Leo_G

The point was, you either have this or you either have that. What I was trying to say is, our powers don't get replaced, they just get stronger so no replacing Fireball with Fireball II and Fireball III later. Same with weapons, you don't later find an upgraded Impervium Katana that does 10% more damage than a Steel Katana, your Katana attacks simply scale with your level and stats.

What you're doing with enhancements is 'maintaining'. I never played one of the popular MMOs where you had to repair your equipment so it continues to work properly, but that's basically what it amounts to.

It'd also replace the need to maintain enhancements. You get a dmg SO enhancement, plot it into an attack and forget about that slot forever. I suppose if your perspective is that you don't want to micromanage enhancements, then of course you're going to prefer the attuned everything route. I wouldn't blame you.

But that's the draw of IOs, that there's less maintaining but one has to craft them/buy them off the market. You want to use IOs because it requires a different kind of micromanagement. They don't expire and wear but then there's the whole side issue with exemplaring and how the bonuses are affected by them...origin enhancements, to my knowledge, don't have issues with exemplaring...they always provide whatever bonus they do as long as the slot they're in is available at your level. If you want the same thing with IOs, you have to micromanage the levels of your IOs.

It's just another aspect of RPGs, IMO. Some will not have a problem managing their enhancements a certain way. Personally, I have no problem with SOs and their corrode and the levels of IOs. What I don't really manage is exemplaring. I just go with whatever power/value I have during exemplaring and be done with it. Others, on the other hand, have no qualms tweeking the particular levels and bonuses of their inventions to get max benefit up to [X] level down. That's just busy work to me.

Now if we're trying to quell busy work with enhancements, I've got a lot of ideas that mainly have to do with the buy/slot interface. Don't really need to reface the enhancement system to make it less clunky.

But you either have to replace that gear with better more improved stats or you have to replace/upgrade the skills. That is to say, a weapon might have a specified number of damage points it deals in conjunction with your stats. That's replaced when a better weapon that has a higher value of damage becomes available that you can put your resources into improving over a weaker old weapon.

Conversely, for static skills that perform a certain way, those are replaced by newer skills with higher value effects.

There should always be an avenue of upgrading, modifying AND replacing *along with* increasing in level and obtaining new skills.

That's kind of an attribute of RPG video games, the micromanagement of a character's skills, stats and level.

That said, from a previous post, I wasn't accusing you of wanting to rid the game of TO and DO, just adding that to the overall explanation of my post as it retains to enhancements as a whole that travels down from the freebie player who only has regular droppable ehnahcements up to the VIP who's got attuned and +5 IOs.

Maybe after I get some more animal heads, sure....

And some robot animal parts...and I'd like to wear helmets/hats with animal heads...

And shark week is coming up. I want a shark costume set.

You...just put a cat's anus on our forum

It's kind of like a tree branching system.

Like you said, they won't make regular IOs attuned because that would eliminate the appeal of purchasing attuned IOs with paragon points.

They won't make SOs static because that lessens the appeal of IOs and therefore IO licenses plus all the other nifty things like Enhancement Boosters.

Removing TOs and DOs without a lot of other sporking with inf sell/buy rates of NPCs and drop rates removes a source of inf for those with no access to IOs/market and increases the frustration of affording SOs.

One simply can't mess with one branch without shaking the whole tree. A reworking of the entire loot system could be a good thing but you'd need to look at the whole not just the part that's convenient for you.

But your suggestion is to add an effect (-EnduranceRedux or -MaxEND) for when drain doesn't work...which is exactly what I just said.

Maybe I'm crazy but -EnduranceRedux and -MaxEND is not intrinsic to the mechanics of 'endurance drain' no more than -Regen and -MaxHP is intrinsic to 'health drain' mechanics.

I think the funny thing is, it's not wrong. That's exactly how endurance drain (-End + -recovery) works. I didn't object to your suggestion about -EnduranceRedux STR or -MaxEND (in fact, I suggested the very same thing as a means to improve Energy Aura's Energy Drain's mitigation back when people hated EA) but simply decided to post an alternate suggestion using a (true) rational concerning drains.

As for your pic:

There are auto-hit powers, ma'am.

