Miladys_Knight
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Posts
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Quote:Actually the problem is the converse. Blasters don't have enough survivability to justify their lack of damage. If the devs approach it from the angle you are taking they would break the game.Originally Posted by firespray
No offense, but this sounds like the most boring idea I've ever heard. I play this game to have fun, not to do consumer research.
The problem with blasters is that they don't do enough damage to justify their lack of survivability. -
Hey Rangle, if you want to see a Plant/TA/Fire in action I can team with you on Justice and give you a Demo.
@Grandpa Squeak -
Quote:I'm betting scrapper and the bow was just a gift from Waylon McCrane.....Originally Posted by Udun01
Pffft.. I don't remember him using his bow at all. It was just a costume piece. He killed the wolf with a sharp pointy object and then when his world fell apart the devs wished real hard and gave it back..
I'm thinking scrapper? -
If it fits your style Plant/TA/Fire. I find it quite enjoyable and it's a high speed damage controller. Open with Flash to limit mob perception. Drop Spirit Tree (does not cause aggro), Then Seeds. Hit a target near the middle with Acid Arrow and follow up with Disruption Arrow.
By now the spawn has self herded and you can lock them into melee range with each other with Roots. With a High rech build you can alternate Oil Slick Arrow and Creepers every other spawn for maximum carnage. Season to taste with Fireball and Fireblast.
One caveat is to skip all the powers that debuff the mob's potential to damage themselves, so skip Glue Arrow and Poison Gas Arrow and put a single end reducer in Flash Arrow.
Much faster and safer soloing than a blaster and you can solo easily as soon as you have Seeds perma.
Edit - Bosses are easily handled by stacking Ice Arrow with Strangler and/or Entangling Arrow with Roots. Spirit Tree fixes any damage that you are likely to take. -
Quote:I will on some toons build 3 or 4 defense types (or 2 positions) to 32.5% defense and then rely on combining insps into purples.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Except, what happens when I don't have one and I'm getting my backside handed to me on a shiny silver platter courtesy of whoknowswhatnastynesswrappedupintheformofanAV?
To answer your above question.....
Eye of the Magus and the Wedding Band. -
I have one slot still open on my home server for a character I don't think I'll ever get to make.
My great great grandpa on my Dad's maternal side was a native American, Blackfoot tribe, medicine man.
To make the character I would need a Plant control Dom/Archery + Axe weapon set and the devs would have to release a "Native American" costume bundle something I have been looking/waiting for, for over 6 years.... -
Even with the tweaks Grav isn't all that good.
For a first time Dom the best primary is the one and only that was actually designed for Doms - Plant.
The strong primaries for Doms are: Plant, Mind, Earth, Elec, and Dark.
If you like melee range SMASH! Earth Assault is the way to go. Earth Assault has lots of KD as secondary effects, because of that it combines "best" with a primary that has no -knock in it's AoE Immob, that would be Elec (and grav, but grav is a pretty weak primary and has -knock in it's AoE hold instead).
If you like the strong control aspect of the dom primary then you want a secondary that has a "power boost" type power in it. That would be Energy, Earth, Ice, and Dark.
The 2 primaries that get maximum utility (ie: boosts the largest number of primary powers) from power boost are Mind and Dark. -
Quote:Right. Caltrops is a DoT patch power. I wanted to make sure there was no confusion between the 2Originally Posted by Kyriani
I'm aware of that but Tenebrous Tentacles isn't a pseudopet. I was talking specifically about dots, which TT is.
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Quote:Psuedo pet patch powers check when you initially cast them and every 10 seconds after that. That's why some people like the Ragnarok Proc in Caltrops. It can proc 5 times during its duration.Originally Posted by Kyriani
Dots do not trigger procs per tick. They only have their chance to trigger checked when the power is initially activated. You'll get a check for every mob you hit with it but only one check each.
