StratoNexus

Or a much faster animation (That 1.17 second cast time has a few animations that could work nicely and would allow for some player choice in the customizer).

Or both!

What is the target for Effective Health? There are not a whole lot of powers blasters get that are affected by those mods. Really it is only in the pools where they can get resistance and defense (and /Dev gets one power).

Mez Suppression -
Blasters interact with Mez uniquely thanks to Defiance and now they will have some offensive toggles that also interact with mez uniquely. Since blasters are the offensive specialists and interacting with mez in this unique fashion is part of their inherent, I suggest the three remaining blaster secondary toggles get the feature of suppression, rather than shutting off. Hot Feet, Death Shroud, and Lightning Field should suppress when mezzed, not shut-off.

Cauterizing Aura and Death Shroud -
Is there any consideration to making these powers have a 15 foot radius for blasters? Lighting Field and Hot Feet are both at 20 feet and that size makes a lot more sense for blasters. What is the end cost on Cauterizing Aura?

Yes.

You should consider using capital letters to start sentences and the occasional line break. It would make your posts easier to read and give a better impression. Or you can ignore that advice, but I think you would get a more receptive audience if you took an extra 10-60 seconds per post.

You might think blasters are not broken, but I am having trouble recalling a time when they added this much mitigation to anything while also admitting that it still may not be enough.

While I have heard they can't do a cleanse effect, I think they can. A very brief mez protection (like your suggestion, 3 to 5 seconds) along with a very large amount of mez resistance. That said, I am not sure how useful that would be and I do think it would be frustrating on those occasions when you hit Aim, the mez is cleansed, but 5 seconds in another mez lands. If Aim and BU were given mez protection, I'd just rather it be for 10-12 seconds.

Well, yeah, I cheated. Hey, I didn't even ask you to check out what the stalker numbers were under Power Surge (because it is pretty lame on scraps and stalkers).

Understood and your point is valid.

Well, you may not know this, but I hear Electric is actually low on mitigation in general (with IOs it gets a lot better).

Want to check out Ninjitsu or Ice?

A blaster build with Scorpion Shield could be neat too.

I love my Consume too, but it is not enough, especially without IOs.

lol. You suggested an Electric stalker can run out of endurance but aren't worried about my /Fire manip blaster's endurance concerns. Too funny.

Thanks for the information, I appreciate the time you are spending checking this out. Understand, I added no extra powers beyond the same number you added to the blaster, so any complaint of the Stalker missing out on taking other powers applies to the blaster equally (but you probably think a lot of blaster powers should be skipped anyway, whereas the stalker has lots of good stuff to take).

Agreed.

In fact, snipes deal 30% more damage than most tier 3s. Only Blaze can out do a snipe, and only if most of its DoT hits (and Fire's Snipe also gets DoT, so it will generally outdo Blaze as well).

We really need to remember that the snipe changes are mostly just to make snipes better. They should not be viewed through the nightmarish prism of fixing blasters. Do making snipes better help blasters? Well, it gives them more interesting options and it is also likely to add a small amount of potential DPS while making the pick of a situational power reasonable, since it has more situations where it can be useful. But it doesn't do a whole lot else and it is not intended to do more.

Other changes are for that purpose and I agree we need to discuss BETTER changes, I'm even willing to expend modest energy testing and typing to try to get those improvements (but I ain't fighting for it ).

What happens if the Stalker has Tough(3so), Weave (3so), Combat Jumping (1so) and Ancillary Shadow Meld (3so (recharge)).

But changing the mod Arcana is talking about will have no effect on Tactics.

They are standard snipes for casting, so they will be affected by this change. They do have longer rehcarges and do a lot of damage, but are still the long cast with interrupt period (at least according to MIDS).

While they may not get bonus damage for being interruptible, they do more damage than the blaster versions, so I'll not be complaining.

Without doing calculations, I am guessing Ice blast is still going to be solid for single target DPS. Plus, it is the king of mitigation when it comes to blaster primaries, so maybe it should be on the low end for damage.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say it is no change at all? They didn't actually make dominator snipes worse.

This is true, but it also is less interesting. While all the powers have a similar goal, I like that they have different mechanical functions and are each unique to their own secondary. This type of thing also lends itself to other theme appropriate suggestions.

I'd recommend we focus our energy on thinking of how to make suggestions that work with the proposed changes or only very slightly modify them, rather than saying throw out the work and testing done up to this point and start over.

Somehow I don't find it a bad thing that Dominators may feel the least benefit.

I definitely prefer the idea of the attack being 2.5 to 3.5 seconds and doing really high damage rather than faster animating and lowering the damage (if keeping the fast cast mechanic).

I am happy. But I was happy without these changes, so that really doesn't count for much.

Well, I can still use the snipe just for its range benefit between fast casts. Early attack chains are rarely seamless anyway, so the longer animation of a snipe isn't hurting like when you get to late game and can fill out the attack chain without a bad DPA power.

