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Last time I checked, there is no Gadgets secondary. There is, however, one called Devices. Freudian slips like this and folks wonder why some hold the belief that the devs don't seem to know the Blaster AT all that much.
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Gadgets is the internal name of Devices. It's a Legacy issue and it was my mistake when adding the patch note.
As for the change itself, there was an exploit involving TFoe and various stationary entities (like Auto Turret.) In fixing this, the player versions of these entities were locked down as well. I do realise this impacts one of the tactics Devices players used to bypass the limitations of the set. I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if the change hampers the gameplay too severely.
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I can tell you now that it will. Hasn't Devices been screwed over enough? First you make it so Smoke Grenade takes you out of the stealth that Cloaking Device gives you, thus making stealth mining (one of the trademarks of the set) nearly impossible. And why isn't Smoke an auto hit in PvE anyway? You're throwing a smoke bomb on the floor, for cryin' out loud. Who misses a floor?
It's not like Auto Turret is even that good of a power anyway. The only thing it's good for is holding aggro so Blasters don't end up as colorful smears.
@Arwen Darkblade
Proud Member of Hammer of the Gods and Sanguine Syndicate
Arc ID #86194 "Cry Havoc"
Arc ID #103934 "Dr. Thomas' First Day"
[URL="http://tobyfife.blogspot.com/"]Hero Girl[/URL] - my geek culture blog
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no no, the /devs were archery and AR, the fire/ i couldnt even tell what the secondary was, it was mostly EMP + inferno.
But fire/ is pretty good, most fun corr primary ive tried out so far, lets me use my secondary to its full power and throw out AoE spikes when my end permits. I can see using the melee instead of the single targets, but most blappers i see dont really use AoE, despite throwing the 2 aoe they have is better than going full single-target. :/ okay now im gone, before i run outta time.
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WHOA!!! Hold it pal. The most fun CORRUPTOR set you've played? CORRUPTORS who get self heals, buffs, and draw less aggro than blasters? HOLD IT. Playing a corruptor has little to no bearing on playing a blaster. Furthermore, the corruptor and mastermind equivalent of devices, traps, is far and away superior. If your telling me you were on teams with people using CORRUPTORS, you don't know squat about devices. I apologize if you DO have blaster experience and i just misunderstand, but corruptor experience has nothing to do with blaster experience.
As to the best blasters being devices.....what power in the thier secondary made them useful? Shiver adds more slow than caltrops, and the damage from caltrops is laughable. Energy and Electricity secondaries let them pump out the damage. Ice has better control effects. Cloaking field has had it's protection nerfed, and will now drop in the blink of an eye. TD is nice, but not as good as buildup. What power exactly do you think is good from that set? For crying out, taser, the melee stun, is outdone by the holds elec and Ice get from their secondaries. In what imaginable sense is the set any good?
O_o What server you playing on? I haven't seen a blaster with devices in the past 3 months. (besides my main)
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I8 Test Server Notes:
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Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.
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Emphasis added.
Last time I checked, there is no Gadgets secondary. There is, however, one called Devices. Freudian slips like this and folks wonder why some hold the belief that the devs don't seem to know the Blaster AT all that much.
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I posted this suggestion for a Gadgets Pool Power on the 12th, odd huh? Anyway, Devices-Gadgets, I bet it means no more TP-ing Auto-Turret which makes it less useful than Electric's Sparky.... so pretty useless in a game that forces you to do things like take Stamina, Travel Powers, Perception Powers and THEN you get to pick things like Auto-Turret and Sparky and these powers are lacking, so skip 'em both. Maybe they should lower the recharge for Auto-Turret as a "Balancing" move?
Quixotik
"I did not say this. I am not here." -Guild Navigator
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O_o What server you playing on? I haven't seen a blaster with devices in the past 3 months. (besides my main)
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I continue to fiddle around with my Ice/Devices Blaster, but it's pretty weak now that Enhancement Diversification has been dumped haphazardly onto all Blaster powersets with no adjustment to the Sets that were obviously Nerfed. Devices/ No Build-Up or Damage Buff and no way to slot extra Damage in the primary set anymore (also Archery, no extra Damage slotting, no secondary effect to slot for). I don't see how the Dev's can say Devices wasn't hit harder by ED's imposed Damage capping. They are just not interested in boosting any Blaster due to PvP and Devices is a fearsome PvP set even if it is a trickster's playing style.
