Starsman

OK, from what I understand, Field Op should grant about 360% regen once slotted.

If that is correct... my napkin calculations show that you would be getting... lets say... with only 3 slotted Health... 0.74% of your HP back per second.

So... if thats right... Field OP also 3 slotted for regen would get you 1.83% of your HP back total per second (that's on top of the Health regen.)

This means you can take 2.46 times the dps you would be able to take now on live*

(for reference, this Blaster was able to sustain 11.9 dps at lvl 50 without enemies denting his HP, now he can sustain 29.3 dps without the enemies eating at his HP)

Impressive? Not really, got to see how this plays with other things in play.

But your proposal is to give the blaster 20% resistance to one damage type. Unless you happen to have other sources of resistance to stack that over, you are only increasing the potential DPS you can survive to 1.25 times what you normally would be able to (or 20.08 dps at lvl 50 before enemies start denting his HP), and thats only to one damage type.


For reference, I looked at will power for stalkers (good reference point since they don't get RTTC) and, should I not be TOO rusty, the stalker with every power 3 slotted for full effects (including Stealth), and inherent Health also 3 slotted, and spamming it's click heal non-stop... would take about 60.55 (smash or lethal) dps before enemies can start denting his HP bar.

That's 5.08x the baseline Blaster and 2.07x the blaster running Field Op.

Suddenly... this is starting to sound more impressive... either that or my math is very messed up... and it may be, been ages since I do these calculations... or perhaps it’s just Willpower Stalkers that suck… (Arcanaville, I call forth thou math superiority!)


*I am, for the time being, ignoring defense you may get from Field Op

Edit:Found an error in the calculations, fixed, stalker now looks more reasonable but the values are still strong for blasters.

Edit 2: found another error... will just make a new post with the corrections. Just note numbers above do not account for base regeneration, just additional regeneration on top of base.

OK, I will concede a lot of ground here mainly because I may be basing my opinions too much in how melee archetypes build their defenses and how “fun” it is for those ATs to build them up as they level, but got to remind myself these are not melee ATs and their secondary should not suddenly have a complete meaning change.

However I do will add one more point/option, as I still feel abit too much is relying on a single power: what if any additional boost needed didn’t come from a single power, but from all powers? Have every single power (perhaps in the primary, only for blasters) grant or refresh a mitigation buff for a few seconds?

Every blaster, would suddenly get at least some benefit for one. No blaster would have to wait until level 20 to get his survivability tool either.

I mentioned something similar to this in another thread, although there I was talking about bulding it up. Here I just mean that using a blast, will grant defense, resist , hp or a combination. A fixed amount defined by power set, not enhance able.

Would you consider such a secondary source to be counterproductive?

Ugh no! I'll take a single Dwarf Form that I can at least decide how to slot over a homogenized inherent.

Good example. That would be just as suicidal, perhaps more

Don't take me wrong, I don't want them to spread the buffs across all the sets, I also dislike the exaggerated spread of effects across melee armor sets as it is and find the best sets are the ones that focus their survivability on fewer powers and make the rest utility, like Fire and Shields.

But at the same time, I sort of wish there was more than one type of buff for each set, with different slotting and source options. This round of buffs seems centered around healing and equivalent techniques. It may be nice if, should more buffs be needed, instead of just adding more healing, one more power (not more than one) was picked as a source for a mitigation-type layer (resist/defense/+HP.)

This is an issue with obsessing over fixed attack chains, not with the game.

Thats one of the reasons I always advocate priority based attack queues over chains, but it's something apparently only Arcanaville ever agreed with (in some posts, she still outlines chains constantly.)

Anyways, there are insane number of things that can force you to alter an attack chain already, including the downtime of hasten or being affected by a recharge debuff or hit by allies recharge buffs.

Attack chain consistency has never been rock solid and this snipe change does not really do much more than add a bit more ripples into that pond.

To be fair, all ancillary ranged attacks for melee ATs always used melee tables, and not by accident.

I recall discussion about snipes at the time they got created for stalkers and it being decided they would not ever have full critical due to this... I never noticed that some of them retained the ranged modifiers, though. I would had logged that as a bug under the original design rule. Not sure now with this.

