Hopeling

Like this? http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=289326

IMX, there's not much of a fanbase for non-Brute(/Tanker) damage auras, other than Hot Feet. Heck, if you ask about a secondary with a damage aura over in the Scrapper forums, half the replies will probably tell you to roll a Brute instead because damage auras suck on Scrappers. (Which is something of an exaggeration, but the point is that it's a pretty widespread opinion among players.)

Caltrops is decent, but you're extremely unlikely to get the full 45 seconds of damage on most targets, because they'll move out or simply die from other things. If we use, say, 15 seconds as a more realistic estimate, it effectively becomes a 42-damage AoE with a 45-second base recharge, which isn't particularly exciting. For sustained single-target DPS, if you can get them to stand in it, it has a pretty good DPA... but still a 45-second recharge, so you're not really improving your overall DPS by much, and it's usually not worth a power pick for a couple extra DPS on AVs.
It's a decent power once you consider its control/mitigation abilities, and proc-trops can be cool, but the power's damage by itself isn't awesome.

??

So when Celestial was introduced as t9-only and thus out of reach, you weren't mad enough to quit, but when it's announced that it will no longer be t9-only and thus you might be able to obtain it, that's the last straw?

I don't think I have done that even once. I'm not sure if I've communicated very poorly or if you're conflating my opinion with somebody else's, could you quote where I've done that?

What I have consistently been trying to say is that, even though I don't care at all about exclusivity, I care about not getting ripped off. Selling me something as a special we-care-about-our-loyal-customers VIP perk, then after they have my money selling to anyone else at a tiny fraction of the most conservative estimate of the cost I paid for the costumes, not even counting the cost to reach t9, leaves me a bit miffed. I'm not arguing against Celestial being available by a method outside t9. I'm not even arguing against it being sold for points directly. The whole thing started over whether it should sell at 400 points like most costume sets, and I said it should sell for more than 400 if it's going to sell for points, and then to my surprise I had to actually defend the idea that things that cost money aren't free.

this part isn't actually true. You can clearly see in-game that a Soldier or Widow has a higher base recovery and regeneration than other ATs (normal is 1.67% and .42% respectively). This not only gives them an advantage to begin with, it amplifies any +recovery or +regen buffs they receive.

Also, "I don't like Tankers" does not mean "Tankers must be changed".

...man, why do I always try to respond to this guy's threads.

Only by virtue of hitting more guys, which a flat crit rate already does. A scaling crit rate would double-dip on that effect: being surrounded by enemies means your AoEs get more chances to crit, AND have a higher chance to crit.

I know it's been years since anyone tried to seriously portray a Scrapper's main role as a "boss killer", but reversing it and making us a "crowd killer" wouldn't really be an improvement. I play Scrappers when I don't want to herd aggro, so this would just be annoying.

...thus prompting him to start the whole steam-bionic thing long before it would ordinarily become necessary, so he could make himself a brass face. It all makes sense now!

Or maybe a million years in the future, he finally invented steam-skin grafts.

Oh, definitely. The need to be in melee range is very rarely meaningful as a limitation. Trivial as it is, it does still exist though, and Blasters are not subject to it. And they are distinctly unlike the other ATs in the category. They don't fit the description of the category, and they are unlike the other things already in the category. It doesn't seem like a stretch to say they don't belong in the category.

Should Blaster changes allow them to belong in the category? Arguably, sure. But currently, they do not, which makes the omission both intentional and justified, not evidence of neglect. We don't have to dig so far to find evidence of that.

Right, they clearly won't be, which is yet another reason it's a very poor analogy to make, since that IS what CoH has done.

Seriously, if you want to even attempt to be convincing, you're going to have to do something other than make increasingly bad analogies. Discuss the actual topic.

Really? I really have to point out that you're using yet another incredibly bad analogy, after I've pointed out multiple times that incredibly bad analogies are unconvincing? Talk about the actual topic, not another thing that looks kind of vaguely like the topic if you squint and ignore the multiple crucial ways in which it is different.

In fact, this analogy is especially bad for you to make, because it is completely contrary to what you're trying to argue. There is a considerable contingent of people who wait to rent the movie or watch it on TV, rather than go to the theater. So yes, that is hurting ticket sales. Not just a little bit, either - the entire theater industry is slowly being replaced by people watching at home, and theaters are terrified and reaching for any gimmick they can think of (like 3D) to try to convince people to buy tickets rather than watch at home. And if Avengers was advertised as being available only in theaters, never to be sold on DVD or shown on TV, and people spent money on tickets for that reason, and then they decided to show it on TV after all, people would indeed be upset, and trust in theaters would be undermined, and their future business damaged.

Any analogy at all is going to be incredibly poor, with only the very rare exception. Analogies are useful to help explain things to someone that does not understand the actual thing, as an approximation to understanding until they figure out the thing itself. They are very rarely useful to convince someone who disagrees with you, because they can almost always find some important way in which it is not actually analogous. This is why I asked that you please stop attempting to draw analogies and discuss the actual topic.

I'm not even counting the money I or others have spent to reach t9. I'm talking only about the tokens spent in t9 versus the other things in t9 that they could have been spent on. I then chose the lowest point-value item as the point of comparison, and concluded that Celestial "cost" me 1200 points. This is, if anything, a fairly conservative estimate; basing the cost on the other repeatables, or including the cost of reaching t9, would inflate that figure considerably. I'm not complaining about people being able to buy it without t9 - as I have already stated in this thread, exclusivity doesn't matter to me. This entire sub-topic started over whether it should sell at 400 points or not, which I said it shouldn't, because that would be a fraction of what it cost when it was supposedly a special reward for long-term loyalty, which undermines the concept of loyalty bonuses and VIP rewards, which is maybe not a good idea when the developers claim the game depends mainly on subscriptions and players are frequently thinking maybe subbing isn't worthwhile. It's not even about other people getting my shiny thing, it's why should a player want the special shiny thing from subbing when they can get the same thing, at a fraction of the cost, just by waiting. Would some still want it immediately? Oh yes, definitely. But it loses some appeal by being an early adopter's fee rather than an awesome special benefit.

Right, which is a significantly less strict limitation than needing to be close to the target to use ANY of our powers. Scrappers need to be close to the target, period. Blasters do better when they're close to the target. These are not the same thing.

Because Blasters are good at melee, and benefit from being in melee range. Not all builds, but many. But unlike scrappers, brutes, and stalkers, we don't need to be close to the target. We want to be close, at least sometimes, but we aren't near-helpless past melee range like e.g. most Scrappers are. It's not our only nor even our primary method of attack. So we don't belong in the category that says "needs to be close to the target".

What are the categories even for? Helping new players choose, mostly. Would it be helpful to a new player to put Blasters in the melee damage category? No, mostly it would be confusing/misleading. Blasters play very differently from everything else in the Melee Damage category. If part of the problem with Blasters is that people try to play them like Brutes, listing them in the same category as Brutes will only make that worse.