Front_Loaded

[ QUOTE ]
when is turning a toggle off not an option? it'd just be for knockback protection, and if you need the knockback protection, then you'd just have to live without jumping for a lil bit

[/ QUOTE ]

Please play a stone tanker/brute with regularity if you think it's at all convenient and safe to run around with your status toggle off. Being locked to the ground is only trading one form of limit on travel power for another, it is in no way a solution and is actually worse than what is in place now - at least /electric has a choice between fly and leaping. Stone tank is VERY awkward to play and move around with a fast team without Teleport. Particularly in PVP areas, you would be whacko to turn off your status toggle for 10 seconds just to hop a 1 foot curb.

[ QUOTE ]
Unsure if this was mentioned, but Havoc Punch seems to have a long delay before power actually activates.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have not seen this to be the case outside of maybe lag in crowded zones. In missions it is a peppy 1.5 seconds, I don't see anything to complain about with that.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure what the point of the sleep effect is for melee attacks. YOu gotta be kidding. First of all, if I'm building fury, I'm going to unsleep the guy next hit. Also, the mob isn't trying to hit me, so not building Fury that way either. Didn't the Ice Brutes go away due to this consideration?

[/ QUOTE ]

When your sleep effect hits and turns off that Tsoo sorceror's Hurricane, or the Circle of Thorns' -acc aura, you might not think it sucks so badly. You can certainly drop mob toggles, I do it all the time - it isn't true for every effect mobs can run, but it is for a whole lot of them e.g. the two examples I just cited. If the sleep really bugs you with respect to building fury, what do you do when you play Stone Melee or Superstrength and the enemy is held/stunned/knocked down? Rendering your target unable to hit you for any length of time is useful and valuable whether in PVP or PVM.

The endo cost for the electric melees is notably lower than EM and Stone for certain (as it should be, lower damage) and I think it is likely they're on the cheap side compared to all the sets except maybe Fire, I don't think you have a lot of room to complain about endo costs with this set.

[ QUOTE ]
If the end drain from attacks isn't going to be significant or noticeable then why the hell did it get put in?

[/ QUOTE ]

The end DRAIN is fairly significant and noticeable - what isn't so spiffy is the endurance RETURNED to you. This isn't anything particularly new, it's true for Electric powers for Blaster and Defender as well. I still don't know why a good number of people seem to have got the notion that the endo drain was going to be something you can rely on.

I am interested to see how Power Sink works versus bosses and lieutenants under I7, along with the extra endo drain from the melee attacks. Endo drain powers are supposed to drain a percentage now instead of a fixed number of points, making it more worthwhile to try to drain bosses/lieuts.

edit: busted bracket (stupid quoting)

[ QUOTE ]
So you want 50/50 in melee and a 100% chance at range....sorry no.

[/ QUOTE ]

If your tanks really are dying 100% of the time - hell, at all - to blasters when you let them stay at range, in these immortal words: "Your a donut". I shouldn't bother explaining the tactics for dealing with this again, I've already described them once or twice and you don't appear to get them - you'd like to just stand there and do nothing and magically win anyway, it seems. There is no way a blaster can reliably kill any tank or brute purely from range unless the tank/brute just doesn't do anything to prevent it. The blaster can not maintain range and continue to attack. If you haven't got the snap to hit F and jump, I don't know that game mechanic changes will help you win more often anyway.

Anyhow the changes are going in, like it or no, so no use disussing it further that I can see. Toodles kids, see you in the funny papers.

I had no expectation that Jacob's Ladder would return any endurance - but what is that very infrequent "2 points of negative damage" message then? It comes in on the same channel that endurance returns do.

Trying to PVP with no knockback protection is stupid. I encourage everyone to try it, you will be crushed by just about every AT that decides to pick on you. It's particularly humiliating to get Galed around over and over. Only someone who hasn't actually tried PVPing with no knockback protection would suggest it.

