Moonlighter

Drink!

Wow! Awesome tips! I love these boards.

You can make Power Boost permanent.

This not only boosts your defense and stuns, but come the next issue (assuming nothing changes - a BIG assumption) you get 22.6 ToHit from Tactics + Karma ToHit + Power Boost to use fast snipe.

Um, Power Boost is what caps my defense. If it goes down I die. There will be no change of play there.

A significantly less hit than my Regen scrapper. But yes the DPS loss can be annoying.

For me it will be Tactics + Karma + Power Boost. No need to time and Aim and Build Up with Snipe. You get 22.6% To Hit once Power Boost is perma.

Can you elaborate? Do you macro your spam attack with Domination or something?

In actual game play, my /Energy blaster isn't really that hard.

You don't need to include Boost Range in the rotation. You only need to click it right before a cone sequence as a spawn starts. It is very useful, but in actual play you are not hitting it once things get mixed up unless you break away and want to start another cone burst.

Basically it's Hasten on auto, hit Power Boost as it cycles, and otherwise it's the same Aim-Build Up-Attack sequence other blasters use. At least that's my experience playing my /Energy blaster.

Energy Manipulation isn't as clickie as Regen. Once Power Boost is perma you basically put Hasten on auto and hit PB as is comes up. That doesn't seem that bad to me.

Boost Range doesn't need to be refreshed as soon as it comes up.

Really, perma-dom is much worse to me than any /Energy build. You can't put both Hasten and Domination on auto. The penalty for missing either click for too long is very severe - Domination resets.

With Energy is you miss a Power Boost click it's no big deal, you can just hit it again as soon as you realize it's down.

I'd amend this to say:

I think if you pumped the devs with truth serum, they'd tell you that a good number of Dom/Brute/Scrapper/Controller/Widow/Soldier/Stalker/Defender/Corruptor builds are overpowered...

(I have no practical experience with Squiddies, and I don't have a end game Mastermind to say.)

ED stands for enhancement diversification.

For most power bonuses, after around 90% total enhancement bonus from slotting you begin to see less and less bonus from further slotting. Some bonuses, like defense, actually drop off after 60% total enhancement bonus. A good rule of thumb is that after 3 SOs it probably isn't worth it to slot more for that bonus.

So for SR each or your defense powers will need 3 SO defense enhancements.

Now, if you have access to IOs, both plain and sets, you get slightly larger bonuses. This allows you to save some slots here and there because you can at level 50 hit that point of diminishing return with fewer enhancements.

For a defense power, for example, you could hit near the cap with a Defense IO, and then get two Defense/Endurance reduction IOs from different sets and still hit the practical cap at level 50. Not only have you boosted the power's defense by 3 SOs, but you also get an SO worth of Endurance Reduction.

This is the game you play once you start building characters, mixing set bonuses, and moving slots around.

If you are going full out and getting expensive IOs my default slotting is usually this:

The three toggled defense powers, Weave, and Combat Jumping get Luck of the Gambler IOs - Defense, Def/End and Def/+Global Recharge. This give you lots of extra hit points, regeneration, and Recharge for all your powers.

The three passive defense powers get 2 Defense IOs.

It's also possible to play the various blaster sets on test and give feedback that it doesn't make blasters competitive with other similarly equipped characters and let them decide if they want to do something about it.

I honestly don't know how these changes will pan out. I may be blown away with the effects on test and be totally satisfied with the changes. I have a very good idea of the effect of another X percent of defense will do for a build. I honestly have less intuitive understanding of what another X regeneration will do.

For snipes, I am dubious of using this to buff their ranged damage. The buff isn't applied equally to all blasters. Some don't even get a snipe. Many can't leverage this in a normal attack chain. I see too many holes - blasters that really won't see a significant benefit.

For the increase of the third tier attack to 80 I see this as a wonderful quality of life buff that will really help.

For the regeneration/recovery buffs I am hopeful. This might make a huge difference to blasters. I will have to test this.

For the nuke changes - they will be effective, maybe fun solo and less fun in big groups with lots of characters who can nuke.

For the Dual Pistols changes, I suspect it will finally bring the set on par with other blasters just in time to see other blasters use the snipe mechanics and their own crashless nukes pull ahead of the set again.

It's not free. In the course of the game - all those years - they have made [1] attempt to fix blasters. People would like it done correctly. If the powers that be wave flashy buffs in the face of players and they nod but it doesn't fix the core problem and there is never another blaster review (or at least not for another how many years) then blasters as an AT have basically lost the chance to become competitive.

