BTW, I love Arcanavilles post. It sounds the most reasonable out of the ones I've heard so far, and it kinda ties in with a lil of my post about Range Boost in NrG secondary, but instead of buffing th blasters range, it debuffs the cons range
Nice thought on that one! 2 thumbs up!
A range debuff would not only make sense, but kick major tail as well. Great idea!
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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.
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Please just ignore them. Really blasters have a couple main issues that dont require totally ruining the sets as these few posters that keep reguritating the same ideas to change blasters to THEIR ideals keep posting.
Blasters have a problem with damage scaling. This is not going to be fixed by simply saying give them more ranged attacks, or whatever. THe scale needs to be fixed. Statesman recognized this a few months back, and did nothing but give us defiance, which does nothing to solve the issue being that good blasters dont ever get much of a defiance buff. The ranged attacks still scale badly, and even more evident since ED was introduced. Over the course of a 50 level carreer i would estimate a extra base 10 percent needs to be gained to really level it out and make blasters live up to the kill before being killed ideals.
Mezz protection, situational, would be nice, i know its not going to happen but i throw it in every chance i get anyway, something IW style, click, nonperma, maybe a 5 minute down time enhanced. Infact hey, there is you new inhernet power. Defiance can live up to its name. Make it like Domination for COV. As we fight we build up a bar, when its full we click it for 2 minutes of practiced brawler style mezz protection. When it wears off we start all over. We build up our "defiance" in the face of chain holds. And much like dominators, will probably save it until we know we need it for that last boss or whatever.
And finally not ALL secondaries are made equal. There are some glowing holes like say burn for a blaster. Fix those things, and those only. Some sets work great, like energy, or even i have seen electric manipulation used very effectivly. But i do agree with the poster before his half a page list of changes he proposed, that is change as few things as possible.
And simply to powers, not alot needs to be changed. Short range high damage burst powers should all be equal in distance, yes 40-50 feet sounds nice. Snipes should provide some distance protection, in that not all enemies should be able to return fire with normal attacks at a 150 foot distance, but rather then changing blaster sets, i would like to see enemies some with higher range some without. Kinda like players. A melee enemy shouldnt have a pistol that can clear snipe range. A rifle carring enemy probably should. And since were on snipe talk, drop the animation times. Or at minimum shorten the interupt by about half.
And really to me that is it. I know other more set specific changes are sugested but i dont comment on sets i havent played. I have played energy, it needs no changes in its secondary it works great, perhaps other sets need to be tweaked to meet its usefulness rather then energy being ruined from fear of melee.
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But, hey, you blappers let me know if I missed the mark.
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I would say you did. The reason for such high damage on the melee attacks is the "risk" of entering melee range. Adding range to these attacks almost demands that their damage be reduced to compensate for balance.
Also, "Blappers" would no longer exist... as you just turned all of our key melee attacks into ranged ones. Losing the melees would completely kill my character concept. Some of us don't care about attack chains.
I understand the Blaster debate. However, drastically removing and altering powers at this stage of the game with this magnitude is extreme.. and the Blaster problem is not "that" extreme.
Adding new power options is the way to go. Not removing them.
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I'm with PMM on this, taking away my melee powers, any of them breaks my Boss Bashing Build. I can solo +2 or +3 Bosses, I don't generally because I mostly team, but I can and my melee powers are a form of defence for me. So when a Boss decides i'm his target I quite often rush in and melee to get a breather.
So I am completely against the removal of any powers the way the OP described.
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Electric: Make end drain meaningful or replace it.
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If they are gung-ho with End Drain, they should make it a %, not a set value.
Frankly, I would rather see them stick a 4sec Sleep effect on Electric attacks.
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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.
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Castle -
You just let us know if you happen to go solo/form a game company on your own.
Youre humble, willing to listen, willing to compromise, and willing to be wrong.
Rare traits in a normal dude let alone a game designer - who typically fancy themselves terminally unique, terminally smarter than thou (usually at the cost of any social skill) and thinking of what thier reply is going to be before your even 1/2 way finished with your sentence.