[ QUOTE ]
everyone is going on about how this kills the non FOTM blasters in uselessness in PVP. heres a question can anyone name me a FOTM PVP tank? please by all means do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ice/EM...

[ QUOTE ]
also talking about blasters when moving into melee getting status affected. please tell me which tanks can give status in their secondary.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stone has a 100% disorient (Fault) and another 100% hold (Seismic Smash). There is a fair amount of %chance disorient on the mallets.

Axe and Fire true enough don't have status effects. On the other hand they have pretty good burst damage, particularly Axe.

[ QUOTE ]
Those are old pre-ED figures. No one can 6 slot a power with the same enhancements anymore and expect it to do a thing and you know that or should. Actual numbers now sit at about 70% to S/L max with tough.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wasn't certain whether hero planner's numbers were correct, so I went with Buffy's. Like I said, she might have been mistaken. 70% is still "very near" 90%.

[ QUOTE ]
Ice's defense based powers is why it is so good, defense helps negate the power of toggle droppers by not getting hit. Removing toggle droppers helps balance things for the other sets.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's nonsense. Your entire point centers around blasters running aim/buildup and whacking you with whatever. Aim/Buildup will punch through any amount of tanker defense, even with outside buffs. I had thought it was generally accepted that Ice tanks do well because of slow, endo drain, and Hibernate.

[ QUOTE ]
But your suggestion is that an AT that has mez resistance needs to enter every melee with a break free running and always keep them up because he shouldn't be able to actually have mez resistance right?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm just offering you a tactic, which you evidently have not thought of and you might find useful. I find it pretty handy on my blaster (considering that if I don't have a breakfree already running I'm going to lose consistently).

[ QUOTE ]
Because they are melee specialists and a blaster is not. All they do (with some few exceptions, ie spines) is melee. They should be the best at that. Blasters are the best damage AT in both melee, ranged, and AoE. If they choose to fight a tank in melee they should be at a disavantage since they are effectively ignoring their primary, ignoring your primary is not a reason that mine should be negated by silly toggle drops.

[/ QUOTE ]

Firstly, you are incorrect - blasters can choose to be melee specialists, they just have to divde your hitpoints by three (lower starting health, no dull pain), sacrifice nearly all resists and defense and status protection, and take a very specific couple of choices in movement pool (pretty much just leaping) in order to just get started.

It was never my experience that closing to melee with a smart tank or brute was a sure thing, maybe 50% - which seemed to me to be pretty fair. And when I ran out of breakfrees I pretty much had to leave the zone and buy more. Since I was totally dependent on specific inspirations to even have a 50/50 chance in melee, I think that falls pretty safely into the "I was already at a disadvantage" category.

"They should be the best at that" seems to me to pretty indicate what you really want - to rarely lose under any circumstances, unless it's to a scrapper or another tank. I will be happy to meet any all-ranged AT with my tanks, I know for a certainty they won't be killing me unless I just stand there like a bozo and let them.

I haven't had issues building fury, as damage plays no part in that, just recharge time for attacks. I don't think this set is any different from any of the others, except the endo cost seems notably low.

Since none of the attacks are described as "Extreme" damage, I think it is likely the single-target damage from this set will not be as good as say EM. I dunno, I like the set so far and I'll definitely play it at release.

Thunderstrike definitely has a lower BI than the blaster version, this was what I found:
5.32 base brawl damage
Charged Brawl:
7.39 Smashing = 1.39 BI
5.02 Energy = 0.94 BI
Total 2.33 BI

Havoc Punch:
11.83 Smashing = 2.22 BI
7.69 Energy = 1.45 BI
Total = 3.67 BI

Jacob's Ladder:
(A bit tricky here since I have 3x training dmg)
27.99 Energy * 0.7 = 19.59 = 3.68 BI

Thunderstrike:
14.79 Smashing = 2.78 BI
14.2 Energy = 2.66 BI
Total 5.44 BI

On the other hand the cost is WAYYYYYYYY lower, endo costs across the board are far lower than their blaster counterparts.

