Mieux

[ QUOTE ]
I think it would be a better idea to add a PBAOE -recharge -slow debuff in there somewhere

[/ QUOTE ] Yeah, that would be cool, especially if they applied to everyone in the zone

I think they essentially tried to apply the bullet time power - Quickness. The slow is in there as well with the +speed. In fact, Quickness is like bullet time ..to everyone on the map.

The PBAoE effect I think was already done with Ice's Chilling Embrace. I think Quickness is actually better...it's also got anti-slow...so it it's like bullet time against teammates as well.

[ QUOTE ]
I think that the main problem with SR, the main thing that is really unacceptable about it, is that 6 3-SO slotted powers out of the 9, all on at the same time (3 toggles and 3 passives), combined, will after ED barely equal a single luck inspiration.

This is tantamount to giving players a "Ranged Energy Blast" inspiration that lets them fire not just a ranged attack, but the best, fully slotted, built up attack an energy blaster can fire. And since that clearly is not reasonable, I don't understand why it is reasonable that the whole population has access an inspiration as good as 2/3rds of our power set at its BEST. Indeed, until the late 30s when you've got your slots all set, Luck is far BETTER than anything the best SR scrapper can do. And that is just not right... extra resistance or not.

F

[/ QUOTE ]I have to agree that this is a peculiar predicament. Exacerbated by the fact that the best +RES inspirations aren't as good as /inv at its best.

I think it feels doubly unfair when you consider that Lucks are defense to all, not just melee or ranged as is true for our powers. But, at the same time, we gain the most benefit from Lucks, though at the low levels, it's probably difficult to notice.

I think this buff is a recognition by the devs of the difficulty in balancing an all +DEF set. I think it was Arcana who pointed out that the point at which +DEF is too good is not very far from the point at which it's not good enough.

The reality to me is that the game designers will constantly battle against contradictory objectives:

Make us feel like super heroes versus making the game a challenge.

With the exception of Kyptonite or Magic wielding villians, Superman was never challenged by anything less than an AV...which he solo's. It's hard to maintain a game from 1-50 when you start out fighting AV's at lvl 1....or even at lvl 20 as is the case with some builds.

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Basically 100% end = full passive damres

[/ QUOTE ] I almost like that idea. the problem is that it would probably make us more tank like than what is good for us. Depending on the numbers and level, /SR could outperform /Inv as a tank by just not attacking.

Again, I like the thematic idea of using +res to simulate our ability to dodge, and that at full endo it is better than low endo...just think it would make us to good at tanking.

[ QUOTE ]
if you are in the blast radius of an actual explosion, its *gravity* thats unable to get you to the ground faster than the supersonic shock wave hits you.

[/ QUOTE ] A couple of things....one, diving for cover behind an erect object, such as a car or the side of a building is not limited by gravity. Two, 'super reflexes' does not limit your reaction time to the blast after it occurs. You see the incoming grenade...or the grenade bounces through the window....the split seconds before the grenade goes off is where "super" reflexes saves your life. It's jumping out the window before the blast that the normal human doesn't have the time to do. This is what Evasions is supposed to simulate, but as a +DEF onlly mechanism, it lacks any realism. Either I avoid the entire blast or none of it, is unreal. But I think we can agree that arguing about reality shaping the game is pointless.

[ QUOTE ]
And studies have shown that the instinctive reaction of people is not to drop to the ground, but to freeze and sometimes turn into the direction of the blast.


[/ QUOTE ] Well, it's a good thing we're super heroes


[ QUOTE ]
This broke the SR concept - not just mine, but Cryptic's concept for the set, as articulated by them many times - which is not that SR is dodging, weaving, or getting luck, but SR as simply "all or nothing damage" which by definition contradicts the resistance mechanism.

[/ QUOTE ] I agree that this has been expressed by Jack, but I never understood how it made logical sense in the context of using +RES, +MAX HP, +DEF to simulate Invulnerability. Nor did it make sense in terms of what "reflexes" would do for a hero. Damage mitigation not resistance should have been a part of a power called Super Reflexes if the name is supposed to accurately reflect the experience.

SR is getting a form of damage mitigation. They are not geting straight resistance. /SR will not resist all damage, all the time, for the same amount, the way resistance works in Inv. If their solution was to simply add X% of static resistance, I would agree that they are breaking the concept. Thankfully they aren't doing that.