Even a single DO in Aim knocks the cycle time to under 80 seconds. Two SOs brings it to under a minute. This is helpful leveling. While leveling a lot of our abilities are not always available. Dull Pain isn't useless early, it is less useful than later on when you get more slots for it and when you add global recharge to have it even more often.

I think if you removed 1.5 to 2 seconds from the current Interrupt time and walked away, it could have been done. That is not as fun, IMO, but it would work out mathematically. With the current interesting mechanic, I would recommend they also remove 1 to 1.5 seconds from the interrupt for when it doesn't fast cast.

I think you are misusing the term blue moon.

Curses, I forgot about this one. That's OK, we can fix this. Yeah!

Touch of Fear becomes Land of Fear. A pet that can be place up to 80 feet away and lasts 10 seconds (maybe use that Dark control immob swirly effect on the ground). Every 2 seconds this pet ticks a terrorize and to-hit debuff effect in a 10 foot radius that can affect up to five targets with an 8 second duration.

Plus it grants the caster a long duration regen buff.

So not happening, but it would be the bees knees.

I think the idea would be that you need a normal chain, and then can occasionally improve on that through the fast cast snipe. This is not really a bad thing, unless you feel builds are too tight to manage it. I think there is a build cost, but I do not think it is as high as you are concerned about.

You will still be able to have an excellent chain without the snipe and can occasionally improve it by throwing the snipe in when appropriate. Would it be even better damage-wise if you min/max to always have the improved snipe? Yes. But again, that is a min-max only perspective. The better snipe will not be hurting builds that operate below the all the time fast cast or, if you are min-maxing and feel it is hurting, you don't choose the snipe, instead choosing what you think is better.

The snipe will be a viable choice. Useful for non min/maxed builds. Can be min-maxed to be very useful or min-maxed out of a build for other stuff one deems more important. I think this snipe change will have a large amount of people on both sides of that build decision.

That is right, a fair amount of builds will still choose to skip the snipe after this change and that is a good thing.

Well, I know I sometimes use Divine Avalanche and sometimes I don't. I sometimes throw in Touch of Fear other times I don't. Sometimes on my /Stone tanker I use Fault a lot, other times I don't need to. I think you are in error. Melee attack sets have situational powers too. I'll grant they reduced some of this when they added damage to Clobber and Cobra Strike, but they still have a fair smattering of not needed all the time powers that are never-the-less often recommended.

But I grant your DPA argument. Blast sets still have a bunch of stinkers (looks at Shout and Howl, Power Burst, Cosmic Burst, Abyssal Gaze and Life Drain, and Short Circuit) many of which are important to have in a build because there are no other choices or they have other desirable effects.

It would be like if Clobber was lame instead of amazing (you know, how it used to be).

Build choices often are hard. On my primary blaster I've always said I'd give up Blazing Aura if they made something else good (I had high hopes for Melt Armor, but they decided to make it craptastic for APPs). I was kind of hoping Inferno would lose the crash and maybe have the recharge changed to 4 minutes.

But, alas, they made BA my heal power, so I'll just have to keep it.

On my Fire/Fire/Force ranger I'll likely drop Fire Sword, which I only took in case something got in my face, for the snipe. I don't really have room for Cauterizing, but I might consider dropping Inferno. This character has a lot of recharge and while I have Tactics I will not chase perma fast cast because Aim and Build Up recharge fast enough for me (I do have vengeance though, which I get to use pretty often, and while that is up my to hit is plenty high).

So many other characters. I will likely drop something on my Nrg/Dev/Mun for the snipe since I already have TD and CD. The Fire/Mental will likely not change, no need for the snipe. My Sonic/Nrg will take Energize, I'll find a way to fit it in. It certainly does add choices.

My Nrg/Regen/Mace stalker will be pretty happy. It may only fast cast after Build Up, but I took the snipe for giggles anyway. I mean, 8 seconds, really. How awesome is that!

It is huge. It makes them better than Blaze. Some will be better than Widow LUNGE.

Not sure it is true that it will bring damage down ever. Sure, if you use the snipe all the time even when not buffed to make it fast, but I see players do that now. You don't have to push the button just because it is recharged.

I think even as a situational use the snipe fast cast change can improve damage for almost anyone. Does it improve it enough to bother changing? That is up to the player. I have occasionally wanted the utility of the long range, but couldn't justify it because of how infrequently useful snipes were. This makes them more useful outside of just the range advantage and could tip me over the edge on some of my blasters. I still will skip it on some characters, I don't think this makes snipes must take. But I do think it improves their value and makes them worthwhile.

That said, snipes were not the main part of trying to balance blasters. The snipe changes are there because snipes need something across every AT. Only the secondary mitigation additions will make me lose my bet so I am working on figuring out how to make sure the devs realize they need a broader revamp and that those changes should be pushed back to I25 (slightly broader revamp, yes, push back the changes, not really ).