Fusilier

I remember those days as well. Those were some heated discussions in the blaster form. After the blaster buffs, it mellowed out alot.

My attempt at Blue Steel's avatar.

I don't know why, but everytime I see Blue Steel in Kings Row I think Judge Dredd.

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Hey, fella'! You knock that off right now. Don't soil a perfectly good thread with math.

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*dumps a bag of dirt* Now this thread is soiled.

This thread is nothing more then flaunting. As I said, he would of only got half the experience for soloing an av any other day but this weekend. He got 101,888 exp (roughly 1.5 bubbles of exp he claims). Adjusting his and the AV's one level higher, he would of gotten more experience, but the value of the experience would of been the same (roughly 1.5 bubbles of experience).

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Can you top this single bonus in double exp weekend? I soloed Ghost Widow and nearly got 1.5 bubbles in a single kill.

Check out the combat log

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Honestly, it means nothing. You would have gotten half that any other day if not for 2X Exp Weekend.

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A while ago they also made a change to the mob AI so it would assess the 'threat' of each team member and react accordingly. Doing damage or debuffing moves you further up the 'threat' list. Generally I've found that it's based on max HP, the mobs will focus on those with the fewest first. If I'm not senile I remember a redname posting that they changed it to be just like we would do, take out the squishiest first to neutralize the threat, then work on that which would take longest to take down.

So, one person attacks, the entire team is put on the agro table, then the entire team gets prioritized by their threat level and generally the squishies get attacked first unless something else creates more hate. With tanker's taunt rules being broken right now, it's pretty blatant.

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Interesting, so not only do blasters have low health that invokes more hate, and damage that adds more hate, they also don't have the decent mitigation to deal with that hate, other then more damage which contributes to mroe hate. I love being a blaster!

*shrug* All I know is I have never, ever been directly attacked in the initial attack, even if I'm in the back and take my time selecting a target or following the brute 2 seconds behind. It's usually an aoe that breaks hide, and I wouldn't be suprised if an aoe that misses me still puts me on the bottom of the agro list. One exception would be if hide is broken, a new group is aggroed,and I wait for hide to engage; I will run up, the mobs will notice me and attack, even if I am stealthed.

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I always wondered if this wasn't the case, being in situations like a hidden Stalker who hadn't attacked and being pegged (ruining hide).

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Hide is an exception, barring ambushes. Let the brute go in first, everyone else drop their aoe's and such, and as a stalker you won't take aggro in the initial charge.

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The only thing I can say is the mobs must be doing an aggro check of every player in range and the AI is splitting the aggro among the whole team so one player is not the main focus of the whole spawns aggression.

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That's correct. It has been this way since release, I believe -- I remember being aggro'd while running Invisibility back in beta. In a nutshell, the entire team is put on the awareness/aggro list, not just the person who initiated the combat. It's not quite that simple, since there are a number of extenuating circumstances that can happen, but in general it is correct.

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Whoo hoo! One of my conspiricy theories was right. Now to prove Stonehenge ss an ancient archaic alien device to watch satellite tv.

I have had this before. I'm cloaked, in the back, no actions are being taken or done. I'm basically just standing still when the tank runs in, aggros the spawn, and a couple mobs make a bee line to me.

The only thing I can say is the mobs must be doing an aggro check of every player in range and the AI is splitting the aggro among the whole team so one player is not the main focus of the whole spawns aggression.

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Anyway, here were some additional questions I had cross my mind: If someone does find that the fourth Damage SO in all attacks actually overcomes the sliver on a regular basis would that possibly change people's optimized slotting? Would it be better to slot a 4th Damage and overcome the sliver of life or to slot recharge and have to cast another attack?

It just seems to me that when playing a Blaster, and with the sliver of life issue, it may be beneficial to actually consider a fourth damage SO.


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If your entirely single target based maybe. But a single aoe some time during the fight should knick off that sliver of health and a bit more on every target it hits. 3 damage accuarcy is plenty, with tossing an aoe every once in awhile should take care of any sliver's of health.

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I knew the howling monkeys would join this discussion at some point.

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Chimp, not monkey.

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Arcanaville, thanks for posting this, and thanks for putting the lie to the so-called "health / defiance lag". More actual data and knowledge is always useful.

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Yes, thank you again Arcane.

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Now the argument isn't whether Defiance isn't working. It clearly is. Now the question is whether or not the exponential equation it's based on is appropriate or whether it should be adjusted, or whether it should be an exponential curve to begin with.

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Yes, Defiance has always worked. It is also not the question of the curve, but how well a Blaster can utilize it. It is also of how much benefit a blaster can gain from it and how often. If it's only function less then 1% of most situations for a blaster, then it's garbage.

Good job Arcaneville.

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1. Blasters are defiance buffed constantly

Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.