What's over-powered in CoX is Assassin's Strike. Damage is reasonable, but AS's delivery is much too easy for a power that is "supposedly" Interruptable, but I have been AS'd by Stalkers who were jumping over my head, not flying, not hovering, but jumping and I am thinking, Interruptable.... right... by what? Gremlins?
Quixotik
"I did not say this. I am not here." -Guild Navigator
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Interruptable.... right... by what? Gremlins?
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They're on the wing!
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Gremlins! Gremlins! Im not imagining it, hes out there! Dont look, hes not out there now. He jumps away whenever anyone might see him, except me!
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@Deadedge and @Dead Edge
Peace through power! Freedom is slavery!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo
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Damnit. My Ar/Dev just turned 35 yesterday. JUST took Recall Friend at 35 so I could TP Auto Turret when I got it at 38. I better get a Freespec out of this.
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Lol the devil you say. I had just taken RF on my ice/dev for the same anticipatory reason (well that and it's nice to port a teammate while waiting on the TF power to open up).
This reminds me of when I finally struggled my way (solo!) to 32 on my ice/rad controller, FINALLY got Jack out, FINALLY knew what it was like to finish a fight in a reasonable time...
...and the pet revamp patch hit 2 days later.
Talk about "Ok, [censored] it, I quit..."
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Because they called it the name they use for coding? Boo hoo let's all cry.
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"Ah, I see that blasters, having begged for a fix for issue after issue, are reeling under the weight of a non-sequitur nerf to a power in the one set which they felt was broken above all else.
I think I'll stop in and try to put a stop to all this..."
Of all the thick-headed posting styles, the one you're trying right now has to be one of the thickest.
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You're fine, STOP WHINING.
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Lol it's nice to see that, after all the other lame concoctions were shot down, she finally just fell back on the troller's standard: I DON'T WANT YOU TALKING ABOUT YOUR CLASS ZOMG!
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Last time I checked, there is no Gadgets secondary. There is, however, one called Devices. Freudian slips like this and folks wonder why some hold the belief that the devs don't seem to know the Blaster AT all that much.
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Gadgets is the internal name of Devices. It's a Legacy issue and it was my mistake when adding the patch note.
As for the change itself, there was an exploit involving TFoe and various stationary entities (like Auto Turret.) In fixing this, the player versions of these entities were locked down as well. I do realise this impacts one of the tactics Devices players used to bypass the limitations of the set. I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if the change hampers the gameplay too severely.
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Castle why wait to see if it "hampers gameplay" in a set that's playstyle has been hampered since ED.
I mean, come on, man, what do you think targetting drone is now? Did you MEAN for it to be an aid for acc in PvP? Because that's what it is, mate. Did you guys MEAN for smoke grenades to be a missable stealth power that breaks stealth and possesses no discernible benefit? Because that's what it is.
Now AT, the TOP TIER devices power which has, since ED, provided no more than a distraction during battle, is MORE useless?
Come on. Just how hampered do we need to be before we're hampered enough not to warrant any more nerfs, much less maybe get a buff or two?
This was a bad move at a bad time and it creates a really crappy perception.
Why play this set any more? Concept, that's it. Concept and caltrops.
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I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if the change hampers the gameplay too severely.
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Castle, I'm afraid the blaster community has likely heard "we'll keep an eye on it" or "we're looking at it" with no subsequent action to take any such statements very seriously.
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It's a game. You shouldn't take anything about it seriously.
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It's a paid service. You should take announcements about impending or intended changes seriously.
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I'm saying that your focusing on single target a bit too much, the melee powers are good if your party is
a. missing scrappers
b. fighting AVs every mission, which is confined mostly to 40+
[/ QUOTE ] I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from here. I mean, why are the blaps only good if you're missing scrappers? Using /EM say, a blaster can meet or exceed a Scrapper's damage. That's good even if you DO have scrappers around.
Blapping's not bad solo no. It's also quite nice in teams. Heck, it's great in teams where there's a good controller, like your earth one. There's very little chance of getting hit with the various controll powers around, which means they can go wild with their high damage powers ... blaps. Higher damage means groups of mobs go down faster which means better XP.
