Novacat_NA

I'd say that the 'high' part of our damage being melee, we're at even more risk when trying to deal equal-damage. Sure, some of those are actually PBAoE or 20ft bursts, but those still have a chance of letting the guy get his punch off... which can mean death.

My biggest problem with that statement is that it is ONLY true if one assumes the scrapper has completely omitted his secondary. The Ranged-damage vs Melee-damage is actually based-on and balanced out on the HP difference. In THIS case, the scrapper IS at a somewhat higher risk, enough to justify the higher cap, especially if you combine this with the fact that most of their attacks are 'lethal-type'.

Of course if the scrapper DOES take some secondaries, this whole idea falls apart at the seams, and even comparing power-pool defenses alone(the only available blaster defenses before the APPs) the scrapper gets better survivability.

And then the mezzing begins....

Debuffs definitely would've been the way...

Well, considering the sheer number of "defeat all", "defeat X", and/or "rescue Y" where one hostage is in the boss room (you don't have to DEFEAT him, you just have to kill the hostage-guards while being SHOT AT by said boss), not counting the occasional "key required" that may involve a boss...

It was pretty damn hard to do even 1/3 the existing missions of the game without having to defeat a boss, let-alone not having to at least FACE one...

As far as your scrapper is concerned, that's nothing. Blasters were being regularly one or two-shotted at range [the whole less-damage-at-range IS balanced out by the HP difference... something I wish people kept in mind] by 'unspecialised' bosses (those that aren't particularly specialised one way or the other). Range-specialist bosses would usually one-shot us if +1 our level, and do so right through increased-density and/or fortify at +2.

You couldn't rely on a massive alpha-strike (not that you really can now as far as bosses are concerned) to take him down thanks to the increased HP they had, either. All the thing needed was ONE lucky shot, sometimes two, and you were down for the count. And that's not even counting the mezzers... when a boss's Grav-distortion knocks off about 1/8th your health per tick...

so what you're saying is that status effects are NOT meant to affect tankers and scrappers?

It would mean they get the damage, the defense, AND don't have to deal with mezzing like all the squishies?

So in other words...

Scrappers: high damage, high defense, med.hp, supposed to be immune to mezzing.

Tankers: med-high damage, top defense, high HP, supposed to be immune to mezzing.

Defenders: Low damage, low HP, moderate defense(affects team though), vulnerable to mezzing.

Blasters: Moderate-high damage [moderate at range, high in melee], low HP, low-nil defense, vulnerable to mezzing.

Controllers: low damage (moderate-high in APP), low HP, defense/mezzing: indirect [has mezzes, which mitigates damage, has pets, which mitigate damage and mezzing, but has relatively low defense himself]

so uh... what'll blasters be getting? because I've no trouble selecting my targets at range or melee with my scrapper [its called a mouse cursor and/or the 'follow' button]

A good equaliser is actually those -res and -def attacks.

I can easily imagine more sets like 'sonic' and 'rad'. If every attack that hit whittled down your defense, or had a chance of debuffing resistance by 2-3%/hit, that would handle herding better than mezzes. These could easily be capped so as to not cause negative resistance, unlike specialised debuffs [sonic or tar-patch for example]. In other words it works as an overbearing system of sorts, where too many additional attackers mean even your stone armor starts chipping. Bosses probably would contribute a slightly larger percentage, meaning taking on those 4 +3 chief soldiers might be a little risky.

Alternatively, perhaps a short 0.5mag chance (5-10 seconds, 25% chance?) could be tacked onto various 'standard' minion attacks later in the game versus the tankers and scrappers only [same as how voids only stun kheldians to my knowledge]. This creates an 'overbearing' effect, where standing up to THAT MANY targets for too long starts being hazardous to even a tanker.

Spend a little too long facing this kind of assault and enough dents get made in your armor that some lucky sleep-dart finally finds its way to your skin...


Obviously these would be relatively mild so that you don't feel it against a standard-sized group, and don't really risk it unless really unlucky against a 'large-team' mob, though more than this starts stacking up dangerously.