No one is saying "No we don't want these buffs."

What people are saying is "these buffs may not fix the problem."

I am still unconvinced that the buff to snipes, for example, is going to make blaster ranged damage worth the poor mitigation.

I just wanted to say that this is a good reply.

Edit: Clipped much of the reply for brevity.

Your Aid Self comment exactly hit on my point. You can obtain out of combat recovery, you just have a fabricated rule based on personal bias that characters shouldn't have to get powers from a power pool. Well, except for travel powers. Then it's okay.

The end result of changes designed to increase out of combat recovery is that people offended by needing Aid Self don't need to take it. Look that's a good thing. It isn't giving the AT anything it can't already get.

Blasters are the most fragile AT. I think we can all agree on that. They need to be less fragile, and they need combat benefits to make it worthwhile to deal with that weakness. I just don't think the ability to recover between fights without the need of Aid Self is the silver bullet to Blaster issues.

First, a *lot* of people run DFB a couple of times for the buffs. This is not some edge case. I am running the content as designed by the devs. I am not running up to 22 in DFB, but I do run it two or three times before running off to the Hollows. Your suggestion that this is some farming edge case is out of touch.

Second, I am not fighting +4s. When teaming, however, I often end up fighting +2s. I side kick to -1 and at even con +1s can appear. This, again, is not an edge case unless you are suggesting that teaming is an edge case, in which case I again think you are out of touch.

Third, I acquired a couple select IOs with my hero merits. I am not farming AE, handing down influence, or playing the market. I am getting hero merits by running tips and Signature Story arcs which are advertised to new players by the game's marketing. It is my experience that many players participate in the game this way.

If you are trying to convince me that extra endurance recovery is a nice perk then no need, I agree. If you are trying to tell me that blasters *need* extra recovery and this will fix the AT then I disagree. Saying that blasters *need* extra recovery is basically saying all ATs need extra recovery. Blasters tend to have less stringent requirements than most other ATs because they lack defensive toggles and end hungry debuff toggles. You can't have it both ways.

Endurance Recovery is a nice perk. I see that it is an advantage. I don't mind blasters getting it. It does nothing to address the problems of the AT. It's like seeing a car with a flat tire and fixing the engine to get better gas mileage.

What I took from this line is that one of the design goals is to reduce blaster downtime. If I misunderstood and we are talking purely about in combat mitigation then that's cool. It just seems like each time we talk about mitigation the subject of between fight recover kicks in and muddies the water.

Between combat recovery is a nice perk, but a neutral alternate animation for Aid Self would, to me, also be effective at doing that.

WARNING: Rambling thoughts ahead.

What I would like to see for blasters is two things: better single target ranged damage and mitigation tools to prevent face planting and/or allow blaster to operate in the mid range game as well as most of the other ATs. What I am seeing is a lot of changes with alternate design goals that are getting thrown into the "make blasters better" pile when that's not really their primary goal.

If I had to guess what is going through the designer's minds here's what I see is happening:

Goals:
~ Bring the blaster AT as a whole up to par with other characters.
~ Make Snipes worthwhile.
~ Make Nukes worthwhile.

Although these are really three separate goals it makes sense to link them all because both power specific goals affect blasters. Do the current proposed changes do that successfully? Maybe not. As evidence I point to the fact that blasters are the least likely to leverage the Snipe change. Is that an overall issue? Not to me - the change fulfills its desired goal of making Snipes more useful. Will blasters see a benefit? Yes, although only a couple of secondaries will be able to fully leverage it. Am I okay with that? Yeah, even though the changes seem "gimmicky" to me because I see making Snipes useful as a separate design goal that crosses the boundaries of many ATs.

As for Nukes, while I fully understand the design goal of making them useful, and they will be useful to blasters, I think the problem with them is that the original launch design for them isn't good for game play. I don't find the strategy of using them to annihilate 1 out of 4 (or 3 or 2) spawns to be compelling, particularly on teams. But it definitely *does* make blasters more effective, and it benefits them most out of all ATs.

Are the new regeneration/Absorb mechanics enough to solve in combat mitigation issues so Blasters faceplant less and edge closer to mid game effectiveness as other ATs? I honestly won't know until I test them.

