Samuel_Tow

That depends on what the costs are. If it takes ten weeks of solid grinding for an account-wide unlock, then that would be missing the point. And I would not be in the slightest surprised if it took this long or longer. After all, costumes seem to be considered an "elite" award. Remember the drop rate on costume recipes?

I'm hoping for SANE requirements for this, however. I sincerely hope that this won't require me to do the equivalent of getting T4 powers in every slot on a couple of characters. I'm still not interested in the raid grind.

I'm afraid I can't make heads or tails of that video. It's cut so that I can't actually see the spawns as they are before they're engaged. I'll take your word for it, though. What difficulty is that guy set to?

I have a huge problem when it comes to taking a power and then almost never using it. As a result, I attempt to use my powers as often as I can, with the possible exclusion of self-rez powers for obvious reasons (though my Blasters seem to have those as part of their attack chains). What this means is I try to nuke a lot. If not once every 6 minutes, then at least once every 10. Yes, sometimes I'm nuking spawns of 6 or 7 enemies, and sometimes even that fails BIG TIME.

The problem with nukes is two-fold. For one, the most accuracy you can get is 95%, and with the RNG as evil as it is, there's almost always AT LEAST one enemy who doesn't take a lick of damage seemingly every time I nuke. Moreover, your nuke's damage is staggered in three components: a 3.0 scale damage hit guaranteed, a 1.5 scale damage hit at 75% chance and another 1.5 scale damage hit at 50% chance What this means is you only have 37.5% chance of delivering full damage, and are actually running a 12.5% risk of delivering sub Total Focus damage. All of this conspires to leave lieutenants alive a lot of the time if you're unlucky.

All of this means is that you're left toggle-less, drained and defenceless with no real guarantee that everything you nuked actually died, or indeed that everything you wanted to nuke got caught in the blast area, as opposed to avoiding a hit by hiding behind a tree or a street light or around a corner.

Finally, about the only real way I've found to ensure I don't die BEFORE I nuke has been Personal Forcefield. In every other case, I need to run into the middle of an enemy group and squat down for upwards of two seconds while every minion, lieutenant and potentially boss takes potshots at me. I've lost count of how many times I'd go to nuke, get knocked back with my nuke queued, then killed before I could recover and have my nuke end up pointless. I've furthermore lost track of the number of times I've rushed in to nuke a bunch of, say, Rikti Infantry only to have one of them stun me with a plasma shot just long enough for his buddies to cut me to pieces. Or how many times I've held a Mentalist only to see a bunch of Drones juggle me four 5-6 seconds.

I'm not making my problems up. These are some of the very real reasons why I ultimately gave up trying to use these horribly awkward, scarily dangerous powers.

Well, poopy! I honestly thought it was more, but you're right. I was reading the average damage of the power, which is listed as 15% higher than the power's direct damage thanks to the 15% chance for critical that it has. It's kind of disappointing to learn that it's not comparable to, say, Head Splitter. I guess the rest of the set is solid enough, especially with single-target attack, but it still kind of bums me out to not have the truly heavy hitter that I thought I did. Mine wasn't fully slotted for a while, so I couldn't tell, but... Well, it's not bad, suffice it to say.

This. It's not a question of which powers to take and which to drop. I already HAVE all the Dual Blades power, it's just a question of what to do with them. Really, Dual Blades animations are too cool to skip. It feels like kicking BABs in the nuts

That has never been my experience, to the point where I have to wonder if we were playing different games. I spent my entire time from 2005 to 2009 playing on Tenacious and NOTHING else, so I got a good idea of what the spawns consisted of, and that's exactly what they were - large groups at +0, small groups at +1. I have never, ever seen large groups at +1 at all, not until the new difficulty settings that divorced spawn size from spawn level.