As I pointed out, I think it should be negated by defense debuffs...but not +to Hit. I do not think it should be affected by -RES, but then +RES never is, so that's not a problem.

[ QUOTE ]
Usually it's by a lot, because she's fighting something powerful and it hits so fast and so hard I do not have time to click a heal insp or engage elude. In such a context, is a small resistance boost going to help? I don't see how it could.


[/ QUOTE ] How could small resistance help? It would help if we were fighting even level mobs: Far smaller chunks of damage. With SO' slotted Toggles and Passives, a minion might have as little as a 25% chance to hit.

As an aside, even level minions haveing a 25% to hit doesn't seem so Super does it?

[ QUOTE ]
Only in the movies is it possible to dodge the effects of an explosion.

[/ QUOTE ] On the contrary, one can dive for cover. This is a reflexive reaction.
Dropping down and over your ears can dramatically minimize the damage compared with someone who stands erect.

[ QUOTE ]
Injury and death come from high velocity shrapnel

[/ QUOTE ] All explosions do not necessarily involve shrapnel as the tool of lethality. Incendiary bombs do not rely on shrapnel for damage. Napalm does not use shrapnel for damage. And, even if they did, we're talking "Super" reflexes. Dodging large chunks/groupigns of shrapnel and thus taking less damage from smaller chunks, is completley consistent with a +RES mechanism.

[ QUOTE ]
which expands uniformly radially and is impossible to dodge altogether

[/ QUOTE ] And that's exactly why +DEF seems a poor choice for an AoE avoidance power.

SR, therefore, could conceiveably +DEF shrapnel, but only +RES incendiary. Unforunately the game can't be that specific.

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In truth, resistance by dodging is the special case, not the general case. It seems like the general case because of the familiarity of some examples (i.e. boxing), and general misconceptions, most of them presented in the movies.


[/ QUOTE ] Obviously you've never actually played any contact sports where avoiding full on collisions can be the difference between minor bruising and broken bones.

And it isn't "resistance" it's damage mitigation. +RES is not "resistance," it is a mechanism. No one here is saying that /SR should have an armor or tougness type of power.

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But its *especially* in fiction that dodging *lethal* attacks tends to be all or nothing.

[/ QUOTE ] I'll concede this. Especially in Martial Arts movies. The combatants seem to take full damage or no damage. But it's more for drama reasons than reality. It's cool to show the fighter completely avoiding an attack, or getting slammed. Grazing in movies has a much lower entertainment value in an action sequences...but it does server some purposes e.g. The Matrix.

But I agree with something you alluded to earlier. These are mechanism and should be thought of as such. That's not to say some mechanisms or worse than others given the specifics. And like others have said, the mechanics of how the power is implemented will determine whether the passives in /SR are equal to all the things a set like /Ninji has in place of them.

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I dont get it . How resisting blows is related to Super Reflexes ? While that solution could make the powerset better , i really dont see how that is making sense .

[/ QUOTE ]

Easy: dodge and get mostly out of the way, getting grazed by the bullet. Roll with the punches. Leap and make it most of the way out of the explosion.

[/ QUOTE ]

Its easy if you want it to be easy. Its not so easy if you actually think about it impartially. Take a bullet. You can *imagine* "mostly dodging" a bullet, but in actuality, given the side of a bullet, the side of the target (you), and the number of different options involved in either getting, or not getting hit, it is vastly more likely that you'll either get hit, or dodge completely.

You can imagine getting hit for less. But its hard to imagine someone *just fast enough to get hit for less* that doesn't just cause the attack to miss altogether.

Having said that, the devs are treating Def and Res as pure numbers, not as conceptual entities. Their many changes to the game - including ED - clearly demonstrate that their grasp of the fundamental differences among how the different attributes in the game interact is, if not faulty, then severely different from mine. So long as thats true, its just not worth it to advocate keeping SR conceptually pure, when the devs are unwilling to protect the concept. "Just don't slot it, or slot it but get very little benefit" does not come from the voice of someone intent on protecting SR's singular concept.

[/ QUOTE ]

With all due respect, a bullet is the worse case scenario for conceptually grasping a rwtp idea. By contrast, it's hard to imagine ever completely dodging an explosion and much more likely you will just minimize the damage you take by moving farther from the blast radius.