As for the "Wow" factor, the nuke changes will certainly help. My preference is to see a lot more single target "wow" factor, like I see on my stalker when I spin and one shot a minion with an in combat Assassin's Strike crit. The secondaries that can leverage fast-snipes will certainly get some of that.

If I had my druthers I'd like to see these changes:

~ The ability to eliminate a higher spawn Lt. immediately by opening with a Snipe. Even if the snipe has the interruptable animation, if it did enough damage to one shot a problematic orange Lt. from the spawn that would probably make it worth it.

~ Better single target ranged damage. If I am flinging around single target ranged attacks I want to see stuff dying quick like my stalker's larger attacks.

~ Better combat mitigation. I actually think that between the new Blaster Set and regeneration this might be accomplished. Blasters will gain a mez resistance proc in a fast attack and good regen. I wouldn't mind each blaster getting one decent 3.75 defense power to help them along but it's a start.

Two more nice things about toggles: You don't have to wait until end game to leverage them as a constant buff, and you don't have to stack +Recharge which gives you more build options. Sometimes it can be very effective to just accept a lesser attack chain at lower recharge if your mitigation doesn't require it and make up the difference by stacking damage or just hunting alternate set bonuses.

Note that I am not criticizing the proposed design, or using regeneration as a mitigation tool. I am talking about the goal of keeping Blasters going by giving them tools to manage out of combat recovery. I am not particularly excited by that specific design goal for blasters.

Why bring it up if I have no problem with regeneration as a mitigation tool? It is because when this goes live I would like to be examining the practical effect it has on combat mitigation rather than getting hung up on how great it is recovering between fights because blasters can already do that.

I don't use Aid Self for in combat healing. It has two uses for blasters, at least before defense stacks. First, it means I always go into a fight at full health. That one fact cuts down on defeats by a large margin. Second, when I do get into trouble I can kite out of line of sight and recover health quickly. That means I can often defeat the troublesome group because I can turn around and engage the train of enemies chasing me.

For defense based defense I find burst healing to be more useful than Regeneration. Don't get me wrong, on a high resist build or a situation where you have a lot of little attacks adding up regeneration is great. And I do find situations where strong regeneration is a great tool, even on blasters. Since defense also staves off CC, however, I tend to stack it in favor of resists.

Practically speaking, I have the DFB boost to endurance recovery up to level 22, and at 20 I grab the Miracle +Recovery and the Performance Shifter +Endurance shortly thereafter from tip missions and merits. Add in frankenslotting cheap IOs and endurance isn't an issue early on. Giving blasters endurance recovery is great, especially since I can build for alternate set bonuses later on, but it isn't a pressing issue I feel needs to be addressed. It's a great perk, but it isn't a tool that I envision will help blasters from faceplanting.

If there were not severe reductions in debuffs for fighting up level I'd agree with you. Smoke Grenade quickly loses effectiveness against harder opponents while straight defense is always effective.

I am not claiming they don't spend endurance on attacks. Every DPS character is constantly attacking. That is the norm for this game. Blasters don't have more endurance cost than other DPS classes, and they have substantially less toggle costs. Solving their endurance issues is easier, at least for me, than for toggle hungry DPS classes.

Here is my issue with this goal. I have that already with Aid Self. While it is annoying to me that I feel compelled to take Aid Self on all my blaster builds, especially since the only animation for it is tech/science specific, it completely solves the issue of between fight health. If blasters can't leverage the coming buffs for substantial in fight mitigation then they really haven't gained anything except a moral victory for people who don't like Aid Self.

As for endurance management, blasters are the lightest in terms of using endurance. A buff to that is cool and all, but it won't make blasters more fun leveling. They just don't have enough in set toggles to need that much endurance recovery. I don't even notice endurance recovery until the forties when I have Tough, Weave, my Epic defense toggle, and maybe Manuevers if I built that way.

The reason /Energy is a beast is because Scorpion Shield plus Power Boost can pretty easily reach the soft cap, and even if Power Boost isn't perma it is up enough to absorb each alpha. Not only will that defense stave off CC, but it also means I don't have to waste animation time on mitigation tools (outside activating Power Boost as I approach a spawn) when I could be dealing more damage.

But I am in the minority in that I am not impressed with Drain Psyche. I understand it can be awesome if leveraged with high defense against specific groups while farming, but anything substantially less than soft cap (so you can survive the incoming damage from a group large enough to leverage the full effect) and the power just can't be leveraged to full effect. It's the kind of power I would spec into once I hit 47.