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Quote:I only use it to keep stuff in burn. Since the only thing that will last the entire burn duration is a boss, that means that I need either Dark Primary or a PPP with a nice AoE immob to stack with (like Mace). In my experience the last half of the damage is usually wasted unless you are playing on +3 or +4 mobs.Originally Posted by Dz131
Should I be using this over flare for damage for a fire/fire blaster? It seems to do a lot more damage with a snare attached to it
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I'm in for that. @Grandpa Squeak
Dark Control character - Halja fra Helheim - Dark/Icy Dom. -
I was going with Ubu....
(you know, "sit Ubu, good dog")
And the Haunts are currently Dan and Bill (for the ghost busters) -
Quote:True but it's the only ranged damage set that grants additional AoE -Damage which stacks nicely with both the -Damage and AoE resistance Aura in Dark Miasma.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
True... but I think the evidence suggests DP isn't a huge debuff set, so in one sense it doesn't qualify already - but remains interesting.
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Quote:For myself I completely agree with this statement but I know others enjoy it.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Also, lolDP.
Dark Miasma is better on a defender though. The question is if the extra damage out put is worth the loss of the debuff value. That's more an individual play style issue than anything else. -
Quote:IIrc the secondary sets are (mis?)described as support.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
That raises another issue with blaster powerset combinations. Mismatched control options. There is very little reason with the possible exception of fire (Trades everything for damage) that you shouldn't be able to match the controls between primary and secondary. The combinations where you can stack the control type, be it kb, stun or hold really do considerably better than the combinations that don't.
In the case of holds you can usually fix it by taking an epic pool but there isn't anything for stuns or fear.
The secondary sets are occasionally described as utility but it seems even that is pre nerfed -
Quote:Yes...... but I thought you wanted the Ultimate Debuffer. That means a defender.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
I'm just looking a that too... Zombie's dark misma is interesting. I was leaning towards a DM/Rad fender... I'm thinking that Rad will allow me to eat through defence and then leave Dark Miasma to just swallow all his other stats - but your notion of DM/DP is interesting. Wouldn't it make a better corruptor to eak out some extra damage?
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Quote:I would go with Zombie Man's Dark/?? defender suggestion but I would add in the caveat that you could take DP as your secondary, use Chemical Ammo, and further increase the -Damage you can put out.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Ok tried posting this three times and I've failed every time. Let's hope it works this time
I've run 2 traps toons, one a traps/sonic defender - got him to 50, and a rad/traps crupper to 49. Both got consigned to the alt-bin in the sky. Just couldn't get on with either of them.
I also had one MM at 50 but he's gone the same way - that was a thugs/poison before /poison got a makeover.
I'm not sure why I don't like traps but I've never found it very effective but somebody earlier in the thread suggested Dual Pistols and that might have some synergy with traps - so I've made a DP/Traps crupper just for the fun of it. Don't know how it'll do, but could be interesting.
If you don't mind giving up a few set bonuses you can slot a Dark/DP with more procs than any other character and either increase your personal damage output or mitigating effects or debuffs (Achilles heel can go in empty clips, Ragnarok chance for KD can go in Bullet Rain). You can also tailor your interface to what ever you feel is lacking. -
Quote:Shouldn't we also be concerned about normalizing the tier 1 secondary in that case? Their range, recharge, and cast times are all over the map. Also some have a projectile that has a fixed speed while others do not.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
3. If it reduces the time spent mezzed, specifically by giving better options to prevent mez offensively and breaking chain mez when the situations encourages it, it'll improve performance. But as to this point specifically, the current version of the idea also includes a small damage increase in the form of boosting single target damage when splash targets don't exist. Separate from that, I would want to improve sniper attacks and better normalize tier 3 single target blasts, both of which would nominally improve offense and therefore overall performance.
