Ohms__NA

I was there. I was running an Elec/Elec throughout beta and most of the way to I2. These "improvements" at the end of beta are about as relevant today as the cries of "City of Blasters".

Gotcha. Wasn't sure where you were coming from.

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If you want to play an AT with defensive capacity that does pretty darn good damage, roll a Scrapper. If you want to play an AT that can't take much damage but can dish out a truly sick amount of damage, roll a Blaster.

At least that's the distinction as I see it. Rather, the distinction as I feel it should be.


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the problem is that, the distinction isn't there.

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Exactly my point. The distinction isn't there... and it damn well should be.

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if you're looking for a balance between scrappers and blasters, stop. there isn't one. I'm not saying scrappers need to be nerfed at all... far from it. i love scrappers. just comparing them is pretty weak.

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Bullhockery! Comparing them isn't weak. (BTW, I'm not calling for them to be nerfed either) Ideally, Tankers have better defensive capacity than Scrappers, but Scrappers have a better offensive capacity than Tankers. Scrappers have a better defensive capacity than Blaster, but Blasters have a better offensive capacity than Scrappers. How the hell is this setup not fair? Furthermore, how the hell is this not balance for that matter?

You trade defensive capacity for offensive capacity and vice versa. That's the deal. Risk vs. Reward. It's why a Defender's blast has 66% of the strength of a Blaster's blast. They sell off that other 34% for an increase to their defensive capacity. Okee-doke. Fair enough, but riddle me this; How the hell can trading nothing for gobs and gobs of everything even remotely approach the idea of fairness?

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If I melee all the time, why not play a scrapper, then I get mez protection, a higher damage cap and better defenses.

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Because, and this where I have to disagree with States, the Blaster AT does damage, from anywhere, yet cannot take it, from anywhere.

If you want to play an AT with defensive capacity that does pretty darn good damage, roll a Scrapper. If you want to play an AT that can't take much damage but can dish out a truly sick amount of damage, roll a Blaster.

At least that's the distinction as I see it. Rather, the distinction as I feel it should be.

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I have a blapper I leveled to 28. It was somewhat painful but I had some fun, but I stopped playing that character. No point when I can run a Kheldian.

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Kheldians are a different kettle of fish... er... okay, bad choice of saying there. Khelds are a reward AT for getting a regular AT to lvl 50. They infringe a bit on everyone.

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-Electric Blast: The Most Scandalous Black-Eye on the Dev's Reputations to date: This set has always had crappy Damage because it was expected to Dominate in PvP. ...But now that PvP is here, Endurance Drain is Nerfed to 25% Per a Last-Minute rule. PvP DID effect PvE NEGATIVELY...Devs should be beaten with rubber hoses for breaking that unwritten law.

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Quite right!

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-Devices: Mines are exploited while the rest of the set can't even begin to compare

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ROFL Yeah right.

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If you have great defensive capacity you don't need to take out your foes with the same urgency that you do if you have lousy defensive capacity. The range at which your foes are is irrelevant.

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And this is what is seen when a Scrapper leaps into a group of +4 mobs and beats them down.

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And your point is....?

With all due respect, capping Blaster damage below that of Scrappers because of range just doesn't jive. Giving Scrappers better defensive capacity than Blasters? Okay, that's fair. But giving them a higher damage cap than the so-called "Kings of Damage" the so-called "Offensive Juggernauts"?

If you have great defensive capacity you don't need to take out your foes with the same urgency that you do if you have lousy defensive capacity. The range at which your foes are is irrelevant.

Call me kooky, but shouldn't something like the following apply?

[*]Tankers should have better defense than Scrappers, but Scrappers should have better offense than Tankers.
[*]Scrappers should have better defense than Blasters, but Blasters should have better offense than Scrappers.[/list]
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And, of course, there's the complaint that some Secondaries have too many melee attacks - something that the Blaster avoids at all costs.

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Uhm, if melee is something Blasters should avoid at all costs (and I'm not saying it is, Risk vs. Reward should apply here) how in the name of all that's good and tasty in Odin's beard did this puppy hit the shelves with this many Blaster melee attacks in the first place?

