Furio

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Ok, so we were told that we would be getting bases when CoH came out, and all these great things would be coming.

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Being that I was here from the beginning, I can promise you that bases were NEVER promised. NEVER. It wasn't on the box, on the website or in any promo material. The most we ever said was - "someday we'd like to do bases."

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LOL not surprising really. Like many of the other sayings from the early days such as "PvP will not effect PvE" and "We want the game to cater to casual/solo players".

So is CoV an expansion or a stand alone then? I don't think I've ever seen a clear answer. Only comments that happen to fit whatever view the devs need at the moment. When convenient to the devs it is an expansion. When convenient it is a stand alone game.

*shrug*

It's a shame to see the business side coming down so hard on the playerbase with the coming of CoV. A lot of the ideals of the early days are washed away to make room for bags of money. In anycase I don't really need a base that bad. You can keep CoV out of my CoH, thanks.

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It's a simple concept, really....if you buy CoV, you fall into one of two categories. People that have CoH, or people that don't. If you have CoH, it's an expansion. If you don't, it's a stand-alone.

And they never said that getting CoV was the only way to get a base, ever.

Well done and very thorough. I haven't done the TFs in the shard yet, but as near as I can tell, the Rulaaru are a dimension-hopping army, bent on conquest. (natch )

COnsidering that the gender specific costume options has been an QoL issue since CoH beta, it strikes me as very odd that the Devs would continue the problem in this way

How much earlier, Posi? 90% say?

Seriously, though, even tweaked, it's not gonna be much help in the late game, where we need it most. More damage is fine and dandy, but to override the instincts of any sane blaster on death's door, it's gotta be obscene damage, and guaranteed to hit.

Since we all know that's not gonna happen, could we get an Acc boost (without the roll-ovep bug, please ) and maybe a slight bit of mag resist?

At any rate, regardless of any tweaks to defiance, please, please, please do something about the near total lack of utility and abundance of melee redundancy in fire manip.

I've been playing around with this on my main (see sig), and I have to say it really doesn't do anything for me.

First off, the bar itself needs more of a visual pop. The fact that it turns black when it's finally full is counter-intuitive And the amount of health (about on pixel left of hp) to get to full is a bit excessive. Maybe it's my 6 slotted health working against it, but by time my hp regen tics once, it's dropped off to 1/2.
It works, and is marginally useful solo. I've still faceplated plenty using it though, since it's just a damage boost. I've wiffed more than a few times when I managed to get the bar full or nearly so, which would likely finished off the enemy, only to survive long enough for the boost to drop off significantly, get in a hit and have the mob procede to waste me. It really needs an acc boost to go along with it.

However, in a team, by the time it actually kicks in, I get healed, or I get dead. Maybe shift the hp percentages it kicks in up a bit, and scale the damage boost down a bit.

Ideally, instead of having it act like a toggle, keeping a level of buff as long as you're at a certain hp, make it more clicky. IE you hit a hp threshold, it kicks in, and stays active for a set duration, regardless of subsequent hp. That would really help blaster survivablity. In it's current implementation, it's a mechanic that I'm going to avoid.

Desperation...sounds interesting, but considering how quickly a blaster can go from 100% to 50% health (let alone 50% to 0) I hope that's not all he has in store for us.

A valid point, but this is pretty much a PvE, not PvP discussion

Yeah...in "ye oldern dayes" there were a good number of mobs without ranged attacks, and they were also to stupid to run from what they couldn't hit. That didn't really last very long.
However, that still didn't help much in a mission, and searching out those mobs to "street sweep" (not really sweeping if you're being that selective) in absolute safety was prohibitivly slow and tedious.

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"We are not ninjas! We are Chinese! Ninjas are Japanese!", Wu, Brain Smasher . . . a Love Story.

Anyway, why are we all assuming that the Coralax are the aquatic arechtype? A quick search shows not a single instance of a red name saying anything of the sort, only folks inferring it back when we only knew two names of new archetypes.

Maybe I missed something someone was told at a con, but it sounds much more plausible to me that the BotBS is the aquatic type and that the Coralax is something else. Corax is a Greek word for crow, but we already know that they're not winged, so perhaps it's a seer type, kind of a combination of "corax" and "parallax".

P.s. Statesman is an Incarnate of Democracy, methinks. Hence the references to Greece.