Devices on the other hand is not so good for big teams. For one, most big teams I've found are fighting +3s. That means you're probably going to be wanting to slot your powers with an acc SO in the first place for one. For another you're not getting as much extra damage from the secondary. There's a little bit more hitting with your blasts. I guess if you waste 3 slots on SG your group gets hit a little less. You could try to lay some mines down, but they're fairly easily interrupted in my experience. CD keeps you unseen untill you actually attack.
On the other hand, the other sets have build up. With the AoE sets, I've noticed that folks seem to be fond of saying that with BU and Aim their Archery blasters can take out a spawn of +3s in 3 attacks, and do it every time the powers recharge. Which is great, wouldn't be quite as fast without build up ya. And heck, when those powers are down, there's also a not inconsiderable amount of damage you can find with some of the blaps.
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and as you said fire/ and elec/ pull it off with AoE, ice can too if you use the rain and breath, AR does it fairly well, and ive SEEN archery do it consistantly. oh and nobody likes nrg/ apparantly so i actually havent gotten to see that one in action.
[/ QUOTE ] I could have sworn I said that /fire and /elec can both do AoE MELEE damage. The good AoE primaries are AR and Fire. They're good off the bat with AoE. Archery gets a lot better once it hits 32 for AoE. The rest of them don't quite come near the AoE damage of those sets. For the record, that's Electricity, Energy, Ice and Sonic. That's just a bit more than half the primary sets.
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this has been nagging at me, where on earth do you people get the idea trip mines define the powerset?
[/ QUOTE ] It didn't define the powerset. It was part of it though. I mean, you'd throw the SG 'till the mobs were all covered, then run in and lay down a mine while stealthed with CD (or alternately skip the grenade and just take superspeed). Or you could lay down some mines in a caltrops field near the enemies (while stealthed), then put down a turret to aggro the mobs and draw them in to their doom. Then you could repeat the process with the next spawn and port your turret in instead of waiting for it to recharge.
To me the devices powerset was all about the ability to set up traps of one kind or another, a good number of the powers in the set mesh(ed) very well to allow traps to be set with ease. Traps are most easily used solo, and as such in teams all you really saw devices blasters do was use their drone and blast from range, which is what you seem to think the whole set's about. Sadly both the methods for setting traps when solo, and the use of the drone when in teams have been reduced in effectiveness over time.
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okay, before i reply to this one, someone said corruptors get less aggro, i made a fire/rad that for intensive purposes, is a tank mage. it takes aggro off 2 brutes and is the only one who ever died on its teams short of a full team whipe. think the self heals are great?
I have an entire spawn that would shoot me as soon as i popped my head out, granted it was my fault but my end was empty after a single attack chain so it might as well be one that kills all but the lts.
a team of 1 tanker 1 blaster and 1 defender would have been faster.
on the other note, earth/ has such horribly low damage that it is almost mandatory that I fight on 6-8 man teams, My secondary requires the ability to hit as well, when it comes to being sk'd I take the highest available.
as for blaps being your riskiest and most rewarding attacks, AoE generates more aggro across an entire mob, but unless I'm fighting on an 8 man team 2 control powers can pretty much makes it 100% safe for the blaster. a strong chain knocks it down to bosses and lts even as an opener.
8-man the bosses take a few seconds to lock down since theres 2, so i let the tanker distract them first.
Earth also has quicksand making accuracy slotting low priority, almost worthless up to +5s... especially when you can stack 2-3 of them. And i still go for the sk.
I avoid teams where I'm fighting over +3s, it keeps the team alive and lets me do my job to the point its fun.
Also, someone compared TD to both aim and BU .... and aim isnt in the secondary so its not really related to this. and if someone could give me numbers as to:
the actual recharge reduction effects, is 99% reduction the same as around 50% of normal recharge? its kinda been nagging at me, and would allow me to actually work out the damage increase from an extra recharge.
Oh and the recharge and duration times of BU would be helpful for that too 
just curious to the actual gap, because if its up for 1/3rd of all the fighting and does 80% dmg increase... well, TD seems to be better from 1 extra recharge slot, and since its a toggle rather than a click it makes me think my numbers are off. 
right now a blaster who is shooting constantly would be getting slightly more from TD, though the fact that you will usually have more than 1 power up at a time would probably balance that in favor of BU. and hasten would be better for non /devices as well.
" Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players."
I don't believe this quoted reason for one second.