Keep in mind this is probably far less heavy of a nerf than what could happen, and pretty much only punishes standing there to eat lunch or herding entire floors at once. Tanks and scrappers would still be far, far more survivable than blasters, and ranged-mezzes themselves would probably be reduced in frequency/number, helping all non tankers/scrappers.

for me its area-effects... I'll hit all except 1 or sometimes 2 for perhaps 10-20 times in a row [this is over a LONG time since I'm only using E.torrent and Tripmine]... Just as you'd expect from 95% accuracy.

And then, bam. complete miss [accompanied by a total and utter lack of aggro if its the mines]. Not "missed 4 and hit 1 even though 95 means I should be hitting all except 1 or 2 ALL the time", but an actual total whiff. NO damage to anything, sea of 'MISS'es if it was nova and/or E.torrent that went off.

But its never the slivers for me. those always end up dying [their existance is bad enough]. Getting'em to there though...

[ QUOTE ]
Sure, but first...why is blaster TI through an EPP better than scrapper TI through a secondary?

[/ QUOTE ]

The only reason I can see for this, though its a pretty good one in my mind, is that we've got very little [none in fact unless you use 'tough'] other +res to stack it with, and very little defense to stack it with also.

Since the higher you go the better the return on adding more [until you cap of course] for defense and resists, and since they stack together, we're effectively still getting less out of TI than a scrapper with slightly lower % from it. If I were to guess [and I did], I'd say that's why its slightly higher.

I don't mind that theirs does knockdown instead of knockback... but the crits + %cap getting combined is a slap in the face, considering they're not losing anything for it [you know, like HP+mezprotect+defense+res all combined].

However, I'd rather see OUR powers get upgraded so as to be superior, rather than see theirs nerfed.

edit: on the endurance costs issue; on every team I'm on, the first ones to run out of blue-juice are always the blasters [and sometimes the defender]... Well, until stamina kicks in at 20 and the bar all-but-stops dropping completely...

I actually wouldn't mind losing THIS perk in exchange for some REAL ones. This one helps us mildly in the early game [that part we breeze through? maybe this is helping it a bit for that?] and doesn't really apply in the lategame [for most blasters I've teamed with, and of course the ones I'm playing as] unless we're REALLY overdoing it.

I will admit that I'm not using hasten though; but the 'pauses' in my attack chain are very few and far-between [Torrent, Snipe, bolt, blast, powerpush, bolt..], so except in the really really long battles... nothing carrying one or two blues per mission won't fix.

His version might crit, too, and uses scrapper damage caps [500%]

They thought something that 'probably will' take out 8/10ths of the less-than-red minions, half the lt's and none of the bosses in exchange for waltzing into melee, dropping what little toggles we have and burning out all our endurance was balanced? ... well maybe, but WAY too situational to be of real use.

Range enhancements are laughable. Problem is how low they are [20% means you need 5 just for you power-bolt to even out with the average late 30's SMG], and what you're paying for this:

DAMAGE ENHANCEMENTS ARE NOT ENHANCING DAMAGE. That's right, damage enhancements do little more than allow you to keep up. They're an actual boost right when you get'em, but enemy HP scales up such that for the other 10 levels you have'em for, they're actually doing little more than letting you keep up.

So taking those range enhancements means your damage no longer keeps up [by this I mean you can't take out minions in as many shots as you used to back in steel canyon with DO's or atlas with TO's], making the fight longer and thus more dangerous to you. You're burning off more than half of your damage JUST TO CATCH UP to a large number of *minion* ranges!

Of course by around level 40, we're lacking the next step in enhancements, probably 50% [the hamios would still be special since they affect 2 at once]. we've also been having trouble keeping up due to the cap, which we started being able to hit back in the 20's.

Tankers don't take mobs down all that fast, true. Unfortunately in my experience this is because said herd is red or purple to the guy... not yellow.

Fact is that in the WORST CASE scenario, a character deals 60% of our damage. And even then, it seems controllers MIGTH be dealing equal-to or HIGHER damage than we can using their APPs.

This is rather serious, especially since that's just on actual damage, and not counting any of the buffs/debuffs/control/defenses/pet-armies that other AT's have all capped out.

Oh great, so we deal an average of 10% more damage, if we ignore the crits than most scrappers [BI is a tiny bit lower, but its mainly due to the lethal damage type scraps get]... Who are virtually immune to status-effects and can easily take 10x our damage.