Those traits of yours are all this community has really ever wanted from this development team: not to get everything they want - just some willingness to be open to other possibilities other than thier own immutable vision of what fun *should be* for everyone(tm).
Pretty much what the devs used to be like here a few years ago in CoH Beta before the Ego-pocolypse commenced.
Good show man, really good show.
I dont agree with some of your ideas, but thats a good thing and not really the point of what im getting at.
The point is your willing to listen and share.
Very, very impressive and refreshing.
Fix the Blaster in the fewest possible moves? Ok, here goes:
Increase Base damage of all blaster attacks by 10%.
Have Blaster Attack base ranges increase as level increase.
That's it, two steps.
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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.
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Please just ignore them. Really blasters have a couple main issues that dont require totally ruining the sets as these few posters that keep reguritating the same ideas to change blasters to THEIR ideals keep posting.
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You have every right to express your opinion and dislike my own. But unless you have some survey of the blaster population, would you be so kind as to express your opinon as yours and not some mandate from the Blaster community?
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Blasters have a problem with damage scaling. This is not going to be fixed by simply saying give them more ranged attacks, or whatever. THe scale needs to be fixed. Statesman recognized this a few months back, and did nothing but give us defiance, which does nothing to solve the issue being that good blasters dont ever get much of a defiance buff. The ranged attacks still scale badly, and even more evident since ED was introduced. Over the course of a 50 level carreer i would estimate a extra base 10 percent needs to be gained to really level it out and make blasters live up to the kill before being killed ideals.
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I would love to see this as well, but that path really seems to be closed. As you note, they've skipped two opportunities to do this (When they raised Scrapper damage and the Defiance), so, either the devs feel such an increase in base BI is not an option, or in some other way undesirable. The proposal is to add range to some attacks in the secondary wihout decreasing their BI/DPS. This allows a blaster to increase the DPS of their attack chain without the increased risk of melee and without an increase in base BI, allowing them to "kill before being killed" better while in the higher safety of range. And it doesn't ruin blappnig chains because the ranged power can still be used at melee. Were we proposing the damage be lowered, then I would understand your concern, but the proposal is simply to add range to one attack.
For example, according to my hero planner, a chain with Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt and Ball ligtning slotted with DMG and RECH SOs gives 25.23 BU in ~9 seconds or 2.7778 DPS. Add charged brawl to that and your chain is 46 BI in those same ~9 seconds or about 5 BI. Obviously, as you add more stuff to your chain, the includence of CB will do down, but I wouldn't be suprised if it gave you the 10% you're looknig for even in your final chains.
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Mezz protection, situational, would be nice, i know its not going to happen but i throw it in every chance i get anyway
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I don't see why this can't be in an APP. But, otherwise, I'm with you on never gonna happen, so let's move on.
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And finally not ALL secondaries are made equal. There are some glowing holes like say burn for a blaster. Fix those things, and those only. Some sets work great, like energy, or even i have seen electric manipulation used very effectivly. But i do agree with the poster before his half a page list of changes he proposed, that is change as few things as possible.
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I think you will find that my later proposal is much less drastic than the original one because you weren't the first to mention this.
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And simply to powers, not alot needs to be changed. Short range high damage burst powers should all be equal in distance, yes 40-50 feet sounds nice.
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Yes, you will also find this idea brought up later in the thread, and absorbed into the revised propsal.
Take my boost range and there will be hell to pay !!!!!
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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Take my boost range and there will be hell to pay !!!!!
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I had put a range boost into build up, which made boost range a hair redundant.
Regardless, my refined proposal did not remove boost range, it buffed it instead.
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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.
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Please just ignore them. Really blasters have a couple main issues that dont require totally ruining the sets as these few posters that keep reguritating the same ideas to change blasters to THEIR ideals keep posting.
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You have every right to express your opinion and dislike my own. But unless you have some survey of the blaster population, would you be so kind as to express your opinon as yours and not some mandate from the Blaster community?
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/signed
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Brahma, sink is an EXCEPTIONAL power. I go from just enough to trigger it to full endurance in one shot.