Pretty sure lightning rod will be in the 30-second recharge range, I recall it having a "Slow" recharge time and not "Very long".

That wasn't my point - it was that the opinion expressed by many, that scrapper/tank/brute shouldn't have to carry breakfrees because it's inconvenient, is pretty poorly justified when practically everyone else has to do the same to have more than a miniscule chance versus any scrapper/tank/brute with a status-inflicting attack. Heck, it's a challenge for a dominator to kill a tank who is AFK even with the tank's toggles off.

This is also completely aside from the fact that your status protection cannot be realistically dropped by most controllers, dominators, defenders, and many flavors of corruptor.

[ QUOTE ]
Devs, please no change to civilians, other than giving us more bonus time for harassing them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe I misremember but I thought I got a time extension for beating civilians.

[ QUOTE ]
About Jacobs Ladder: I haven't ever seen it print the "has drained the foo-enemy's endurance" damage message, or visibly drain the target's blue bar; both of which the basic attacks do reliably. The endurance-related aspects of the power seem completly broken.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hit a vault door with Jacob's Ladder and nothing else, you will plainly see the blue bar drop.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I use the Ninja Blade and Scrapper Broadsword cone slice-type attacks all the time, and I find it WAY easier to hit at least two if not three enemies with those than with Jacob's. With average human enemies like hellions, they seem to have to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Jacob's, but I can get away with a third to maybe a half of their width between them with the sword attacks.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the justification for that is that you're swinging a sword side-to-side, and I agree the cone is of huge width for both the sword attacks. I don't have an opinion whether Jacob's Ladder should be changed, to me it's adequate as is.

[ QUOTE ]
Last thing I'm wondering about the set so far, is, does thunder strike ever disorient the secondary targets? It dosn't do smashing damage to them, which is what got me wondering, but I haven't had enough time to see if it does yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the knockdown and disorient both can hit secondary targets, I've seen the brute version do it. The attack is pretty different from the Blaster version, with knockDOWN instead of knockBACK, and apparently a 50/50 split for the ST smashing damage and the AOE energy damage.

[ QUOTE ]
I love the fact that you "Screamed bloody murder" and then left in the quote where I already mentioned why what you would scream bloody murder about wouldn't exactly apply.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am glad that you love it. Just because you said pre-emptively that it wouldn't apply, doesn't mean that it does not apply. It is "inexcusable" that my blaster must carry breakfrees dammit!

[ QUOTE ]
Which means, I can lose the use of my powers and have no way to counteract it/prevent it. It's completely unexcusable.

[/ QUOTE ]

The entire point of toggle dropping in the first place is to - duh - drop your toggles and make you more vulnerable. You still have the advantages of high hitpoints, high damage output, and for the great majority of melee builds, some uninteruptible form of selfheal/max hp buff. This is outside of Tier 9 clicks that can't be detoggled anyway, and passives.

It's not like you're a Dominator and all your opponent has to do is eat one inspiration to completely neutralize your primary powerset.

[ QUOTE ]
The phrase is choose to close to take advantage of toggle drops not had too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since we're discussing toggle dropping, I feel pretty comfortable with the expression "has to close to melee to take advantage of toggle drops". I don't know of any ranged toggle drop powers.

[ QUOTE ]
Really? Well lets see. Fire can ride his resist caps to S/L how exactly? Oh yeah he can constantly pop sturdies because outside of that it aint happening, he isn't even getting all that close even with everything he could have.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, nice that you mentioned Firey Aura, since you were saying tanks/brutes only get one damage selfbuff. Fiery Embrace...

According to Buffy, a Fire tank can reach 90% S/L resist with just Fire Shield and Tough. She may be mistaken, I don't know. I do think that qualifies as "very near".

[ QUOTE ]
Ice....your talking resists so skip it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since Ice is particularly good at PVP by all accounts, yeah you'd probably better skip it.

