hepheastus

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Please, please, be clear and concise or say nothing at all.

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If only more of the posters on this thread followed the rules you wish to impose on Statesman.

Maybe WE are the villians here. Playing by any set of rules we choose while the hero must play fair.

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Aaiieeee!!!! The Light!!! The Light of Truth!!!!

It burnsss!!!!!

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AoE's have NOTHING to do with surviving mezzes and everything to do with surviving everything...

All other AT's have damage mitigation abilities except blasters.... and if you say it's range you're full of garbage.

Our damage mitigation is extreme damage. If you're going to nerf that changes need to be made to give people a fighting chance.

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Please, please, be clear and concise or say nothing at all.

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If only more of the posters on this thread followed the rules you wish to impose on Statesman.

Maybe WE are the villians here. Playing by any set of rules we choose while the hero must play fair.

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Statesman is the learned and talented lead designer of City of Heroes and has an obligation to play it straight with his customers. We on the other hand are a bunch of yahoos who paid $15 to play a game. There is no moral or practical equivalence here. We have no obligation other than to show everyone the same courtesy that we would expect in turn.

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"Rationalizations are a key to survival. They're more important than sex."
"I doubt that."
"Really, whens the last time you got through a day without a rationalization?"

[/ QUOTE ] Oh snap... what a [censored] apple polisher. the man made a reasonable request... why even talk about tweaks when we all know for a fact that they mean "make less effective" and we all know for a fact they're going to go ahead with said tweaks no matter HOW much we rant about it. given the amount of time and effort people put into their build the developers should EXPECT complaints and pleas for understanding. In short Statesman dosen't need you or your fan boy ilk to defend him. Get off the ballzac....

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I'm not talking about close, just back up to 75% like it was in beta. Rad would be the only defender even able to get close to Blasters. Tankers have attacks as a secondary and their damage is being looked into, so should Defenders. Just my two cents.

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Okay I'll bite. the day they give blasters secondaries that are anywhere NEAR the effectiveness of defender secondaries.... I'll hop on that bandwagon. How about it? a 66% effective shadow fall for blasters?

didn't think so. Don't expect me to support driving a nail into the blaster coffin with a move like that. Actually I kinda feel sorry for defenders now... If massive AoE's take a hit on the blaster side.... you just know the defender variant is going to be pure crap.

As a defender I say that would be cool..

As a blaster I say... please stay off my lawn son. we already have scrappers squatting on our damage-real estate. we don't need another ranged archetype with damage close to ours AND secondaries that put ours to shame.

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The problem with Elec is that the secondary effect has NO effect untill the mob is TOTALLY drained and even then if the mob even has a sliver of end it can usually get an attack off. The other attack power secondary effects usually have an immediate effect.
Some solutions for this is that the end drain effect actually should give the elec blaster or defender some end back

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That would be nice... nice and massively overpowered. It would mean a no penalty thunderous blast. what should happen with elec blast? ramp up the damage. and drop the endurance crap for a disorient effect. It's not like mobs don't regen endurance like they got a 6 slotted stamina... because they do.

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God I wish I could kill a +2 mob in one freaking hit man. I don't know.

Is this actually true? I think your getting your information wrong somewhere. I am 75% sure that MOST Blasters could not kill a +2 in one hit unless they were hugely buffed, and the enemy was hugely debuffed.

Or perhaps it was an Underling

I team up with a lot of blasters, and I've never seen that happened.

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My L 37 energy blaster can 2 shot red minions easily... BU+Aim, snipe, power blast.. next. I can't two shot red LTs. The sad part is I don't have damage maxxed.. I run 3 acc SOs and 3 damage SOs in my main attacks.

My AoEs DO totally suck tho, not even worth using except as attack cycle fillers.

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with build up+AIm and a resonably well slotted blazing bolt or total focus.... yes. a blaster can one shot an orange MINION. blazing bolt is an interruptible snipe and total focus's long animation time put's the blaster using it at risk. so what? ever see what a built up eagles claw can do if it crits?

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The whole Ranged support role is pure BS anyways. give me ONE instance in ANY mission, ANY team battle or task force where range is an issue?

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How about going up against a Tank Smasher or Tank Swiper before a hold kicks in, or when a hold misses? Sure is nice to stay away from those big fat blades or that pbaoe disorient and still be able to do some damage. Until that Tank is in a hold, range is a good thing.

I think maybe you're being a little melodramatic.