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Quote:I don't know. My numbers look so bad comparatively that I think we need to scrap the current defiance and start completely over. 4 of the blasters were created after D2.0 if they are better at all it has to be just marginally. I think anything that is based on the current set up will fail miserably.Originally Posted by cybermitheral
I still think my idea of helping Blasters ESCAPE mez rather than ignore it has merit
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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...4&postcount=34
What about adding to Defiance a +MezResist value so as you are mezzed however many stacked Defiance's you have reduces the duration by [num_defiance x MexResist].
As you are mezzed you still attack using the 3 available powers and any Defiance those attacks generate is added with their +MezResist.
The following is based on what I read from here:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Resistance_(Mechanics)
So for example:
Defiance adds say +75% MezResist per stack.
If you have 4 Defiance you have (4x75) 300% MezResist.
Based on the above this would reduce the MezDuration to a quarter (so a 10s Mez lasts 2.5s).
If during that Mez you get 2 more Defiance's stacked (before any of the current Defiance expires) you would have 450% MezResist which would make that 10s Mez last only 1.8s.
~~This is obviously not counting the time it takes for you to fire those 2 attacks and the MezDuration already ticking over
Let say the Mez lasts 30s by default.
4xDefiance (300%) = 7.5s
Time taken to fire those 2 attacks = (say) 3 secs.
Remaining MezDuration = 4.5s.
Addition Defiance from 2 attacks (2x75 = 150%) = 450%
New Remaining MezDuration = 0.81s
This way you still get mezzed but by doing what Blasters are MEANT to do (attack and damage) not only do you do more damage (standard Defiance) but you also spend less time Mezzed without getting MezProtection (which is prob too much).
Maybe +75% MezResist is too much? Im sure this could be balanced better or even have the value based on the amount of +Dam Defiance grants:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Defiance -
Quote:I wasn't being curt. I have all ready given the answers to your questions. I doubt restating them will give you more clarity but:Originally Posted by Diellan_
I did before, and I just did again (and the curt non-answers aren't particularly helpful towards having a discussion). You talk primarily about a handful of data points (Blaster without pools, Blaster with pools, Blaster with mag 4 mez protection, other ATs), and give a lot of analogies for why you feel as you do about the suggestions given, but I do not see what I'm asking for. I mean, if, for example, every Blaster was suddenly granted Darkest Night as a bonus (and nothing else in addition), would that (a) prevent a sufficient amount of mez, without (b) stepping on Defenders' toes? (b) is highly unlikely, since nobody has accused Soul Mastery Brutes from taking over from Defenders, even though they get the debuff in addition to their own survivability - because Defenders have a lot more to them than just what that one power can provide. As for (a), well, that depends upon the discussion of just how much mez is acceptable - given that we've stated that Defenders and such are doing "fine" in terms of mez, even though they still get mezzed, that amount is something above zero.
The total Focus nerf that was being discussed is that a mag 4 control was taken away from blasters BECAUSE IT STEPPED ON CONTROLLER TOES. Yet the Mag 4 Hold in Seismic Smash remained for Brutes and Tanks. We know for certain that the devs don't care if tanks, brutes, scrappers step on defender/controller toes only blasters. We also know that it doesn't matter if any other AT steps on blaster toes so that blasters have no unique tools.Quote:Quote:Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
The blaster is the ONLY AT in the game that will get hit with 45% of all mezzes launched at them. ALL the other ATs in the game can limit being affected by mez to 5% or less.
All the other ATs in the game can use their full range of powers 95% of the time. In a late game heavy mez environment (which, with the exception of the ITF is every thing else) the blaster can potentially be locked into using only 3 powers for entire missions.
No blaster primary, secondary, or epic power set provides any kind of mitigation to any status effect: hold, stun, sleep, terror, confuse, knock back, immobilize, endurance drain, slow, -rech, defense debuff and -regen. A blaster's only recourse is to suck it up and repay the resulting debt or use a break free. Break Frees do not drop often enough nor do they have long enough a duration to be a reliable solution especially in the case of primary + secondary combinations that are single target focused.