Thunderous Blast... catch a breath, sink off any survivors and voila. A 'free' TB. Also (mind you this is pre-end-nerf) TB could almost if not completely drain almost any of those who survived in the group. Drop my sink to recharge and nothing had any end left.
It really is a great utlity power. Where conserve makes your endurance last longer, sink gives it all back to you with the added bonus of draining enemies (assuming they fix that.)
That's NOT a power I'd want to see taken away.
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True and I agree to that. I've never had sink, but most people I know try it for a couple of lvls and think it's okay, but not uberrific. With Conserve Power I can drop a nova, pop a blue hit Conserve, and I'm back in action. I've been doing it the same way since the changes, and IMO it's still better then sink. But hey, we all have our favorites. So what about the other things I forementioned?
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I think a lot of energy's utlity powers are underrated.
The problem I see with them is duration. (The following is MY take on it and not necessarily correct for anyone else People play blasters to blast (or blap.) Having that many click/short term/buffs is more of a slowdown. They end up getting viewed as situational powers and at that point can become a burden. "Meh, why would I take boost range when I can take this?", this being another attack, or say stealth or something.
All the powers that boost like this DO suit a purpose and are great. (I swear by power boost on my dominator. PB/Domination = perma-froze mobs.) However, despite how quickly you can make it recharge it's still so short lasting... it's like by the time you trigger all your boosts some of them are already expired.
Anyway, that's how I feel about it and (maybe) how some others do and that's why I think they're underrated.
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Fix the Blaster in the fewest possible moves? Ok, here goes:
Increase Base damage of all blaster attacks by 10%.
Have Blaster Attack base ranges increase as level increase.
That's it, two steps.
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Good low number of steps, but it doesn't fix Archery/ and doesn't fix AR/, nor does it solve some of the problems with the secondaries (/Fire, /Dev, etc.). Implementing Pilcrow#5 alone would do a better job (although, again, that doesn't solve the problem with some of the secondaries either) in a single step.
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Yes, you will also find this idea brought up later in the thread, and absorbed into the revised propsal.
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I think it might be wise to start a new thread with the revised proposal. Or maybe we can continue discussion here and collect some more ideas, and then start an new thread before the weekend starts.
The point being: the revised proposal is buried under a mound of discussion. And I don't think there's an easy way to point to a specific portion of a thread... or is there?
Arcanaville:
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Give each blaster primary a means to debuff range.
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I like it too. Hey Pilcrow, if you like this, can you add it to the list? I know we're not really looking for changes in the primary, but we were looking at ways our debuff side-effects would work better.
I also like Arcana's -acc debuff for DoT effects.
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I think some of you guys are being rude to SOCKERROCKER.
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I think he's asking for it. You'll note that he doesn't come in here to debate the topic. He comes in here to throw random points (Brutes? Why the heck are Brutes mentioned in this thread?), doesn't back up his comments, doesn't make meaningful replies when someone replies to him, etc.
In short, maybe not a troll, but certainly it's like he's posting on a separate topic from the rest of us, while ostensibly replying to us. And that's just rude. If he will join in the thread, he should look at what the thread is about. Nobody else is derailing it constantly like he is. In fact, if you delete his posts and the replies to them, this is one of the most constructive and straight-forward "fix Blasters" thread that I've read in months.
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I like a number of the ideas you present. Many simply won't happen, for a variety of reasons, but some are quite doable. When I get out of my current mountain of work, I'll re-read this and try and implement some of it.
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You know, if you keep responding to reasonable posts with little to no amount of flaming I may have to stop ranting. Think about where you'll be then without my rants.
(thinks about continueing the trend of good cop bad cop with Pilcrow continueing to play the good cop)
On a different note, it would be interesting to know what Ideas you thought were interesting Castle. You don't have to say why you didn't like some of the others but it would be interesting to know which ideas got a nod even if we don't know why.
If nothing else it will give us more food for thought.
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Actually, I want to know why for the bad ones, also. I don't need numbers as much as a knowledge of what the Devs are considering as "won't change design plans". If it's set in stone that the secondaries won't have more ranged attacks than the Immobs, then let us know so that we don't spend time thinking up solutions that involve those. Etc.
