Torakage

Statesman...I love you. This single post has made me happier than I've been in days.

Positron, you're awesome too--clarification and codification of the awesome makes it easier to understand exactly how wonderful this is.

You can try to quarantine the madness...but it'll keep leaking out into the General Forum.

Ah, well...at least we have a place to call our own. *buys this thread and puts two hotels on it*

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Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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And there you have it, folks.

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(*What the heck are crumpets anyway?)

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"Crumpets?! Nobody understands crumpets. You gotta know what cricket is to understand crumpets."


o.o sorry, counldn't help myself *wanders off to have a scone and a bit of tea*

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Ninja turtles reference! Ack!

Luddites hate technology.

And War Witch is responsible for a great deal of the snarky dialogue in CoV.

*watches the little shooting star go across the monitor, trailing the words "The More You Know"*

Come back, Bo! Come back! *sob*

One thing that most of this sort of idea would RELY on would be the skill system. Superspies don't kick down doors, they infiltrate parties and chat with the villain wittily, extracting the needed information with repartee before seducing the villain's daughter and then making a daring escape in the night.

Or something along those lines. *grin*

The point being that the spy's powersets would almost be secondary to their skillsets, and a magical superspy (divination magic!) would be somewhat different from a technology superspy (Q-branch!).

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One of the obvious moves is the City of Manga/City of Manhwa to appeal to CoH growing Asian audience, through NCSoft Distribution.

In particular, such a game/expansion would probably feature a high tech Korean or Japanese themed city with lots of martial arts powers, lots of robots, and perhaps a few powersets that cater directly to the magical girl types.

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I see no problems with this.

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dude...the animation times on all those magical girl powers are way too freakin' long...10-minute animation for your ultimate attack and it's interruptable?!

City of Mecha (expands to Japan)
City of Superspies (expands to Europe)
City of Waterbreathers (expands to Atlantis)
City of Aliens (expands to space)
City of Gyros (finally allows heroes to enter stores and buy a freakin' gyro!)

Martial Arts/Dark Armor, I believe.

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OK - here's the most likely outcome...

If you own both games, you get all options - the new CoV sets will be accessible for your heroes.

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WOO!

But if they pull Manuscans out of the Frozen Chrysalis missions, then what about the fluff ties between the factions? Will they battle in the streets and only one survive or something? Do you guys pay ANY attention to the game bible anymore? When was the last time anyone actually looked at the piles of background and went, "whoa...we shouldn't do this or it'll foul up the story!" You guys are ruining the game for those of us who live for stories like the Frozen Chryaslis coup or the Air Hammer revolt.

Man...this blows...

The only real serious problem I've got with Issue 5 is that it apparently undid the stability patches from back in July. The 9/15 stability patch made it even worse--I can't get a stable connection to City of Heroes to save my life now, and it was just fine before Issue 5 downloaded.

Well, that and I think the Invulnerability changes went about half again as far as they really should have--ease up a bit, guys...the Invuln heroes didn't take your cookie.*

*Disclaimer: I am not a regular Invuln player, but having seen the changes in action with one of my less-often-played alts, I'm less than thrilled. If I wanted to be that fragile I'd log on as one of my Blasters.

Sounds like they'll get both, Telva.

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Main worry:

This means one of our main fixes is... more damage.

1) Strings attached however. It better be a massive increase because if you thought it was hard getting a heal before, just wait till the team starts TELLING the defender not to because they want more damage.

team blaster: from dead to deader.
Solo: possibly less downtime [take on one group normally for a better chance at a full alpha-kill on the next? THIS could be interesting in a way...]

2) Hopefully this doesn't come with the damage debuff I fear it may.

3) Will it really be all that useful? Usually we go from full-green to orange or blinking red for about a SECOND, before the rest of the volley's animations finish us off. So unless its a fully linear thing, or a series of buffs that activate for a bit of time when we fall under certain numbers... I'm not sure we'll get to taste that extra damage in the later levels where we'd need it.

Early on? sure, hellions can take a while to finish you off. But later? ... oops!

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That's a good point--in a team situation, and even sometimes when soloing, a Blaster goes from healthy to dead in one volley. If they're lucky, two or three volleys. That's not nearly enough time for this damage buff to make a difference.

The stores at least give us the illusion of SOME kind of economy in this city. We can't enter any of the stores that the mundane humans can and buy a gyro or a pizza or go bowling. And as difficult as it is to obtain the DO and SO enhancements that you can use without resorting to the stores, removing them would be a Very Bad Idea. Heck, without a place to sell the useless enhancements we DO get (level 40 training?!) we might as well not have random drops at all.

And the mission would be one room with an unlocked door and a glowy. Click the glowie and you get the artifact.

Here's my contribution to the 3B Bible. It's not 100% mine--I'm borrowing extensively from the popular webcomic Schlock Mercenary and the (increasingly misleadingly named) "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates."

So I give you the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Blasters."

Rule #1: Pillage, then burn.

Rule #6: If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.

Rule #8: Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock.

Rule #9: Never turn your back on an enemy.

Rule #12: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.

Rule #13: Do unto others.

Rule #16: Your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth.

Rule #21: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.

Rule #27: Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.

Rule #29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less.

Rule #30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.

Rule #31: Only cheaters prosper.

Rule #34: If you're leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.

Rule #35: That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.

Rule #36: When the going gets tough, the tough call for close air support.