The shadow entered the Gish, continuing its general southwesterly zigzag path. One of the few remaining streetlamps flickered to life as the shadow ducked around a dumpster and up and over a wall and into the remains of what appeared to be an old church. It circled the perimeter before finally settling in over what it had been searching for.

The prone form was partially covered by stone blocks, two foot by three foot, held together by mortar. By the cut of the stone, this had been a section of the church’s wall. It was male, dressed mostly in black and approximately six and a half feet in, what would be height if the man had been upright. His face was obscured by the debris, more building blocks, that littered the floor. Smokey tentacles reached out towards the wall section. Without making contact, the heavy stones levitated gently into the air, clearing the prone figure before settling back down a foot or two away.

“Christopher Logan?” the shadow asked. Its voice flickered in and out and the prone figure wasn’t sure exactly what he was hearing. He was sure that he was hallucinating. He fought to open his bruised, swollen eyes. All he could make out through the slits was a patch of darkness slightly darker than the growing gloom of sunset on King’s Row. The darkness bore the unmistakable honeyed voice of a torch singer as it stabilized. But he wasn’t hearing it from feet away. He was hearing it right inside his ear. It wasn’t like telepathy. He’d run across his share of telepaths in his time. This was something different. He chalked it up to a concussion. Maybe a near-death experience. After the beating he had just received at the hands of the squad of Paragon Protectors, either of the two were distinct possibilities.

“Christopher Logan?” the shadow asked again.

This time Ohms snapped his right eye open. The effort took a lot out of him. He remained where he had fallen, prone, his left ear on the ground. His arms and legs splayed out around him. He peered thru the shattered remains of a targeting reticule that was attached to his ripped mask. Fortunately, the dark blotch came clearly into focus. Unfortunately, it didn’t take the form of the dropdead dame the voice tricked him into expecting to see. It remained just a dark blotch floating in a sea of darkness. “You got him,” Ohms croaked.

The shadow seemed to sigh, changing its elevation slightly. “I have been seeking you. There isn’t much time.”

“Time for what lady?” Ohms asked. If this was a near-death experience, it was becoming an annoying one.

“I have been observing you for some time,” the shadow admitted. “I made my decision, but not before you… you…”

“Got my fourth point of contact kicked up around my ears?” he asked.

“I… I’m not sure what you mean,” the shadow said.

“Happens all the time,” Ohms shrugged, but only verbally.

The shadow laughed, a hearty laugh considering its incorporeality. Then it caught itself and reminded Ohms that there wasn’t much time. “You are gravely wounded.”

“Yeah,” Ohms conceded, coughing up more blood. “Noticed that too.”

“We do not have time for this,” the shadow said curtly. “If we do not act quickly, you will perish and I will need to find another.”

“Another what?” Ohms asked.

“Host,” the shadow replied.

“A host?” Ohms asked.

"A suitable host,” the shadow replied.

“You mean,” Ohms asked. “Like a parasite?”

“It is more of a symbiotic relationship,” the shadow corrected. “But only if you are willing. That is very important. And only if you are suitable.”

“Suitable?” Ohms chuckled. This was the first time he noticed that lack of sensation in his legs. His arms weren’t doing much better. The ‘pins and needles’ feeling was beginning to fade from them as well. Not a good sign. “Lady, right now I’m about the biggest lemon from the tree that grows in every junkyard from here to Tennessee.”

The shadow didn’t know how to reply to that. “I can tend to your wounds, but…”

“But?” Ohms asked.

“But first we would have to merge,” the shadow replied sullenly. “And I have yet to fully explain it in order for you to make an informed decision. And as I have said, that is very important.”

“Lady, I’ve got nothing but time,” Ohms said. The stars were beginning to creep into the edges of his vision. “Not that I have a lot of it, mind you. Let’s start with what makes me suitable. Bloodtype? Showsize? Powers?”