Have you ever played an MMO? Some of them have whole *CLASSES* where they do nothing *BUT* cast extraneous buffs and summon things.

Boy I remember back when I played FFXI, if you were a summoner, redmage, bard or white mage, most of your career was casting protectra [roman numeral], shellra [roman numeral], stone skin, regen [roman numeral] on the tank, refresh on other mages, Blink if you had it all before anyone even started to fight. God help you if you were a Bard or Redmage because people would demand your buffs/debuffs even if you had other offensive abilities. Black Mages? Would cast the same things if they took the other jobs as subjobs...and none of the above include their job abilities which often are self buff abilities that boost the next cast spell.

Thief or Ranger? Thief had Trick Attack and Sneak Attack (and another one I forget) they had to use before engaging and Ranger used powers like Barrage and Unlimited shot all of which enhance the next attacks used. And my favorite, the Monk, is famous for spamming Boost before engaging because it was a 15 second recast ability that stacked and lasted 3 minutes.

So yeah, crying you have to use 4 powers that buff you a great deal? You're just being a baby. You don't even need to use Aim and BU together or you can even save it if the situation isn't critical. I mean, I run SR scrappers as my main, I don't keep any powers on auto so have to click Practice Brawler myself and occasionally I just don't click it at all...not the end of the world and don't end up dead since not ever battle is critical. No reason you need to click every buff all the time together at once just because...be glad you have powers that buff you and don't require a target to begin with.

Preferentially, I believe you're simply investing too much into DPS when DPS tends to rely more on sustainability rather than raw damage. At least in the case damage ATs like Doms, Scrappers, Stalkers and Blasters, it's more about 'can you keep it up' vs 'how much you can do'. Because, IMO, sets are balanced enough (most of the time) that whatever attacks a set has available, they can do enough damage to complete a task...that's what the whole balancing act the devs have done in the past up until now...giving damage where damage is needed.

But why I bring that up is, well, again, you're investing probably more than need be into DPS. Blasters can already achieve adequate DPS without any alterations. They have options for more DPS by using secondary attacks. The point I'm making though is that, forcing a paradigm of superiority of DPS with only range above what others can achieve with their available palette of attacks just undermines the secondary melee attacks available to Blasters. You want seamless high DPS at range, but what does that do to the very same Blaster who decides to slip into using melee powers?

So, IMO, the whole argument that Blasters need high DPS and it needs to come from their ranged set (a ranged set, mind you, that might also have melee oriented PBAoEs in it) underminds the very same Blaster who decides to broaden their bucket of skills to include melee range. That isn't to say there shouldn't be options for high DPS at range, but that should be a set-by-set focus, not an AT focus which further differentiates the Blaster from its ranged kin. Def/Corr have to make due with what's in their ranged sets while a Blaster can take advantage of other tools.

This could tangent into another issue with blasters though, that they seem split in their personality of damage dealing vectors. But that is a ship that has long sailed. The secondaries have melee ranged attacks and it's too late to go back and make the Blaster all ranged...

But speaking as a player who is widening his experiences with ranged ATs, I have to say they all have their advantages and disadvantages. One advantage of Blasters in melee is that they do more damage. Giving that at range really does give up that advantage since it comes with great disadvantages.

I do hope that the devs look at improving Blasters' survival some more. I had proposed before, an 'Overpower' ability on a Blasters' single target mez that scales by rank like a crit: Use any ST mez and it has a low % of a longer duration +1 mag on minions, mid-low % of the same on Lts and a high % on bosses and up. It won't turn them completely into Doms but it will give them better active defense to high threat targets.

Just to clarify then: saying you expected snipes to carry the same or higher benefit for Blasters because one feels their overall performance lacks enough that they deserve such compensation...is being confused for saying you're looking at too broadly at surrounding context of the game and realizing the full suite of capabilities of the ATs.

Which feels contradictory to the assertion that you're taking the snipe changes out of context with all the new changes planned.

*shakes head*

I suppose I could see where the confusion lies, but the first assertion (that Blasters need more out of snipes because they are the worst) still does not take into consideration the other things being added. To assert that they are the worst without considering the buffs they are getting is what I'd consider looking at the change out of context with all the other changes.

