Panzerwaffen

I'm not overstating anything. That is exactly what I see when looking at my combat attributes. My brutes used to run a 170%-180% damage bonus from Fury. Now, they run 130%-140%.

I realize the final net effect on damage is not as large, but it is noticeable, at least to me.

You must not look at your actual numbers then.. Otherwise, you'd see that wonderful 30%-40% reduction in damage bonus from the 'new & improved' Fury.

Heck yeah! I just played around in Mids' for a bit and came up with a build that has:

* 102.5% global recharge
* 1.1s downtime on Hasten
* 2.7s downtime on Energize.
* Shadow Meld up every 24.5 seconds.
* 430% regen w/ Energize.
* Capped Energy resist & almost 60% resist to S/L with Tough running.

And that's with no purples. Could pick up about another 10% recharge by swapping out some sets for purples.

I thought this was awesome, then I realized Scrappers get Shadow Meld too...

I had someone quit a redside team I was leading a month or so ago, with the comment in team chat "Only noobs fight Carnies!", while we were steamrolling a Carnie paper mission.

Hostage escorts?

I agree with this sentiment. Go big, or go home!

I disagree with this completely. Outside of PvP IO's and purples, there is no reason a player can't afford a decent IO build just by playing the game, and selling their unwanted items at the market. It's always been that way, and since the introduction of H/V merits, it's even easier for a 'casual' player to afford a good IO build, including the most expensive rares like the Numina & Miracle uniques.

I have a small question. Do you actually ever sell anything on the market yourself?

As a seller, how can the purchase price of an item possibly be the result of my greed when I list an item for say 7.5 million and buyers purchase that item for 15 million? I didn't make them pay that price. That's the price the buyer offered. As a seller, I can't MAKE the buyer pay any particular amount.

People pay what they think something is worth, based on whatever their own individual criteria are. The fact that your criteria are different, doesn't mean there is anything unfair about the system.

No, this is not the case in most circumstances. I've ran a number of all-Defender TF's, and while they are great fun and can steamroll everything in their path, adding even one blaster to the team amps up the damage output to incredible levels, when combined with all the -res and +dam the defenders provide. The speed difference between a team of 8 defenders and 7 defenders + 1 blaster is huge.

A damage capped defender does barely more damage than a completely un-buffed blaster. Defender ranged damage scale is 0.65. Blaster is 1.125 for ranged damage. Defender damage bonus caps at 300% vs. 400% for blasters.

We'll have none of that logic nonsense here!

I don't think she does either. It all sounds good, and in perfect circumstances, it might work that way, but in actual practice it doesn't. I have a nicely IO'd Fire/Rad controller. Between Char, Cinders and Choking Cloud, I can nearly instantaneously hold an entire group of boss rank enemies. I can regularly solo on +2/x8 with that character.

None of that matters when facing large numbers of mez-heavy opponents like Malta or Carnies. One of them is going to get missed and fire off their status effect, or they are going to fire it off between the time they first agro and they get hit with a status effect themselves. I have to slow down, be more cautious, use more breakfrees, and turn down my normal difficulty to handle those types of enemies.

Yet this is what the majority of PuG players that I encounter do. They are either teaming, or if running solo they are on default settings. It's easy to see another player's difficulty settings just by looking at the mission window.

There is such a wide performance gap between the low end and high end in this game, that any discussions of balance must be done based on default. The ability to handle higher difficulties will vary greatly depending on not just AT, but powersets within that AT, what powers are used, how those powers are slotted, what they are slotted with, etc.

And you completely skipped over my point about difficulty, which is that having bosses turned off does not necessarily equate to 0/0. +1/x6/no bosses is hardly default difficulty level, nor is it boring or slow.

I didn't mean to imply that solo play has no bearing on balance. It certainly does. But how AT's are balanced against each other is based on more than just their performance solo. I'll use Defender vs. Scrapper as an example. Solo, a Scrapper will do more damage while being more survivable in almost all situations and difficulty settings. When that Scrapper joins a team, his only contribution is a simple addition to team damage output. When that Defender joins a team, he acts as a force multiplier and increases the performance of the entire team.

A Blaster also performs differently depending on whether he is solo or teamed. Solo, there is more need to be cautious and worry about survivability. Teamed, when he has to worry less about assuring his own survivability, he is more free to contribute damage.

Outside of two specific combos, all Blasters will have access to Aim or Build-Up. Most combos will have both. And to address your point about these powers not being up for every spawn, not every spawn requires them either. Learn the enemy, and use them when needed.