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As mentioned earlier, States told us to think "underwater" in reference to the coralax, and as revealed in issue 2 of the Top Cow run on CoH,*spoiler, though I'm sure most have seen it by now*













States is Zeus Incarnate, hence the references to Greece

You're right. There were so many /dev blasters running around, with blaster damage and damn near unhittable, that it quickly became assumed among a lot of folks that all blasters were /dev, and people in groups would be suprised when the blaster didn't have the drone floating around their head.
That decimal error in SG's acc debuff would make it so that mobs would have virtually 0 chance to hit the broad side of a barn, much less a player.

The entire AT was never as dominant as the "city of blaster" folks would have you believe.

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City of blasters was a myth? You either have no idea what you're talking about or that was supposed to be humour.

In Pre I2 days, blasters were king. No other AT even came close. Period. That's what they are refering to by saying city of blasters.

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No...it's a misconception. As someone above me noted, it was City of /dev blasters, on the strength of *one* broken power. There were a lot of blasters, but those were the early days. On paper, (ie with no playing experience) blasters look like the most fun to play. So a lot of people roll blasters. Slotting a blaster is pretty simple to figure out, too...all the slots go to offense, so in the early going blasters really are offensive juggernauts, especially compared to the other classes that have to split slots between offense and defense. Nothing about blasters as a whole has really changed since then. The environment has, as there are more mobs with ranged attacks and mezzes are more prevalent, and mobs will scatter if they can't get into range of their attacker, but City of Blasters is a myth, one that died without any significant changes to blasters as a whole.

Now you wanna say "City of /Devices Blasters, before the smoke grenade fix" I doubt you'll get much argument. But my fire/fire (played since day one, so i'm well aware of any changes to them ) certainly wasn't what people had in mind when people said "blasters are too uber" back then.

Almost always awesome.
The blaster melee attacks sucked in beta, and were given a bump towards the end of it because noone was taking them.
Personally, I think the fact that they were so unpopular should have been a hint that a squishy didn't really want to be in melee and maybe the secondaries shouldn't be cobbled together from tank/controller sets...hence devices, the only secondary designed from the ground up for blasters, but that's neither here nor there, now...they're looking at us now and hopefully they leave those massive melee attacks in, and drop the crapola powers.

The SWG system is goofy. Once you find a base of the opposing faction, you gotta go check once per hour to see if it's vulnerable then you gotta get that info to the rest our your guild, then you gotta make sure you have all the required professions......and then theres no guarantee that the base owners will even be there.
My guild took down many a rebel base unopposed by players.

the "appointment" system is far better, imo

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My favorite was by MacAllen (who got banned and became MacDaddy) about how all Scrapper sets should be more like Martial Arts (the old MA mind you) and if the Devs didn't do it then CoH was dooomed because a whole AT was useless.

Hehe... I remember his rant on Spines and how useless they were.

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Is that what happend to Mac? He was everywhere in the prebeta days, but I can honestly say I don't remember a single post from him from beta on....

Ok...first off, I specifically said we're talking about late game, team situations. That automatically assumes at least a defender or controller.
Build up is in almost every secondary (4 of 5) and is a 100% damage buff. Aim is in almost every primary and provides a 65% damage buff. 5 slots of max level SO's alone will put you at around 300%. Boost Range is moot as that's what it does...boosts range...not damage.
So...already the average blaster is capable of nearly capping themself on their own.
Now, you add the team (which i specifically said we're talking about ) buffs. Regardless of who normally gets these buffs now, we're talking about if blasters didn't already hit the cap:

Fortitude(empathy),Siphon Power, Fulcrum Shift(kinetics), Accelerate Metabolism, Mutation (radiation)(for when ya die...it's gonna happen) Assault(pool)
So..like I said earlier, that's nearly every def primay/con secondary. And I'm totally ignoring the red pills.

Now siphon power is a 25% buff from a defender, 20% from a controller Sure that's not huge....fulcrum shift however is that same amount for each mob hit by the AoE and a 50% defender/40% controller around the caster. that is MASSIVE on a team.

Now maybe you are playing with the wrong people, but personally, in the 40's the average sized team i was on was in the 5-8 range, and there was usually multiple defenders or controllers...and i am talking about pickup groups.

Would a cap change benefit blasters? yeah...even getting to 425% in a duo with a defender would be a great boon to damage output, IMO.