For all intents and purposes, one cannot assert that Blasters *need* more from the snipe because they are the worse due to whatever perceived picking order they are set in won't be the case in the future. Hell, Blasters could end up being far better soloers by the end of i24 than either AT that share their snipes.

If you had never implied blasters deserve more from the snipes, then miscommunication. But I never accused you of looking at all applicable changes working in sync.

PS: If you hadn't read the coffee talks, I really suggest you should. Arbiter Hawk was even asked if any of these new changes will make Blasters the 'kind of ranged damage' and his reply was something like 'no, we're trying to make all the ATs more even' which gives me the impression that changes to Blasters will be closer aimed at improving their survivability in addition to making the ranged sets less situational and more useful.

You had me go back and reread all my posts in the thread. I said no such thing.

That is, I didn't accuse him of looking at the snipe change as part of a suite of blaster changes. If you're talking about when he was mentioning the improvement to ST DPS, to again clarify: his stance is the snipe changes are solely to improve DPS when that is not what they are for. That the changes might do that to varying degrees is a side effect of the changes but is not the intended goal. However, that is a metric the devs said they'd be looking at and rebalancing other sets to account for.

The entire time, my point is that he isn't taking into account all the changes and when I say all the changes, I'm talking about QoL improvements, survivability improvements, utility improvements and not just damage.

For all the times you say I'm accusing you or some such and you not doing the same to me...meh, I just feel you've got it backward. A lot of the things you think I'm saying you're saying, I'm not actually implying that you're saying them. If anything, most of the things I bring up are points I'm imploring you to consider when you're talking about the snipe changes. If I've accused you of anything, it's that your stance was weighed by bias and emotion and that's really it. If that has changed or not is, as you've mentioned yourself, irrelevant so I'm not bringing it up anymore.

And no, I'm not making some sideways comment about another thread when I bring up Freezing Rain, that's just one of the better resist debuff powers I'm familiar with since my go-to Corruptor is a fire/storm/soul.

Not that it really matters, but no, I'm not saying Corruptors are overpowered or not...to bring up that matter is an entirely different discussion that requires a whole new thread. I'm also not going to agree or be labeled as someone on either side since it's not relevant and will only be used against any further argument I have. If I say corruptors aren't overpowered, you just make comments like the one above. If I say they are, then you come back with "SEE!?! That's what I'm saying!". So the attempt to paint me in the corner will simply be dismissed as another discussion entirely.

That all aside, the only thing I can express to you is what I'm trying to express to the others that agree with your arguments: the snipe changes were *SAID* to be made to make the snipes fun and usable, particularly on teams. People ask "then who is the change targeted to?" and I have to repeat myself: They are targeted at *SNIPES* not a particular AT. If someone things a change must be targeted at a *PERSON* then these snipe changes are targeted at the *PEOPLE* that take snipes, wanted to take snipe but couldn't justify the space in the build and the people that view snipes as trash.

If you aren't any of those people, most likely the change won't have any affect on you.

If you are one of the people that take and use snipes, suddenly snipes have a few extra utilitarian uses and can boost performance greatly when on teams.

If you feel you could not justify the space in a build for a snipe but wanted to have one, suddenly snipes can be leveraged greatly by proper builds/team makeup/power usage. You can make a snipe work for you or you can go the extra mile to work to exploit that snipe to its fullest.

If you viewed snipes as trash before, well suddenly snipes are the talk of the town. Your perception is countered by the community that now see snipes are 'better on defenders' or 'hard hitting on doms' or 'a means to get a tier 3 strike on electric blast' or 'not an eternity and a day to animate on a stalker/scrapper'. They may not be the best, they may be annoyingly situational, but they won't be trash anymore. If you want to take them or not is purely up to flavor and build.

To chime in:

I already took snipes. I just recently built a Rad/Dark blaster *purely* because I wanted to use that snipe. I love the look of Blazing Bolt too. I enjoy the cool *ring* of Ranged Shot. Zapp has been an electric pick for all the characters I choose electric theme with. I take and find uses for snipes *regardless* of how good they are.

