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Only they may remove the tier1/2 always fire mezz thingie, no good.
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Then why would they be fixing all the Tier 1/2 blast animations? 
...
I'm going to stop comlaining about this.
I may hate the absurdity of it but at the end of the day my AR Blaster's getting a 12.5% damage buff, a Fury bar, faster Tier 1/2 attacks and can plug people while mezzed - all for free if you count the current Defiance for nothing.
I'm sure I'll survive. Somehow...
Blasters get Fury? No thanks.
Also THIS post will explain what could happen with the animation changes in terms of Fire and Ice, quoted below.
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You need to be careful here, because I believe you are looking at the DPC (damage per cycle) of the single attack in isolation. True, if you take a power with 1 sec activation, and 8 second recharge, and increase the activation to 1.67, then the cycle time goes from 9 seconds to 9.67 seconds, and its overall dpc drops to 9/9.67 = 0.931, or 93.1% of its original value (about 7% lower).
But that's not what dominates blaster DPS (total damage per second), because with enough recharge, blaster attack chains become full. Once you are using every single second to activate powers, the only way to improve dps is not by using more powers, but by replacing lower DPA (damage per activation second) powers with higher DPA powers in the attack chain.
Consider a power set with 5 powers, all of which have activation time 1 sec, recharge 4 seconds, all with 1 DS of damage. This set can fire these five powers over and over again, with each power recharging just in time to continue the chain, and it does 1DS/sec. Now add 0.67 seconds to the activation times of all the powers. Their individual DPC goes down to 5/5.67 = 0.881, or 88.1% of the original value. Not too bad. But the original chain was full, and now you'll be using powers with less DPA: while individual DPC went down only 11.9%, total DPS went down to 1/1.67 = 0.599, or 59.9%.
Thus, an 11.9% drop in DPC causes a 40.1% drop in DPS. Of course, this is a contrived example, but it illustrates the point: DPC is only meaningful when attack chains are sparce - i.e. you are always free to use any power that happens to be recharged, without two powers fighting for the same execution time. When attack chains are full, DPA begins to take over from DPC as the dominant factor in total damage output.
Its worth looking to Martial Arts for a practical example. Originally, if I remember correctly, TK and CAK did 1DS, and EC did 2.24. The MA changes (partially to "fix" TK) reduced TK from 1 to 0.84, CAK was boosted to 1.64, and EC was boosted to 2.28. On paper, that looks like a win, since TK was reduced by only 16%, while CAK was increased by a whopping 64% (and EC by about 2%). However, MA's *net* DPS went *down* because CAK is slow, and TK is fast, and changes to TK are magnified because of that. Simply put, if you are using it more often, and it takes up less space in your chain, the damage it does will dominate your total DPS. TK was the dominant attack in preI6 MA attack chains, and even a *tiny* change to TK had a disproportionate effect on MA: *no* amount of buffing CAK was likely to reverse the damage done by TK's reduction.
Ice blast is playing the same role in Ice as TK played in MA. Small changes to it are going to have a significant effect, and cutting its DPA by 40% is not likely to be a small change (and some calculations in this thread are suggesting basically that same situation).
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Arcanaville is the crazy good with numbers.
Also here's a thing RE: Damage buffs.
Blasters were pretty much underperforming Pre-ED too, when they theoretically had twice as much damage (I know mine pretty much did). I don't think just plain damage is the answer here - and hitting your T1 and T2 Primary powers and T1 Secondary is lacklustre in my opinion. It'd work fine at the lower levels, but not as well in the higher ones - just like the current Defiance.
Crazy good? LOL a huge pile of empty air numbers totaly based on something no where near the reality. Trowing around numbers 'so i scare you enough and you say I AGREE!' attemp failed misserby. DPA and DPC, rofl he really tries to be 'famous'.
Making such huge post, such numbers about 1 power, totaly forgeting ratio of 1 power versus the rest of the entire blaster set in damage. No, i serious laugh at that post.
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[ QUOTE ]
Crazy good? LOL a huge pile of empty air numbers totaly based on something no where near the reality. Trowing around numbers 'so i scare you enough and you say I AGREE!' attemp failed misserby. DPA and DPC, rofl he really tries to be 'famous'.
Making such huge post, such numbers about 1 power, totaly forgeting ratio of 1 power versus the rest of the entire blaster set in damage. No, i serious laugh at that post.
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His reasoning is valid - as has been echoed by other posters in the thread in regards to prolonged DPS.
Believe what you want, i not even gonna try to explain.
Hopefully all these changes hit with issue 11 live, first my blasters and then dual blades 
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[ QUOTE ]
Believe what you want, i not even gonna try to explain.
Hopefully all these changes hit with issue 11 live, first my blasters and then dual blades
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I'm pretty sure they won't come with I11, this is a massive change - especially considering the massive uproar going on stateside right now.
The animation times are a buff to some sets, sure, and a nerf to others (and that's what they are - a nerf, in terms of base DPS potential and maneuverability) and hey some will stay the same. I'd much rather the other sets be brought in to line with Fire and Ice for animation and rooting rather than the other way around. I do not like standing still while I'm trying to shoot my attacks off.