And you seem to be mixing your points about base damage across the ATs. Slotting has nothing to do with base damage. Blasters and scrappers simply do more damage than the other ATs. It's not about who slots what and when. Scrapper and Blaster attacks are just more powerful.
You're right about why blasters out damage scraps at low levels, but that's really not the point.

Thats where you're wrong. Build up is in almost every secondary (not just energy). Assault, while rarely taken by blasters, IS a common power among controllers and defenders, since they get a bigger buff from it.Almost every defender primary/controller secondary has some kind of teammate buff, (I think FF and Dark are the only ones that dont) You know...the teammates that supposedly want you on the team for your damage potential. Wasted potential, since they cant help most blasters damage-wise.

We're talking about team situations here, by the way...late game team situations, specifically, where all of the weakness of blasters are most glaringly obvious. Finding oneself in a situation where you could very easily hit a 500% cap is not at all rare...it's nearly an every fight (in a team) occurance for 4 of the 5 blaster secondaries.

As far as the AT's base damage being the same...wrong again. Scrappers and blasters base is pretty much equal. Defenders do 33% less than blasters. Tanks do 20% less than scrappers. I'm not sure where controllers fall, but again, their base is less than blasters.

You are correct, that there ARE other issues that would impact our survivability, but a higher damage cap would help far more than you give it credit.

Yes,most blasters can hit the 400% cap on their own. That's exactly the problem. The "solo specialists" get more of a boost from being on a team than the more team dependant blaster.
So, in addition to the scrapper being more durable, needing less of the others AT's attention to stay up, they can get a bigger buff....further marginalizing the one-trick pony.

Considering that blasters pretty much only bring one thing to a team, and can faceplant quite easily (negating their main contribution), a higher cap would make that fragility a bit more bareable for the rest of the team, and if it was good enough, it could change the common practice of leaving the blaster facedown until the end of the fight.
"Sure, he's dead, but did you see how many he took with him?!"

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Maybe I should of read that update after my morning coffee.

I do thank you for the information though. Although this does stink quite a bit. Running around and sniping people while super speed selcudes you is (was) this blasters primary defensive mechanism. I can understand why SS got changed, but I don't see why somthing that was working should be messed with. All of us whove been robbed of the usefullness of SS should get a free respec from the devs.

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*points at the free respec that came with issue 4*

Cuz blasters are broken?

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Now, the issue is more specifically - what does a Blaster do that a Scrapper can't already do? Or, even worse, is a Scrapper inherently "stronger" than a Blaster.

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Seems to me, in almost every group I'm in, that Blasters easily get 3 times the number of defeat messages that Scrappers do. The ability to change targets without moving adds so much more to Blasters offensive output than people seem to realize.

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Strangely, there was a lot of back and forth not too long ago in which several blasters insisted that scrappers can just stand in one spot and kill everything, while blasters have to constantly jockey for position.

It was surreal, but I think it demonstrated that neither scrappers nor blasters have the luxury of sitting in one place during a fight.

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True. Both AT's have to move in combat. The only difference is the reason they're moving. For scrappers, it's most often to hit something else, far more rarely to get the hell outta Dodge.

Blasters are moving because something's running at them and they're outta control options and don't have the firepower to immediately drop it, and less often to apply more firepower (from their shorter ranged attacks) to an already engaged target.

Yeah...much like mezs(but not exactly like), they higher the rank, the more resistant they are.

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Okay, When I first got this game back in June of last year, I was so excited to play it. The first Toon I made was Mr. Nothing, A NRG/Fire blaster. At the time, I thought he was the cat's pajamas. Then again, I also thought that Origins mattered.

Anyway, I'm still playing him today, He has loged over 500 hours of game time. And yet, he is yet to reach level 50.
Infact, not even close. 41 after 8 months of playing.

Why? I was to level 20 with ease and level 30 not much longer. Then things, as they say, took a turn. I lost my ability to solo. I realized this after amounting very large amounts of debt. It took me about 2 weeks to get out of it. I spent nearly 2 months in the low 30s.

Why is it like this? Most people would have given up on a */fire by now, but He's my baby. I currently have 3 fire powers, and only because I ran out of Energy Blasts. Ring of fire, Build up, and combustion. Of which I only use build up, available in all pools.

In otherwords, my secondary is useless. Give me something I can use! Holds, sheilds, more ranged attacks, SOMETHING!