[ QUOTE ]
Stone.....well with granite he can but toggle droppers can't drop that anyway and he takes a -recharge and -damage to even do that never mind the -speed.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think we can stipulate that Stone trades the obvious best choice for PVM for the obvious worst choice for PVP. I have two Granite tanks myself and I don't have a problem with that. The downsides of Stone in PVP are not limited just to the heavy drawbacks of Granite, in pretty much all ways it's a terrible PVP set. Then again, there are many Blaster builds that are pretty bad at PVP too (*/dev or */fire e.g.)

[ QUOTE ]
Inv .... ah this must be the tank you speak of after all if he has 3 slotted for resist TI + Uy + Tough + RPD then he can indeed do this, but he shouldn't be able to rely on three of them right? He needs two powers from a power pool and three from his primary to achieve this and yet he shouldn't actually be able to expect it to work, why is that?

[/ QUOTE ]

By the same token, a blaster foregoes practically all defense and accepts small hitpoints for the ability to hit people for big damage - and yet some tank with a pretty standard PVM build can reduce his damage by 65-70% or so. He is absolutely required to carry a large number of breakfrees to keep from being regularly flattened. Shouldn't the blaster expect their powers to work too?

[ QUOTE ]
So tanks can run if they don't want to fight you....ok so. You can run from tanks as well, worst case you need to hit a breakfree to do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the reason you can't eat a breakfree yourself is...

[ QUOTE ]
(re: kiting) Yes both have to. Not the tank is dead at range so he must close but if he does his defenses will likely all be negated....how is that fair?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why will his defenses likely all be negated? You're referring to the toggle drop hitting your status toggle, and then inflicting a sleep/disorient status. Guess what - eat a breakfree and that doesn't happen.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Being buffed to damage cap I think we can discount.


[/ QUOTE ]
As a scrapper I totally ignore any blaster that says that, after all how many whines did scrappers hear about being able to ride their damage cap? I can tell you many many more then I care to recall.

[/ QUOTE ]

Look, you can't have it both ways. If the blaster is pegged at their damage cap, then you are pegged at your resist cap and have breakfrees etc. I don't care what discussions you might have had in the past with other people. I'm examining what you're saying now in this thread - which appears to be that nobody but Blasters carries any inspirations or uses them in PVP.

[ QUOTE ]
Are you honestly whining that tanks outdamage blasters? Be real. It's not that close.

[/ QUOTE ]

Neither is the difference in hitpoints, resistance, defense, or status protection.

[ QUOTE ]
Also don't forget a blasters defense according to the devs is distance, you can strike from it and others can't. If you choose to melee with melee ATs you still do more damage but they should have a clear advantage over you for doing so.

[/ QUOTE ]

I may misunderstand you, but you appear to be saying scrapper/tank/brute should just plain old "have a clear advantage" if the blaster enters melee. Why? Because you just like winning?

Sorry for the excessive quoting, I generally hate to do it but I didn't see a way to make this post make sense without the quoted bits for context.

edit: fixed broken bracket

[ QUOTE ]
I personally don't buy the "Melee ATs should have to rely on breakfrees just as much as others" line of thought, because quite frankly, I think my status protection and defenses SHOULD be reliable, I spent a power slot on it. The defense sets are why we DONT get reliable ranged attacks, we DONT get blaster level damage, we DONT get unresistable damage in our attacks.

Again, I state, if there were tanker/brute/scrapper attacks that randomly disabled Blasters ability to blast in their primaries, Defenders ability to buff and existing buffs, and Controllers ability to Hold, players of those three ATs would be screaming bloody murder.

[/ QUOTE ]

*SCREAMS BLOODY MURDER*

Tanks, Brutes and Scrappers do in fact have just such attacks. Hold, Disorient, and now Sleep (Electric brutes). Not every single set gets them, but then not all Blaster sets get them either (Fire/ and /Fire spring to mind). If you choose to build your scrapper/tank/brute for PVP, you have the choice of selecting a powerset with 100% chance of status infliction, which will disable - and to be precise, not randomly at all, but 100% of the time! - your opponent's powers completely.