Damage mitigation from a reflex is a given and not even debatable in a real world setting. Sometimes you may not mitigate, like when being fired on by a short pulse laser, but many more times you will, like being fired on by an extended burn laser (you move out of the beam).

Regardless of the real world realites, the game can do what ever it wants...and does. The +DEF that Ice has, makes no more conceptual sense than putting +RES in the passives.

So I agree with you that the devs treat +DEF and +RES like mechanisms not powers, at least when it came to Invunerability. Which is exactly how it should be for all sets. It's the players on these boards that seem to insist that +RES as always having to be a "resistance" type of power. Certainly the game tends to reinforce that. I'm finally glad they've gotten over their resistance (no pun intended) of using +RES to simulate reflexes.

[ QUOTE ]
Ice could use some love as well while you folks are at it.

[/ QUOTE ] out of curiosity and completely off topic, are there threads which explore/establish Ice's comparative effectivenss to Inv and other sets under ED? I guess i'm wonding if Ice is going to be as bad off as Inv or worse.

I think some of the challenges for the dev in applying this to Ice may be:

1) thematic - if this is supposed to be associated with /SR's "dodging," then it's not clear that any other +DEF set should get it. I guess i never thought ice was about "doging" per se. In other words, if Ice gets this, then every set with some +DEF could argue for this. If they limit this power change to strictly "Super Reflexes" then they won't have to open that can of worms.

2) One of the reason I think they had to do something like this is based on the Gamespot screenshots. Remember /Ninji? Ninji has the toggles with the AoE, but it also got a bunch of other powers in place of the passives. This forces the question of whether the passives in SR were balanced with all that other stuff? Did Dodge and Agile make up for the reconstruction like power? Did they make up for caltrops? At 5% +DEF, coupled with a toggle max of about 20% ...that answer has to be a resounding no. Ice doesn't have to make up for the powers in /Ninjitsu the way /SR's passives have to.

3) Ice got that PBAoE dmg debuff and /SR did not ge that. This means that the devs see the powers/problems associated with Ice/ and /SR as requiring different solutions. Personally, I like that. I don't want a power that Ice/ has in /SR just because it helps the problem. I'd like to keep the Ice/ solutions as separate and unique from the /SR solutions as possible.

Please don't misconstrue this as a vote against Ice needing improvement. I'd just like to see them get something that was more thematic with Ice than a "rolling with the punch" power....just my opinion.

First, I love the addition of damage mitigation for /SR. Something I've been asking for. I also appreciate your acknowledgement of the general disastvantaged situation that /SR is in and would find itself in.

A couple of thoughts...

1) For thematic purposes i.e. this is a form of rolling with punch, it would great if the +RES could be to Melee/Ranged/AoE as are the passives. In addition, they should be negated when our +DEF is eliminated.

I suspect however that this will not be possible because:

A) you probably can't give +RES based on position.
B) the +RES wouldn't stack properly with something like Sonics.


2) It'd be great if the amount of +RES was tied to the amount of +DEF.

3) Please don't let us slot for +RES. It will mean you will have to set a lower base value, and, those slots we got back from ED will be consumed. I like the slots I got back. However, in the spirit of customization, I suspect you will let us slot it.

4) Please make the description of the power term this as "damage mitigation" and not resistance. I agree with others who say that "resistance" breaks the theme. Let the description dissuade players from thinking of this as toughness or armor.

5) As far as the numbers, it'll be interesting to hear how you want this to help us. In other words, what situation should /SR be better at because of this. Can an AV that would normally two shot us still be able to two shot us?

6) Again on numbers, if the "lucky" aspect of the set is to be preserved, you could make the resistance variable a la <omitted> so that it has a % chance to kick in after X hit points. And subsequently, it could a very high lvl of damage mitigation without being overpowered.


Finally,

You mentioned that you were looking in to the To-Hit problems for /SR. With ED, a power like Tactics will cut our defenses by nearly half. Focused Accurcy will completely negate it. Heck, even one Insight will negate our defense. There is no power that makes a hero's damage unresistable or grants a -regen component.

Is the dmg mitigation power you are offering hear the answer the the +To Hit problem or is that still being looked at?