Rule #37: There is no “overkill”. There is only “open fire” and “I need to reload”.

Rule #38: Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it can't be hard on your clients.


I know I posted this in the Legion of Freedom forums, but it was suggested that it belonged here as well. I also know I've probably missed a few, but a thorough read of the five years of comic archives should turn up any I've missed. Hope you enjoyed!

Super Speed has an inherent stealth bonus while you're zipping around. The mobs don't aggro on you nearly as easily because you're moving too fast for them to notice you. Stack this up with the Stealth power pool and you have discovered why so many Blasters rely on this for their livelihood. You can move through enemy-infested streets with impunity, targeting and destroying only those enemies who you wish to.

So to answer your question...no, they won't have time to shoot you and mangle you horribly. More often than not, they won't even take a shot at you unless you shoot first.

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Joking apart, this is a really, really good idea.

It would give so much more personality and life to the signature heroes to have them do this. They don't even have to get off their pedestals. A simple ranged attack would do.

I mean, which would you rather we did - run to a lifeless chunk of hovering machinery when we get into trouble, or run to one of Paragon's legends?

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I agree. Arguments that they've already paid their dues are great and all, but the fact remains that some of the most powerful beings in Paragon City spend all their time standing around in public areas doing nothing while heroes sometimes die all around them.

Would be awesome if they had similar AI to the Police Drones and if enemies got close enough to trigger their aggro, they did something...heroic?

Yarr...villainous pirates be cap'ns, don't ye know?

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However since a blaster cannot stay at range indefinately due to the rooting nature of his attacks you cannot assume that blasters will not be in the same position that scrappers are.

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Huh? Rooting makes you fight in melee? That's the exact opposite of what rooting does. You root the guy and then back away, ta-da you're at range and he can't get closer.

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Nonono...they're referencing how when you attack, the animation keeps you from moving for a second or two or five. While you're immobile and shooting, the mobs close in and beat the stupid out of your poor blaster, and then mock his corpse for holding still that long.

EDIT: Orochi beat me to it, but...yeah. Consider this emphasis.

I'd be happy with three melee attacks per Secondary: one early, one medium, one heavy. Currently, apart from Devices, those secondaries have anywhere from four melee attacks to seven melee attacks. Ditch some of 'em. Blappers will likely complain, but odds are they should be playing Scrappers instead if they want to melee.

Fill the rest of the Secondary with stuff that makes us better ranged combatants, like Build Up, Aim, Conserve Power, etc. Add in some powers that enable us to effectively deal with aggro so when we snipe a mob his friends don't drop us with the alpha strike. Suddenly, we don't NEED the melee attacks so much--the mobs die before they get into melee range, and we aren't dying instantly in the return fire. The aggro mitigation means that we're a touch harder to chain-mez by the enemy mobs (since ideally we nailed the mezzers with our opening salvo).

That alone might fix blasters, but we'd probably appreciate having our ranged equalized a bit too. Stop letting minions with pistols outrange our snipes and instead give our attacks identical range to theirs. City of Blasters saw us outranging everything. Now everything outranges us. There HAS to be a happy medium, one where their range and our range are the same. Hover-sniping now entails some risk, but the risk is not stupid lottery odds like it is now.

And as for our damage, we do plenty now, if we live long enough to hit more than one or two attacks. Scrappers get criticals, which is awesome for them. Give us that nifty unresistable 30% that we're kicking around in the arena and now we've got something that makes us awesome too. Maybe include a tiny, cumulative -resist on our attacks that means once we start hitting, the damage snowballs up some. Leave the caps as is, if you insist that the range is a defense--after all, if all of the changes this post suggests go through, range might actually BE an okay defense.

It's nice that you want to compare our damage to tankers and scrappers. How about the damage ability of controllers with an army of pets, or some defender builds that can, through self-buffs and enemy debuffs, outdamage us without breaking a sweat? If you're gonna haul us out of this pit, make sure we're at least on a par with the rad/rad offenders. Test and compare with ALL ATs, and make sure if you're comparing a blaster to another AT that the other AT is built for offense. If we're the damage kings from range, then it should be harder for controllers and defenders to outdamage us, especially since many of them get significant aggro-management, defense, and healing abilities along with their ranged attack capability.

So there's my 2 influence on the idea. It will be buried by more bitter ranting and reflexive accusations soon enough, and likely will be utterly missed and forgotten in the frenzy...but I needed to get it out. I play this game to feel heroic, and I'm an altoholic who can emphatically say that blasters don't feel very heroic as things stand.

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blasters exsist to take the one shot kill that would have killed a more valuable squishy.

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I thought that was the tanker's job.

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It is--but unfortunately...

1.) It doesn't kill the tanker. It barely inconveniences him. And...

2.) Our alpha pulls all of the aggro off of the tanker just long enough for us to die. Then the mobs go back to giving the tanker a nice Swedish Massage.

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Our role is no longer defined.

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Sure it is. "Debt Sponge" is a role. So is "Concrete Kisser." I'll admit that neither is a particularly attractive option, and they're not a whole lot of fun...but that's the role Blasters currently fill. Tankers shrug off hits that would level a building; Scrappers move through crowds of enemies like the avatar of a death god; Controllers can stop a rampaging elephant in it's tracks without breaking a sweat; Defenders can turn the most powerful blow into a love-tap, or heal critical wounds with a thought; Blasters die, anytime, anywhere, for any reason.