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I think it might be wise to start a new thread with the revised proposal. Or maybe we can continue discussion here and collect some more ideas
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I think the latter is a better idea for the moment. Most of the people responding (even Castle) seem to agree that some of the ideas have merit, but quite a number of the ideas (including mine and those I stole ^h^h^h^h^h liberated from others) are probably not easily implementable due to resource constraints (coding and artwork).
I would assert that ideas like Pilcrow#5 are ideal, in that they involve using pre-tested code that already exists in PvP, and no changes in artwork, etc. are more practical than some of the other (great or otherwise) ideas being proposed.
I think there are some other ideas along similar lines (no artwork changes, no new powers, minimal coding) that could be added. For example, why not also add the PvP code for status effect immunity to players for PvE? It would be a minor change (the code already exists), might solve another problem (perma hold/stun, especially in the later levels), and wouldn't require added any explicit status effect protection to blasters (which the Devs are apparently reluctant to do).
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I think a lot of energy's utlity powers are underrated.
The problem I see with them is duration. (The following is MY take on it and not necessarily correct for anyone else People play blasters to blast (or blap.) Having that many click/short term/buffs is more of a slowdown. They end up getting viewed as situational powers and at that point can become a burden. "Meh, why would I take boost range when I can take this?", this being another attack, or say stealth or something.
All the powers that boost like this DO suit a purpose and are great. (I swear by power boost on my dominator. PB/Domination = perma-froze mobs.) However, despite how quickly you can make it recharge it's still so short lasting... it's like by the time you trigger all your boosts some of them are already expired.
Anyway, that's how I feel about it and (maybe) how some others do and that's why I think they're underrated.
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You touched on a very good point. Power boost for a blaster is of limited use. Why? Not because the buff isn't strong. But because the way the majority of such buffed effects work for blasters is cumulative over time -- the actual benefit of one knockback, or one slow, or one non-SC drain, is low. It's only your ability to pile them up that helps you out. A 15 second boost to that... not always attractive. Make it a toggle? Must-have (and overly strong). You can take some of the bite out of it by slotting recharge -- but you start eating up animation time and endurance that make you wonder "is there something more effective I could put that time and blue to use on?"
The other thing that really sneaks up on energy manipulation's buffs is recharge. Conserve power is amazing.. when it's on. But for a pro-active (that is, best used *before* you need it) utility power... it's got a recharge that you'd normally associate with situational powers. Heck, I nuke more often than I can conserve power. Let's go over and ask folks with the fitness pool -- "Do you guys consider stamina a situational? Is endurance management situational, something you only need once in a while?" You'll get laughed out of the building. And don't get me started on the relative quality of stamina and conserve power for endurance output over time -- the pool power wins. Despite the strength of the buff, conserve power is, as a whole, the worst endurance management power in the game. Stamina out-performs it and is an auto power, power sink/energy drain/consume/dark consumption/transference can all be used both more frequently *and* reactively (ie, only when you need to, instead of guessing when you should activate it), not to mention all those have enemy effects that a strict self-buff lacks.
Conserve power would have a lot going for it if it had a 5 minute base recharge and its current 90 second duration. You could use it frequently, with the knowledge that it'll be down for a minute, but then back. Instead, it has a 10 minute recharge.. fully slotted, it's got a 1/3rd uptime for half endurance cost.
Over 5 minutes, a rested-to-full blaster has 100 endurance + the 500 endurance he'll regenerate over that time to spend -- he can output 600 endurance in 5 minutes.
Over 5 minutes, a conserve power blaster will have 90 seconds worth of half-price power usage, essentially doubling his endurance in that time period. He can spend the original 100 endurance plus the 150 endurance he recovers during the buff, at half price, or outputting powers worth 500, and then he can trickle along at the regen rate for another 350 for the remaining 3 and a half minutes. He spends a maximum (assuming he could drain himself while conserving, squeezing the most power usage -- while not drawing aggro and dying -- out of the discount period) of 850 endurance -- a 42% boost. Conserve cost him 8 endurance to activate, by the way, but that's a bit trivial here.
The stamina blaster can recover 50% faster with the same slottage as the conserve power blaster (3 of the only type the power will take). Thus, he recovers a whopping 750 endurance in the 5 minutes, and can burn 850 as well.