Thanks. Love the game.

Can you just clarify one quesiont.

I am an SR Scrapper with Agile + toggles. I get drained of endo from sapper and my toggles drop. A FF defender has me within her Dispersion bubble. I get attacked by a fire blast.

If the the base of Agile is 5% against Ranged, and the base value of DB is 10% against Fire....under the old/current system, only DB would count against the attack.

Do changes mean that Agile and DB combine to give me some benefit greater than just DB?

Thanks.

[ QUOTE ]
That would require some pretty odd activation/recharge ratio to even things up...


[/ QUOTE ] I'm only half following this discussion...er correct that..I've only read the last two posts....so this may be proving the opposite of what I intend...

Perhaps the lower value is due to the fact that mobs don't cycle attacks as quickly as we do. Er rather, mobs don't always use attacks as soon as they are recharged. Mobs seem to switch to melee mode and often stay in melee mode at the expense of having to close with their targets

In essence, there is a lot more activation time for certain mobs than there is for players. AV's seem to spend a fair amount of time running around..probably chasing a defender. Thus, a recharge only debuff would be of much reduced value.

[ QUOTE ]
I may dangle my left foot in the Arena finally to see if it gets shot off or not.

[/ QUOTE ] Oh, it will. You're just going to have to shoot back faster and harder.

These changes shouldn't help against defender debuffs in the Arena per the current Arena rules.

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I wouldn't mind this as much if wasn't for

[/ QUOTE ] Despite having a lvl 23 or so Inv/stone tanker, i'm not going to make assessments on Invinc for tankers at this point. I will say that for the DM/inv i teamed with, it seemed the +Acc was much more important in his fighting ++ mobs than the +DEF.

[ QUOTE ]
Thusly making the non-S/L resists pathetic in PvP. But yet, S/L damage is almost unchanged.

[/ QUOTE ] But that's the whole point, balance Inv by gutting its non-s/l and forcing Inv's who want to be comprehensively inv to really sacrifice for it.

You don't play much PvP...well, I have fought that same lvl DM/Inv with my DM/SR...quite a few times. In I4, I could not kill him at all without detoggling. And even detoggling, it would take me 10 minutes and lucky crits with me Fearing him and brawling. He had capped S/L with 10 slots, and about 50% Neg resist. He couldn't kill me, and I couldn't kill him.

In I5, our battles come down to whoever gets the last punch. This is an order of magnitude of improvement, imo. He can easily kill me with without detoggling me, and I can kill him without detoggling him, though its a lot easier if I do. But I'm doing about 60/40 Negative. If I was Claws/SR or MA/SR, he'd be resisting ally my attacks at 70%+ and I wouldn't be getting any extra debuff from DM. I can only imagine a Claws/SR would get owned, but I could be wrong.

I'm not saying that Inv is properly balanced, but I am saying that it seems more appropriate that Inv is centered around S/L and everything else comes at a very high price. This way the game can balance for /Inv by just creating more non s/l damage without having to give everyone Psi attacks or create a bunch of -res type of debuffs...which really don't debuff resistance to begin with.

I also fought a lvl 50 Inv/SS, who claimed he was 26-0, both of us exemped to 37, with my lvl 39, and I was able to play him competitvely. He was probably beating me 3-2 or 5-3 in a 10 domination match. And let me tell you, Perma Rage flat owned me. My only recourse was to fear him after he'd KO me and then brawl and Siphon Life until I saw TI drop and then go for broke. No way in the world I could have beaten him without detoggling. He could easily flatten me without detoggling.

EDIT:
I'm actually surprised they didn't unperma Dull Pain. I've fought /Inv not using DP and my not using Fear and they went down pretty fast. DP was also why I could not ultimately kill that DM/Inv in I4.

[ QUOTE ]
defense owns accuracy enhancements no matter how many of them you have.

[/ QUOTE ] It's a little more complicated. Defense gets a chance to cap before accuracy enhancements. But if the best defense can do is reduce you to a 50% chance to hit, then each one of your acc's is working on 50%.

Six slotted toggles reduce melee to just under 50% and with a toggle, that's about 45% left for your acc enhancements to work on. Six slotting passives is just not worth it. The pay off is too small compared to other things you could slot e.g. Health, Aid Self, Parry/DA, etc.