Never, ever did I see a Tenacious spawn consisting of 6 +1 minions. Ever. I've seen 6 minion spawns, but they were always +0. Of I got a minion-only spawn at +1, it was 3 +1 minions. If I got +1 lieutenants, it was always only one. If I got 2, it was 2 +0 lieutenants and 1 +0 minion.

I actually made a thread about this the day the new difficulty settings went Live, and one of the community reps specifically told me that the new difficulty settings were different from the old and there were no direct correlations between them. I had asserted that +0x2+bosses was equivalent to Tenacious (which was set for two, at character level, with bosses) but was directly told that it WASN'T equivalent, as there were no equivalents.

I would like to see either the option to fight enemies of JUST my selected level and nothing else, or at the very least a return to having +1 spawns be smaller groups.

True, it is a matter of taste. And though I mentioned Elude, that doesn't actually help as much as one might expect, considering it's stacking defence on a set that's already 3/4 of the way to its own cap with just slotting and power picks. So you definitely have a point there. However, as long as it's going to be all or nothing, I prefer powers which allow me to up my game and survive, rather than those that attempt to end the fight NOW. Simply put, game balance doesn't allow you to end fights NOW in a lot of circumstances, so such powers are simply operating against the design of the game at large. Balance, on the other hand, is much more lenient about extending your welcome by a few more minutes provided you can't use it too often and it's ONLY a few more minutes.

In more basic terms, I find Nukes to be a gamble almost every time I've used them and I find defence set god mode powers to be a gamble almost never at all. And I don't like gambling.

My bias AGAINST Blasters, you mean. And, yes, it's showing, I make no secret about it. I actually do have a list of all the things that drove me away from Blasters and the penalising nature of nukes is pretty high on it. I suppose you could make the argument, as others have in other circumstances, that because I don't like Blasters then my arguments should be ignored as I cannot be pleased - and in THIS CASE AND ONLY THIS CASE I'll grant you that this may very well be true. But I still dislike the idea of a big nuke with a big crash in a game. It works well in a comic book or a movie, but in a game it just serves to irritate me.

I want to make a confession: I would sooner LACK power than have power but be prevented from using it. And that, in a nutshell, is Blaster gameplay in general and nukes in particular. You have all of this power, but because of how the AT is balanced and how the abilities themselves are designed, you usually can't use them for fear of SOMETHING. And I hate that!

Blazing Aura, Hot Feet, Fire Shield, for starters. Hover to keep me out of melee in every instance.

Any power I have no use for solo is a power I have no respect for, at least on an AT that's not designated support, which Blasters aren't. And you are correct - there is almost no instance solo when a nuke's drawbacks are worth it. That's my entire point. I've taken and used at least Nova and Inferno, and in neither case did I ever find using a nuke to be an advantage. It was cool, yeah, but it was also far too stressful and far too pointless as compared to what else I could do.

It's simple enough to hold that one lieutenant, yes, but what of the other minions? All it takes is one Malta Operative with a Taser, one Tsoo Yellow Ink Man and you don't get to nuke, then you get mobbed and killed. Or, more commonly, it's fairly simple to hold that one Chief Mentalist and then watch as the other four drones proceed to juggle you in the air for the next 10 seconds. The more I delay nuking, the higher the chance that I won't get to do that at all.

You're reading too deeply. I try to not use inspirations in every fight when I play, but with Blasters, I have to do that very often. When I fight normally, I have a very high chance of not using any inspirations in a fight. When I use a nuke, I almost always have to pop a blue or a green afterwards if ANYTHING survived, even just a single minion. Inspirations are consumables, which means sometimes, they simply run out. I can't afford to make a build which fails without inspirations in my tray. That's my chief grief with the "just use inspirations!" mentality. Yes, that's a viable strategy for one big encounter where if I'm not prepared, I can back out of the mission and prepare, but not a viable strategy for running an entire mission, because I simply run out too fast.