[ QUOTE ]
But its fine for a Melee ATs powersets to be worthless in PVP? That viewpoint is utter garbage, IMO.

And yes, Im aware that a status affect CAN negate the abilities of the ATs I listed above, however there are also multiple buffs and of course breakfrees. There is however, no buff, or inspiration, that prevents toggle drops.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the blaster does not have a breakfree in hand you WILL beat them a very high percent of the time, with one of the many sets for these ATs that has a status effect. And again, your stance boils down to, that is just as it should be. You shouldn't be bothered to carry breakfrees because hey, you took a power pick that makes you immune to every status effect anyone can try to stick on you. That's a good example of a double standard if I ever saw one.

Pff, well enjoy the kiting folks! I'll be making an elec/elec brute anyway, I have no interest in completely respecing my blapper for range.

[ QUOTE ]
The damage between tanks and blasters is not competitive at all. At best he's doing 80% of your damage but you even have a cap of 500% compared to his 400%, and then you generally have two self damage boosts and he has one. You are way out damaging him from the get go add in 30% unresistable damage to boot as well. You also have ranged attacks of great value that he lacks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Considering the blaster had to close to melee to take advantage of toggle drops, we can write off the range advantage. That leaves really just two sets that are particularly good at melee, /electric and /energy. /Electric in particular is almost completely Smashing, which you likely have very close to capped resistance against with your toggles up. /EM is also still mostly smashing until Total Focus.

I dare you to say you have regular problems with blasters killing your tanks completely from range. In my experience that simply does not ever happen. The tank has lots and lots and lots of time to simply break line of sight, and completely controls whether he wins or loses the fight. In the comparison of a single all-ranged blaster vs. a single tank, the blaster likely cannot possibly win unless the tank chooses to let them. The reverse isn't true, as you can close to melee by movement or TP Foe, inflict status on the blaster (KO Blow, Total Focus e.g.) and force it to boil down to inspiration use. Both parties are forced to do things that aren't particularly fun - kite, and be kited.

Being buffed to damage cap I think we can discount. The only way that happens in PVP is when the player eats a lot of inspirations. Nothing prevents you from doing the same and eating a lot of inspirations as well. All AT comparisons break completely when one person or the other eats a handful of inspirations. E.g. you could eat 10 purple insps and floor his acc even through aim + buildup.

Heaven forbid the AT that is described as the squishy damage AT actually have some delusions of a damage advantage!

I am so happy you can finally punch that stupid civilian getting in your way during bank robberies, and you actually get rewarded for it.

I'm not sure I see the benefit of smashing a car though, when it blows up and knocks off about 1/2 your health.

/Devices' sole redeeming grace in PVP is stackable +perception. Otherwise IMO it's the worst set of them all.

[ QUOTE ]
Where does this leave Assualt Rifle / Devices blasters?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the toilet. Good luck toe-bombing that frisky jumping Brute at all, let alone getting a toggle drop out of it, let ALONE actually hitting his status toggle (maybe 1 chance in 20 or 25, considering a typical 4 or so toggles).

[ QUOTE ]
Toggle dropping on top of unresistable damage on top of the GDN is just kicking a man in the jewels when he's down. Can you really argue that a fire/Ene blaster needs toggle dropping to kill an Inv/SS tank? That Inv has at most 27.5 resists to fire should you really be able to just drop that to 11.8 with a toggle dropper?

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you really think 15.7% resist is making or breaking you in pvp? If it was, then do you think a 78% reduction in chance to toggle drop can possibly be a balanced response?

[ QUOTE ]
Another balance issue is that neither tanks nor scrappers have toggle droppers in their powersets. How come a blaster can hit me with bonesmasher and knock my toggle down but I hit him with hack and his toggles are totally safe? Toggles like tough, hover, CJ, Stealth, Tactics, Assault and the like are all possible to be being run by that blaster but my broadsword primary can't do a bloody thing about it where as your Energy secondary can?

