[ QUOTE ]
Well, they were argueing about soloing anyway. I just felt that it was starting to stray the conversation away from the main point of the thread. Which was: What is the blaster role in teams?
[/ QUOTE ]
It was, although I think blaster soloability is something for consideration in all this.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
[ QUOTE ]
No blaster set has 5 or six melee attacks. Although, if there was one that had 5 hard hitting melee attacks that would be something to behold.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually electrical manipulation has just that 6 melee attacks:
Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Lightning Clap, Lightning Field, Shocking Grasp, and Thunderstrike.
Granted 1 is an aura but its melee range and Thunderstrike and Lightning Clap have an aoe effect but they are non damaging. I guess you might say that Power Sink is melee too but its not much of an attack unless you are counting the drain effect as one.
IMO and experience, Thunderstrike is next to useless with its long animation time and what I have seen to be low hit probability on its secondary effect. Lightning Field is just an aggravation to me and draws attention to me even when used next to a good tanker. Most of the other attacks I don't really use except Shocking Grasp whose hold effect rocks. I use Lightning Clap as a "Get'em off me power!" Its a panic button 
Anyway my whole point in this is that if our primary role is ranged damage, then why so many melee attacks in the secondary for Electricity with 7 melee range powers?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Scrappers are the natural soloists, but they are not implemented to match their AT class description. They should have no range, their defenses should be less effective than tanks under normal, not extreme circumstances, and they should be significantly outdamaged by blasters.
Right now I'm of the opinion that blasters probably do more damage than scrappers, but the problem is that its not *blatantly so* which makes it impossible for blasters to fulfill one of our original "roles" - to overshadow scrappers in the damage department while the tank is overshadowing the scrapper in the defense department.
[/ QUOTE ]
Earlier today, I was on a team with:
1 level 40 D3 (me)
1 level 43 Fire/Kinetics controller
1 level 42 Fire/Energy blaster
1 level 40 or 41 (not sure) BS/SR scrapper
1 level 41 FF/Psy defender
1 level 29 Fire/Fire tanker (sidekicked)
1 level 20 Ice/Ice tanker (sidekicked)
The blaster and both defenders used our nukes - the blaster every single time it came up, me whenever I got hit with fulcrum shift and it was up, and the FF/Psy seemed to be somewhere in between. Otherwise, the main damage came from the fire blaster, who used ball + breath. She never benefited much from Fulcrum Shift because she didn't want to run into melee range. She did benefit from my tar patch, when I was able to lay it before everything died.
After a couple of fights, the scrapper started charging into every spawn ahead of the rest of us, and after a full mission, she switched to her AR/Dev blaster. She said that she was running ahead so she could get a few attacks before everything was completely wiped out, and just got tired of not being very decisive compared to the blaster on the team and switched to her blaster.
I relate this because this is how things go pretty much every time I play a scrapper on a team with blasters. Even my spines scrapper experiences this. Overshadowed? The only time I feel my damage actually contributes is when we're fighting single hard targets - bosses at the minimum, up to AVs and maybe monsters.
I tend to find, having played a tanker, defender, peacebringer, and two scrappers into the mid-late game, that blasters do the damage on teams. Spines comes closest with its AoEs, but its overall damage is lower to compensate for both its range and its AoE.
I dunno, I could agree with you on this point if I believed there was actually a point to having non-blaster primary damage dealers on a team with blasters.
[/ QUOTE ]
The combination that tends to "overshadow" scrappers in teams is tank(s) + AoE blaster(s). If the AoE-capable heroes are free to fire ranged AoEs without fear of aggro because of a tank holding aggro, then a melee attack class is going to tend to be left out in the cold.
I'm not sure that is fixable, nor am I sure that's actually "broken" in the first place. For example, in a team with a good tank and a couple ranged AoE shooters, even my ill/rad controller can get effectively trumped. Everything can be dead before I can get toggle debuffs deployed, and my pets will lag behind unless I teleport myself directly into the spawns. What I tend to find myself doing is EMPing an adjacent spawn and then letting the pets whittle them down a bit before the group destroys the rest, or sometimes try to race the tank to a group and cast the PA into it for fun.