Interesting. Of course, take away the permission to burn the initial pool (starting at empty and leaving empty, or starting full and leaving full for the next cycle to be identical, as it were), and you get the plain blaster gets 500 to spend, the conserve power blaster gets 650 to spend, and the stamina blaster gets 750 to spend -- conserve power favors dumping and in a dump situation can catch up to stamina, but doesn't get to dump twice in a row.
Now, consider that, say, power sink is useable once a minute, requires a hit check, but folks like to brag that it'll take 'em to full of, say, 2 enemies. We'll just slot 3 endmod enhancements, since the other two examples have only had 3 slots to play with thanks to ED, so we don't touch the recharge. In our 5 minutes, our blaster gets to fire off power sink 5 times, using 75 endurance to do so. He gets back 500, from his power sinks, 500 from his recovery, and had 100 to start off with. He gets to use 1025 endurance in 5 minutes. Now, this number compares with stamina the way you'd think a secondary-to-pool comparison would go.
To truly make conserve power worthy of a secondary slot and its anticipatory nature, I'd love to see the base recharge bumped down to 5 minutes base. This would be 2 and a half slotted, so we'd cram two uses into that 5 minute time period we've been analyzing. 16 endurance to activate, and you could burn your original pool plus 300 endurance worth at half price. 800 effective endurance output during conserve, plus two minutes of recovery for 200 more. 984 endurance output in 5 minutes on a burn cycle, with a much less painful 1 minute famine per feast.
Anyhow, I sort of got sidetracked by a conserve power analysis, but oh well. That's my take on why the self-buffing of energy manipulation is often "underrated." It boils down to that the buffs other than boost range -- which is often antithetical to an energy manipulation set, since it's a popular blapper choice -- just provide too much famine compared to the feast. Power boost isn't a very easy-to-see benefit on most primary powers (boosted slow?), and the "chance" nature of bone smasher and energy punch's disorients makes people leery of the possibility that they'll power boost and it won't go off at all. And conserve power.. well, in a game where stamina is so widely taken, it's nothing to crow about. Even though it can be stacked on top of stamina, it's so infrequently available, that many people will forget they have it, or will dislike building a blaster that can actually use endurance at the rate to take advantage of conserve or conserve + stamina, only to not be able to use that level of output the majority of the time. Much better to drop a few of those powers and take fitness, and be able to maintain a level of consistency.. at least in the eyes of the majority.
Okay, since _Castle_ has replied, I'd better stick my two cents worth since it looks like some of this might be implemented. This is not to say that I disagree, merely that I would make a minor adjustment to Pilcrow's suggestions before implementing them.
First of all, I disagree with the assertion that Blasters must have ranged attacks in their Secondary, to produce usable attack chains on a par with Scrappers and Tankers. Defenders and Corruptors have the same problem as well, and adding more attacks to the Blaster Secondary wouldn't fix that. What the Ranged Power Set needs is more usability from the attacks it DOES have.
The Ranged Power Set has three limitations that are not shared by Scrappers, and which are at the root of the Blaster damage problems. A Scrapper is able to build an attack chain easily with the three most damaging attacks in the Set, but a Blaster (or Defender or Corruptor) cannot for the following reasons:
1) The most powerful single target attack in every Ranged Set is always a Sniper attack. This essentially disqualifies it as a chain attack as it can be interrupted. It is possible to use it in combat under certain circumstances, such as if you are a Defender with high Def or a Acc debuff, but that reduces your DPS as the attack takes around three times as long as more typical attacks.
Like Assassin Strike, Sniper attacks are meant to be used as an opening attack in a chain, but while Stalkers get their highest damage attack IN ADDITION TO Assassin Strike, Blasters only get the one Sniper. The damage of AS and a Sniper is about the same, as AS is 6x damage, but has a lower base than a Sniper.
2) The second most powerful attack in a Ranged Set is always a Burst. The extremely limited range of a Burst limits its usefulness when chained with Bolt and Blast, and limits it to chains including melee attacks, or as a situational attack in which you dart forward if given an opportunity. While to a point Burst makes sense, it is a modification of range just as Sniper is, and it balances Sniper's long range by having a short range instead, in fact the limitation just encourages Blasters not to take it.