No matter how much people try to down play that, it's still blatantly unbalanced at best and irreparably broken at worst.Quote:Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Slotting 2 SOs per atribute for effect (and to avoid the ED cap) you get (using Electic as the Epic for the example):
10.2% defense to all positions/types
41.7% resistance to S/L
27% resistance to energy
and costs 1.51 end per second.
1 mez drops all those numbers to 0s due to supression and all you've gained is the ability to negate a single hold. You are still going to be affected by 35% of all other mezzes thrown at you (stun is more common than hold). The mez resistance isn't all that helpful. To give an example of one of those with better numbers a 30 second Longbow Stun grenade will last 20 seconds. More than enough time for the mobs to tear out your internal organs and show them to you.
You have 10 power picks left to split between 17 remaining primary and secondary powers and 3 additional Epic powers and 43 slots left to split between them.
No other AT gives up so much to get so little.Quote:Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
- Force fields, Sonic resonance, and Traps all have powers that convey mez protection on the caster.
- Radiation Emission, Storm, and Dark can all floor an entire spawn's chance to hit.
- Early game primarily buffing power sets like Empathy have some similar issues but do have tools to keep the caster alive. Later additions like Thermal and Cold have both buffs and debuffs to use and it isn't 100% necessary for a primary buffer to directly enter combat to still fulfill their primary function.
The notable exception to these is Trick Arrow and we know that is on the dev's radar http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279734Quote:Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
1) I do NOT think that blasters NEED more damage. They need the ability to hang fire and apply the damage they all ready have.
2) I do NOT think that blasters NEED more defense or resistances. I get that they are supposed to be glass cannons and I can and do roll with that too.
3) Blasters are the ONLY AT that are forced into combat and incoming mezzing attacks by their very design yet have absolutely no ability to avoid or escape mez in their power sets (defiance does NOT count. It does not help you avoid nor does it help you escape.)
I'm not even asking for the world when it comes to mez protection. All I have ever advocated is mag 4 protection. Just enough to avoid 1 application of mez so that I CAN hang fire long enough to kill the mezzer without having to resort to break frees and so that I can keep what little defense/resistance/secondary effects I get from various toggles without them being suppressed or detoggled.
That would still not be BALANCED since the other ATs that are forced into combat by their design still have all these things AND MORE but it would be enough to make the difference. I'm not even asking for even footing. I'm pretty sure that I could manage with just a toe hold.Quote:Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Total focus nerf comes to mind, Power Boost's KB removal nerf, Acrobatics nerf all relatively recent and if not targeted directly at blasters (we know that 2 of the three were for sure) then targeted in such a way to adversely affect blasters the most while potentially "looking" even handed.
I thought of a possible measuring stick that we can use as comparison. A way to self data mine as it were. All the characters are mine so there is no variance in skill.
Here is a sample of my level 50s listed in order of creation (I know there is a way to find out how many hours a charcter has logged. I don't remember how though. If someone can remind me I'll resort the list in order of hours logged):
Character -- Debt Badge -- Mez Badge
Defender Emp/Dark/Dark -- Level 6 (Max) -- 61.46% of level 3
Defender FF/Psi/Psi -- Level6 (Max) -- 67.89 of level 2
Scrapper Dark/Regen -- Level 6 (Max) -- 72.11 % of level 2
Controller Earth/Storm/Fire -- Level 6 (Max) -- 73.83% of level 2
Blaster Energy/Energy/Force -- Level 6 (Max) -- 73.66% of level 5
Controller Earth/TA/Primal -- Level 6 (max) -- 96.36% of level 2
Blaster Arch/Dev/Munitions -- Level 6 (Max) -- 80.40% of level 4
Tank Fire/Fire/Pyre -- Level 6 (Max) -- 47.11% of Level 1
Scrapper BS/Shield/Body -- Level 6 (Max) -- 91.67% of level 1
Controller Plant/TA/Fire -- Level 6 (Max) -- 96.96% of level 2
Blaster Sonic/Ice/Elec -- Level 6 (Max) -- 67.42% of level 4
Blaster Energy/Elec/Fire -- Level 6 (Max) -- 40.91% of level 4
Controller Ice/Rad/Ice -- Level 6 (Max) -- 68.56% of level 2
Dominator Mind/Ice/Fire -- Level 6 (Max) -- 97.47% of level 1
Blaster Rad/Fire/Mace -- Level 6 (Max) -- 33.63% of level 4
Now that I look at it I realize just how shocking the differences are and I wonder just how many of those mezzes were cut short because they resulted in my defeat. The results here might show that I was less affected by mez than I actually was. I was clearly hit by far more mezzes on my blasters but if they were cut short by my defeat then the problem is even worse than these numbers show. -
Quote:Read the whole thread. It's in there.Originally Posted by Diellan_
Um, what you did was list what everybody had in terms of mez mitigation. You didn't say anything about (a) what was necessary in order to provide the mez mitigation we feel is sufficient, and (b) where that point lies in comparison to Defenders.