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Oh and btw.... last time I checked you don't have to exactly get within kissing range to lay a hold down... and don't assume that all blasters have MAXIMUM range at their disposal. a fire blasters MOST damaging attacks vary from close to mid range.... putting him well into range of a tank SMASHERS PBAoE stun.

they're going to jack the alpha strikes. so alpha strike what?

tank swipers have no pbaoe disorient. what they do have is a knock down that can put you on your [censored] at range allowing them to easily get into melee range and one shot you... IF said ranged attack dosen't do the job by itself. Now who's being melodramatic? There's no single blaster attack that's going to disable a Tank swiper anyways and not ever situation even affords you range. besides bosses tend to be accompanied by other mobs... like juicers. Juicer elec blasts combined with tank swipers, smasher ranged AoE attacks can absolutely destroy a blaster in seconds. I'm not being melodramatic... you're being narrow minded.

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Dude, right on!

Im an AR / Dev who , yes, does use his AoE attacks to great effect. All i can say to those who think AoE's need to be nerfed is this: Do you realize that 1 time in 10 we may come really close to dying? Plus the slow anim time on AR makes for some really sticky situations. Why change anything. Do I care that Regen scrappers or Invuln Tanks can take damage? NO. Do I care that Rad buffs make mobs into wusses? NO....that's thier jobs man. Leave em alone. My job is to blow stuff sky high with some carefully placed high explosive / projected fire! Take all that away from me and I become "Mr. Glass". Thanks a lot devs, but leave the powers alone, and fix existing "problems" that plague us everyday. Lag, Doors, meaningless travel, and a whole host of other real problems should be addressed first.

Leave powers as they are, or improve them. Dont Nerf anything most have come to rely on. It amazes me how ppl care so much about another AT's build by saying it's "unfair" or "imbalanced" NONSENSE!

Just do me a favour, find a way to kill the Lag Monster on Infinity. Lol

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The whole Ranged support role is pure BS anyways. give me ONE instance in ANY mission, ANY team battle or task force where range is an issue?

Only if you got a team full of blaster and defenders.... which on difficult missions isn't viable. When if EVER are there missions where melee damage can't reliably subsitute for ranged damage? In fact remove the blasters from the equation and add tankers and scrappers and the whole need to kill quickly goes out the window. The only member of the team really benefitting from speedy deaths... is yes you guessed it Mr. glass cannon the blaster.

Statesman has said that alpha strikes are diminishing the role of whole AT's..... Well To that I say BLASTERS DON'T EVEN HAVE A ROLE IN TEAMS. unless you REALLY count my single target immobile as team enhancing. My AoE's are what make me valuable to a team and He wants to "balance" that... leaving me what to offer to a team? moral support? comic relief?

I'm just not getting it. If the blasters role is to speed up killing and the developers desire is slower more protracted battles....then theres a SERIOUS dissconect that needs to be resolved. If this is where the game is going... Either give blasters some defense... or just save everyone some aggravation and discontinue the AT. I could not in good faith suggest that ANYONE subject themselves to the fustration of being the games only worthless Archetype, past level 32. because that's where we're headed.

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5. The massive AOE Alpha Strikes will be addressed shortly after Tankers get their due.



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Hey states,,, If you guys are going to lower the damage of these attacks how about getting rid of the absolute and complete drain on Endurance?

Those attacks are SUPPOSED to wipe out large groups. I'm sure that's they way you guys designed them BECAUSE they do leave you damn near helpless and unable to regain endurance for 10 seconds.

I've pretty much decided that you guys were going to bork the level 32 ultimate for blasters so I rushed mine to level 50 so that your nerfs wouldn't touch me. NYAHHH NYAAAHHH *rasberry*.... Given the lack luster secondaries offered to blasters and your intent to "look at" the massive AoE's I have to tell you that I hope these new Epic power pools are going to be pretty good.... because blasters really have nothing to look forward to.

I love this game. And I'm probally going to be playing it until the day they pry my account out of my cold dead hands. but seriously man blasters are just pointless to play after a certain level. the last 6 levels of my blasters career involved 50% alpha striking the hell out of mobs and running. Because without a massive infusion of lucks... that's the ONLY way to survive. the other 50% involved trudging through missions at near defender speed. and of course there was some teaming. I team with my supergroup a ton... but I still like to solo from time to time and I think that blasters should have some ability to do that. If we are a support class.... and you want battles to last longer we need real skills that will allow us to contribute to a team. For gods sake you guys put blazing aura, and combustion into my blasters secondary..... what does that support besides wasted power slots and blaster dirt naps? And my ultimate secondary power was.... hot feet.....???

I guess what I'm saying is what are you guys going to offer the blaster community to make up for our loss of power? I heard you say you're looking into the lackluster damage in Elec blast... kudos. but what about NRG blast? The knockback just annoys the hell out of players diminishing the desirability of energy blasters in teams. If you tone down Nova.... well there's going to be a lot of NRG blasters getting booted from teams. And even on teams.... think about this. why bother with the ranged support of blasters when scrappers can provide a consistant and reliable source of damage? They don't need the kind of baby sitting that blasters do and can fufill the role of tankers if need be. Defenders can provide ranged punch and they have buff debuff abillities that can support a team. controllers and tankers offer sources of damage and crowd control......