Back in I4, scrappers could push 71% with toggles/passives/Hasten..not including CJ, Stealth, or Elude. That left your acc's operating on 5% and six Hami's wasn't going to make any diff acting on 5%. Of course Aim cut right through that, but so what, /SR's shouldn't be unhittable against Aim, imo.
Whether aim should be up 7 seconds out of every 21 is a different question.

I agree with your general concern that it will seem tough to strike a balance wiht To HiT. To Hits are needed by players to deal with all the debuffs of defenders/controllers, and I also think every Defensive set should be vulnerable to Aim. Tactics and FA are different matters as they are toggles and everyone can get Tactics. It'd be one thing if we could all get a toggle to make our damage 50% unresistable or stop or put 50% healing debuffs on our attacks, but we can't. So /regen and /Inv get off scott-free when it comes to power pool and APP powers available to stop them.

[ QUOTE ]
However now that you gutted Invuln's non-S/L resistances

[/ QUOTE ] I've been thinking about this...and it occurs to me that perhaps one of the reasons Inv was so powerful was because it such high non-s/l resistance. Yes, I now you're on about Invinc and its evils, but gutting the non-s/l makes Inv a lot more balanced, imo, at least as far as scrappers go. Now, we start see places/mob types where Inv doesn't continue to totally dominate in the scrapper world. Its seems the they devs have decided that Invulnerability is now going to be great at S/L, but to be truly inv to everthing required some significant sacrifice and questionable value.

I'm not passing judgement as to the fun factor on this change, but from the fence, it seems to make sense conceptually. I never say the DM/Inv in my SG pause for anything...and that was with unslotted Invinc. Now we'll see if he pays a little more attention to CoT and BP.

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[ QUOTE ]


What are you going to do about the lack of reliable protection DEF builds have against anyone with perma or nearly perma +ToHit buffs, i.e. Blasters and Body Mastery Scrappers?



[/ QUOTE ]
How bout you do what controlers do! Brawl till focused acc goes down and RUN when Aim/Buildup goes up?!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yarrr, thar she blows! Tactics, matey. Goose and gander and whatnot.

[/ QUOTE ]Yer clever tongue has stiched a grin over me scowl from ear ta ear. Another five Jolley Rogers to fly from yer mast as we set sail for the Rogue Isles....stalkers beware!

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Do the resistances stack and apply to all debuffs?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

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I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of this proposed change, but I think that it misses the primary problem with Defense-based sets (in PvP at least): the overpowering nature of toHit buffs. With a single click, an unslotted Aim, a moderately slotted Build Up, or a heavily slotted Focused Accuracy/Targeting Drone negates an entire Defense-based line, even fully 6-slotted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Understood; we're still working on this.

[/ QUOTE ]Ahoy there matey! Keep yer distance while I dance me a jig, wouldn't want me hook catchin' ya in the navel. Me thinks the sun is finally going to break through the storm clouds that have been a hanging like an albatross 'round me Super Reflex neck. Five stars to ya matey, and may they be bright as the moon when she's low in the sky.

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Fantastic Statesman!

Question though, when you say lessened by 10.8% does that mean:

A def debuff of 10% is eliminated or;

A def debuff of 10% is reduced to 8.92%?

[/ QUOTE ]

The latter.

[/ QUOTE ]Can you provide more clarification on a related question?

Do the resitances stack and apply to all debuffs, or do the FF+Dodge resistances only apply to Melee debuffs?

If FF+Dodge only applies to Melee, then I am curious as to how these numbers were chosen. /SR's can't cap anyone anymore. So a 10% debuff, reduced by a max of 31%, is still approx 7% debuff. At the height of my /SR resistance, i'm saving 3% of 10%? I'm really at a loss for understanding how the magnitude of suggested resistances address what you recognize as a problem.

Can you provide of us with a real situation, say a lvl 50 Rad using six slotted RI with defense debuff against an /SR with max slotted defense?

Thanks for looking into the problem and offering some help.

I am really enjoying the I5 changes. To my surprise, I was able to have competive 1v1 duels with a lvl 50 Inv/SS tank with Perma-Rage fightimg my lvl 39 DM/SR, both of us down at lvl 37 with no inspirations. In I4, this match would have been pointless. In I5...it was heart pounding.