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This is true, but is that small damage buff for 60% health and above is almost meaningless. It only adds a few more points of damage that will still need another follow up attack to finish, most likely will already result in excess damage without the Defiance boost.

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Because the relationship between critter damage and blaster health changes with level, defiance means different things at different levels. I'm still looking at defiance for blasters at levels other than 50 (defiance itself doesn't change, but I'm still looking at the damage numbers verses health issue at different levels).


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Have you also considered resistance buffs on the blaster? Higher resists will slow down the damage the blaster recieves, but if the blaster is taking less damage, then he's living longer where normal damage will be enough.

Smoke Grenade never caused aggroed. Aggroed only happened when one of the mobs was missed and saw you in your unstealthed cloaked Device.

Now, SG is auto hit, at least the -perception part. You can still be seen, but that's not likely to happen much, CD got a bonus or something and some speculate it's a portion of stealth that can not suppress.

Ok, one issue. It feels like it's been longer, but I remember ranting and raving when I found not Smoke Grenade was not auto hit in pve. But where do you get it was treated the same? SG finally got auto hit in pve and always has required a to hit check in pvp.

No, Smoke and Flash Arrow have both been auto hit in pve for the last few issues. In pvp it requires a to hit check.

Smoke Grenade just finally got the same love.

Trip Mine's gone, finite, doesn't exist, dead to me. I'm just trying to figure out to keep Smoke Grenade and work in Taser and Ignite.

A detoggle has a message attactched to it so the owner of the power knows it went off or didn't. You'll have a hard time noticing a foe's toggle went down when he's runnig several toggles outside of his status protection and complete shutdown. No, I'm annoyed because now the to hit debuff is almost like the random chance in BuckShot, Slug, M30 to knock down. I won't know if it hit or not except by getting real close and looking for the swirling yellow balls. Not that knowing if 3.5% to hit debuff landing or not is worth complaining about, but a 3.5% to hit debuff is in my opinion not game breaking enough for it not to be auto hit.

Smoke and Flash Arrow have always been auto hit Smoke Grenade wasn't. But now all these similar powers are auto hit.

But now I'm confused. The -perception debuff is auto hit on Smoke Grenade, but the to hit debuff requires a to hit check, but it's no longer giving any miss messages at all.

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Anywho, I jumped back into game and I did kinda notice something.

The -perc effect is shown by the smoke on the mob, but you have to either have good eyes or get close to see if you get the -acc effect, shown by the circleing crosshairs.

So I guess I have to go back to my 2ACC/3AccDebuff plan.

Just wish I knew what the "%" the debuff was. I mean if the difference between 1 AccDebuff and 3 AccDebuff (with SOs) is only like 5-10%, then im not sure its worth it.

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Smoke Grenade's acc debuff is aproximately 3.5%. To hit debuff SO's are 20%, with the third dropping off at 15%. The difference between 2 SO's and 3 SO's is bearly half a percent. I plan to just slot 2 debuff into it now should I have extra slots.

Dam the last patches. There is now too many good powers in AR/DEV; I want everything in AR, everything in Devices to Cloak, and full Fitness + Leaping before Munitions. I want 21 powers out of 20 possible choices. It's a very tough decision.

Thank you Castle. *bows down and worships Castle* I am not worthy! I am not worthy!

Now I wonder what the Cloaking Device chance is?

Nada from Castle other then a read recipet. I did some further testing and Smoke Grenade seems to be hitting everything I found so far up to +8. I got risky as well and 170,000 debt later, it seems to be working at least on the auto hit. I was able to hit several large spawns with no misses. But I also discovered if I tried to toss Smoke Grenade on those groups close up with CD, I was seen, which indicates to me that CD was supressed and Smoke Grenade does break itself before reapplying on the second toss. Also, the cut off for preception seems to be +5, anything higher appears like it might be resisting the perception debuff if I attempted to us SG, wait for CD to unsupress, and walk close up.

Possibly. A few days ago I noticed I wasn't gettting any misses, but I just assumed it was because of Fortitude and Tactics in the group I was running. But if it's hitting now... waiting on Castle's confirmation is too much...

Woooah! I swear to god, at this very moment, I have chucked over two dozen SGs at +8's, no acc no drone, every hit has landed with no miss. Even one throw at a +8 bosses and it didn't miss. Either I am in a the Twilight Zone or it's the real deal. PMing Castle...

Smoke Grenade is non-aggro, so you can just toss em all your want, as long as you don't get too closeor attack. It doesn't display hits in the chat text, but it does display misses, which also displays above their heads, if you missed you will see MISS!, if you hit you won't see anything, but it landed.

Unless it was changed in the recent patch and not posted in the notes, Smoke Grenade is still working as normal. It's not the visual smoke that tells you missed or not, it's the MISS! that appears over their head. Lob some smoke grenades at some +2-+3, and you'll see it, I would run the test myself, but I'm at work at the moment. When I get home, I'll do it, but I don't expect anything different.