The only thing you guys gave blasters was damage. In the higher reaches of the game when blaster 1-3 shotting becomes commonplace we're not even living long enough to deliver our max damage capacity. And several defender types become kind of useless to us at this level. Empaths, Kinetics, even radiation because blasters tend to draw mobs out of the cloud of death that serves as protection because they're programed for range.

So If all we have is damage. If that's alll we have to offer a team.....

Why are you guys jeporadizing that? what is it you have in mind for us? I'd really like to know before I roll another blaster. And I'd really like to give the blasters in my supergroup a reason not to abandon the characters they've worked hard to develop. I'd like to say something to keep them playing the game. some of them are talking about quitting. Maybe you guys don't care, but these people have become my friends over the last 7 months or so and I don't want them bailing over to WoW... I want them here with me blowing [censored] up and having fun.

After retiring my blaster.... I started playing a scrapper and a defender regulary. I whipped out the hero planner and got to work. and making descisions have been hard because defenders and scrappers have REAL secondaries. It's actually hard to make room for pools because Rad blast and INV are both so damned cool. my blaster had exactlly 4 good secondary powers.... and one of them was just more damage. the other 5 powers ranged from marginally useful to pure garbage that makes me think none of you guys actually bothered to test those powers in actual game play. And I've heard NOTHING about improving any of them one Iota. I don't know... maybe you guys didn't Think through the post 40 game for blasters?

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No more blaster nerfs please. It is NOT needed.

My ar/dev blaster hasn't been out of debt since Issue2 went live.

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Learn to play the game. Don't tell me you know how either, because if you're in debt because smoke bomb now does what it should do, you don't know how to play.

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How the hell would you know if he knows how to play? Do you have an AR/Dev blaster of similar level? Do you even have a blaster?

Just another troll flapping your yap.

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if you read the AT descriptions a blaster was never meant to solo...they were meant to be behind the low damage tankers that are taking the hits while blasting away at devastating effect. if mobs have more hit points then you cant kill a mob easily before it kills you. a tank and support people need to be there while you do the damage. imo from the descriptions it sounds like a blaster should solo about on par with a defender that is geared to solo(i know an emp defender cant solo like the 3 big damager rad/kin/storm)

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WTF?


the guide clearly says blasters can solo......

You got vengence reversed.

Killing minions dosen't trigger vengence. Killing LT's triggers vengence. If you see vengenced LT's it's because you killed an LT in the group.

What's really horrible is a vengenced fake nem.... not fun at all.

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Ok, folks I've decided, if ALL of you can agree on which combination of blaster is the most "broken" as you put it or the "worst" combonation, I'll take it lvl it up and then either I'll be stomping and say you don't know what your talking about OR I'll be stomped and I'll agree that they are indeed in need of alteration of design.

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With smoke grenade gone none of them are "broken"

No more broken than Spines/INV scrappers. Fire/* becomes extremely powerful in the late game. Fire/Energy would be the sets I'd take if I were starting over again. Having build up and fire breath so early on would equate to pretty fast leveling. of course the early game has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY harder. By the time a blaster hits level 20 now he probally deserves all the gusto he can get.

Maybe You're cool with Debt. I'm not.... especially when it takes damn near 2 million xp just to make level 42 in this game.
Especially now. I want to hit 50 as fast as possible before the Dev's finish [censored] what's left of the AoE blaster.

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I said outdoors and there are guys that don't have super long range attacks that you can fight. so please don't try to only answer a fraction of a piece of a poste.

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Please don;t try to limit me to fighting out doors. and besides I think I covered that. Range is an illusion in this game.

I've run around corners. blasted/
Flown away....blasted
supersped away.... blasted.

You get attacked where you were when the attack began. There's no dodging. and theres not much out ranging in the late game. It's full of snipers, rikti and Nemesis with notoriously long ranged attacks. Obviously you've never played a blaster past level 35.....

that won't help in the late game. I've sniped guys at the very edge of sniper range and have had every other mob in the group shoot me full of holes as I was kiting backwards at superspeed.

Hell it won't even help against sky captains. in teravolta.
And you're ignoring door missions. long rang attacks are pointless when you don't have ANY range but close. Try long ranged fighting in a cave.

Heh... in my own missions i have to carry a full load of lucks and disciplines to get anywhere. many times I have to leave the mission several times to see contacts for new supplies. And that 's TEAMED. And I'm in my 40's.

bull. Been reading Xmen For decades And I've seen him take of that visor dozens of time and completel level stuff. Put it back on and keep on trucking.

Besides lets end all of this comic book analogy crap. Comics have no real bearing on CoH. how many fire manipulating assault rifle types are their out there, in comics?

