Rathulfr

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Correct.

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Toldage.

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Lameage. We all know why this idiotic change reared it's ugly head. I wasn't misled at all. I knew as soon as Statesman starting talking about it that the pool's utility would be lowered to just above craptastic.

It seems to me stealthing a mission for glowies is no different than getting mission xp from contacts that tell you talk to other contacts or to patrol areas in a city (clicking on phone booths, etc). These types of missions are usually minimum risk to the player too. I guess they're gonna nerf those missions as well?

If they’re so hot to suppress stealth during combat, I'm thinking it's a fair trade to remove the movement penalty while being suppressed. Hey you know … balance and all.

No, I stopped holding my breath a while ago.

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Sorry about the pyramid, but QFT and amen, brutha! Why is it okay in the Sacred Church of Risk vs. Reward to gain XP by flying through relatively safe zones to click on Contacts or Phone Booths, but not stealthing through an instance full of potential hostiles to click on glowies? Where does that make any sense?

There are other ways to make click-glowie missions more risky for stealthed players, without nerfing Stealth powers. You could add more mobs or ambushes that can see through stealth, like the Rikti Drones. Or you could add ambush triggers to the glowies. But the simplest is probably to add a "defeat boss" or "clear room" component to the click-only missions, as has already been done in most CoV missions. In other words, eliminate the "click-only" aspect, and make them "click-plus-defeat" missions.

But ultimately, stealthing through a glowie-only mission should be considered an alternative, but still valid, method to complete some missions. Why do heroes and villains have to fight their way through everything? Answer: they don't -- and shouldn't. If anything, CoH/V could stand to have more missions that require more creative problem-solving, besides simply "defeat all". But that's a topic for a different thread.

/e channeling Teen Talk Barbie

"Math is hard, let's go shopping!"

Me 2!

I thought Posi already posted somewhere that fall damage doesn't "count", so Defiance wouldn't have kicked-in for the scenario described by the OP. Defiance only works when the damage you've taken comes from actual combat, not from falling to 1 HP -- I believe Posi said he did that on purpose to address a potential Defiance exploit?

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NPC Lenard: "I want my two dollars!"

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Hey! That caught my attention! Any reference from Better Off Dead gets my thumbs up!

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“Are you all really that anxious to be the first one to get the enema arrow?”

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Best. Line. Ever.

My "main", Rathstar, is a level 37 Energy/Energy Blaster: he was the first hero I created, back in November 2004, and he's still my primary hero that I play regularly. I tested out the new Blaster stuff this weekend, and here's my input.

Just as I expected, Defiance was practically useless: I was either mezzed or dead before it ever became a factor in most battles. The one or two times I actually survived long enough to get off an attack before I was dead, it was neat to see the increased damage output, but it was mostly irrelevant. My target would've been dead from regular damage anyway, or I was taking damage from someone else entirely, rendering the effect of Defiance moot.

On my new Archery blaster, however, it was quite nice for levels 1 to 5 (as far as I've played him, so far). There was a couple of times when the Defiance did help me "finish off"a particularly tough target, before it finished me. But I never really had much of a problem with lower level Blastering before, so Defiance was just icing on the cake. In fact, it often felt a little like cheating -- it felt way too "Scrapperish" for my taste -- not at all like a Blaster.

Bottom-line: Blasters have never really had a big problem with being damage-dealers in the first place. Defiance fails to address the fundamental problems with Blasters: a lack of ranged defense, status effects, and "instant aggro". I would prefer to see these problems addressed, instead.

Give Defiance to someone else who now really needs it: Tankers.

* Supergroup Name: The Rathstar Family
* Website (if any): N/A
* Leader or Recruiting Officers: Rathstar, Mrs. Rathstar
* Preferred Method of contact: In-game e-mail
* Guild Description: "The family that fights crime together, stays together." Our supergroup is composed exclusively of Rathstar's immediate family: father, mother, and five children. Currently, The Rathstar Family is not accepting any applications.

THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!1!!shift-evelnty-one!!

Being both an En/En and AR/Dev blaster myself (on 2 toons, of course), I'd like to see the following for blasters:

1. Eliminate the 400/500% disparity. Scrappers have enough other stuff going for them that Blasters don't.

2. Do something about "ranged aggro = instant death", perhaps by decreasing the amount of aggro with a greater amount of distance. We do need some aggro, for pulling, but to have a single shot trigger a mass eruption of every villain and their mothers in a mile radius is just silly.

3. Blasters need defense that scales with range, including against status effects. Stateman's comments imply that the advantage of being a blaster is range: okay, then give us that advantage -- even to status effects. If a CoT behemoth cannot shoot me from over 120' away, then the CoT mage standing next to him should NOT be able to mez me, either. If I'm within the range of those CoT at 100', there should be an accuracy check for both their elemental and status attacks. But the odds of their attacks landing/affecting me should increase as I get closer to them.

4. Sniper attacks should be aggro-free, or have a very small aggro radius. They're sniper attacks, after all: they're supposed to be stealthy, quick, deadly, and hard to isolate. If I snipe a guy, he should go down quietly, and if not, he should start looking around like "[censored]?" He should NOT be making a bee-line straight to me.

5. More hit points would be nice. But I'm not entirely sure it would be necessary if we take care of items 1-4, above.

Let's not mess with the Blaster secondaries, or at least not Energy and Devices: I like them just the way they are, thanks. Besides, monkeying with power sets seems riskier than what I've suggested above.