3) Blasters usually have a third attack which is minimal damage, but which has a control component in some way. For instance, Energy has Power Push, and Electric has Tesla Cage. While these are effective for keeping the Blaster alive, they are too low damage to be used constantly as part of a chain. Rather, it is used situationally, either to begin a chain like a Sniper, or in emergencies when a foe gets too close.
Now, unlike the previous two examples, Scrappers usually get a Power like this that is essentially identical to the Blaster version. For instance, Cobra Strike in MA, or Stun in EM. However, given that a Blaster cannot use his most powerful attack OR his second most powerful attack in most attack chains, the lack of a third choice becomes even more of a limitation. In addition, some Sets such as Battle Axe do not share a "control only" power and instead have a combination damage and control attack.
4) To counter the three limitations above, Blasters have their Ultimate, which is not shared by any Scrapper. The Ultimate does the most damage of any attack, including the Sniper. However, like the Sniper, the limitations of the Ultimate make it unusable in an attack chain. And most importantly, it takes up a slot that would be normally taken by a chainable attack.
I disagree with Pilcrow's assertion that more ranged attacks should be included in the Secondary, because as I see it, there are at least two attacks in the Primary which more properly belong in the Secondary. The Blaster Secondary (Devices excepted) is equally derived of melee attacks and control powers, and so the short range (point blank actually) Burst attack and the single target Control (2 and 3) would seem to more properly belong in the Secondary. In fact, the single target Control is in some cases redundant with Defender Primary Powers. The best example of this is Power Push and Force Bolt, only one of which needs to be taken.
The only issue with putting the ranged Control powers in the Secondary seems to be that Secondary Powers, even Control based ones, are either melee or PBAoE. (Again, Devices is the exception) This, I believe, is the other issue with Blasters. Their Secondary control powers, while useful, require them to move into melee to use them. Thus they are encouraged to be Blappers in order to use their holds as defenses. While I can see the logic behind this, there is a greater risk in stunning a foe and moving into melee, and thus greater reward, the fact that a Blaster has NO DEFENSES AT ALL, while at range, proves to be the largest issue after level 30.
Thus, my suggestion is that instead of adding ranged attacks to the Secondary, make more of the current Control powers ranged. This would bring the other Secondaries more in line with Devices, which is already longer ranged. I believe it is the ATTACKS that should remain melee, and the Secondaries should be a combination of melee attacks, and ranged Controls.
With enough ranged Control powers in the secondary to replace Power Push and Tesla Cage, those powers could be reduced in effectiveness in their control element (a process which has already started, to make them less effective compared to Controllers) and increase their damage. I would make the damage less than Burst, but more than Blast, about the equivalent of mixed damage/control powers from Scrapper or Tanker sets such as Crippling Axe Kick and Swoop/Jawbreaker.
This would eliminate the redundancy between Power Push and Force Bolt since Power Push would do more damage but have less knockback. (maybe doing only knockdown if unenhanced) Tesla Cage likewise could be moved into the electric Secondary and a more damaging minor hold, or even a sleep or stun substituted for it. Tesla Cage could also be left where it is, and the damage increased by turning it into a DoT. Freeze Ray could be modified in a similar way.
My other suggestion would be to increase Burst range by at least a factor of two. It doesn't have to be increased to the same range as Blast/Bolt, but should be enhanceable to be in that range. As it is, the incredibly short range of Burst makes it unenhanceable in terms of range, as the increase is so slight as to make no real difference in strategy. Increasing the base range will increase the effect that enhancement has, as well.
