I'm a noob, only been playing for five weeks or so, but I wanted to bring something up about the TA/Archery set: The whole and ONLY reason I chose a trick arrow-archery Defender was because in my mind, I was thinking I could play Hawkeye (or Green Arrow, if that's your flavor of comics). That was it. A free-wheeling, wisecracking, never-surrender kind of guy.
I took the net arrow, and snap shot, thinking that this would be great.
...and then at Level twelve, when I got my flaming arrow, I finally started to feel like a competent character. It wasn't until I could throw 30 points of damage at a whack that I felt like I was doing something in the game.
There's a big disconnect between my mental image of a comic book archer and the stated game purpose of Defender as an archer. Maybe you have to play archers a certain way, or slot them in a specific way, in order to make them comperable to, say the same level blaster (or even controller).
This is not in and of itself a bad thing; I always end up playing in a team and keeping everyone amused as my Area of Effect arrows do very little, if any, visible damage or effect to the mob. But it would be nice to solo. Green Arrow did it in the comics all of the time. Man, that's a geeky thing to say, but hey, isn't this game ABOUT playing Super Heroes? That's why you made it, and that's damn sure why I bought it. My other characters work well, and seem to be more completely balanced at the lower levels. But I'm looking at Oil Slick, still several levels away from me, and I am envious. I have a sniper shot that I won't get for another eight levels.
To me, in the super hero world, an arrow won't do much damage compared to a power blast, but it seems so much more effective in the comics rather than in CoH. Maybe I just thought I'd be cooler sooner. It seems, though, that I'm not that good at Crowd Control, and I'm not that good at front line shooting. I don't think I'd mind, if I was one or the other, but not both.
I don't have any hard numbers to throw at you. This isn't about that, and I frankly have no desire to crack the gaming code and figure out how much damage I throw to the hundredth decimal point. Other people seem to have that angle covered nicely. I just wanted to share my perceptions, as a new player, and also as a comic book fan.
One last thing: the endurance drain on the arrow sets are huge. I know it's related to the effects of the arrows I'm throwing, but considering HOW many arrows I have to throw to kill a yellow lieutenant, it seems that those paltry arrows should either cost way less, or do more damage for the same end amount. In door missions, I'm popping blue inspirations like a kid eating skittles at a fat camp, and that's just to assist on the controllers and scrappers.
Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening, and keep up the good work.
Mark Finn
aka Johnny Bull's-Eye
Carnival of Justice
Guardian Server
