GGSeizor246

I joined the CoH community right after i3 went live

I have been playing mostly scrappers, blasters, and defenders for a very long time (however i have 2 level 50 blasters, 1 scrapper, 2 tanks, 2 defenders, one stalker, and 1 controller who was mainly a damage dealer build).

The toon that i play the most i made in my first year playing this game and is my 4th oldest toon. My Assalt Rifle / Devices Blaster. the Connoisseur.

My favorite builds? My first 50 was a Force Field/energy defender (the Greater Good) so it has always been close to my heart. Assalt rifle/ devices blaster, Martial arts/ Super Reflexes scrapper, Claws/regen scrapper, and Kin/Rad defender. I couldnt narrow it down to one build i like the most so i listed my top 5.

I have been playing an Assalt Rifle/Devices blaster for about 5 years now. i do understand that AR/Dev is far from the best blaster build, but, call me stubburn, i cant seem to stop playing him. I have become quite proficient with him. i have spent hundreds of millions of influence maxing out his damage potential, i got rid of many of my favorite powers from both assalt rifle and devices, all to make him as efficient as possible, and i have gone through more respecs than i can count. However, the more i better him, the more i become frustrated by the ever more stronger built players (meaning anyone who isnt assalt rifle/anything but devices or traps).

AR is generally equal to all of the blaster sets. Damage, endurance, accuracy, is equal many of the blaster sets; however, the main reason why AR ends up being far weaker than the other sets is the lack of an Aim power. All i would like to ask is would it be too much of to give AR a slight boost above the average damage and accuracy to compensate for it's lack of aim?

Don't get me wrong, i am not asking for my burst to one shot, or something like that. When i say a slight boost i mean bringing the base acc of powers like burst and slug from 1.05 to about 1.20 or a bit higher (now keep in mind that Archery has a base acc of 1.15, the highest of the blaster sets). Damage wise i believe a slight boost of about 15-20% would be more than fair.

I do not know much about how the balancing system works in the game, but i see these numbers as resonable. It will put AR at slightly above any average blaster who doesnt use aim and it would hopefully not be overpowered if accompanied by /em for example.

I bring this up because one, i love my AR blaster! Two, because i see so few AR's on the multiple servers i have played on, and Three, because when i heard about dual pistols i began to think "if that set has aim, there would be no reason, beyond concept and preference, for a blaster to pick up Assalt rifle over dual pistols."

Feel free to correct me if my proposed changes are too much, too little, or not needed, just comment in general. Keep in mind that i mostly pvp with my AR/Dev and think that these changes would also be useful in balancing AR for both blasters and corruptors.

thank you for your time.

Thanks for the reply!

lol Suprisingly enough, that is the same tactic I have been using. (lol and the sniping near dead villains has landed me about 4 PVP IOs). I never tried the +damage slotting though. Ima go work out a +damage build right now lol. thanks again.

I have been playing my AR/Dev blaster in pvp ever since zone pvp was introduced into the game. I understand that AR/Dev is a horrible choice for pvp, but i would like to know if there is anyone that has made this combo work well without Tp foe into trip mines.

If there is anyone that has made it work, mind telling me your secrets? lol

the problems i see with AR/Dev are that they dont have a Build up or aim and do less damage with their first 2 attacks than all but two sets in pvp, They only have 2 single target attacks (if you dont count the snipe and stun), and all their AoEs do less damage than Burst in pvp. the only problems i have with devices is that time bomb is almost impossible to use in pvp (and even if successful is only as good as 3 trip mines) and that the set up time for gun drone is pretty long.

I would like to avoid replies similar too "dude, you need to re-roll into anything-else/EM" please.

I for one think the set is going to be a bit like AR in the sence that it has almost no mezes of any kind. I really dont see any holds or an immob in the dual pistol set. Stun possibly. i would love to just pistol whip someone, but it would have to be a major stun if it is a blaster primary power that requires you to go melee to use.

Someone mentioned earlier they would like to see a "headshot bonus" type thing where there is a chance to do even more damage. Full Auto has this effect called "Lucky Shot" it is a 10% chance to do a lot of damage on the final tick of the DoT.

i expect this set to be really fun to play and fun to watch, and i already have a name saved for my first dual pistol blaster!

now i am sure people have mentioned this before, but i think Ar and Devices needs to get tweaked quite a bit to balence out.

i have had an Ar/devices blaster for a few years now, and i have spoken to other devices blasters about this (i couldnt talk to any Ar blasters because i couldnt find any).