Are you telling me since Issue #1, Auto Turrnet was never meant to be teleported from mob to mob? Give me a break. If this is the case why wasn't it fixed Issue #2-#6? You mean you're just now getting around to fixing this?
Wild Theory:
I think this is all about the FOTM Uber Thugs/Traps Masterminds that popped up Issue #7. The Friend Recall nerf to the MM Traps power set forced the Blaster Devices power set to take a hit (to be in line) IMHO.
BTW, I love FOTM builds, what a don't like is the nerf to the power set Traps forcing a weak power set like Devices to become even weaker.
And if we go with the quoted reason for this change, Why should we expect a balancing boost elsewhere in the power set? After all, the objects where never intended to be portable in the first place!
28 L50's on Freedom
L50 Time Titan WP/Stn, L50 Lord Time Titan Grv/Rad, L50 Super Hero USA DM/Rgn
L50 Decoy Master Ill/Rad, L50 Shield Slinger SD/Ice, L50 Super Heavyweight Stn/Nrg
L50 King's Jester Fire/Kin, L50 Winterchill Ice/SS, L50 Alberta Clipper Ice/Ice
L50 I Mastermind Bots/Dark, L50 MVP Invul/Nrg, L50 Steely Resolve Psi/MM
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I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if the change hampers the gameplay too severely.
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Castle, I'm afraid the blaster community has likely heard "we'll keep an eye on it" or "we're looking at it" with no subsequent action to take any such statements very seriously.
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It's a game. You shouldn't take anything about it seriously.
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It's a paid service. You should take announcements about impending or intended changes seriously.
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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also.
::hands over a paper bag::
Deep breaths now.
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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also
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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly
@Deadedge and @Dead Edge
Peace through power! Freedom is slavery!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo
Captain, my fire/nrg blaster uses AoEs fairly heavily on teams and the the melee attacks just when things come at me ( I can take em out fast and get back to firey doom). And on a team with a good controller, or tank I can cut loose (same for my AR blasters). The devices secondary has very little in the way of contribution to that. I think you're giving the drone a little more credit than it's due is all. I'd recommend, if you don't take my word for it and if you can get into the play style, playing a fire/dev to twenty and a fire/nrg to twenty, the difference in the amount of doom brought it fairly noticeable (and 20 isn't a hard mark to hit).
@Deadedge and @Dead Edge
Peace through power! Freedom is slavery!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo
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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also
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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly
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True but alot of games and hobbies require money either once or repeatedly. It doesn't change the nature of the thing.
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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also
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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly
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True but alot of games and hobbies require money either once or repeatedly. It doesn't change the nature of the thing.
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If you were paying a golf membership and the club decided to make the worst hole...worse, I'm sure people would get upset.
@Deadedge and @Dead Edge
Peace through power! Freedom is slavery!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo
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Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also
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You don't pay anyone regularly to maintain Monopoly
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True but alot of games and hobbies require money either once or repeatedly. It doesn't change the nature of the thing.
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If you were paying a golf membership and the club decided to make the worst hole...worse, I'm sure people would get upset.
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Ok I can see that. I'll just chalk it up to the wierd way I view the world.
I have lots of fun playing City of Heroes and have been playing since the three day head start and have characters with over 900 hours on them, trialblazer badges, etc.
But, maybe just for me, it's an entertaining way to pass some time no different than picking up a book or watching some cable TV.
I'm so un-invested in my time that if they announced CoX was shutting down all the server tommorow I'd probably say, 'Oh well, was fun while it lasted.'
This probably scews alot of my responses from what is likely to be the norm. Chalk it up to me being wierd but it also means I find myself rarely using the words dissapointed, outraged, or betrayed.
Apathy FTW!
Oh I understand TargetDummy, I feel the same way. I understand why some would be upset and I commiserate. I don't play my /dev anymore and never really planned to make another, so I'm not really effected by this change. That doesn't make the change less dumb.
Captain, 3 recharge SOs cut the recharge of a power very nearly in half. Aim and buildup recharges in 90 seconds (roughly 45 seconds with 3 SOs). They are both up for 10 seconds. If you alternate you'll have 15 is seconds of downtime (less concidering the time to go from mob to mob). In my experience they're both usually up when I want them.
@Deadedge and @Dead Edge
Peace through power! Freedom is slavery!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo
I'm glad I got my Electric\Devices Blaster to 50 a long time ago, so I don't have to worry about this.