Oh how wonderful, we get 20% better damage than tankers, who only die because their computer bogged down from having so many enemies taunted around'em that the toggles dropped because they'd autoed the wrong attack while gone to lunch.

Joy of joys, 33% better damage than defenders and controllers, well minus those little debuffs they can use (and all the buffs they can use defensive or otherwise), and that possibly-higher controller APP blasting damage, and the army of fire-imps or phantasms... Which they're dealing out while far safer [my best 'blaster' is currently a Dark/Dark].

Besides, you're better off doing melee damage with those nice defenses once things can outrange everyone; its no different for you while that whole 'ranged defense/advantage' falls apart for those that needed it in the first place...

Um, I've always remembered Buildup as +100% and aim as 62.5%... I really don't know where you got that 65 and 35...

That's the reason its often recomended to ALTERNATE Aim and Buildup, rather than stack'em.

By the mid 20's, most self-respecting blasters are at ~266% or ~300% for devices. That means ~366 while buildup is on, or 362.5 while Aim is on for device users. That's right, with a single small-red-skittle blasters are already capping their damage, team or no team.

This is critical to understand since it makes everything we say about other builds coming too close, equating or in a few comparative choices surpassing our damage. Basically, what you're seeing in the mid 20s and above is us already at or negligibly-close-to the 400% cap mark.

The ONLY reason blasters are even remotely far-ahead damage-wise of everyone in the early game is that we have little else to slot, really. Other ATs are either concentrating on hold-duration or their defensive powers. That's why in the 30s, everyone suddenly catches up to us.

The *perception* that we do great damage is just an illusion brought on by the fact that while everyone's slowly slotting stuff for later, we're working on our attacks [they're all we have anyways]. Afterwards we work on, uh... well, more attacks mostly, and a small handful of utilitarian powers if we have'em... usually stealth. Everyone's topped out their defenses and starts working on dealing damage, to make the killing-in-safety faster. But damage soon starts lagging behind all that mitigation(for both sides, and in ALL its forms) and those defenses/resists suddenly become far far more valuable...

Keep all that in mind when you read all our suggestions, and how most of them don't involve upping our damage cap [or base]...

So in other words, the blaster was annihilating minions, because they were

A) herded by the tanker (and thus attacking noone else for the MOST part)
AND
B) Locked down by AoE control effects.

In other words, the blaster was annihilating things because they were too busy shooting at someone else, AND completely helpless and thus unable to turn around and turn him into a bloody carpet-stain when he DID get their attention.


1) Actually, Targets that haven't been specifically aggroed [ie; taken damage/taunt/effect] but are just along for the ride (ie the 20 guys that wake up because you killed their buddy) have a nasty tendency to go straight for whoever's the quickest/easiest kill.

That's why running in and slashing the boss will often get them firing at the rest of your team too (with the void going straight for the squid if left to his own devices for example).

2) That's not ranged damage keeping him alive. That's just "getting too close getting him killed". "Ranged damage keeping him alive" would be better demonstrating by your Regen scrapper jousting a +4 elite boss so as to not get one-shotted, and thus win.

Yes the blaster's "safer" at range than up-close, but only because he's even weaker up-close than at range. He doesn't have any range-defense or anything of the sort, he just dies kinda somewhat slightly slower.

If Achilees was that vulnerable everywhere EXCEPT his heel(what with getting one-shotted by a hit to the foot), would you say his heel is his defense? or would you say he's a bloody wimp, just slightly less prone to dying if you whack him in the back of the foot instead of the skull?

We're kinda somewhat less-prone to ultrafastdeath if you whack us from afar. You want safe, look at someone with invulnerability power set. That's "Safer in melee than in range". We're still more vulnerable than anyone else at range... we just happen to die faster in melee.

3) well on that one, ouch. could've been anyone, depending on level/powers (sometimes its a bit too deep to superspeed out of)

Lets take a look at that description, anyways:
"The Blaster is an offensive juggernaut, This hero can deal a ton of distance from a distance."