It's surprising to me how rarely that notion comes up, considering that's one of the game's greatest strengths by far. Sure, if you're an artist or filthy rich, you can take your imagination and commit it to artwork, film or game, but if you're just an average Joe, the best you can do with your imagination is... Well, imagine it. And then here's a game where you can build the super-cool characters you always dreamed about (often without knowing you were), give them form and actually play them in an actual game! From time to time, especially when I log in a particularly cool character of mine, I have to pinch myself, because it does not seem real that I could have my own moving, fighting action figures.

Power customization is a large part of that. I sincerely hope the rumours of that in I21 or I22 are true.

My feeling is completely the opposite. I want to have leeway for mistake and a broad comfort zone. There's nothing I hate more than games stressing me out with worry over my every action and pissing me off by cheat-killing me every time I push a wrong button. That's not fun gaming, not from where I'm standing.

Sure, I'm not saying we should be completely unkillable and never stand to worry about failing, but if I do go down, I want to look at it and say "A-yup! I screwed the pooch on that one. I deserved that." rather than "Seriously! You can't be serious! That was on the line! I can't believe this!"

That argument is more to the effect that once you nuke, anything you survive is going to attack you, and you're going to be out of endurance with no toggles and potentially low on health. There are some nukes which have the benefit of control effects on them, such as Blizzard which leaves the Blaster pretty safe as enemies are slowed and slipping. But something like Inferno really just doesn't.

Furthermore, all nukes that I've ever used are slow, with animations of over 2 seconds. What this means is that you're sitting in essentially a large, full spawn, taking fire from everybody for over two seconds. Now, this is rarely enough to kill a Blaster, as I've found out, but it's usually enough to drop that Blaster into the orange, if not red. So if you nuke a large spawn and end up with orange health and no endurance AND a boss survived, then you are in deep, deep trouble, especially if said boss is a Tank Swiper or a Hewer Elite or a Gunslinger or some such.

First of all, shooting a hold at a problematic enemy before firing a nuke just means that the NPCs have that much more of an opportunity to kill you before your nuke fires, or to ensure you trade holds with them. Additionally, Blasters are the only AT I've ever played which is completely and utterly ****** without inspirations, if you'll pardon my language. If I don't have purples on hand in case I slip up or face a nasty spawn, I die. If I don't have break-frees for those holds at inconvenient times, I die. If I don't bring enough reds to the right fights, I die.

Granted, I tend to play mostly melee ATs and Masterminds, but I've never played a Scrapper, Stalker, Brute or Mastermind who was so completely SOL without inspirations at any time. Sure, I can't beat every elite boss on just my wits alone, and there are some exceptional situations where inspirations are mandatory, but as a general running theme, all of my other characters get more inspiration drops than they actually use. Except for Blasters, who use more inspiration drops than they actually get by a fair margin, so I never have any left over just in case I opted to nuke a spawn instead of fighting it conventionally. Really - why nuke and use up my inspirations when I can fight normally and very likely need to use none at all?

I find Blaster Nukes to be far too overbalanced on the side of caution. They don't do nearly enough to impress with with nearly the kind of reliability I'd want to see, and in return they have some of the game's most severe crashes. Seriously, the only thing which crashes worse than a nuke is Unstoppable, and I'd take Unstoppable over Nova any day of the week. Hell, I'd take Force of Nature over Nova any day of the week, and that ought to say something.

Yes, nukes are strong. I don't find them to be nearly strong enough to be worth the crash.

Yeah, I'm not really interested in adding range to the power so much as moving not using that damn "kneel and pet the ground" animation which takes me out of my skin whenever I see it. I'm be happy even with the power being limited to melee range (7 feet) just so long as I can toss it like a grenade, rather than setting it down carefully live a flower pot.

I actually have nothing against the ability of powers to persist on the ground for enemies to arrive and activate them, just the same way traps, bombs and grenades do. However, what does bother me is when these powers pay for their ability to be used as traps by being incredibly awkward to use and being highly situational.