But, if I was levelling him up now, I'd dump Auto-Turret, as its too situational without being able to teleport it - I used to use it as a distraction by dropping it then teleporting it around a corner, for instance.
Besides, Trip Mine is the best power in the Devices set, anyway, and you need Teleport Foe, not Recall Friend, for those.
Devices gains best usage solo. You can set up your traps and open with a blast to gain attention. (caltrop ontop of trip mines so they bloody explode at the right point.) smokegrenade and cloaking device to lay a time bomb as an opener. (no good on targets with long range perception.... and can see thought stealth.) Auto Turret... ok I have no positive comments about this, I was looking forward to it... when I got it, I stick with it for a couple of levels.. dropped it... Sorry but I was horribly disappointed in this power.
Energy provides strong boost to the primary by way of build up, boost range, and power boost. (plus conserve power) In a team situation, energy is far more useful considering that there really isn't a set up time. EXTREAMLY few teams will wait for you to set up anything with devices.
Energy and Electric provide melee attacks that in a pinch can do very impressive single target damage should you feel the need to take a risk.
Ice provides slows, a pbaoe sleep, a hold, and ice slick. All of which can be useful depending on the situation. Ice patch as it's called can be useful in pulling though doors to clump targets together further. The slow of shiver could leave targets withen rains longer or make it harder for them to scatter suddenly. Build up doesn't need to be explained.
Fire... uh.... gives you more damage... with AOE's... (especialy if you are completly out of your gord with the way you play it )
Team wise, Devices is rather far behind the rest.
Solo, its great...
Just my opinions
Its not godly, but the bonus is on-par with BU when your sustaining damage, and for the most part, melee does not add anything new to a blaster.
80% is not a huge boost when your in a large team, EMP can add damage, kin, rad, dark, but theyre all support toons, of course they get more invites, they give bonuses to everyone.
They also cant solo that well if they build to team. my troller could make a party barrel through anything at 20, but he couldnt solo a same level spawn of 1 lt and 3 minions, his endurance ran out before the lt went to 80%. on the other hand, I also add large amounts of -defense and various means of +dmg.
If you think corruptors get so much more from the secondary, just team. the secondary adds more to teams than to their own damage. a blaster and a defender paired up easily compete with 2 corruptors, especially when you consider that most of the time they dont get as much team support from brutes or MMs. domis are too rare to rely on.
what I mean is, you get more from a team than your secondary. when your team is rolling you wont even notice BU, you might have fortitude or any number of things, TD + FS is far better than BU + FS, your already at the cap! dark/ gives -res, but no -defense, accuracy is good here. Rad? gives bonuses to both, it doesnt even matter as long as you dont maliciously hunt their anchors for kicks.
even then, getting your damage capped from FS isnt necessary, the archery blaster i mentioned only got the benefit from the buff around ME, yet still did great damage.
TD gives a different bonus, thats why i said its bad to compare. as for devices not being team-friendly, neither is focusing on blapping, at least not in anything over 4 people.
btw a FS'd scrapper crits for 1400 on +2 wolves with its tier 9(i think it was a boss), but has less options for quickly killing minions, I would try and reference something a little less borked but that was the only time i ever saw a scrapper yell out their damage.
since most PuG blasters build for solo, people shy away from inviting them because theyre more likely to get the job done with a spines/ or an aggressive troller/tanker. When someone thinks about getting a blaster they usually are thinking of fast-paced kills, but scrappers are fairly easy to come across and minions as a whole are the largest initial threat. It takes 1-2 blasters to completely remove that threat very quickly in any size team, as long as they bother to take the 2-3 AoEs they have access to, taking out 2 bosses per spawn takes longer with 2 blappers or 2 scrappers, it doesnt matter, as 50% more single target output doesnt close a 100-200% health difference.
tho spines are more often than not completely insane and the last one i teamed with liked to herd multiple spawns (+2s) while the team was still fighting. checked the kiosk the next morning and he was that days "warrior nemesis" because of it. oddly enough, i was checking it because i half expected that to be the case. oh yea, and the team was handling the spawns he brought, but not really by choice.
If your team brings buffs/debuffs, the "gap" in secondary power is either not very noticable and devices is more often than not just as effective, or BU is so trivial you need to stop getting hung up on it.