Well, ton is relative isn't it... scrapper ranged attacks can crit, and controller fire-blasts apparently have better damage than our own. Also our stronger powers all have this particular lack of range I like to call "Melee".

Matter of fact that should read "Can dish out a moderate-to-heavy amount of damage from slightly beyond melee range", considering we end up with less range than villains.

" But the Blaster must be careful, because he's somewhat fragile compared to other heroes."

Somewhat? Somewhat would go with my idea of giving us a small amount of defenses. Tactical playing is more of a jack, really... Take a look at all the margin for error you can do with a tanker. YES being smart will help, but the fact that they can take just about anything tends to cover a lack of tactics a hell of a lot more than most would like to admit. Defense king, Damage queen, Tactical's the jack. but ANYONE can be good at playing, so it doesn't even fall into AT abilities.

Right now its "least defended of all archetypes, barring a specific squid-like form toggle used by the epic AT". Even controllers can get some mitigation; things tend not to mezz YOU too much when they're busy with all those pets... or held and helpless. Somewhat would be maybe a 20~30% and 1 point of mez resistance once all slotted up. That's NOT counting taking 8+ pool powers and running 6 toggles at a time here... Before APP's since those blur lines for EVERYONE.

"The Blaster can't stand toe to toe with most villains at melee rangefor long. His best defense is a great offense!"

Ok that part's true. Note how it doesn't mention he's SAFER at range, but rather that he's far weaker in melee.

Doesn't do anything to explain why all our strongest powers are melee ranged though... Also should read "his ONLY defense is a somewhat above average offense".


If we're to "not infringe on the bosskilling role of scrappers", then why is everyone and their mother wasting minions faster and safer (or as fast and safer, or slightly slower and far far far safer) than we are?

Considering all we DO have is damage, and a handful of single-target holds or caltrops, I'd say everyone is infringing on OUR territory rather heavily, what with the high defense and nearly-or-equally-high(arguably higher in a few specific comparisons) offense.

Mind explaining to me WHY everyone claims we shouldn't step on other people's toes, while they're walking on our heads? A bit hypocritical if you ask me. If we're to be boosted in a way that doesn't step on other people's toes, we'd need a gamebreaking damage boost to bring our damage/defense ratio up to par with a tanker's damage/defense.

That's at LEAST 1.5x our current base damage, and means we'd probably be one-shotting purple minions with 5-slotted snipe. Personally I don't think that's very balanced. But then again, if we're "fine as is", there's only one other way for us to be near the top of the bellcurve.. and I'd rather not see that one swung yet again.

Ah. that one.

I guess back when things didn't outrange us by 120+ feet, we WERE pretty damn powerful... and if most didn't have ranged attacks at ALL, then with our damage might even have been outright broken should there've been something like caltrops to play with...

We all know how great a help getting that 2nd shot in BEFORE the return-alpha starts up is, over in the low levels... THAT is "range=defense".

Once they outrange us though... it either flies out the window, or we waste 4 range SO's on bringing it up to par, defenestrating our damage on the way....


So yeah, I agree with you... perhaps back then range/control or range/defense would've been broken, but right now, defense is king because of the way defense/resistance stacking work.


I'd suggest some low ranged defense or damage resistance... relatively cheap since we really DO need it... say 4 slots to cap at... 20% of one or the other?

That would give us some very decent breathing space, but far, FAR from overwhelming, which would eventually evolve the blaster into "moderate" defenses by the end of it once the APP's kick in.

25~40% barring any pool powers is nothing to laugh at [hey, its one or sometimes TWO extra hits from a boss], a single point of mez resistance would pretty much double our chances against such bosses (two-shots instead of one to disable us for that kill), Does NOT step on scrapper toes and the such [range simply ISN'T an advantage to that degree], and would further stack with whatever a team used on us to make us relatively survivable as long as there's a defender or controller in the group.

This would of course be taken as a power, or split into the existing toggles of the set (so as to total out to a similar amount), preferably just one or two powers though.

Combined with a slight reduction in AoE aggro (so we can fire off two area attacks before the *average* tanker loses them completely to us instead of just one), that would make us quite effective in teams.

Actually, considering what was wrong with that internal server, wouldn't it STILL have been showing us as weaker than the rest?