Sniper attacks can be left as-is, since although they cannot be used in a chain, with both Burst and the psuedo-Control Power being more useable additional damage should not be needed. If it seems like Blasters need even more damage, Burst can be increased to do Sniper damage, and the Control increased to Burst. I think that if many of the ranged Secondaries have a combination damage/control ability, however, like Ring of Fire et al., there should be enough damage to help Blasters, without making the Primary damage so high that Corruptors become overpowered. (Of course, Defenders can just use the additional damage in any case)
The first melee attack of a Blaster Secondary could be changed to a point blank Burst-like power (thus preserving that functionality) but as that would require animation changes, I think I would prefer to see that added to one of the more powerful melee attacks, particularly when there are a lot of them, as in Fire Manipulation. For the most part, however, I think the melee attacks can be left as-is, increasing the range of the control powers, and adding more damage in the Primary should make it unneccessary to eliminate or even weaken the Blapper strategy.
(I also agree that Targetting Drone needs +DMG)
Question though... if we debuff an enemy's range uhm... won't they just close with us? >.> And hurt us in melee?
I could be wrong; I've never used Hurricane myself (I haven't gotten my storm defender high enough yet); but it seems to me that if you end up dropping an enemy's range; all they'll do is get closer. And then you are no longer at range at all. Which uhm... yeah... <~_~> I could be wrong though; not meaning to bash it; just not understanding is all.
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You touched on a very good point. Power boost for a blaster is of limited use. Why? Not because the buff isn't strong. But because the way the majority of such buffed effects work for blasters is cumulative over time -- the actual benefit of one knockback, or one slow, or one non-SC drain, is low. It's only your ability to pile them up that helps you out. A 15 second boost to that... not always attractive. Make it a toggle? Must-have (and overly strong).
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Yeah, power boost is definitely an odd duck. However, if they increased all of our secondary effects, or added more secondary effects, then maybe the current version of powerboost would become rather useful.
I really liked your analysis on conserve power. It is a bit more on the purist side for my own tastes. And by purist, what I mean is that you truly expect that the effects of the power be closer to "perma" than "situational".
For the few of us who actually have conserve power, I expect we use it as a bonus power to be combined with stamina already planned in the mix. (It would be fantastic if conserve power is a complete substitution for stamina, but that would be asking for too much).
Besides ... if we are truly utilitarian about our endurance usage, then we'd realize that a lot of our stamina's endurance recharge is wasted every time we go AFK, or take a break waiting for someone who went AFK.
What I mean to say is that there is actually a lot of good opportunities to take a break and socialize with your fellow heroic MMORPGers.
Of course ... if they do reduce the downtime of conserve power, that'd be gravy!
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Well, unintentionally I'm sure, you've inserted your own subtext there. I've defended the need for melee attacks in the Blaster secondaries, and the need for there to be a better damage potential up close than at range more than once in this thread alone.
The statement means what it says. Once our role was premium damage, now our role is ranged damage. Since that's the new role, please increase the amount of range the AT has access to so they can perform that role better. That's different from "all of our attacks should have range, then".
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My issue is with the word "role." It implies that melee attacks should be the rare exception to the rule, not a valid choice a blaster might make. It says that blappers are either broken, or evidence that the blaster sets are broken, because by definition they cannot fulfill the blaster "role."
I still think the blaster role is "damage" and it should be a valid choice for every blaster to decide if for them their blaster will be "AoE damage" or "single target damage" or "long range blaster" or "short range blaster" or some combination of all of these, and each of them should have a valid advantage over the others.
Spines scrappers have more AoE than other scrappers, but no one says all other scrappers are inferior to spines scrappers. Spines and claws have ranged attacks, but no one considers them superior to all other scrappers just because they have ranged attacks. In a similar vein, I do not think that blasters should be heavily weighted towards AoE damage, or heavily weighted towards higher range. Designating any "role" for blasters other than "damage dealer" tends to do so, even if not everyone intends it to be so.
Maybe this is just being picky, but I don't think the blaster's role is ranged, I think its a blaster characteristic that (one of) their primary mitigation tool(s) is range.
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I can see why you want it in the primary (Defenders would go nuts if they couldn't debuff range, too).
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Actually, I'm still debating with myself if this should be restricted to blasters, or given to both blasters and defenders. There's some pros and cons both ways, but by putting it in the primary, both options remain open.