[/ QUOTE ]

Aside from having pretty competitive damage, FAR higher hitpoints and resistance, always-on status resistance? Even with your toggles off at the start of the fight you have a pretty solid comparison with any blaster build.

[ QUOTE ]
My melee with blappers on live has ALWAYS ended the same way. Im getting my toggles dropped and having my entire secondary negated like tissue paper, ((The reason the myth that /em Bonesmash drops all toggles exist is it has a high percentage to drop multiple toggles, and if it hits your stat protection toggle, the stun is applied and everything drops.))and if I do try to kill them first, I get three shotted due to defiance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your stance boils down to - the blapper should be 100% reliant on outside buffs or breakfrees, but you shouldn't have to do anything more than start your status toggle before the fight even begins. Nobody says you can't just eat a breakfree like every blaster pretty much is required to, and then - so what if your status toggle gets dropped?

Like you can't hold/disorient/fear the blaster? Every brute set has a 100% chance status effect power by level 20, if they choose to take it. In my experience closing to melee with a well-played brute is pretty iffy even with toggle dropping the way it was. If I dared to do it without a good supply of breakfrees it was a very consistent string of losses. Now that toggle dropping is effectively removed, I don't see any point in closing to melee at all except from stealth, and then only to ambush people dumb enough not to have +perception.

Edit: oops, that's excepting Fire Melee, no status effect there.

Anyhow I don't see why you enjoy being kited, that way nobody wins, it's just a big dumb irritating stalemate. I have yet to see anyone kite in a way that is fun for both parties, and that is what you'll have since closing to melee is being pretty heavily discouraged with this change.

Havoc Punch and Charged Brawl both appear to have about 25% or 30% chance to return "some" of the endurance they drain. Jacob's Ladder does indeed show me the same "2 points of negative" type message, and I have yet to see it return any endurance to me. I do see that it definitely does drain endurance from every target it hits though, even though it doesn't say this in the combat window. You can see the target's blue bar drop when you throw it. I think the "2 points of negative" message is probably a bug, and it should be returning some amount of endurance here.

I had no expectation that the endo return from the melee hits would be really noticeable, they aren't for the Blaster versions of the same attacks. It doesn't look to be something you can really rely on, and I'm not completely sure where people got the idea it would be, there isn't any precedent for it. I think if Jacob's Ladder has a much lower chance of returning endurance - if the "2 points of negative" is what it's supposed to be, it looks to be around 5-10% chance - that's not unreasonable, I doubt it is intended for you to be able to make a profit on endurance with a really pretty fine attack power, not with any regularity.

I have seen the Sleep land with Jacob's Ladder, and frankly that's a pretty nice secondary effect for any AOE.

Animation times are pretty fine to me, the time for Thunder Strike is right in line with Total Focus or Shadow Maul. Jacob's Ladder seems about 1 sec faster than Shadow Maul/Total Focus. Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch are quite acceptably fast to me. Really seems a pretty solid set at low levels.

I wasn't talking about your exchanges, which are pretty clearly on-topic, but rather the very personal and blatantly ad hominem post I was responding to. I don't see anything much to do with toggle dropping in that large recycled collection of quotes, bruised ego, and defenses of minutiae no one cares about except perhaps the person who posted it.

But for an obligatory comment about toggle-dropping - it's now no more than a verrrry minor side-effect to various attacks. I think it's a painful nerf for Blasters, sure, but dominators REALLY did not need a nerf in this department. At least the blaster has pretty high damage to contribute. Dominators, I don't see why a nerf to their toggle drops was required at all. Rotten damage, primary negated by breakfrees - and now a greatly lessened potential for toggle drops.

To the brute complaining about getting 3-shotted by /EM blappers, that's not due to toggle drops and you'll pretty likely still get 3-shotted by the same guy if you don't change any of your tactics.