StratoNexus

Heh. It was for emphasis, as opposed to antagonizing.

If VS gets the same small AoE treatment of LS, that would be cool!

There are a lot of reasons to make it work as Hawk has designed it. For example:

It does apply a limit, this way it will not be perma for all.

It allowed Hawk to give a modest bonus to a set that could use it.

It gives players something to build for. The build meta-game is actually a very important aspect of playing (and designing) MMOs.

In that build meta-game it provides reasonable competing choices.

The fact that to-hit debuffs exist is a feature. I know some have complained, but I LOVE that I could craft a build to have perma-snipe but a spawn could negate that. This is the perfect type of non-binary negative that should be targeted in design. Rather than being held or totally shut down, we just lose access to a damage increase. We can even still use the snipe if we want, it will just be slow.

It is thematically appropriate. This is very important and an oft overlooked commitment CoH devs have made (and one that I have occasionally criticized when I think gameplay concerns are more important (crashing nukes is a solid example), but I love them for this commitment despite my occasional disagreement).

I don't think any of those work like that anymore. My Musculature stopped improving the slow in Hot Feet at some point (much to my great sadness).

Well, you have to consider that the change will work for both styles, it is just better for one style. Should they have designed it so it works for people who prefer not to take Aim and Build Up at all? There are those who would say yes and I hope they at least considered those people. At some point you have to make a decision and every decision will leave some people with the less than optimal situation.

The choice we as players have to make is how to deal with it. The nice thing about the changes so far is that they are unobtrusive. We can mostly ignore them and be fine (even /Dark could still choose to use their power in melee if they want). Or we can adjust to take advantage in part or maybe adjust more to take advantage in full.

The circle is now complete!

Then Sonic is the best to bring to a league, hands down. It isn't even close. Yes, sonic attack defenders are even better, BUT THEY ARE BETTER THAN FIRE BLASTERS TOO. If you are talking min/max you don't bring the fluff AT blaster along at all.

One thing I like about that list is that the order makes more sense to me considering the sets other abilities than any list I have ever seen compiled by others. Still not perfect, but more in-line.
Sonic and Ice have always been great at mitigation, so being lower damage makes sense (and Sonic boosts ally damage on top of its mitigation).

Fire should on top (and if Assault Rifle gets the expected animation time increase, it probably will be) and Psy is designed to be a single target specialist, so it should up there as well. Rad, Beam, Elec, Dark, and Energy should all fall nicely in the middle. The range from Rad to Dark looks OK to me, so Energy is a big stand-out to me.

Archery's RoA is stupid fabulous and I have no problem with its single target being low. I have always thought Archery needed some extra mitigation and wish it could could have a modest Stun chance in Aim and some kind of debuff in Fistful (-7.5% to-hit debuff in fistful is what I think).

Of course, I expect further changes will mess it up again (and I haven't really parsed this fully to see if any of your assumptions are out of kilter).

It seems unfair to simultaneously compare Sonic to other blasters for a raid and not count the -resist because your are also comparing it to buff/debuff sets. Buff/debuff sets will be better than every blaster for trials, even the "best" ones.

Honestly, using your own list Sonic is at 318 vs Assault Rifles 453. That is 135 apart. With two other people in the league who can manage a measly 200 DPS, Sonic blasters already win. How often are you on leagues where only 2 other people manage 200 DPS?

Edit:
Cool list and thanks for the work. This will be helpful. I'll have to examine it closer and, as always, blaster secondaries having excellent attacks always makes this harder than when armored sets are analyzed.

The animation is longer than that, 1.32 arcanatime. Staggering them is not just better from a DoT perspective.

Using both is often overkill, using neither is more dangerous. Therefore your choices are use both to ensure a fairly easy victory on spawn A, but then have neither for spawns b and c (maybe c, depends how quick you can move). Stagger them, so you have one for each spawn A and B, and none for spawn C.

I do better with inspires and safety that third way and I'd rather they design around that. We can encourage people to stagger them normally, but understand that maybe for some situations using both is wise. People can always play how they want, of course.

This would be good for some patches, like the Caltrops you mentioned. OTOH, there are patches I want them to keep running out of. It is likely hard to give them the judgement to know which ones are just annoying and which ones will be deadly if they stay in.

The damage output difference between a perma-fast snipe build and one that only fast snipes occasionally is not that large when measured over the course of a mission. The variance in kill speed and time through a mission just isn't gonna be a lot.

I agree your example supports your point well. I disagree my examples do not apply. Sometimes things are not the same across all sets. My examples are all I need to make me feel good about that assertion.

I don't think this is part of the issue, I think this is the crux of your issue. If A can make it perma easy, B, C, D, and E should be able to as well. That is not an entirely unreasonable position, but I also do not think it needs to be true.