As Blasters are underperforming accross the board this seems a little... off side.
Also - this'll affect cast times for shared powersets (Doms, Corrs, Defenders) and for some it will be an even bigger difference - especially Dominators who get the hard hitters like Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast at 38 and.
Well, thats what they doing right? Fury style buildup, mez-through shooting, overal range increased damage. Combine with unresistable part in PvP, there ya go.
We will see, time will tell.
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If you're mez'd in PvP you've got bigger problems than being able to fire off Flares or Power Thrust.
Fury style build up? That's not even working on Brutes in PvP right now I don't think, so should be fun.
Increased ranged damage? I like the idea - but that's achievable by IO bonus' now.
Unresistable damage? We had that already.
I'd actually like a Blaster inherent, not another AT's tacked on to us.
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Believe what you want, i not even gonna try to explain.
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Oh please do.
Arcanaville is the probably the most knowledgeable player there is outside the devteam itself. He explains and you shrug it off with a "lulz he just wants to be 'famous' lulz"?
Should be interesting to see if you have anything remotely interesting to say compared to Arcanaville.
I doubt it.
SingStar:
"Extremists LOVE to fish to get us annoyed so we break the forum rules."
CRACK68:
"The origin of life wasn't planned either, should all life be declared a bug and wiped out?"
Lionsbane:
"You know me.Ever the realist"
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Fury style build up? That's not even working on Brutes in PvP right now I don't think, so should be fun.
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Fury is actually a misnomer - this Defiance charges up exactly like Domination, not Fury. And Domination charges fine in PvP.
<QR>
I'm not sure how to feel about this. My Ice/Elec builds mainly on melee DPS, so she's not much affected (although her ranged chain is going to suck now), and my Fire/Fire doesn't really care about ST damage (But it's still a nerf, I don't have room for flares, improved or not).
On the other hand, My lowbie AR/Ice is getting buffed, and my Arch/Dev won't be affected.
I do still think that the damage scalar rise should apply to both melee and ranged attacks though. (As well as trip mines )
This is going to be a major nerf for blasters in pvp and a not needed one if you ask me. It's going to be so easy empathing if they nerf ice and fire that much.
Thing is the basic idea is a good one, the execution is not. I don't see why they feel they have to buff some sets while nerfing others. Just buff them all, then nobody will complain.
People choose their powers carefully. I have chosen to play Fire and Ice, because of the superior attack chains and animations. Many people have chosen them for this reason.
This change should make the other sets more attractive, not by nerfing the good sets, but by bringing the other sets more in line with the good ones.
Also seriously, buffing Tier 1 attacks hardly helps many people. Most people skip this attack because they are [censored]. So even if Flares gets a huge buff by this, why would I want to take it, when Fireball and Blaze animate just as fast, but have significant advantages over it? Most people use the Tier 2 as their bread and butter attack, so any increase in its animation duration will have a serious affect on their attack chain.
Click
Looks like we're not getting a Defiance Bar, more... Defiance Icons. =\
Well sorry to say but imho this change is a load of [censored].If this change goes through from a pvp point of view i might as well take our fire blast and slot snipe for the manticore set and with epic sets try make blaze fireball chain. Flares i aint even considering that pile of [censored] for an attack within pvp.
As for PvE.rooting is bad and why they wanna nerf fire and ice with more rooting instead of aligning the rest.A blaster is way to squishie already why they wanna make it even worse.
Well the only thing that comes in my mind is to simply have a reason for that [censored] all defiance change. Because if my fire blaster gets rooted there is more chance i ll be needing that [censored] defiance they wanna bring in.
Thats not acceptable and i might as well as i said start looking at speccing fire blast out.
I actually hadn't thought about the implications in the second tier attacks. I'm unsure as to whether I think this is a good thing or a bad thing to be honest. It would certainly have a negative impact on a couple of my characters, including one of my favourites, but I'm also objective enough to say that I know Ice Blast is "a bit good" at the moment.
My current time to go through my main "chain" (the three attacks and Freeze Ray) of single target on Ice Blast is 4.24 seconds. The total combined BI of the chain is 279.16. The time would rise to 4.91, a rise of 15.8%. The loss in DPS would be noticable, but not horrendous, if I took the hold out the equation it would obviously be more significant, but I use that an awful lot. The rooting issue for PvP seems less drastic to me, I've played characters that have longer animation times, as long as the leaping powers are well slotted it's manageable, although harder.
Electricity Blast takes 6.24 seconds to go through the single target chain of two attacks and one hold, for a combined brawl index of 155.14. This will fall to 4.84 seconds, a drop of 22.4%.
Even with these changes, Ice Blast is still considerably better in terms of single target capability.
I'm dubious about this though, I'm always particularly sceptical about the dev's ability to do anything involving blasters given a history of screwing it up royally whenever they've tried. Changes to animation times on all the sets needs decent and objective testing, and I still think Elec and Archery will be considerably sub-par with these changes (although elec would gain quite a bit from it).
I'm still not convinced an accross the board solution is the answer, the sets are meant to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's going to need tweaking for individual sets.