Even in those kinds of teams, though, my scrappers and my controller, and heck even often my energy blaster, will realize the minions and LTs are worm-food in seconds, and target the boss(es). Bosses do not go down in the AoE alpha-strike in most teams that I've seen, and I can at least start wearing them down prior to or during the alpha strikes.
I have a potential idea for maybe "solving" the alpha strike problem. If I think it through, I'll Suggestions and Ideas it.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
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[ QUOTE ]
The combination that tends to "overshadow" scrappers in teams is tank(s) + AoE blaster(s). If the AoE-capable heroes are free to fire ranged AoEs without fear of aggro because of a tank holding aggro, then a melee attack class is going to tend to be left out in the cold.
[/ QUOTE ]
On teams, I've felt overshadowed (as a scrapper, in terms of damage output) by:
Energy - Energy could (and usually did) knock things away from me and kill them, leaving me with little to do.
Electric - Energy-vulnerable villains seem to be more common than smashing/lethal-resistant villains. They certainly seem more common than negative-vulnerable villains. Also, AoE.
AR - AoE and good single-target damage. Yes, it uses lethal mostly, but that simply puts that aspect on equal footing with scrapper damage, not behind scrappers. Add in a level 32 power that can be used every fight and a cone that does fire damage, and it's pretty easy to not keep up well.
Ice - Attacks animate quickly and hit hard. Generally speaking, when duoing with an ice blaster, the blaster took bosses out much faster than I could. In addition, said blaster could fight bosses much more safely thanks to bitter freeze ray and freeze ray.
Fire - AoE, with a secondary effect of more damage.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure that is fixable, nor am I sure that's actually "broken" in the first place. For example, in a team with a good tank and a couple ranged AoE shooters, even my ill/rad controller can get effectively trumped. Everything can be dead before I can get toggle debuffs deployed, and my pets will lag behind unless I teleport myself directly into the spawns. What I tend to find myself doing is EMPing an adjacent spawn and then letting the pets whittle them down a bit before the group destroys the rest, or sometimes try to race the tank to a group and cast the PA into it for fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
I didn't say it was broken, though. I said that blasters can already overshadow scrappers when it comes to damage.
[ QUOTE ]
Even in those kinds of teams, though, my scrappers and my controller, and heck even often my energy blaster, will realize the minions and LTs are worm-food in seconds, and target the boss(es). Bosses do not go down in the AoE alpha-strike in most teams that I've seen, and I can at least start wearing them down prior to or during the alpha strikes.
[/ QUOTE ]
True, but then scrappers are meant to be boss-killers, so this is working as intended.
I don't think scrappers are doing too much damage in relation to blasters. I think that blasters tend to exaggerate how much damage scrappers do and underrate their own damage when it comes to complaints about damage output. Nerfing scrapper damage won't fix blasters.
[ QUOTE ]
I have a potential idea for maybe "solving" the alpha strike problem. If I think it through, I'll Suggestions and Ideas it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Cool. Other solutions have not worked so well - increased hit points, for example.
BTW, just to be clear, I still agree blasters have problems. I don't think scrapper damage is the source of those problems. I still say I'm all for a boost to blaster damage (10% or so) or a reduction to scrapper damage (to 90% or so), but an alteration so that blasters do significantly more damage compared to scrappers than they do now? That's just one step in making scrappers the solo AT not because they're better at soloing, but because no one with any sense will want them on teams.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
[ QUOTE ]
I went away from the computer to check on some CoV stuff and *wham* I received 5 or so PM's asking "what is the Blaster's role?"
Answer - Ranged damage. Now, the issue is more specifically - what does a Blaster do that a Scrapper can't already do? Or, even worse, is a Scrapper inherently "stronger" than a Blaster. We want each Archetype to have a well defined role, and part of our Scrapper testing is aimed directly at this.
Secondly, I have no intention of removing melee attacks - it's just a "perception" by some Blasters that some of the Secondary Sets aren't as useful as Devices or Energy Manipulation. This is a rather frequent refrain in PM's (and the occasional forum post). This is something that we should also explore...we want all the Secondary sets to be fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
So....what up?