I still think Invinc is too easy.

You might consider lowering the knockback protection on scrappers. It's annoying to get knocked back, but there still should be some chance we get knocked around as scrappers.

Croa is a wonderful zone but alas, it goes by so quickly.

The rescue missions are fantastic. How cool is it to rescue captives and have them team up with you to fight? To bad we can't kick them when they Leroy on us .

The auto-exemping on missions is such a welcome addition, I could kiss someone...not you...but someone. The other night, got DC'd on the Katie Hannon TF and was able to come back and finish it. In I4 I would have been auto-booted.

I appreciate you looking into the defense situation. Whatever changes you make, please continue to keep the sets distinctive from each other. CoH has tremendous replay value because the sets are so different. Preserve the uniqueness of each set.


As a general comment:

[ QUOTE ]
And an accuracy boost on it, would be nice. What good is the extra damage, if you can't hit anything.

[/ QUOTE ] Yes, I'm sure it would be nice...but rather bogus. If anything, a hero's accuracy should get worse as he or she takes more damage, not better. Damage increasing based on desparation makes sense. Accuracy does not.

[ QUOTE ]
It still kicks in way to late to be any help

[/ QUOTE ] I've teamed with pleny of blasters and seen Defiance help out. I've played my own blaster and had Defiance make a diff. I'm curious just how much help blasters expect it to be? Certainly Containment is the most helpful power of all the Inherents, but Punchvoke, Crits, and soon to be released Vigiliance are decidely of less benefit. No scrapper relies on crits to win a battle. What's more, most mobs die from two normal attacks so crits are not really helping much. Only against Bosses and AV's do they even get a chance to make a difference. Punchvoke is by and large unnecessary to soloing tanks. Most tanks also have things like Invinc, Mudpots, Blazing Aura, and Icicles which provide their own taunt...not to mention Taunt itself. I'd be curious to see how much a difference Punchvoke even made to the average tanker. And we'll have to see how useful Vigiliance is.

Except for Containtment, the rest of the Inherents don't seem to be any more of a benefit than Defiance.

I've only got the Rescue Archer mission.

I liked the mission. But it was on Invinc and it was a breeze for the Inv/SS tanker and my Claws/Regen. I was lvl 30, the Tanker was exemped from lvl 36.

Perhaps the mission was so easy because I had a tank with me, which is why I think we need a lot more missions like this. They force us to use other AT's and need non-combat type powers as well.

However, I think we should be able to remove missions. Let us fail a mission with whatever consequence, but allow players to remove misison that they feel they can't do or realize they don't want to do. Since we are heroes, I do feel like there should be some consequence to not doing something we've accepted.

La Noire on Triumph

http://img300.echo.cx/img300/3500/lanoiremodel2oe.jpg

[ QUOTE ]
) you're assuming a fire or AR blaster for AoE. Ice, elec, and eng cann't put out that great of an XPph number.


[/ QUOTE ] True...all blasters are not created equal. But I have no doubt the weakest blaster generates XP three times faster solo than any def and NON-fire tank except may Rad at super high levels.

[ QUOTE ]
B) my fire tank generates XP much faster

[/ QUOTE ] The reality of that situation may have disappeared for many now that Burn invokes terorr/panic/mobs run away form the burn patch. I don't know for certain as i have not tested it, but Fire tankers are in a class by themselves because they can herd far more mobs together than any blaster. Again, I'm sure P-US spines/inv could probably rival Fire tankers, back when US could be perma.

[ QUOTE ]
and controllers with damaging pets (illusion and Fire especially).

[/ QUOTE ] Yup, Fire controllers are probably also near the top of the food chain for solo XP..but we're taking about AT's. If it's a question of just generating mass XP per hour given all the builds from top to bottom, my money is on Blasters coming out ahead. And as Concern said, and I have seen other blasters post, Max/xp per hour includes some defeats. In other words, xp per hour of stuff that can't kill you is lower than the xp per hour from stuff that can kill you and does from time to time. Obviously there's an optimal level difference depending on build.

The fact is, blasters "solo" just fine. Solo in this game has never meant you were able to finish all your missions without help. My lvl 32 Kin/Psi get defeated by three even level mobs...two minions and one Lt. I got mezzed and the Vampyri Shadow Punched me into debt. When I was awake, I could not do enough damage to kill them fast enough. One heal misses and the wrong time....lights out.