And to further address the solo issue, when a player creates a character, they are presented with choices. Those choices have consequences. Some combinations of Blaster powersets will provide much more mitigation solo, some will provide less. Try an Ice/Electric blaster with 4 hold powers, and see just how much mitigation is possible through control.

In the end, these kind of debates are ultimately pointless. They are all based on our own perceptions, experiences, abilities and biases. Some players eagerly look at challenges from a tactical problem solving perspective, some get frustrated that they can't mindlessly mash buttons and 'win'. I know what I am capable of when playing a blaster. I know what the regular group of players I team with is capable of when playing blasters. That carries vastly more weight with me than what a minority of posters in this thread claim.

See my previous point about difficulty setting and bosses.

Most squishy AT's are going to have trouble dealing with two boss rank mezzers at one time when solo, so to suggest this is a blaster problem is just silly.

Controller runs in on 2 Gunslinger bosses. Fires off AOE hold power, then ST hold. Locks down Gunslinger #1. By the time the ST hold finishes animating, Gunslinger #2 has the controller perma-held with his cheating ice bullet. Result: A quick case of eating the floor for the controller. And that's provided the controller actually gets to fire off the AOE and ST hold. 50% of the time, the first Gunslinger would be able to get off his status effect before the controller could activate a second power and the controller would be eating floor that much sooner.

Well, the default setting is 0/0/no bosses, so any discussion of overall AT performance should revolve around this to begin with. Otherwise, we can all pick and choose settings that make our own position look stronger and our opponent's position weaker. Further, since difficulty settings came out, I see the vast majority of players I team with still set on 0/0. That means they have never once adjusted their difficulty at all, since once it gets changed it will show 0/x1 from then on at the lowest setting. So, I'm going to suggest that base difficulty is, in fact, the normal setting that most players use.

No bosses does not automatically equal 0/0 though, so don't assume the blaster has to play on a lower difficulty setting than anyone else. I usually run +1/x4 or x6/no bosses when I'm solo on my AR/EM blaster. That setting would have my EM/WP stalker faceplanting like mad, yet the stalker's +2/x2/bosses would be more difficult for my blaster than his normal setting.

Most smart players know that some types of enemies are going to be problematic, and they're going to adjust their difficulty settings when going up against them solo. So to say a blaster running against Malta or Carnies having bosses turned off is somehow weak isn't even remotely true. Heck, my purpled out fire/rad controller that normally runs at +1 or +2/x8 with bosses, turns it down when facing Malta or Carnies.

And finally, what difficulty setting a solo player can run on with a certain AT has little bearing on inter-AT balance, as this is a team-based game. Some AT's shine in the solo role, other AT's shine on teams. Blasters do well in both settings.

D'oh! That's a darn good question!

No, not really. Technically you can, but you'll be bidding against the other 300 or so other players all bidding for the same item that shows up only every couple of days. So, you'd most likely be waiting for months for your 2 billion bid to fill.

There's no reason to knock the OP for selling this item the way he is. He's not being greedy. The going rate for these is simply that high.

Although, in all fairness, he should have posted this in the Market Forum. Would have gotten a lot better response that way.

Agreed. This makes no sense, and I think restricting legitimate temp powers from certain tasks is setting a bad precedent. If there is a problem with a temp power, adjust the power. Don't say "you can use this power, but not on this content..or this one here...nope, not that one either."

FYI...

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Damage_Scale

Blaster Melee is 1.0, I believe.

This is a point that cannot be driven home strongly enough.

During a little 'friendly' discussion here on the forum some months back where a few people claimed it was "impossible" to play blasters against enemies with status effects, I made a custom AE mission with Malta, and every single enemy group was set up to include a boss Gunslinger, which is well known as an enemy that can completely status-lock a squishy.

I ran through a bunch of times with my main, an AR/EM blaster, with bosses enabled, to prove that blasters could handle even boss-level mezzers through use of their own control powers. Worked pretty well, although I had a couple faceplants when Beanbag or Power Thrust missed.

After that, I turned bosses off, which set every Gunslinger boss to LT rank, but still with all their nice mezzing effects available. I ran it again, repeatedly, with a Fire/EM blaster this time. I didn't try and control anything. I simply ran up to every Gunslinger and burned him down. They'd hold my blaster with that nice ice bullet of theirs, and thanks to defiance, I'd just keep firing away. No tactics. No pulling. No control. Just running up right in their face and mashing attacks. Worked every time, 100%. I suffered exactly zero defeats running that mission over & over again with that 'tactic'.

Defiance is an amazingly powerful tool, and doesn't even really require much in the way of tactics to take full advantage of it.