They do have 2x the recharge of a regular attack, all epic/ancillary powers do.

Just crossed my mind... this would include Scrapper/Stalker Patron snipes...?

My question is: what is their goal? Regardless of how strong or weak damage is, how survivable do they want blasters to be? Do they want blasters to be more survivable than a stalker? Less? About the same? A notch under? Half as survivable as a stalker?

Note my curiosity is about their intention, not what we want or think is deserved.

Refresh my memory... LRM?

The boost is just range. That is nothing compared to the Buidlup/Aim dance Arcanaville just mentioned above, not to mention the insanity that an AR/Devices can pull with over-slotted targeting drone (remember, AR snipe does bonus damage if Targeting Drone is running, that will be on top of the snipe cast time being cut down)

So yea... Sonics and DR were already low in damage comparatively.... Not sure I recall how Ice was doing balance wise but it also will be left behind a bit.

Hawk did say they are looking at those sets though, I guess it's wait and see.

I just hope, should they decide this "is not enough" they don't cramp even more into these powers. I already don't love the idea that technically all blasters now will have one power in the secondary that is nearly mandatory unless you are suicidal. I would had liked to see this kind of buff be a bit more distributed.

That sounds great.... but it also sounds like blasters with no snipes are in a HUGE disadvantage....

I guess non-snipe sets can have one fast animation attack designated to get snipe-like bonus damage if you have that tohit buff level.

It just crossed my mind though... are they doing this also for dominator snipes? Their snipes already are different with higher recharge and no interrupt...

Over 2 years old now. How time flies, eh?

I guess it's all about intentions. Perhaps they wanted Kheledians to be able to buff out of the penalty. Either way, nukes may still be revised. I guess they won't touch them yet because they want to make sure they can measure survivability boosts caused by the new survivability tools.

If suddenly nukes can just be used left and right, well, that alone would increase survivability over what is now in production and would make it harder to quantify the impact of the new tools.

For them to be shorter, they have to be new. Technically even if they just remove chunks of the animation, engine wise it's just still a new animation.

But thinking more about it, the change to do the dual pistol momentum mechanic would be too big... would require copies of all powers to exist and the powers to redirect... too messy of an implementation for an old set that already has an interesting mechanic.

Oh right! darn it started mixing sets in my head! I kept thinking Conserve Power was an Electric Manip power... Never mind that bit then!

*CRACKS FINGERS*

Certain Redname just got automatically subscribed to my Dev Spam List.

Arcanaville had her fun, now its MY TURN!

....


That is an interesting direction to go... not exactly that way since it would require too much change... but what if somehow all blaster attacks were cloggles of sort... all allowing for an extended DPS that drops if you activate any other attack... entirely eliminates the world of "attack chain holes" from blast sets... Each attacks dot can be slightly lower than the attack's activation time (we do want people to pursue the use of other attacks)

The issue here is it would involve a lot of art team involvement. At least some new animations would be needed for "toggle mode" fire for all positions (running/flying) and a new continuous graphic FX would be needed for each set.

The idea of holding down the one button would, in my opinion, suck in this game. But sustaining a blast in this toggle fashion... that may be cool...

My point is not really about what requires more resources; but that it's my understanding the developers set a brick wall on animation changes for balance issues. Mind you, I think they recently shortened Gravity>Propel animation, so there may be exceptions. I doubt they will ever approach a full set wide animation change though, ever.

You can suggest anything you want, but it helps to know where to not focus much time if the devs already said that's not an option.

There was a small window of time where many powers had animation times adjusted, but this was not due to a suggestion or balance reason, but instead as a "bug fix". It was BABs removing extra dead rooted time many powers suffered off, in some cases the cast times actually increased (see Stone Melee.)

I think only one power was intentionally bypassed during that process and it was Spine's Barb Swipe, due to fear of buffing that set's damage capabilities.

Everyone has interesting stuff to say and you are no exception.

I'm just noting the issue with the idea of animation time changes. I saw that list and feared this would derail into suggesting different arbitrary cast times for different powers.