No blaster would have suffered that fate. Build-up and the Lt is down in micro seconds.

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Blasters are very good at soloing up until the 30’s then IMHO they become ineffective

[/ QUOTE ] A blaster's ability to generate xp "solo" is probaby unrivaled throughout their career. Maybe Spines/DA can generate more xp faster. What blasters claim they can't do is finish their missions. Per the devs, soloing is not defined by the ability to finish all your story arcs solo.

[ QUOTE ]
Why disqualify Electric?

[/ QUOTE ] I hear they do sucky damage

When I team with them, I can't say they are as impressive as Fire or Ice. Plus, when I see them zap mobs, I always get the feeling they are just tickling them.

But if you want to enter you Electric in the Blaster v Scrapper Olympics...I'll let your zaps do the talking.

[ QUOTE ]
To be precise, because its dangerous language, Statesman said that blasters are not necessarily supposed to be able to solo all bosses. Meaning, if you can't solo a boss as a blaster, that might just be because that boss is too difficult, or your build doesn't allow for it.

Remove the two italicized words, and it sounds like the implication is that no blaster should be able to solo any bosses, implying that any that do represent a game balance failure, and I don't think this stronger statement is true.

[/ QUOTE ] You're creating a distinction that was not implied and then passing judgment on the distinction that you've created, suggesting that it was my distinction. "supposed" means that some blasters will be able to, but most will not. A 6'4" man is not supposed to be tall enough to play power forward, but Charles Barkely was one of the greatest power forwards in the game.

[ QUOTE ]
Statesman disagrees, though; he's stated many times that a specific design goal of the game is that everyone (meaning all ATs in general, we obviously have to exclude broken builds here) should be theoretically capable of soloing their own missions (set to the lowest difficulty level).

[/ QUOTE ] You'll have to show me that quote. What the States has touted is that you can "solo". He's never said how it relates to your missions. His definiton of soloing, which he basically stated point blank was that you can log on and gain experience without teaming. It had nonthing to do with content or missions. Players like yourself, have inferred that soloing meant completing all your missions. If he's said something more recently in direct contradiction to that, you'll have to post it to prove me wrong because I have not seen it.

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Moreover, I cannot see how you could reduce blaster power to the point where most couldn't solo their missions,

[/ QUOTE ] Damage output and ability to a solo a mission are only correlated, they aren't directly related. You're taking a position that is invalid and arguing against it. First, some misisons require you to click two glowies at the same time so you can't solo them can you? Second, I'd be surprised to find that a decent blaster build with inspirations cannot defeat all mobs on a heroic mission by lvl 18 or higher. Third, what we are really talking about is beating missions on Invinc, and the reason why blasters can't do that is mez protection and hp's. Those two things alone would allow blasters to solo on Invinc.

Fourth, who wants to reduce blaster power? Your statement irresponsibly suggests that I am advocating some reduction in blaster power so they can't solo. Gross inaccuracy. This is about the role of blasters in CoH. They are not intended to be the soloist that Scrappers are and I am not in favor of changes that erode that disintinction.

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but the problem is that its not *blatantly so* which makes it impossible for blasters to fulfill one of our original "roles"

[/ QUOTE ] So is a question of perspective isn't it? It is blatantly obvious blasters do more damage than scrappers. The problem is that the difference is less as the levels go higher. Blasters are used to SUCH a gap at low level, that the gap at high level is harder to perceive. Go fight 10 whites with a lvl 35 scrappers and blaster while a controller has them all on lock down and tell me which AT kills them faster (don't use Electric blaster). Blaster AoE with Build Up and Aim do FAR FAR FAR more damage than scrappers to more people. Without crits, my blaster can kill bosses faster than most scrappers.

The problem Arcana is not that blasters don't do a ton of damage, the problem is everyone else starts doing enough damage that you don't need X% more firepower to succeed.

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It keeps being said that scrappers are supposed to be the best soloers, and everyone forgets that blasters are supposed to be "successful" soloers.

[/ QUOTE ]Once again, blasters are incredibly successful soloers, they are not as good at completeing all their missions. You need to re-examine what Statesmen's definition of soloing is.