When you say that the melee stuff is useful, its not. This is comming from a seasoned veteran of the blasters. Fire swords, useless. Combusion, waste of endurance. If I get in a big Mob, I'm dead.

I mean I love a challenge, but this is kind of absurd.

At one point a few months ago, I teamed with a Scrapper. We were both high 20s. He has since Gotten to 50. Created a Kheldian, which passed me around 34, and is now Also 50 (with about 15 HO enhansements now). Ya think something might be wrong with this picture?

Blasters are worthless after level 30 and everyone knows it. With the exception of me Novaing in Hearding Situations, and dieing, I have no Heroic Duties.

Melee is useless to a Blaster, I don't care how anyone, Including the statesman, may defend that. It's not. Give us more Ranged attacks and/or holds, or just let us die.

And we will die.

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I feel your pain, man, but not all blaster melee is useless. /energy works quite nicely from what I've seen and /elec's not too shabby either when paired with elec/.

The problem with /fire melee is 1) too much of it and 2) No secondary effect. DoT is NOT the same level of protection granted by /energy's disorients, /elec's end drain or even /ice's slow, -rec.

It's almost a shame you went with energy. Consume is great after an Inferno...but not so much with the happy happy after a Nova

Just a note about your suggestions for /fire. Old fear sucks for an AoE blaster.I Say AoE blaster because I'm going with the theory that the secondaries should be interchangable but synergize the BEST with the related primary. Which is why you never see a fire/ using Rain unless things are held or as a panic button. I'd want the new fear (see sig )

That being said, however, they'd have to recode fear. Ya see, all of fire has a DoT...mostly useless, but it's there. Actually, now that I think about it, with a fear effect added, it'd be less than useless. Each tic would break the fear, allowing the mob to retaliate, leaving us at square one. It'd have to be a new effect...Stop drop and roll. For the duration of the DoT, the mob has to roll around trying to put out the fire...just the secondary powers' DoT though.

Hot feet has the "run away" fear in it. You can't slot it currently, and mobs will still get close enough to you to whack ya good before turning tail and running slowly away. And again, not something I want as a fire blaster ....scattered mobs.

Nope...that's basically it. I'm most familiar with /fire obviously, so I speak from that perspective. There's very little from that set that I used regularly. The swords, build up, consume after an inferno. That's about it.

I can't remember actually using ring of fire for it's control aspect, just another attack in the chain. Didn't take combustion, didn't take blazing aura (absolutely retarded power for a blaster, IMO...frontloaded inferno, sure, I'll risk that...waiting for a DoT tic...instant pass on that.) Got great use outta burn after they fixed it...didn't use it after they "realized they didn't mean to fix it". Hot feet...such an insult. Only good use for that power I've found is standing behind a tank, slowing AV's at it's edge.

And then there's the reason that /energy is so good with it's melee powers, and why /elec and /ice are so much better than /fire (at least from the outside lookin in)...No real secondary effect. DoT tics are only useful for droppin a runner who's managed to get outta range since your last shot. In other words, useless. That runners gonna come back anyway. The DoT isn't large enough to save me an attack, doesn't keep enemies from hurting me, doesn't debuff the baddies any. C'mon,they're on FIRE! Why are they still as accurate as before, hell...why are they even still shooting at me? I learned what to do if I caught on fire in kindergarten...STOP! DROP! ROLL! (in the game it'd be cower like fear if they couldn't be bothered to put in the animation)

bleh..I've said all this before. Fix the secondaries and we're well on our way to being viable.

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Dear States,

Personally, I think Ice Manipulation is a great secondary, with a couple of crappy powers, but I dont think its anyworse than Devices or Energy.

If changes are made to Blaster secondaries, such as adding new powers, please consider using the Kheldian model of power availability. What I mean is, Kheldians can unlock multiple powers from a primary or secondary set at the same time. As an example, Dawn Strike and Photon Seekers are both unlocked at level 32. If new powers are added to secondaries to add to Blaster survivability, I propose that none of the current powers be removed. Rather, just add more powers to the set that unlock at the same level as current powers. The code must already be there for this.

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I would second this.

If Blasters are ranged damage then they ought to be able to pick from their secondary a large number of powers that don't require that they be in melee range.

But there are plenty of happy blappers out there.

So I really see this as the only viable way to "fix" the secondaries.

PS - States: This is one of the rare times that a post of yours actually left me MORE confused than before.

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I sent one of those PM's, and I'm with you, Pilcrow...confused.