sequel.

Oh yea! I forgot that part.

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Are you sure, I see the impaled Corpses in the background. that is looks like a still from the intro scene of the Bram Stokers' Dracula game.
Soph

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No, it's Malek, Lead Seraphim Crusader. He was a puppet of the TimeStreamer, and for his failure to stop the Inner Seraphim Priest's murder at the hands of Vorador, he was encased as a spirit inside his armor so he would serve them for eternity, becoming a Scion for the Pillars of Nosgoth.

Then Kain killed him in his own Bastion, and ripped off his helmet as a trophy.

So..as much as the Lore cites him for being a Bad-[censored].. he is actually quite a wussy character over-all.

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I don't recall ever killing him. I know when you go to his bastion he novas and you have to run out. Then you get the axes. I just assumed he was still putzing around someplace.

Nope, that's Malek from Blood Omen.

Nah, he's fire/fire. It's not especially uber. Ultimus is possibly just a really good fire/fire brute. Also shivans and nukes help (and those might be on the choppibg block anyway).

Happy birthday CB!

Unless Castle changed it the debuff is statistically insignificant

*blink* *blink* So....I might be able to drop SS for stealthiness

My advice would be to respec out of it. Any other power (including jumpkick) would be more useful. If you don't have taser, get that. It's great (and now has a bit of range)

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Logged Ikube onto test. Unless this is just something I missed ages ago, it looks like they're trying to apply a pseudo assassin's strike functionality to Cloaking Device.

It doesn't work yet though.

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Don't get attached to that. It got nixed and sent back to the drawing board.

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Awww. Looking forward to what you come up in its place then.

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Praise the lord and pass the amunition!

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Ammunition? Pass that ranged Taser! Sweet. These look like some pretty nice changes. The +Dmg thing to CD I wasn't expecting. Was expecting more of the invis aspect of Hide, not the damage spike thing. It's not going to be like AS, as it shouldn't, but sounds slick and does fit when you think about it. A suckerpunch, as it were, would do more damage because the target didn't see it coming.

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I might put snipe back in my build

Woohoo!

We'll get them to use countermeasure beta one of these days. Wonder what that'll be.

Concern said what I think I was trying to say a bit better.

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If your team brings buffs/debuffs, the "gap" in secondary power is either not very noticable and devices is more often than not just as effective, or BU is so trivial you need to stop getting hung up on it.

Also, the boosts from secondaries do not alter the amount of damage you do to the point your party will suddenly notice that your secondary is "uber"

i say devices does well because I havent seen a single one be any less effective than someone using a different secondary yet i HAVE seen plenty of blasters who focus on an entire single-target attack chain that does less than a single AoE when you look at total damage, true, a fire/ who relies entirely on his AoE will have hell soloing or in groups of 3-4, but he will contribute heavily in large teams, they may not be grateful, but a fast team will not disband after 1 mission.

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I'm snipping her because I think what you said here is more or less a summary of what you said at the top.

Firstly, it depends on the buffs. Yes fulcrum shift can cap a blaster, but what else? Not AM or fortitude or siphon power for that matter. With those buffs BU is still going to help and you get a nice tohit buff during its duration (bigger than TD? I don't recall). With resistance debuff, BU is just that more useful. I've teamed with dark/ defenders and try to use aim and bu after they drop tar path for added bonus. Using one or the other (or both) I won't miss when it matters. When I'm on my dark/ I tell blasters to wait for tar patch before they go nuts. I keep hanging on BU because in /dev it's traded for targetting drone (which you get hung up on) which was once an okay trade. In short the damage boost from BU is very nice when combined with resistance debuffs of any kind.

As to the single target chain. It depend on what that chain is getting used on. If the blaster drops a boss in a single chain, the group is better off for it. If an AoE blaster toasts all the minions in a single chain, the team is better off for it. /elec and /nrg give blasters a choice as to how to build. /nrg has several really great buffs (well, conserve power is so so because of its recharge), /elec has melee powers which can be used as to kill things going at the blaster or for blapping. /devices give blasters a choices too. In the way of the chance to grab pool powers.

Oh I understand TargetDummy, I feel the same way. I understand why some would be upset and I commiserate. I don't play my /dev anymore and never really planned to make another, so I'm not really effected by this change. That doesn't make the change less dumb.

Captain, 3 recharge SOs cut the recharge of a power very nearly in half. Aim and buildup recharges in 90 seconds (roughly 45 seconds with 3 SOs). They are both up for 10 seconds. If you alternate you'll have 15 is seconds of downtime (less concidering the time to go from mob to mob). In my experience they're both usually up when I want them.

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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also

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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly

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True but alot of games and hobbies require money either once or repeatedly. It doesn't change the nature of the thing.

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If you were paying a golf membership and the club decided to make the worst hole...worse, I'm sure people would get upset.

Captain, my fire/nrg blaster uses AoEs fairly heavily on teams and the the melee attacks just when things come at me ( I can take em out fast and get back to firey doom). And on a team with a good controller, or tank I can cut loose (same for my AR blasters). The devices secondary has very little in the way of contribution to that. I think you're giving the drone a little more credit than it's due is all. I'd recommend, if you don't take my word for it and if you can get into the play style, playing a fire/dev to twenty and a fire/nrg to twenty, the difference in the amount of doom brought it fairly noticeable (and 20 isn't a hard mark to hit).

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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also

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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly

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Interruptable.... right... by what? Gremlins?

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They're on the wing!

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Gremlins! Gremlins! I’m not imagining it, he’s out there! Don’t look, he’s not out there now. He jumps away whenever anyone might see him, except me!

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Then its odd that the best team blasters ive seen have all been /dev, now isnt it? well, the fire/ was pretty useful, but that was the primary.

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My guess is the fire/ was pulling most of the work . My fire/dev was pretty nifty, caltrops and her firey death attacks worked great. By my fire/nrg and fire/fire both kill faster. I can tell you from experience aim+bu > targeting drone for massive death quickly.

Oh yea and smoke grenades need a lot more than range.

Have fun at work.

edit - Was that pvp comment for me or someone else?

Captain there aren't too many AoE blaster builds. Fire and Ar are the only ones that can do it fairly early in their careers. Archery can pull it off once it gets rain of arrows. The other sets are pretty light on AoE damage. And also on a team a blaster alternating aim and build up can be consistently buffed and better off than targeting drone (one or the other might be down for a spawn). You keep harping on the wonder that is the drone when its one use (in PvE) is pretty much down the chunnel.

edit - IMO /devices' set defining power was targeting drone. Now the drone is mediocre at best. Trip mine used to be a close second.

And either way build up is a bigger damage boost than 25% >.>

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Funny, up until ED everyone said it was bar-none the best blaster secondary out there. Suddenly after ED everyone's saying it wasn't that great before... Funny how revisionist history tends to happen on things like this...

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If I recall correctly /em had taken the mantle of best secondary before ED, though that's really a non issue. They were both considered very good sets Pre-ED, model sets even that others should try to be more like. ED hurt devices badly. 6 slotting TD made up for Accuracy SOs. Wasn't TD's tohit reduced at some point, then the tohit enhancements switched to schedule B (I don't recall, I left during I3 came back late I4)?
Tripmine was able to smoke packs of things with 6 damage SOs in it (now it's a toe bomb/fall back position). Time Bomb has always been hinky and AT even with 6 damage SOs was...well...kind of sad. /devices isn't even a shadow of its former self.