Again, the shadow didn’t know how to reply to this. “You do not have powers. Not any longer.”

“Yeah,” Ohms said, thinking back to the minutes immediately preceding his getting faceplanted. “Noticed that one too. Got nerfed by ol’ Shovelface’s goons. Then got well and truly pwned by them too. All in all, it’s been a pretty crappy day.”

“I found you suitable because of your will to fight,” the shadow explained. “To fight the good fight against forces doing what they do, simply because they can. Against those who have been corrupted by their great power. I do not have time to explain, but this is what makes you a very suitable candidate for me. I have… amends to make.”

“Amends?” Ohms asked. This was getting stranger by the minute. Too bad he didn’t have enough of them left to see how strange they could truly get.

“My… race,” the shadow continued. “Has done… things. Terrible things.”

“Join the club, lady.” Ohms chuckled ruefully. “It ain’t exactly all bunnies and rainbows around here.”

The shadow hovered, remained silent.

“Will or not,” Ohms said, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m pretty busted up here, and even if I wasn’t, my powers are toast and hot lead hasn’t proved to be much in the way of fending off goons that can heal quicker than you can shoot them while blasting you to so much conductive jelly.”

“If we merge…” the shadow trailed off. “You will have powers. But that isn’t the way I wish to do this. I do not want to hold the promise of power over your head like some sort of temptation. Some sort of deal with…”

“With the devil?” Ohms asked. The corner of his eyed turned up slightly. About all he could muster in the way of making it clear he was joking.

The shadow gained altitude and seemed to shake from side to side as if agitated. “I am not the devil.”

“Take it easy, lady.” Ohms assured, “I was only joking.”

“You do not understand,” the shadow replied. “My race… We have done terrible things. Wicked things. It is a… difficult reputation to live down. Even when you renounce what your race has done. What it still does.”

Ohms didn’t reply.

“Christopher Logan?” the shadow asked.

Ohms didn’t reply.

“Christopher Logan?” the shadow asked again, insistently this time.

Ohms eked his right eyelid open again.

The shadow dropped altitude, closing within inches of Ohms’s bruised and battered face, and shook with even more agitation than when it had been insulted. “There is not much time. Do I have your permission to merge with you?”

“You get to make amends?” Ohms asked.

“Yes,” replied the shadow. “We will make amends.”

“And I get to keep in the fight?” Ohms asked.

“Yes,” replied. “We will continue the good fight.”

Ohms thought it over, “One thing.”

“And that is?” the shadow asked.

“What’s your name?”

“My name,” said the shadow. “You would not be able to pronounce it.”

“That’s okay,” Ohms replied. “Tell me anyway.”

The shadow did. But she had been right. He doubted he’d ever be able to pronounce it, let alone write it out. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was the blows to the head. The repeated blows to the head. Maybe it was his life-force fading away. But he caught enough of it that sounded familiar. “Okay Velda,” he said. His eyelids slipping shut, darkness engulfing him. “Let’s merge.”

<<Fin>>

Christopher Logan was one of those that rushed to Paragon City’s aid all those years ago. A veteran, he reenlisted in the Army at the start of the Rikti invasion. He volunteered for a super solider program that activated an unused portion of the human genome, knicknamed the Tableau Rasa gene. The activation of the Tableau Rasa gene gave the subject superhuman powers and abilities, based on what was used as a catalyst. In Logan’s case, the catalyst was electricity. The resulting transformation gave him almost complete control over one of the rawest, most powerful forms of energy on Earth. He became Ohms – Defender of the Resistance.

By the time his transformation and training were complete, the invasion had been brought to a dramatic conclusion but the need for heroes, both human and superhuman, was still very real. Under the auspices of the Federal government, he was deployed to coordinate the efforts of a civilian supergroup known as The Order. The Order was an odd collection of unique and powerful individuals. Dumping a military man in the middle of them would seem to be little more than a source frustration for both parties, but as it turned out, the very uniqueness of the Order, aided by what the members referred to as The Calling, lent itself to cooperation.