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Quote:All ready been done in post #12 of this threadOriginally Posted by Diellan_
There's a long way to go from "useless debuff" to "Defender level", and the onus on your part is to demonstrate that anything less than Defender level would not be sufficient.
Judging by the devs track record there is no in between. In fact what it looks like to me from observing for 7 years is that each department is tasked with solving each problem and then they implement ALL the solutions some of which are contradictory. A perfect example this time is enhancement converters. The new power sets make more use of set IOs that do not see much use which will raise price and market value. At the same time they add converters which will suck up all those sets and convert them into things that are used more often. 2 contradictory solutions that pull things too far in one direction. All they really needed to do was adjust the drop rates to more closely match the use rates. Something we know that they could have done simply by changing values in one of the spread sheets. Instead they had 2 departments working on the same issue. That seems like a waste of time to me.Quote:Again, false dichotomy. There's no in between?
Blasters need to be correctly modified this time so that they don't have to suck for 2 more years. -
Quote:Not surprised since you clipped the middle out and the chain that lead there.Originally Posted by Diellan_
This dichotomy confuses me. On the one hand, you say that every other AT is able to handle mezzes, but then you say that giving blasters the debuff/mez effects to handle mezzes would make them overpowered. Is blaster damage really that high compared to the others? The kind of things that ArcanaVille is listing are a drop in the bucket compared to the tools that Controllers, Dominators, Defenders, and Corruptors have at their disposal.
I'm not a math whiz like Arcanaville is. I can't see the math in it but even I can see that if this mechanic gets the number of mezzes that affect my blasters down to the same level as those that affect all my other toons that the blaster will then be a better debuffer than a defender could hope to be and a better controller than a controller could aspire to be.
With that in mind I can see one of 2 possibilities:
1) We don't get it because it treads not only on controller, defender, and corruptor toes but on their arches as well.
2) We get a watered down version that still leaves the blaster too vulnerable to the combined lack of mez protection and meaningful mitigation and the next pass is another 2+ years out and we continue to suffer through the same issues we suffer through now and have since I2.
I am not in favor of complicated solutions. The blaster learning curve is all ready too steep for the average player. Making the fix as complicated could easily make the new player just throw their hands up in frustration and continue to abandon their blasters just as they do now.
The blaster AT should be as intuitive to play out of the box as all the other basic ATs are. For those of us that are good at playing blasters we should be able to find efficiencies that still allow us to stand out (even by a large margin) when compared to the average player.