Also, the boosts from secondaries do not alter the amount of damage you do to the point your party will suddenly notice that your secondary is "uber"
i say devices does well because I havent seen a single one be any less effective than someone using a different secondary yet i HAVE seen plenty of blasters who focus on an entire single-target attack chain that does less than a single AoE when you look at total damage, true, a fire/ who relies entirely on his AoE will have hell soloing or in groups of 3-4, but he will contribute heavily in large teams, they may not be grateful, but a fast team will not disband after 1 mission.
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I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if the change hampers the gameplay too severely.
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Castle, I'm afraid the blaster community has likely heard "we'll keep an eye on it" or "we're looking at it" with no subsequent action to take any such statements very seriously.
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It's a game. You shouldn't take anything about it seriously.
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It's a paid service. You should take announcements about impending or intended changes seriously.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ya, we pay for it and... well, I'm sorry It's still a game. I play for my monopoly board also.
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When you pay ongoing fees for youre monopoly board and they start making changes to it on an ongoing basis, then maybe you'll have yourself an analogy, there.
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::hands over a paper bag::
Deep breaths now.
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*laughs* Nice... does that work in RL? This is just folks discussing their product, mate. All the smartalec effort in the world to style it as something hystrionic so you can excercise your "it's just a game" muscles won't change a thing.
This is obviously a conversation which you're having trouble identifying with.
You might want to head off to another thread that agrees more with your delicate sensibilities.
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I'm saying that your focusing on single target a bit too much, the melee powers are good if your party is
a. missing scrappers
b. fighting AVs every mission, which is confined mostly to 40+
[/ QUOTE ] I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from here. I mean, why are the blaps only good if you're missing scrappers? Using /EM say, a blaster can meet or exceed a Scrapper's damage. That's good even if you DO have scrappers around.
Blapping's not bad solo no. It's also quite nice in teams. Heck, it's great in teams where there's a good controller, like your earth one. There's very little chance of getting hit with the various controll powers around, which means they can go wild with their high damage powers ... blaps. Higher damage means groups of mobs go down faster which means better XP.
Devices on the other hand is not so good for big teams. For one, most big teams I've found are fighting +3s. That means you're probably going to be wanting to slot your powers with an acc SO in the first place for one. For another you're not getting as much extra damage from the secondary. There's a little bit more hitting with your blasts. I guess if you waste 3 slots on SG your group gets hit a little less. You could try to lay some mines down, but they're fairly easily interrupted in my experience. CD keeps you unseen untill you actually attack.
On the other hand, the other sets have build up. With the AoE sets, I've noticed that folks seem to be fond of saying that with BU and Aim their Archery blasters can take out a spawn of +3s in 3 attacks, and do it every time the powers recharge. Which is great, wouldn't be quite as fast without build up ya. And heck, when those powers are down, there's also a not inconsiderable amount of damage you can find with some of the blaps.
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and as you said fire/ and elec/ pull it off with AoE, ice can too if you use the rain and breath, AR does it fairly well, and ive SEEN archery do it consistantly. oh and nobody likes nrg/ apparantly so i actually havent gotten to see that one in action.
[/ QUOTE ] I could have sworn I said that /fire and /elec can both do AoE MELEE damage. The good AoE primaries are AR and Fire. They're good off the bat with AoE. Archery gets a lot better once it hits 32 for AoE. The rest of them don't quite come near the AoE damage of those sets. For the record, that's Electricity, Energy, Ice and Sonic. That's just a bit more than half the primary sets.
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this has been nagging at me, where on earth do you people get the idea trip mines define the powerset?
[/ QUOTE ] It didn't define the powerset. It was part of it though. I mean, you'd throw the SG 'till the mobs were all covered, then run in and lay down a mine while stealthed with CD (or alternately skip the grenade and just take superspeed). Or you could lay down some mines in a caltrops field near the enemies (while stealthed), then put down a turret to aggro the mobs and draw them in to their doom. Then you could repeat the process with the next spawn and port your turret in instead of waiting for it to recharge.
To me the devices powerset was all about the ability to set up traps of one kind or another, a good number of the powers in the set mesh(ed) very well to allow traps to be set with ease. Traps are most easily used solo, and as such in teams all you really saw devices blasters do was use their drone and blast from range, which is what you seem to think the whole set's about. Sadly both the methods for setting traps when solo, and the use of the drone when in teams have been reduced in effectiveness over time.
MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812