With these changes, I might respec a few so that they can either get perma fast snipe or 1-yellow-away fast snipe. Others, I will leave their build alone and just leverage fast snipe with Aim/BU or on teams. For me, insta-snipe is just a new build decision for more characters. You don't have to have it for snipes to be usable and you definitely don't need it to be perma. And that someone can leverage it more because of their build is little different from Blasters being able to leverage damage buffs better than Tanker or Defender because of their damage mods, or a Brute and Tanker leveraging +regen and +resist better than Stalkers because of HP mods.

Now if they go back and swap out the requirements for insta-snipe, I honestly wouldn't care. I do feel that the proposed insta-snipe requirements is a fun alternative because it gives more purpose to ToHit across the levels of the game...I wouldn't mind it having alternate requirements though (like debuffs on the foe or linked to specific powers like Build Up (without slotting)).

The other side of the debate will chime in about how extremely powerful Corruptors are compared to Blasters and sight the damage difference between then then powers like Freezing Rain or some such, as if those powers just magically happen without consideration, cast time and aiming affecting anything.

Not saying we're taking full consideration of all aspects of an AT either, but at least we say so. You're claiming more closely to absolute superiority with these changes while ignoring so so many variables of the ATs since they *DO* play significantly different. You can't just point out ToHit buffs and forget about all the rest here.

*shrugs*

What about the nuke changes? How proportionally do those affect each AT? I can see a high damage PBAoE mag 3 hold or a ranged AoE -END/recovery that can hit 16 foes that's up every couple spawns as a huge benefit to survivability...moreso than Def or Corruptor who have another powerset for that...and they'll do less damage with it. Couple that with sustain and you can be survivable enough while contributing greatly.

Gaining a certain amount of benefit from a change isn't the same as being the target of the change.

Even if Defenders could get perma insta-snipe effortlessly, I don't think it would change them from non-DPS machines into DPS beasts.

You clearly have been fooled then. Why do you think they called the game Bejeweled? Don't you think that sounds a little similar to the word 'bewitched'? I'd try to extrapolate what the creators of that game were intending but everytime I explore the ins and outs of that game, suddenly two weeks have passed and I don't remember a thing.

Personally, I think Energy Manipulation will be the new Regen for Blasters: very very very clicky. So clicky, some people will avoid it despite it's advantages. Personally, the managing of the self boosts sound fun to me but Ice will ultimately be more survivable with a bit more clicking and Fire will be more damaging without needing to click much of anything. Dark will feel like a contradiction and I'm kind of unsure what Elec will turn out like or Devices (since devices may receive more changes).


I will call the 'looking at the snipe changes in a vacuum' card again.

Blasters have plenty of tools to manage recovery: Besides Power Sink, Consume and Dark Consumption returning END, you've got Field Operative, Touch of the Beyond and Power of Thunder that also grant recovery.


Face it, you guys that are hounding on the changes just don't have the scope to look at them *ALL* at the same time and make the judgement on how the ATs will perform when its all through. Really, *NO ONE* should be able to tell because more changes are being announced and more changes will be made.
What's irrelevant is 'who gets fast snipe more? blasters or the other guys?'

Even if Defenders win the fast snipe race, it won't matter because at the end of the day, the devs are looking at the sum total of all the changes and how they affect the ATs' performance.

I will clarify: I did not say the buff to a single target attack is not designed to be a buff to single target damage. I said the snipe changes are not the sole buff coming to ranged sets and that particular change was to make the snipes more usable and fun.

You and your gang are dead set to get a ST dmg buff to the set where that probably isn't the design goal of *THAT* change. *THAT* change is to give snipes a semblance of usefulness, if not solo then more definitely on teams. You can then go ahead and argue about solo fast snipe while forgetting that Blasters are more team dependant and Def/Corr are more team focused.

We can continue, by extension, to label the change to snipes as useless because one cannot perma its affect solo on a blaster while forgetting the extremely nice uses for pulling snipes offer while solo.

Then go on to forget about all the other improvements powers and sets are getting *AT THE SAME TIME*.

I'm not sure how many visits to Mother's clinic you'd need or how many smacks on the head it'd take to forget all that, but if that is how you'd like to continue your argument, all I can really say is "Wait for the changes to come on beta, then see" because your arguments are more based on speculation of the intent of a change rather than the changes actual effect.

I don't care what someone else accuses you of. You're talking with me. Winning some shouting match with someone else doesn't get you a win for every new resulting discussion.