We already know what's up, it's really just a case of Dev procedure:
1. Ignore complaints about weak Blaster sets
2. Continuing ignoring
3. After enough PMs, make a post claiming to have plans to fix some of the problems.
4. Return to Step 1.
[ QUOTE ]
We already know what's up, it's really just a case of Dev procedure:
1. Ignore complaints about weak Blaster sets
2. Continuing ignoring
3. After enough PMs, make a post claiming to have plans to fix some of the problems.
4. Return to Step 1.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure seems like it. We were told that they'd be looking at our secondaries and something would be done...nearly a full year of development later, we have...
*drumroll*
Defiance. Which had to be renamed from Desperation so Blasters wouldn't slit their wrists en masse.
Color me underwhelmed.
[ QUOTE ]
We already know what's up, it's really just a case of Dev procedure:
1. Ignore complaints about weak Blaster sets
2. Continuing ignoring
3. After enough PMs, make a post claiming to have plans to fix some of the problems.
4. Return to Step 1.
[/ QUOTE ]
Don't forget to weaken strong Blaster powersets while obliquely and/or unintentionally nerfing the AT as a whole.
Holy Redname-Post Necromancy, Batman! We're delving into this again?
Well, all I've got to say is that I expect them to get in some fixes to Blasters by I8. Issue 7 seems way too time-consuming for the devs even without adding extra fixes onto it, but I expect by Issue 8 they'll have enough time to fix stuff and add stuff COH side.
Arc Salvo: Okay hold one sec guys, we can't just rush in blindly vs these Nemesis, they've got these ranged aoe's tha-
Teammate1(charging in): Shut up, Arc Salvo, you lame*$% Viewtiful Joe wannabe! What do you know?!
Teammate2(also charging): yeah, ST#& arc salvo u PWR RANGR U!
Arc Salvo: *sigh*
[ QUOTE ]
I went away from the computer to check on some CoV stuff and *wham* I received 5 or so PM's asking "what is the Blaster's role?"
Answer - Ranged damage. Now, the issue is more specifically - what does a Blaster do that a Scrapper can't already do? Or, even worse, is a Scrapper inherently "stronger" than a Blaster. We want each Archetype to have a well defined role, and part of our Scrapper testing is aimed directly at this.
Secondly, I have no intention of removing melee attacks - it's just a "perception" by some Blasters that some of the Secondary Sets aren't as useful as Devices or Energy Manipulation. This is a rather frequent refrain in PM's (and the occasional forum post). This is something that we should also explore...we want all the Secondary sets to be fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
A year later..... And meh. Let me guess... other priorites.
[ QUOTE ]
Holy Redname-Post Necromancy, Batman! We're delving into this again?
Well, all I've got to say is that I expect them to get in some fixes to Blasters by I8. Issue 7 seems way too time-consuming for the devs even without adding extra fixes onto it, but I expect by Issue 8 they'll have enough time to fix stuff and add stuff COH side.
[/ QUOTE ]
keep dreaming arc. if we're lucky MAYBE they'll do soming about the reaming they gave energy drain. but then I'm not holding my breath on that either.
[ QUOTE ]
Holy Redname-Post Necromancy, Batman! We're delving into this again?
Well, all I've got to say is that I expect them to get in some fixes to Blasters by I8. Issue 7 seems way too time-consuming for the devs even without adding extra fixes onto it, but I expect by Issue 8 they'll have enough time to fix stuff and add stuff COH side.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is why we're only heating tar and gathering feathers, rather than lighting up the torches and handing out pitchforks.
Issue 8 rolls around with this issue still unaddressed (resolving it seems unlikely but at least another bone or two thrown our way might appease us) and the devs will have a riot as the six or seven people who still play blasters rise up in outrage.
Seems like everytime I PM a Dev about this, I get a different answer.
First it's: "We'll look into it".
Second: "Pretty busy with Blasters right now"
Third: "Haven't gotten to the Blaster stuff yet"
....
At this rate, we'll be playing "City of Jem and the Holograms" before we get some fixes.
Folks actually bother PMing the devs. I mean, I'm sure they do. Presonally, I don't see the point in bothering.
[ QUOTE ]
Folks actually bother PMing the devs. I mean, I'm sure they do. Presonally, I don't see the point in bothering.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly, I tend to agree with you.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
Even with the typos?
We'll make some allowances since its your birthday. We can assume you're drunk. 
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
[ QUOTE ]
At this rate, we'll be playing "City of Jem and the Holograms" before we get some fixes.