First, i think Ar needs a major accuracy boost. My only reason for this is the lack of an aim. Now targeting drone does a good job of boosting my ammount of times i hit, but lets face it, that little drone is no aim+build up.

second, i know ignite was an insane av killer (when on a team who has all the aggro and a controller to lock them down). however, even before its rechardge, i never thought it was overpowered due to its limited area size and the fact that the only good ways to use it are to either immob the target first and melt them down, or to keep the baddies out of melee by setting yourself on fire. all i am going to say is i want a larger burn area.

Finally, i will bring up time bomb as it is my only grievance with the set. The damage is slightly lower than a blaster nova so it would seem pretty good, but i know almost every blaster uses bu+aim before every nuke. Time bomb is not effected by aim anyway. All i would ask for is a damage boost, a kinda big one. it takes 8 seconds to set, 15 seconds to go off, and in the end, all i have to show for it is my fully slotted time bomb ALMOST killing a lot of even level baddies.

Maybe i am just doing something wrong with my blaster after about 3 years playing him, but these seem like good and pretty easy (mind you i have no idea what effort these changes would require).

i welcome comments and criticisms.

lol I have gone through every method possible of finding character names (sometimes taking hours). Recently I have started combining words into one cooler word. some of my characters. . .

Scaldron (Scald and Cauldron)

Vigilight (vigilant and light)

and my personal favorite, Kokomono (Koko is a monkey name and Mono is spanish for monkey)

I have even gone so far as to name some characters after food. Let me help you with some here.

Bran Flake
Crazey Crunch Berry
Rasinetta
Pugnacious Pumpkin
Dominight

All good choices in my opinion!

Hmm. . .Let me try this!

Greater Good = Lesser Evil
Ironclad Marvel = Paper-Uncovered Normal

Connoisseur = Ignoramus

Vigilight = Inattentive Dark

Detective Steven = Criminal nevetS

Lightning Psyche = Dirt Body

Vaudeville Kid = Movie Man

Fox Fang = Bobcat Claw (good one I think)

Lol this is fun!

Most of the time, if i want powers that dont fit my concept, i make them work somehow. For example I have a character that is a monkey named Koko who was taken from south america, and sold to Nemesis for one of his new life extension experiments. He was trying to copy his intelligence into a different brain.

Crey then attacked the nemesis base only to find that nemesis was already gone. They found Koko and took him to their labs and experimented on him. His brain was furthur changed by their experiments giving him the power to control the minds of others to do his bidding. He is now known as Kokomono!

He is a Thugs/Pain MM who will be getting the mace patron pool. MM because, like Nemesis, he will hardly do his own fighting. Thugs because he wipes the mind of people he finds on the streets and controls their bodies. Pain because he will make his puppets fight through anything until their bodies are completly destroyed. and mace because he has some of the mind of Nemesis who wears a bunch of armor, and carries a staff. Mace will give me scorpion shield, and a mace (super booster III will let me make him a big armored suit costume)

Basicly, it is hard to tell what the person was thinking of when they made their toon and even harder to know why they choose the powers they did.

My favorite name for one of my characters is:
the Greater Good

I just recently moved to vitrue server for a few reasons:

1. Everyone on my old server were farmaholics who didnt want to team with anyone who couldnt get them from 1-50 in 2 hours

2. I rarely saw server events where people got together just to hang around.

And 3. because I wanted to RP as an evil human hating monkey bent on taking over the world through mind control and organized crime.

Now that I am on virtue, I RP on random teams all the time, or i try to at least. Rping makes me like the game more than i already do. Instead of thinking "what will make me kill stuff better" I think about what works for my character's concept. And in the end, it is just plain fun.

Thanks for the answer, MGoblin!

The Nemesis army is my favorite villain group, so I have a few questions about their ever plotting leader, Nemesis.

What is Nemesis' name?

What is known about his life before he became the super villain he is now?

Finally, is it really all a Nemesis plot?

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...Tankers easily shrugging off AS after AS and then Stalkers would not be needed on a PvP team.



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This is what happens now. How would eliminating unresisted damage change that?

Blasters would still be the damage AT of choice because of the high damage modifiers and the ability to attack from range. Nothing would change in that regard.

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To be honest with you, I have no idea how it would change. I suppose AR and Archery Blasters would be even less popular and non-EM Stalkers would all but disappear. Tanks and Brutes would replace Stalkers and Blasters, perhaps. But I think the devs gave unresistable damage to Blasters and made Assassin Strikes unresistable so that Blasters and Stalkers could do what they were made to do.