According to Order lore, in times of great need the Cloister, their living headquarters, literally grew itself where it was needed most and began summering heroes to it via the Calling. The Cloister itself looked like a stone cathedral from the middle ages while the reminder of the compound, the Sanctum, took on the appearance of the times and places in which it grew. Through the ages, the Sanctuary met the needs of the civilian populace, providing them with shelter and sustenance while the Times of Great Need continued.

From the Cloister, situated in the neighborhood known as “The Gish”, the Order helped bring the city back from the brink of destruction and prevented various forces from pushing it over that brink, more times than even they could keep count of. One of the most unique qualities of the Cloister was its apparent sentience. Those that did not belong inside, could not gain entrance. When new members joined the Order, the Cloister grew to accommodate them. Any damage that was sustained, was repaired. Not instantly, but the damage was repaired. The energy it embodied was as old as the Earth itself, if not older.

It came as quite a surprise the day it was all but utterly wiped off the Earth itself.

The recent incarnation of the Order had always had a strained relationship with the Statesman. No one could quite put their finger on way. Perhaps they rubbed him the wrong way. Perhaps he rubbed them the wrong way. Perhaps it was a little of both. Perhaps this was why that when it had become apparent that the Statesman had designs on carving out a kingdom for himself, a kingdom known as Paragon City, the Order was one of his harshest critics. Then one of his most determined adversaries.

“Huh, the Cloister,” Ohms croaked, making an effort to spit the blood from his mouth and he laid facedown in the rubble of the ruins of his old supergroup’s headquarters. Its buttresses jutting out the remnants of its palisades looked like the urban version of a carcass in an elephant graveyard. “Never thought I’d see it again.” His entire body ached as he let himself chuckle, “Ironic really.” He hadn’t laughed in years, not that this was a true laugh by any stretch of the imagination. After the Cloister was the destroyed and the Order scattered, Ohms went underground. Until then his tagline Defender of the Resistance had been just that, a tagline. A play on his new name. His hero name. “Heroes,” he spat again.

Many heroes had been willing to throw in with the Statesman. They believed his cause just, if a bit extreme in its execution. But not every hero went along to get along. Several fought against the Statesman. Some through legal channels. Some through attempts at legislation. Others through… force of arms. Or eyebeams. Or laser blasts. The Statesman countered with lawyers, politicians bought and paid for, force of arms, and one other component… his control over the media.

Soon, only those superhumans willing to take his side continued to wear the title of “Hero”. All others, those that resisted, were branded vigilantes, traitors or worse. “Rogue” became a mark of death. Any hero deemed a Rogue could expect a call from the Paragon Protectors. No one knew what to expect after the Protectors came to call. Mostly because the Rogues the Protectors took into custody were never heard from again.

Ohms was one of the first to earn this new title. Not that it came as a shock to anyone who knew, or who had heard of him. For some people, their hero name fit their powers. For others, it fit their personalities. In the case of Ohms, he was definitely one of the latter. An ohm is a unit of electrical resistance and Ohms had resistance by the bucketload. For him, this had always been the case. His electrical attacks were simply one manifestation of this.

After he went underground, he used his electrical blasts do the talking. The electrical blasts he commanded through the activation of his Tableau Rasa gene. But, as the saying goes, “That which is giving can be taken away”. The one thing every Rogue, and every Hero for that matter, feared most, more than the Protectors, more than the Statesman himself, was something Crey Industries called the Nanite Evolutionary Regression Facilitator. This shoulder-fire weapon fired a bolt of energy bearing nanites, tiny robotic devices that sought out whatever it was that made a superhuman more than human… and shut it down.

<<Continued>>

Meanwhile, across the multiverse the smoldering wreckage of a once thriving metropolis sends plumes of acrid smoke into an indifferent sky. The sun itself seemed too war-weary to put much of an effort into burning through the cloud cover. Rusted hulks of automobiles lined the debris-strewn streets of King’s Row. A chill, early Spring wind kicked up dust as it blew through the bombed out buildings. The only things that dared to move were scraps of wind-tossed paper and the feral packs of pets involuntarily abandoned by their owners.