To give a metaphor - adding a complicated solution to a complicated problem is like hiding a key to your house somewhere outside that is so counter intuitive to your thought processes that if you lock your key inside the house you'll only be able to remember where you hid the outside key 5% of the time. Then worrying that it might be too easy for someone else to find by accident and locking the key inside a box with a combination lock that you won't be able to remember the combination to before putting it in the hiding spot that you won't be able to find in the first place. -
Quote:I'm not sure that I can get behind this. I'm sure it's numerically sound and I have no doubt that it could be tweaked to work BUT it would not be fun. Sure it may keep me alive, but while I'm mezzed I'm still playing a character that is level 2. That's not FUN.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
We already have a good mechanism for that for Blasters: Defiance 2.0. If the active mitigation mechanism is something put into most or all single target blaster attacks, its going to be in the two ranged primary attacks blasters are allowed to use when mezzed.
Currently, being mezzed means Blaster offense is degraded down to the point where you have basically two or three attacks with which to kill your attackers before they kill you, or at least last long enough for the mez to expire. With splashing counter-mitigation effects in those two powers, the equation changes to using your D2.0 attacks to simply continue to hit the most dangerous targets, and keep them from damaging you too much until mez expires. That's a significantly better option for two reasons: splashing effects mean you can affect more targets than the one or two you could normally engage with tier1/2 blasts, and offensive counter-mitigation would allow you to gain some benefit from your attacking besides maybe killing the target, which is a binary benefit: either it dies or it doesn't.
I've actually been conducting a long-term experiment on my own blaster to see if this actually works. Since I19, I've been playing a build that takes both Bolt and Blast (not all energy blasters do) and builds for ultrahigh recharge. When I do get mezzed, even if I have a break free most times I will try to see if simply using those two powers, cycled as fast as possible, can keep me alive until the mez expires. And they can. Sometimes, and if I switch from trying to kill the most dangerous target, to cycling through everyone and trying to hit as many targets as possible whether I kill them or not. The problem is that even with the ability to cycle those two powers almost by themselves without gap, they are just single targeted and their knock has only a low probability of firing. And most blasters are not going to have +150% recharge to use them that often.
But a mitigation effect that happened all the time or nearly so, that hit multiple targets with each shot, that could be fired while mezzed (as the tier 1/2 attacks can be), that I think would work for everybody.
Mez would still be dangerous. You'd lose all your defensive toggles. And mez would still negatively affect blaster performance: you'd lose all your AoEs and most of your single target damage when mezzed. But you would have a way to stay alive long enough for the mez to expire. It would be less likely to kill you.
Better yet: this is just as useful even if you are not mezzed. This is not a break out of mez power that if you're not mezzed has no benefit. You can use this *proactively* to try to *prevent* mez, by using it to go after the mezzers directly.
About the only thing its likely to not be useful for directly is boss fights where everything else is dead and its just the boss left. Which is why I've suggested that it should do one more thing: when there's only one target left and there's nothing to splash, it should turn around and hit the intended target harder. Still working out how to do that, though.
For a mez solution to work for me I have to get the amount of mezzes that affect me (turn off/suppress toggles, lock me out of my 21+ other powers, prevent me from moving, etc) down to 5% or less (actually 2.5% or less since half of all the mezzes launched all ready miss) without dipping into the inspiration tray. Just like I can achieve with EVERY OTHER AT I PLAY.
If one of the goals of a blaster modification is to keep them from being abandoned as they level then they have to be not just numerically or intrinsically equivalent to scrappers but the fun factor has to be there too. I didn't level my blaster to 50 only to use the first 3 powers the majority of the time. There is no thrill or WOW factor in that.
I know exactly how I'll feel after the next pass of blaster improvements if I'm still limited to 3 powers in the majority of high level content on my blasters while all the scrapper players on the team continue unimpeded in scrapper lock. I'll still feel cheated and quite frankly I still will be cheated.
I really don't see how you can get the % of mezzes down to an acceptable level with this idea without making the thing hideously overpowered while unmezzed.
I also can't see how this will significantly speed rewards gained, especially solo, if the blaster is still limited to an average DPS that is lower than a defender due to mez. -
Quote:Fixed.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
Also, a break free taken ahead of time can prevent every status effect except slow.