Offense stays effectively the same [# of hits/target stays the same, matter of fact it stays the same despite conning] and defense just simply jacked up for everyone versus higher mobs...

In other words, We'd still have been outranged, outgunned, etc compared to others...

Everyone knows you have to use Blazing Aura on him. That'll make him think twice about...
uh...
well it won't stop him from hitting you... and I'm not sure he's even thought in the first place...

... um, "you're obviously a crappy player if you can't figure it out"? yeah that must be it. Its not that combustion and BA are useless, its that we don't know how to use them. Proper herding techniques would let us make use of our extreme defenses to...
..

waaait a second here...

Actually if you look carefully you'll see every time I've suggested something like this, its been for SO-time and higher only. in other words the base damage is identical to scrappers until 22~24, at which point it quickly jumps up [in the span of 2-3 levels] to the new amount.

Thing about teams is that we're almost always already at or near the cap once we get our hands on SO's; so really, damage buffs aren't what we need in teams later on anyways even right now; 400% is 400%, and the most that defender can do for us is make save us an enrage or two, or make us need buildup somewhat kinda less often. So it wouldn't change that aspect of teaming all that much, while the small handful of extra defensive slots would get to stack with whatever forcefields, fortitude or other stuff they use on us.

Its true that there isn't much room left for those extra slots. Perhaps 3 or 4 by level 50 that find room in some defensive power that wouldn't otherwise be six-slotted, though that's already better than nothing.

The main effect would be to allow those other enhancements in the attacks. Yes, that could mean less dependance on hasten/stamina. Or a marginal range increase to at least equal the CoT.

I definitely WOULD love for buildup to be seperate from the enhancements... or perhaps a scaling base-damage modifier...

25% at level 1, 50% by level 50... but applied to actual base damage [like switching to nova-form], and thus affected by the enhancements...

Though that might be a rather nasty blow to Devices unless the drone gave a mild boost of its own.

That's pretty well written.

The safest I've felt facing ANYTHING is when that snipe opener causes that freak-tank to start RUNNING AWAY. This really only happens with them though, but considering I don't really mind all the 'scattering' (the only advantage of range over melee currently is not-having to tap the 'follow' key), I'd love to see things start to panic when I snipe them [from a measly 150ft... our sniper BB guns seem to go well with villains that can't seem to break a parking-meter if given an hour and cyber-upgrades], rather than turn around and frag me like a clay-pigeon...

Well, way I see it is that A) buildup and Aim can easily be modified to either alter base damage to a lesser degree instead of enhancing it so as to give that bonus independant of the cap (but still reasonable).

This DOES mean we can still cap with the enhancements, and unfortunately some WILL do that. This does allow people to do this, potentially reducing the use of Buildup and Aim or team damage buffs.

On the other hand, Defenses stack. This means that while we're an offensive juggernaut with or without the team, we're safer in teams, where our mildly-higher-than-current defenses would be bolstered substantially by even fortitude or increase density!

At the same time, since you cap at 95% accuracy, if you REALLY want to cap out your ACC in there like that you can, sure... but one's usually enough for the 95%, and you can always pop aim/buildup for heavier enemies. Besides, don't some scrappers slot two Acc in their attacks?

You could, on the other hand, put in that extra range slot, and a recharge reducer with no loss of damage performance.

I'd stick with the drone and Aim, throwing recharge and/or range into my attacks instead of ACC in the now-superfluous 4th~6th damage slots. I could always blow aim or pop a red when I needed that last 20% or so...

Obviously my idea has a few holes that would need taking care of, since it does alter things quite a bit, but I don't think making fire MORE useless would be all that bad a thing... not if we're all trying to get the set completely reworked.

Still, problem is that as far as our survival is concerned this falls to one of three specific things:

1)Aggro-specialised Tanker (the guy just using taunt once in a while won't cut it)

2) total lockdown (but at that point, what use are we? and more importantly, controllers once they get their pets... have their own damage-dealers... without the xp-loss.)

3) forcefields (.... sorta iffy, especially against purples).


Fact is, other than those three in particular, there's not really anything to 'defend' us. You don't NEED to take the aggro control three-steps further if you're not going to try to keep a blaster alive.