Heres a blaster for you. Havok. He can knock out star ships... pulverize moutain tops...... level cities. Now that I think about it most heroes who fit the "blaster" archetype in comics are over the top engines of destruction. What 20 minions could stand against the human torch? most arch villans cower before his nova flame. What 20 minons can stand against the IceMan. They'd find them selves flash frozen in seconds.

Let's deal with what we have here. An offensively weighted high risk build. That needs to be teamed....... needs massive damage to support that team.... and at the same time marginilizes every other member on that team because of that very damage.

The very concept is broken. And the only way to fix it is to make the game so hard everyone has to team. all the time. The problem is that's not how the game was designed. Not at all. People were told that the blaster can solo. The blaster was given enormous power and range to supoort that. but in the late game street hunting is composed of nothing but huge groups.

Very huge groups, some with the ability to stun or mez at range. Missions are populated with bosses that no single blaster should be able to take down.

The only way a blaster can survive solo in that enviroment is moving from group to group unleashing holocaust after holocaust. If you want to make people happy.... allow the solo blaster to go after small groups by ensuring that theres a modicum of small sized groups. Let the teams handle the large spawns.

Otherwise upcoming changes will turn the whole concept of CoH into a lie. We'll end up with "any other MMO" Unless you're a scrapper.

Man that was beautiful.

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Hate to agree with Punni, but...I do. Either let blasters have their AOEs, in fact give all sets AOEs, or change the secondaries so theyre more useful defensively.

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I agree but theres a problem there too. If you give us crowd control..... then we intrude on controller territory. If you give us too much defense then we intrude on defender and scrapper territory.

We are right where we should be. Extreme damage output and low defense is the ONLY way to balance Blasters. The Dev's need to wake up and see that.

you're preaching to the converted. If the above post was intended for me.

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While I appreciate what a good tank can do, this is simply never going to be the case. Provoke has a finite area of effect, it you provoke the mobs that are in the back shooting the ones near you will aggro if damage. If you provoke the ones near you the ones shooting will certainly aggro if damage and may simply change targets at random.

Mob behavior makes it impossible for you to provoke everything, and whatever is not provoked can and will aggro on your team mates.

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Yes, provoke has a finite area of effect, but only few roaming enemies really get away from my full agro covering (provoke is not the only tool, combustion and fire sword circle are also area of effect attacks that do provoke), but if i see some one suddenly fal to yellow or lower i target him, auto follow so i can see where he is and see what is hitting him and somehow get agro of that one or ones back.

It is not automatic, but nothing on this game is. It is about knowing to do your job. Also, the blaster should not really go blasting ANYTHING, he should focus on the area the tanker and controlers have already keept in check. The scrapper are the ones that should move arround freely.

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speaking of fire sword circle and all that burn tanker crap..

States if you're going to tone me down how about giving me a secondary that works instead of this gimped bag of Fire tanker retreads......

Making mobs tougher, "tweaking AoE..(we know what that means) and leaving blaster secondaries as they are is just plain wrong. It's clear to me that you guys just threw the fire secondary together with no real thought. It's junk. Before now I could get by with it..... but if you guys are making SUBSTANTIAL changes to what the fire blaster can do There needs to be mitagaiting improvements elsewhere. Anyhing that undermines my solo ability (which is predicated on damage) also gimps me for teaming. I've said it before time and time again. who needs a half ***** fire blaster on their team that they need to protect, and who does middiling damage? You'll not only knock solo out of whack for us... but duo's too. If you just have to kill the AoE's please just do away with nukes altogether and give me something useful in return. Increase my single target damage. give me some real support tools... just don't nerf the hell out of us and leave us high and dry. Say what you will but that's exactly what you did to AR/Dev. If you had to nerf
Smoke grenade that badly you could have looked for ways to soften the blow. Like giving devices a build up ability. God knows that taser gun crap wouldnt be missed. Now AoE blasters are in the spot light. after the next round of "fixes" what will be left for AR/DEV? They've already respeced their build, trading offense for defense. theres no slack left. With a new round of reductions they may as well hang up their rifles and go home. I am really beginning to wish you'd never made blasters in the first place. Stronger defenders would have drawn less attention, and people wouldn't be complaining about our level speed or kill ratio. Instead you guys made us what we are. front loaded damage with damn little else. My AoE powers aren't exploits. I didn't overbalance or break them. Keep this in mind when you you guys finally decide to fix things. And for gods sakes let us test the changes on the test server first. Don't stealth nerf us like you did fire tankers.

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this discussion came to a conclusion the second you suggested we shift to melee attacks to become "hallmark" blasters.

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This is my last comment on this topic as I can't stay on the forums all night like some people....



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Thank god......

And really I'm Hope you're not in the military.... you're the kind of jack [censored] who'd send archers into the frey against knights on horse back.

Later fool.