I read somewhere on the forums that unresistable damage was given to Blasters because that's all they do - deal damage. Since other AT's had some kind of way to deal with incoming damage (def, res, debuffs, buffs, etc...) Blasters had no place on a PvP team. Besides, if you take away all unresistable damage, hero side would be overrun by Tankers easily shrugging off AS after AS and then Stalkers would not be needed on a PvP team. Now some would see the reduction of Blasters and Stalkers as a good thing, but there are people who like to play those sets.

The most common complaint I see concerns the Energy Melee/Manipulation sets. Now of course nobody wants to talk about nerfing any particular sets but EM (both Stalker and Blaster sets) far outperform any other set within its respective AT's. Even Brutes and Tankers are finding their own FoTM niche in the Energy Melee sets. Extreme burst damage combined with fairly consistent stuns makes those glowing fists shine all the more. Wanna "fix" PvP? Fix EM.

A good Blaster will anticipate being stunned and load up on BF's. Alot of people poo-poo the idea of popping inspirations in PvP but if you don't, you really leave yourself with large holes in your survivability. The Strength of Will inspirations you get in Siren's Call are the best. Three minutes worth of mez resistance is definitely worth the effort of getting 1,000 bounty in Siren's Call.

Before the patch, you had to wait for Cloaking Device's stealth to un-suppress before running in to plant a bomb, that is no longer the case. It was only a 3 second or so pause in action, but it really seemed like forever before I was able to run in. I now toss my Smoke Grenade and immediately run in for the Time Bomb/Trip Mine. This change coupled with Taser being a ranged stun - in my opinion - make /Devices a very good set.

I dunno....I tried Smoke Grenade on live and it is certainly auto-hitting. While I do appreciate the change, I don't see any evidence of the change in Cloaking Device Castle is talking about. I've been searching the Dev Digest and the patch notes for more information, but I've yet to find it. Perhaps we could get a follow up post by our beloved _Castle_ and he could elaborate.

(edited by me) I just checked it out on live and am glad to announce that while Smoke Grenade does suppress the stealth of Cloaking Device right when you use it, once the animation is over, you can run in with CD on and you are unseen. I tested out throwing SG in view of a group, they saw me. But if I threw it from out of their aggro range (with CD on) and immediately ran in, they didn't see me. BEAUTIFUL! Thank you, Devs! That change, coupled with the fact that now SG's -perception is auto hit and Taser is a ranged stun makes /Devices a great set in my opinion. Now if they could re-do that +damage to Cloaking Device...

Inertial Reduction does eliminate the momentum of flight. I have a Kinetics Defender with Fly and when Inertial Reduction's effect is on me, I get the same "stop on a dime" effect I get from Hover.

LOL....yeah....My team found out the hard way. Dropped half the team into the orange - killed one. But being a quick study, I Deceived the next one we saw and nobody got hurt.

I've only been playing CoH for about a year and a half, but I was fairly sure I'd seen everything in the game. Until today. I was runing a level 45 Crey mission today and came across Paragon Protector Elites. I've never even heard of these guys! Is this new or am I more newb than I knew??

Just another lesser known emote: researchlow

It is the same as research just one one knee.

I have a level 37 Archery/Devices blaster and I love playing him.
As to the acc bonus, when Targetting Drone goes down I can still comfortably hit +2's without any acc slotted into my attacks. With Targetting Drone, I can hit +4's without too many whiffs. This allows me to slot 3 damage and 3 recharge. Makes for a pretty good chain.
Rain Of Arrows ROCKS! The thing is, you can't think of it as a "nuke". You'll be very disappointed. If you think of it as just another AoE, you'll drool. Slotted with 3 damage and 3 recharge, it's up at the beginning of just about every spawn and does great damage - for an AoE. I repeat, it's not a nuke. Cool thing is (as it's a location AoE) you can cast it around corners and from behind walls.
And by the way, the pause after Ranged Shot is gone and it does more damage than Blazing Arrow - despite what some Hero Planners say. They also reduced the endurance costs on the Archery powers.
After going 50 levels with my fire/fire blaster, with all his PBAoE's and strong melee and short range attacks, Archery plays very differently. I can sit back in relative safety next to the team healer and have the complete ranged attack chain many other blasters complain they don't have.

I am glad to see someone writing somthing good about the force field powers. I have a level 50 bubble defender (The Greater Good, Victory server) and I have found that the force field powers are awesome

If I team with a group of blaster or controllers who cannot find a scrapper, they love the force bubble

I love being able to hold and AV especially in a situation of a team wipe and i am alive but no one can rez because to close to AV, or if we dont want to mess with them yet

the power Repulsion field is fun if you are good on endurance and you happen to find a big group of low level baddies, i love to watch them fly, or if i run out of end when i have Force bubble on and the baddies get to close and i have to run


In Short, I am happy to see a post about how good FF is.