In its heyday the King’s Row neighborhood of Paragon City had been home to all manner of industry, large and small. Communities sprang up to meet the needs of the citizenry that worked here. It had fallen on hard times, even before the invasion, but it had been making a comeback in the months that followed. Now it was a battlefield. Like much of the rest of the city. After the Rikti Invasion and the Statesman’s role in preventing the total subjugation of the human race at the hands of aliens, no one ever would have guessed that it wasn’t the invader’s hands they had to worry about.

At first, in the chaos following the Rikti War, the Statesman and the superhumans that flocked to Paragon City were welcomed as heroes. In those days they were. Now, three years later, the city was a fractured shell of its former self. Force field walls, once erected to separate the parts of the city too damaged by the invasion, and too difficult to cleanse of the various criminal elements that inhabited them, were now used to separate the citizenry into those that supported the Statesman’s stifling utopian vision and those that rejected it.

Following the High Park Uprising, King’s Row met one of the harsher penalties the Statesman could dish out. It was now, like Warsaw during the Second World War, a ghetto and locked down. Those still trapped inside were unable to get out and very little in the way of food and supplies were able to get in. Most of those were either smuggled in by brave souls or were brought in by black-marketeers whose only interest was to make a buck.

A shadow flitted across the ruins. Its inky darkness an umbral speck in a devastated cityscape filled with smoke and shadow. Unless you were paying attention it could easily be passed off as a shadow cast by a scudding cloud. By the way it moved, halted, changed direction, you could tell there was an intelligence, a sentience at work there. But by the way it went out of its way to avoid detection by the squads of the Statesman’s Paragon Protectors, it was obvious that it wasn’t a shadow belonging to one of the large carrion birds that were seemingly everywhere in zones such as King’s Row.

After the invasion, after the reconstruction, the Statesman acquired greater and greater control over every facet of Paragonian life. One of the first steps he took after gaining sufficient power was to seize control over the major corporations like Portal Corp. and Crey Industries. The Communists called it “Nationalizing”. With control over these companies, along with great wealth, came access to the technological advancements they had in development. One such development was the controversial Revenant Program.

Countess Crey had been working on a highly advanced and highly unethical means of supplying a demand for superheroes by cloning heroes that fell during the Rikti invasion. When that source dried up, she moved on to cloning heroes that were still alive and fighting crime. Thanks to the efforts of some brave, well-connected cops and their superhero associates, the program was exposed. The public was outraged. The Statesman used this as justification to oust the Countess and take over Crey Industries.

The irony that these were the very same Paragon Protectors that the Statesman now used to swell his ranks of superpowered stormtroopers isn’t lost on many, especially the heroes that they’re routinely sent out to apprehend… dead or alive.

The shadow saw the approaching squad of Paragon Protectors and dropped under an outcropping of a building leaning so far to one side as to risk toppling over from the slightest gust of wind. The four Protectors flew past in what fighter pilots called a “Finger Four” formation. The two in the back bore weapons, about the size of a rifle. One glowed red around the barrel. The other glowed green. Their uniforms mimicked that of the Statesman. The uniform he adopted shortly after seizing total control over Paragon City. They were jet black; a small red star rode over their left breasts. Their trademark helmets glistened, reflecting what little light seeped into the ghetto.

After they passed, the shadow lifted from its concealment and continued on its way. Floating, searching it seemed, roughly southwest across the devastated zone. Periodically it would drop into the ruins of a building or the empty shell of a car or truck before continuing on its way.

<<Continued>>

Thanks tons. I've kept my altoholism in check long enough to get a character to lvl 50 and I'm in full on "Uhm... which Kheld should I roll up?" mode.

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Its like the holy grail of blasters and its right there in front of me. A dev post admitting there is a problem and saying they will fix it!

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"Look into it" and "fix it" are two different things. Not holding my breath, but I am glad to finally see a red name in here. It's a very positive start.

Cool deal. Way to go States.