Can a team really protect a blaster? Sure; if they happen to be of rather specific AT's and builds.

Do they really have any reason to want to do so other than as an incidental side-effect of having powers that happen to help protect the blaster? ... not in the least.

Basically, if you just increase mob sizes, you're forcing the situation. Even with a blaster, there's still the question of how fast that AoE damage can be dealt. and as a matter of fact, even with the current lower numbers, we're dying.

The AoE problem is actually two-fold.

1) the aggro it generates seems exponential, or at least greatly increased to ALL mobs involved for EVERY mob involved [aggro resonance of some sort].

2) you need 2 or 3 AoE shots to take down a group, no matter how many are in there.

Current problem: Things will either get busted by the alpha-strike (say, yellow or lower), at which point it doesn't matter how many there are except for your xp bar.

OR, they DON'T die from the first two shots and thus get a second volley in, killing the blaster before the third [or fourth or fifth that would be required] shot. This is what we currently see when teaming with purple-hunter teams, and why we become useless.

Adding more enemies just increases the chance we'll die between the first and second shot, OR the XP.

It doesn't increase the effectiveness of the team to protect us... as a matter of fact the greater number of foes likely decreases their management, as there's more things that get missed by the hold, and there's more enemies, which increases the chance of them breaking-off.

30 enemies at 2/3 health turning to face your blaster, or 20 enemies at 2/3 health turning to face your blaster... there's not all that much of a difference (though it would quicken the whole herding process for those tankers.)



But you're right on the behavior bits... it WOULD be a hard-sell to the scrappers (due to ignorance of the increased boss/LT crit chances)... though it would ultimately help them [headsplitter crit won't help much on a minion that gets one-shotted anyways, but that's increased chance of critting the boss]...

Well that's one of the ways my suggestion of lower-cap/higher-scaling (post20) would come in handy.

Scale blaster damage so that starting in the early 20's, when SO's become available, base damage quickly shoots up within 2-4 levels to roughly twice that of scrappers.

"You crazy? that's sick!"

Ah, but not if you drop the cap to, say, 200~250% ! That's right, in one simple fix give us a mild range-boost, mild defensive boost, slight accuracy boost and whatever else the player himself can think of, by simple virtue of not having to 5+1 (or 6 for /dev) damage/acc in every attack!

This means the average power needs two or three SO's in damage to reach full effect with buildup,etc. This means you have either better range/effects on your powers (offensive boost), and/or a few slots to spare to improve defenses, recovery, protection, etc etc etc...

The simple act of having more slots to spare means we get all those minor improvements we're wanting with just one fix. And you don't have to worry about 'secondary' effects of the fix (like how particular boosts in one aspect might lead to uber-builds if combined with some other powers) since that's what you're giving off as the actual 'buff', nice and controlled by slotting!

Damage doesn't really change [right now blaster attacks are all pretty much slotted for that 266.6~300%+BU/AIM setup to reach 400 reliably all the time] since 200% of 200 is the same as 400% of 100... just with less enhancement slots required to hit it.

Also makes teams more valuable to blasters [compensating for the increased death they bring us] thanks to improved effect of power-boost/fulcrum-shift, and even defensive powers [since def/res stack up...]

(one problem though; since temp.powers are based on base damage, that would mean once the scale-up kicks in they'd deal double damage. should be a way around this though...)

Increasing spawn size has some problems... Notably our aggro, and the big question of "will they get packed up fast enough for us to make a difference".

If yes, then as-is nothing's stopping anyone else's AoE powers [including the tanker that herded them] from decimating them.

If no, then those extra enemies mean you either HAVE to have a tanker, due to the massive number of foes that need to be reliably not-shooting at you, or you're in rather deep...

Perhaps if we're to be "minion cleaners" then the trick would be to remove the crits against minions scrappers do, but increase their LT and boss crit-chance by 5% each.

Meanwhile, give us a 10% (and therefore unresistable) damage bonus against minions (5% vs lt's and nothing on bosses), to go with our brand new inherent 5% ranged damage resistance (it ain't much but it'll eventually stack up a tiny bit) and +1 mag.

I very much like that idea.

I've been saying for a long time that the real problem with our damage is that the cap, for the damage dealt when reached, is too high.