[/ QUOTE ] Argh! Now you've gone and gotten that blasted song stuck in my head. 
MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812
That's always a safe assumption. Ya' think I blapp sober?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I went away from the computer to check on some CoV stuff and *wham* I received 5 or so PM's asking "what is the Blaster's role?"
Answer - Ranged damage. Now, the issue is more specifically - what does a Blaster do that a Scrapper can't already do? Or, even worse, is a Scrapper inherently "stronger" than a Blaster. We want each Archetype to have a well defined role, and part of our Scrapper testing is aimed directly at this.
Secondly, I have no intention of removing melee attacks - it's just a "perception" by some Blasters that some of the Secondary Sets aren't as useful as Devices or Energy Manipulation. This is a rather frequent refrain in PM's (and the occasional forum post). This is something that we should also explore...we want all the Secondary sets to be fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
A year later..... And meh. Let me guess... other priorites.
[/ QUOTE ]
Thats not true...they said they were fixing blaster secondaries...err...wait a minute, how many months ago was that again? I stopped counting after six.
[ QUOTE ]
Thats not true...they said they were fixing blaster secondaries...err...wait a minute, how many months ago was that again? I stopped counting after six.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's coming up on another six months since you stopped counting.
It was about this time last year that they said they were going to be looking into them.
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We already know what's up, it's really just a case of Dev procedure:
1. Ignore complaints about weak Blaster sets
2. Continuing ignoring
3. After enough PMs, make a post claiming to have plans to fix some of the problems.
4. Return to Step 1.
[/ QUOTE ]
Don't forget to weaken strong Blaster powersets while obliquely and/or unintentionally nerfing the AT as a whole.
[/ QUOTE ]
Specifically /NRG.
Won't someone please think of the poor squishy Stalkers?! 
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
[ QUOTE ]
Won't someone please think of the poor squishy Stalkers?!
[/ QUOTE ]
*prays for the Stalkers*
Hey, remember the sniper in "Saving Private Ryan"? The guy who recites scripture before he presses the trigger ...
If I did that while playing my blaster, does it count as "Sympathy for Stalkers"?
[ QUOTE ]
Scrappers are the natural soloists, but they are not implemented to match their AT class description. They should have no range, their defenses should be less effective than tanks under normal, not extreme circumstances, and they should be significantly outdamaged by blasters.
Right now I'm of the opinion that blasters probably do more damage than scrappers, but the problem is that its not *blatantly so* which makes it impossible for blasters to fulfill one of our original "roles" - to overshadow scrappers in the damage department while the tank is overshadowing the scrapper in the defense department.
[/ QUOTE ]
Earlier today, I was on a team with:
1 level 40 D3 (me)
1 level 43 Fire/Kinetics controller
1 level 42 Fire/Energy blaster
1 level 40 or 41 (not sure) BS/SR scrapper
1 level 41 FF/Psy defender
1 level 29 Fire/Fire tanker (sidekicked)
1 level 20 Ice/Ice tanker (sidekicked)
The blaster and both defenders used our nukes - the blaster every single time it came up, me whenever I got hit with fulcrum shift and it was up, and the FF/Psy seemed to be somewhere in between. Otherwise, the main damage came from the fire blaster, who used ball + breath. She never benefited much from Fulcrum Shift because she didn't want to run into melee range. She did benefit from my tar patch, when I was able to lay it before everything died.
After a couple of fights, the scrapper started charging into every spawn ahead of the rest of us, and after a full mission, she switched to her AR/Dev blaster. She said that she was running ahead so she could get a few attacks before everything was completely wiped out, and just got tired of not being very decisive compared to the blaster on the team and switched to her blaster.
I relate this because this is how things go pretty much every time I play a scrapper on a team with blasters. Even my spines scrapper experiences this. Overshadowed? The only time I feel my damage actually contributes is when we're fighting single hard targets - bosses at the minimum, up to AVs and maybe monsters.
I tend to find, having played a tanker, defender, peacebringer, and two scrappers into the mid-late game, that blasters do the damage on teams. Spines comes closest with its AoEs, but its overall damage is lower to compensate for both its range and its AoE.
I dunno, I could agree with you on this point if I believed there was actually a point to having non-blaster primary damage dealers on a team with blasters.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)