Its also the case that, to a certain extent, I want the effect to be inherent in "attacking" to fit the "feel" of blasters getting mitigation through offense, and not a utility power. In effect, I'd like blasters to get hit less often because their foes are genuinely afraid of getting blasted in the face, which seems to fit at least a little a "comic-booky" concept of blasters: the ones without true defense tend to stay alive by constantly shooting at everything and preventing them from really counterattacking effectively.
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I can see where it would help them operate better at range. I can see a dev thinking: "that's way too poweful" and another going "well, if we gave it to the MOBs, too...". Well, let's see where you take it.
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Interesting thing about giving it to the MoBs: they already did give it to the MoBs, you just might not be thinking that they did.
Relatively recently, the devs changed things so that -perception now affects players in PvE the way it does in PvP: critters can actually disappear from your view if they are beyond your adjusted perception range (or they actually turned on the -perception in critter powers, something). The net result is that, in effect, critters debuff range now. They do because range and perception are linked: you can't shoot at what you can't target, even if you actually have much longer range.
But this isn't symmetric. (As I mentioned to Castle once before) -perception doesn't affect critters the same way: once aggroed on you, critters can target and shoot at you even if their "perception" is debuffed to zero: the game doesn't force critters to "see" you to shoot you.
Critters can force you to close to extremely close range before they become targettable - critters can actually become totally untargettable for short periods of time. But players cannot do the same thing to critters, because of AI restrictions (the critters always somehow have to "know" where you are).
Debuffing range is an alternate way to get the same effect, and by giving that effect primarily to blasters, it enhances their ability to attack from range.
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If they boosted our range, what would happen to the people that slotted 3 Ranges into their attacks? What if those same people picked up Boost Range? What if at that point you're hitting stuff so far away the game just becomes a joke? What if in PvP you can hit people from on top of buildings and chase them down from such a far distance away that they have no chance to react? Would everyone be accepting that?
If we increased the effects of our control powers, would the Controllers feel like we're stepping on their toes?
If we took away some of the melee and made it ranged, would everyone with a Blapper be happy or upset? How long would it take the average person to adjust to a new playstyle? Would everyone who doesn't read the forums be in agreement of what is going to happen if they're power changes?
If Power Boost and Conserve Power were made so that we could use them more often, would we just never run out of endurance and have greater control than some of the Controllers? If we buffed our control and then buffed Power Boost, would it be too powerful? Would we be too powerful with close to limitlesss endurance?
I like a lot of the ideas in here, but I mostly like the ones that just change some numbers. The whole range thing is now really starting to bother me in that if we get a boost in it, it would take a long time to test and retest and make sure that it won't break the game down the line. I would lean more towards the "range increases with level" option since it's in the late game that guys like Malta and Nemesis start to really screw with us. Early on fighting Family and Tsoo? Pfft, please. Anyways, I put out those questions to see if people are thinking about these things when they make their suggestions. Like I said, some of the ideas in here are creative and sound fun, but there is a big difference between what we can write and hypothesize on the boards than what actually will work out overall in the game.
If you think I'm overthinking all this, let me remind you that Cryptic isn't one to just take an idea and throw it into the game. From all of the people who I've brought into the game, every single of them has agreed that for the most part, what Cryptic puts into the game is well designed and thought out. I'm sure if you asked Castle how many scenarios and overall schemes run through their heads when implementing just one little change, he'll tell you it's not just 2 or 3.
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Brahma, sink is an EXCEPTIONAL power. I go from just enough to trigger it to full endurance in one shot.
Thunderous Blast... catch a breath, sink off any survivors and voila. A 'free' TB. Also (mind you this is pre-end-nerf) TB could almost if not completely drain almost any of those who survived in the group. Drop my sink to recharge and nothing had any end left.
It really is a great utlity power. Where conserve makes your endurance last longer, sink gives it all back to you with the added bonus of draining enemies (assuming they fix that.)
That's NOT a power I'd want to see taken away.
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True and I agree to that. I've never had sink, but most people I know try it for a couple of lvls and think it's okay, but not uberrific. With Conserve Power I can drop a nova, pop a blue hit Conserve, and I'm back in action. I've been doing it the same way since the changes, and IMO it's still better then sink. But hey, we all have our favorites. So what about the other things I forementioned?