Dwarflord

Nobody outside of double-stacked tactics, eh? There are so many ways to see through stacked stealth that don't involve stacked tactics.

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Refute this:

The devs have given heroes all the tools they need to defend themselves against Stalkers and defeat them, including inspirations, AT powers, pool powers, temp powers and team combinations.

True or False?

I know that all the necessary tools are there because I've seen good hero teams use them with GREAT success. So.. why can't you?

If you are too lazy or incompetent to use the provided tools, then what you are complaining about is inconvenience and your completely subjective 'fun factor', not balance.

I bet Castle and the dev team cry everytime they read a 'nerf stalkers' post. I believe the dev team went to some length to insure that there were ways to thwart this (guaranteed to be) controversial AT, and I see Stalkers as a testament to how powerful the devs view the hero ATs.

But I guess they have over-estimated the ability of many players. And here we are.

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QFT

Wah Wah Wah...villains have one AT that can actually do damage even if it is an interruptible attack that there are no less than 10 direct counters to and many many pretty effective counters to. After my EM stalker and brute get 40, I may just level my /energy blaster up from 34 to 40 to get TF slotted and respec him to a blapper with stealth/invis, hover/fly and teleport and do the same thing I do with my stalkers except not have to use an interruptible attack to do it and actually be able to smoke brutes, scrappers, and maybe tanks due to the toggle drops+stuns of blaster /EM. Sure I can get mezzed, but I'll have BF's, my target will be stunned, and I will be killing and teleporting out of there. Blappers can do all the things people accuse stalkers of doing and some things stalkers can't do nearly as well.

Heroes just have blinders on with regards to their own ATs as all they see is a bunch of villains that are inferior to them...that they can beat down regularly...and then there's stalkers that are actually a challenge to deal with/build to defeat. I wish there was only 1 hero AT that I had to build against...but there's not. Many hero AT's can kill stalkers, and at least 3 of them (built for PvP) can 2-shot a stalker.

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This is actually a serious question, not a troll or flame. I hear many blasters say they will suck with the changes and many say they won't. My suspicion is that the ones who don't think the changes will be that devistating are the ones who are already using tactics, hit and run, etc... while the ones who are really, really upset are not.

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Dropping a tripmine and SS/SJing away to avoid the alpha strike is just barely classifiable as "tactics" and is only available to Devices secondary. It's certainly not a fun way to play a blaster and has no skill involved. Being unable to survive an alpha strike from even blue or white minions as well as being able to be easily 1 or 2-shotted when fighting in a group makes for a very unsatisfying game experience.

Blasters get statused easily, die easily even with their toggles up, but even easier with them down, and simply don't have the tools to effectively deal with grouping or soloing without incurring significant debt or fighting very low cons. This is most evident in the AR/devices build, but is present in all builds to some degree. Both my blasters are 35+ so I'm not talking out my [censored].

Anyhow, I've given up on blasting for at least the time being... Yes, I can solo weak stuff with TM with my AR/dev blaster or kill stuff with nova every few min with my Energy blaster and still slowly plod through the levels...I can even eventually gain exp even with the dying that I do in a group. But it's just not fun anymore.

Call me a FoTM all you want, but I'm playing a scrapper now...I was a blaster because I liked their ability to solo and group well. Now they do neither particularly well and hunting with my friends just leaves me feeling stupid every time I die.

My new scrapper (SK'd til I can catch up a bit) can get right up there with my fire/axe tanker friend and dish out some nice damage as well as take a bit too. It's not the concept I wanted to play as, but at least it allows me to have fun with my friends again.

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stop trying to solo huge mobs above your lvl if you want a game that you can solo go play doom III. /end rant



Yes because this is only deserved for other ATs!!!



Such as?


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Such as fire tankers (really all tankers can solo high mobs...just takes a bit longer), fire and illusion controllers, almost all scrappers and I'm sure some more I can't think of. Blasters are the lowest defense AT and have such low hp that being one-shotted is quite common against a purple boss...so much for grouping being safer, eh? An AE blaster (especially AR) is very ill-suited to taking on small groups like a couple others have said to do. Our attacks are slow and are very inefficient on a small number of targets. We already sacrifice a good degree of "boss-killing" power, so why can't we be good at killing minions?

People complained that they would see a blaster killing +3's...yeah, minions. These same people probably see nothing wrong with killing an even level boss with a lt. and a minion. Well for an AE blaster, the +3 minions were doable...the even level boss and friends is very hard.

Now, the one thing that AE blasters were good at (taking out the weakest classification of enemies: minions), they can no longer do effectively. The return fire simply during the blaster's alpha strike can easily earn a blaster a trip to the hospital. All the status effects take hold on us on the first try and then we watch as even white or blue minions beat us down with all our painstakingly prepared toggles turned off.

The problem, imo, is that there is far too much villain CC in the game. Status effects posessed by even the lowliest of minions get chained on a hero and he cannot respond. I see even some of my tanker friends having problems with this post-issue 2. It should not be so easy to drop a superhero's defenses to nil. CC is too powerful in this game, from all standpoints and it is quite simply too prevalent in villains.

Blasters take enough damage from villains not to warrant needing to be easily slept/held/stunned/whatever by 90% of mobs you fight.

Well, Burn...the main thing that has changed since this being posted is that Devices is no longer the clearly superior secondary for blasters. Smoke grenade is being nerfed from a massively overpowered ability into an almost pointless gimmick. It's not a bad secondary with the heavily nerfed SG, but it isn't the best for all playstyles/builds anymore.

If you want to learn about Energy as a secondary, Pulsewave has a pretty good guide here on the boards. Couple things I want to add though. Boost Range doesn't work well with cones (most of AR's AE attacks) and Energy is mostly useful for two abilities...Buildup (get this at SL4) and Conserve Power. Before you ask, Conserve Power is not a replacement for Stamina...it is a supplement...but it's nice. Somewhere you will undoubtedly read about someone who "gets along just fine" with only CP and no Stamina. They are like the 3-legged dog who gets along just fine...functional but not as good as they could be. Personally, I think Energy is a pretty good secondary powerset comparatively speaking.