It's context. Yes, all those buffs mentioned apply to all ATs...because none of them are aimed at any of the ATs, just the ranged sets in general *INCLUDING* the snipe changes. They all will sum to different results with different ATs: Defenders won't be 1-shotting Lts with their nukes while Blasters will. Some focused Corruptor builds will get perma insta-snipe solo but only get marginal effect (Blazing Bolt is hardly better than Blaze without requiring the effort) while Blasters may not need to use it at all or get just what they need out of it (hello Aim + Moonbeam...sorry Corruptors/Defenders, you don't get aim). Suddenly, Blasters will be a good deal more survivable with the change which will stack favorably with any team mitigation effects.

But sure, once the changes release for testing, I'm sure if it overpowers Corruptors like you say, something will be done to fix it. I doubt that will have anything to do with the snipes, but we'll find out when that ship comes in.

And bonus points for pointing out the mention of those changes and *NOT* considering them whatsoever in your rebuttle despite all of them affecting future performance.

Well, the characters I have often have more than just 2 kinds of builds too.

I had a few rolled that were only 2 builds but as more sets roll out, if a set or AT performs more like how I envision or is capable of what I feel my character is capable of, I'll reroll them or sideroll them.

If a new sword set comes out (again), that will just be another main I'll have to make as my main uses all sword sets (except Broadsword, yuk...but maybe when it gets some new animations) + a low level in Martial Arts...although with the fighting pool coming out, I may just have to specialize him in that pool just to give the pool the old college try.

But anyway, I wouldn't be opposed to only 2 characters sharing the same name but I have to wonder why only 2?

I'm going to show you a picture and I need you to pick out the two you think are Batman. Please pick no more than 2:

















The correct answer is

FredrikSvanberg suggested it first

Yes, as of currently, Snipes are either openers or pulling tools. The changes allow for snipes to be used as damage tools in some circumstances. That those circumstances aren't 'whenever I want and how I want it' is not a quality of life approach, that's simply entitlement.

I've seen the numbers. That doesn't trump the cost. Therefore it's an option, not a necessity. If the buff were so significant, then surely this means the damage improvement possible for Defenders and Corruptors outstrip anything a Blaster is capable of ever accomplishing under all circumstances? And therefore we should all throw away our Blasters and pick up Corruptors instead? Is that what you feel the numbers prove?

Because if so, then perhaps we should nerf this snipe change before it gets out of hand...but then, I don't see these changes as being the significant shift you seem to believe they are.

Well, you did mention the old dev team didn't balance with regard to cast time. That the new dev team has basically equated quick animations to damage offers a means of granting a magnitude of damage improvement that isn't tied directly to points of damage dealt nor damage buff values.

If they wanted a simple magnitude of damage improved, they *could* have made a % of ToHit unlock a buffable proc of extra damage while keeping the attack interruptible...but that doesn't make the power fun or improve the quality of the attack.

That the power is circumstantial to begin with is apart of the fun of using it. It's thematic and useful and adds a new element of improvement besides just damage and recharge that is quantifiable.


I do disagree with you but I'll pick the actual option I agree with and not the hamstrung ones that you feel support your argument: blast sets are marginal for all applicable ATs which include Blasters, Corruptors and Defenders. So blast sets are being improved, not just the snipes in the blast sets.

What I really do hate is when people look at changes in a vacuum. And you're looking at the snipe changes in a vacuum. Yeah, forget that Dual Pistols doesn't have a snipe and is having its animations looked at. Forget that crashing nukes are being made crashless and sets like Electric Blast suddenly have a 'wipe the spawns blue bar clean' button every couple of minutes while doing a ton of damage. Forget that powers like Atomic Blast and Psychic Wail will be able to shut down spawns if not outright clear them. It doesn't matter that the tier 3 blasts are getting their range improved and powers like Voltaic Sentinel are going to get looked at and Time Bomb might be turned into a toggle and blasters are getting huge regen/absorb/recovery buffs from their secondaries. No, this is about frelling snipes and how frelling unfair a deal Blasters are getting.

Yeah, I've heard you guys say how huge the snipe changes will be. And yeah, they're still not looking huge from here.