As you mention, probably the most popular use of Devices Trip Mines is to toe bomb, largely because the interruptibility makes them useful for not a lot else. Now imagine throwing these as sticky grenades

This reminds me of one of Jack Emmert's famous foot-in-mouth moments, where a player expressed grievances with his character's performance, and Jack responded "So what was your team doing?" My "team" does not exist, because I'm not on a team. I'm playing by myself, something the AT description tells me should be possible for the AT. Considering that neither nukes nor anything else in a Blaster's powersets requires team-mates as an explicit prerequisite, I don't consider Blasters a team-only AT.

If your argument is that nukes are great ON A TEAM, then yeah, they kind of are. But people don't always play on a team.

I'm not against "final stand" powers. Not in the slightest. Powers like Unstoppable, Overload and Elude are easily some of my favourites. What I'm against is powers with very limited use an very dubious, unreliable results that nevertheless come with drawbacks which far outweigh their usefulness. I would sooner use Foce of Nature on my ex Energy/Energy/Force Blaster than Nove as a last resort, because Nova had an unreliable shot at hitting or indeed killing what's threatening me, yet it removes my ability to defend myself while Foce of Nature allows me to stand and fight and kill what's threatening me, at the cost of it then expiring, crashing my endurance and not recharing in another 1000 seconds. But at least when it's up, I know I can rely on it.

Blaster nukes are treading the wrong tightrope. They're trying to balance the ability to kill an entire spawn in a single hit with the fact that being able to kill an entire spawn in a single hit is badly overpowered in most cases, so they're kind of half-and-half, with the multiple damage components and the target cap and so on. More than anything else, they give a Blaster precisely what a Blaster doesn't need more of - shock damage.

By FAR the biggest problem Blasters have is that they have very little time to act, because the border between being alive and being floor pizza is often counted in seconds. A Scrapper can goof around, botch his setup, get hit about the head and still have quite a long time to react before things get really bad. A Blaster does not have that luxury, with the expectation that a Blaster's damage can work so fast that this short life span wouldn't be crippling.

But if I were looking for an all-or-nothing power on a Blaster, I'd want to see one which allowed me to do much damage by means of keeping me alive long enough to do so. All of my Blasters had more than enough damage to take anything and everything down, but rarely lived long enough to be able to do so. A power which gives me a window of opportunity where I CAN live long enough to kill stuff, at the cost of crashing me AFTER that fight is done if I don't drag my feet, is one I can respect far, far more than what is essentially a roll of the dice.

And I sincerely hope you are successful The idea behind the heightened critical chance after Eagle's Claw is very cool, and it does give Martial Arts a LOT more flexibility than I originally thought it would, but the way it's hooked up now is just horrid. City of Heroes is not a game about split-second twitch reflexes, so giving us a window of opportunity to exploit a mechanic that, with all the limitations accounted for, is less than a second, is just bad form.

I know for a fact that the game is capable of doing better. We've seen it in Dual Blades, where one attack sets the player in a mode where another attack could have an additional effect. We've seen it with Dual Pistols where one power effect from one power can alter the chance for another power effect in another power to occur. There are better mechanics, and these existed prior to the Martial Arts changes. I sincerely hope we use one of them so that we could have the same functionality without the stress to my nerves.

Certain Martial Arts combinations look incredibly cool. My personal favourite is Strom Kick -> Dragon's Tail, a sort of double spin kick. Eagle's Claw -> Crane Kick also looks pretty cool, though for reasons I cannot describe. It sort of looks like a single flowing motion.

I think I just found the first use of the elongated Half Helmet in this game that I've ever actually liked Normally, it makes the head look like an egg, and goofy, but you've matched the elongation with the other details very nicely. The Martial Arts plate stretches it forward, the large face shield stretches quite a bit backwards and the "tech ears" match the curve of the helmet. Usually, elongated helmets look like someone took a regular helmet and put a lump on the back of the head, but this one really works. I'll try using it when I get the chance to design more helmets