Rather than have to boost ourselves up by 500% to reach maximum damage, we should have not MORE damage at the cap, but simply a LOWER CAP. The idea here is that thanks to the fact that you're at the damage cap with LESS enhancements (like, say a 250% that's worth as much as our 400 is right now), you have an easier time without breaking the game. The slots y ou save serve to give a host of minor improvements (bunch of small ones instead of one big change) to defense, range, etc etc...

So when you proposed a moderate-across-the-board "specialisation" option... well lets just say I like a lot.

how I see it working: Depending on the power set, the power would have an average range of roughly 50 feet, Brawl Index of roughly 3.8889, and moderate form/chance of whatever the standard status effect . A shorter ranged, slightly weaker version of the Slug/Blast power. However, it would have a very small AoE [the tiny one like some rockets/grenades have in the game]. Recharge would be 12 second base.

The specialisation trick? The power has 1.3x the standard damage cap(so 520%). Accuracy affects it normally, but Range enhancements are worth triple value (this isn't actually too bad, 50 * 2.8 = 140ft. that's 3 range enhancements there), Damage is worth double. Cost would likely be about 25end, to compensate for the relatively low recharge and good power.

With full damage enhancements, you get a short-range AoE attack dealing 20.2228 BI to 2-3 packed foes (Blaze would do 23.5556). More powerful than fireball for sure, but would make a very interesting replacement for the 32, wouldn't it?

Alternatively you could slot 4 range and 2 damage, and thus get a 170ft attack dealing 6.479 (less than a 5 damage burst) to a tiny area, though buildup and aim would up that a bit more.

See, to me its always been the opposite. Maybe I'm just stat-obsessed, but I've always gotten far more attached to a character I knew inside-out than one where I had to guess at relative ability. Like my hackmaster characters, or customised Heavy Gear, in all those tabletops. I knew the to-hit, armorHP regression, damage, average damage, average damage with penetration rolls, average crit-severity, average initiative-result, and every other tiny little detail about one of my fighters.... And I never roleplayed more with any character than that one. Didn't need to think about the numbers or chances whatever the situation; I knew them and simply went along in character. So did the rest of the party.

Because you already KNOW the stats on YOUR end, but not on the enemies side [you can learn them, but that's where the variety and environment comes in to smack you a new one when you finally manage to get the ropes on one gang!], you have a pretty good idea what you can or can't handle, but without excessive testing (ie; 3 hours of grinding) first.

All that time I'm not spending trying to figure out exactly what that newest power can do, before even spending time trying to figure out what it can do to different targets, is time spent loitering around chatting, roleplaying, or thinking about something other than the numbers.

I feel that when you can just pop open the game, know what you'll be able to do, you can enjoy it a lot more than if you spend all that time trying to figure it out.

There's nothing wrong with NOT being told, if that's part of the game, but fact is most of us will try to anyways, thus leading to things like the brawl index guide. its a matter of saving some time, especially when a "Superior" attack is barely above "Moderate" but far above your "heavy" and equal to your "extreme".

The fact that the descriptor says "superior" for example is no guarantee that my blaster's an offensive juggernaut. But it can be a lot clearer for the players [saving the devs a lot of testing time; we can calculate the stuff FOR them and all they have to check is if the numbers match up or not, rather than spend 10 hours reproducing the results] and help out with balancing if the numbers are there.

For one thing, range-to-enemy would be a nice thing to have in our target-data box. Would let us get some hard numbers on just how much more range the little bastards (and their LT's, AND their bosses, AND of course their snipers) have than all of us...

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The "roles" question is best addressed by Statesman - AFAIK scrappers dmg > Tanks. Tanks def/res > Scraps. Blasters = dmg via range. These are gross generalities.


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That's actually one of the things that's been driving us blasters completely up the wall (for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the perception that range is proportionally safer than melee), as I'm sure you've noticed in our corner of the forum! (don't worry, we'll be patient, we just wanna make sure no one forgets.. well, and convince those that think we're death-machines or something!)

Still, you guys have done quite a bit. Between things like the test threads and the more recent patch explanations, I really don't see how anyone could say the devs aren't listening...