Almost every idea I see along that vein is ending up at the point of just having perma-fast snipes for all. At which point you should get rid of the mechanic and just make the snipes fast. Getting enough +to-hit to be perma is not supposed to be universally accessible and balanced between the sets and I don't think it needs to be.

But your playing /Earth! Don't you play that to get all up in their face and hit them wit' da hammahs! I know I do.

It should be noted that Hawk has said that both Rifle sets may end up with longer animations because those times are too fast for the animation to look good (and I can definitely believe that for Assault).

Hmmm. I like all those!

Thanks for the response.

Blazing Aura does need Acc for its other function to work, so it would be nice to be able to slot for both Acc and Heal leaving us able to use other slots for Dam and Dam (and End).

I mean, if you wanted to adjust blaster MaxMax Health upwards the appropriate amount, that would be good too (not that my wife plays a Cold defender or anything, but, you know, just in case...)

While that would be awesome, I am pretty sure he just means the ones that mirror the listed powers. So Power Burst, Blaze, and Bitter Ice Blast. If he is making those changes for doms too, he should also change Thorn Barrage and consider changing Life Drain to 80 feet.

It is one charge of Aim and it is possible they might change it to one charge of Build Up. So yay?

Well, Captain Atom for sure has some pretty impressive mitigation properties.

Storm can melt bullets and other objects before they reach him (which is why I was thinking resistance or absorb for /Fire, but cauterizing wounds ala Healing Flames works conceptually as well) and cure himself of poison.

And really, all comic book heroes can take a beating, and then, often during the evil soliloquy, recover enough to win the day!

Did you take /Men just so you could have the pink bubble (no judgement, I took WoC just because of that)? Because aesthetically Psychic Shockwave looks like a good fit for what you showed of your build, unless you mostly just wanted the pink bubble.

If you really believe that, Ice will never measure up. I am surprised you kept it around considering its modest AoE damage output is well below what some other primaries bring to the table.

With your PoV, only Fire matters (and likely only corruptors), so you might as well just play that and be content.

That is one of the things that worries me when Hawk says they are going to look at its DPS. But there is another way to analyze to it.
667.5 damage over 60 seconds = 11.125 damage per second. Recharge will not improve this.
Blazing Arrow has a 11.98 second cycle time and deals 161.7 damage.
Power Burst has a 12.24 cycle and deals 132.6 damage

VS = 11.125 dps

BA = 13.5 dps
with 33% recharge - 17.06 dps
with 70% recharge - 20.57 dps
with 136.6% recharge - 26.04 dps

PB = 10.83 dps
with 33% recharge - 13.61 dps
with 70% recharge - 16.33 dps
with 136.6% recharge - 20.49 dps

There is room for VS to grow both in convenience (cast time improvement and duration) and damage output.

Cool and thanks!

That is also about the difference between Fire blasts DPA and Electric's on Umbral's old chart.

The fact that stalkers and tankers are only 25% apart on base damage must be why stalkers NEED other things to improve their damage.

Sometimes I think people think things are much more finely and tightly balanced than they are. The variances on so many things in this game are ENORMOUS. A 25% difference in DPA is small relative to so many other things. I should note here, I don't think this is a bad thing.

What is the variance on mitigation provided between Force Field and Kinetics?
What is the variance on damage increase between Force Field and Kinetics?
What is the difference in single target damage output between a Fire/Electric blaster and a Dark/Ice blaster?
How about AoE damage of a Fire/Fire blaster and a Psi/Ice blaster?
What about an Ill/Rad controllers breadth of abilities compared to an Energy/Regen stalker?

I find your numbers evidence in support of my position. Fast snipes are a clear benefit and making it perma will be useful. But they are not so great that you must build for it and the DPS difference between a build with occasional fast snipe and perma fast snipe is not going to be very large and a build without the snipe at all will still be OK too.

While I would be fine if they upped the required to-hit for defenders and corruptors, I am also fine if they get more benefit from the snipe change than blasters and dominators. Of course, I have now long argued for the damage of defenders and corruptors to be increased.

Huh! (as in the sharp intake of breath due to shock). We finally get a decent, interesting +damage buff other than Build Up and you want to poo-poo it! Begone evil one!

Now, I am not saying /Dark got the proper version of Soul Drain, I really like that 15 foot radius version and think it makes much more sense for a blaster to have the larger radius.

I wasn't looking at the snipe changes as THE damage enhancement portion, although that change will help sets with snipes a bit.

I would increase the blaster ranged dam mod to 1.25 and the melee dam mod to 1.125 (and I'd consider increasing the blaster cap to +500%). Increase the corruptor ranged dam mod to 0.9. Increase the defender range dam mod to 0.8 and give defenders scrapper base HPs and the stalker HP cap.

The best part is you changed a different word than I thought you meant! See below for where I thought you were going!

I'd also be ok with a To Hit bonus being added to Domination so that a Dominator who builds to take advantage of it can get reasonably permanent FastSnipe using Tactics, Kismet and Domination.