I also think that until they sort out what they're going to do with Defiance, it's impossible to get balance sorted.
Edited to add: Ice and Fire Blast outshine everything else by miles. Someone should try to decide either: that this is the standard they're working towards on blaster sets, and bring the others inline; that these two sets are overpowered, and should be brought more inline with the others, or; that they're after something in between.
Personally I don't think that they should be working towards the standard of the "worst" sets, they don't really feel like blasters at all, I'm not sure whether I think everything should be brought up to the standard of Ice and Fire or whether they should be aiming just a little lower.
Oh, you can't spec fire blast out, unless you take flares.
I have mixed feelings about this. I like it, because of the buffs to some of the sets which, imho, are lacking somewhat BUT I don't like the 'nerfs' to Fire and Ice. I think the DPS of Fire and Ice should be the target DPS of all sets, mainly because they're Blasters, they are supposed to do large amounts of damage over a range but also handle themselves if the enemy gets too close.
I think they should be focusing on Assault Rifle, Electricity, Energy.. All the ranged sets other than Fire and Ice, to try and bring them all to that level.
About the new Blaster inherit power, what on Earth? The work being put into it is appreciated but.. Sorry, Devs, but I don't think it will work or be much of an improvement on the current Defiance. Perhaps just try and fix the current Defiance so it goes up faster, increase the Blaster damage cap and make Defiance go up to the cap, something like that.
Edit: Just looking at the Defender secondaries, if this goes ahead then Dark Blast/Gloom will be nerfed like Fire and Ice blast tier 2 attacks.
I am the Blaster, I have filled the role of Tank, Controller and Defender
Sometimes all at once.
Union EU player! Pip pip, tally ho, top hats and tea etc etc
Personally I don't really mind the Defiance changes.
If anything I'm slightly excited about them.
Yes, I'm somewhat annoyed at the "nerf" in activation time of Ice and Fire's tier #2 ranged attack. I have an Ice/Dev and a Fire/EM Blaster, and I'd have preferred that all tier #2s got normalised at 1 sec instead of 1.67 secs. However if we actually break down the attacks and what we're getting in this new "package", The two sets that get a slight nerf (Ice and Fire) don't come off that badly.
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+ Tier #1 animation times: (Changed to 1 second)
Archery: 1
Sonic : 1.33
Ice : 1.17
Energy : 2.0
Elec : 2.0
Fire : 2.17
AR : 2.2
Everything gets buffed here except Archery (which stays the same).
Archery does not actually benefit at all from the animation changes.
+ Tier #2 animation times: (Changed to 1.67 seconds)
Ice : 1.0
Fire : 1.2
Energy : 1.67
Sonic : 1.67
Archery: 1.67
AR : 1.87
Elec : 2.07
This is where the controversy lies. Fire gets a minor 0.47 second nerf, Ice gets a slightly worse 0.67 second nerf. After the change they'll animate along the same lines as Energy's tier #2.
Incidently, I don't remember Energy getting flack in the past for a slow animating tier #2 attack... the slowest animating attacks in that set are the Tier #1 and Tier#3. It's probably best to compare the changes directly to Energy Blast's Tier #2: Sonic's is sort of hard to see because it animates in "pulses" and looks longer than it actually is, and Archery has bow redraw issues.
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Now lets look at the other aspects of the new Defiance:
+ Stacking Damage buffs with each attack fired.
+ 12.5% Ranged Damage increase.
+ Cast through status effect for tier 1 and 2 powers.
Since the Stacking Damage buffs will be something of a "Fury" Hybrid it'll be dependant on firing heavy attacks off as fast as possible, largely ignoring what actual target each attack is fired at (though AoE powers will count the NUMBER of targets hit). Since the damage buff will be greater for higher damage attacks, this favours sets with a Tier #3 blast and a fast recharge time on their higher-tier attacks.
Fastest recharging Tier #2s: Fire, Archery, Sonic.
Fastest recharging Tier #3s: Fire, Energy, Archery, Sonic, Ice. (Sonic/Ice are 1-2 secs longer)
Now note that tier #3s animation times are not being changed. This puts Fire and Ice in the best position (both have a fast-recharging tier #3, and both their tier 3s have a 1 second cast time), with Energy next-best (has a 2 second cast time). Sonic and Archery both have a 2.67 second cast time on their tier #3.
So Fire will benefit the most from the Stacked Damage buffs, with Ice second, Energy third and Archery/Sonic next. Elec and AR have no Single-Target tier #3 attack and are joint-last. Fire, Ice, Sonic, Energy, Archery will also benefit the most from the base ranged damage increase since those are the sets with a heavy Tier #3 ranged attack. All Nukes except Ice and Archery (being pseudopets- hopefully this can be tweaked) will also get slightly more powerful.
At this point Fire is in the lead over Ice (Nuke is buffed and tier #3 recharges slightly faster). But note that Ice is the only primary which provides any mitigation in it's secondary effect. Castle has stated -recharge is the best secondary effect (personally I like -resistance, but I can see where he's coming from). Since Ice will be able to use its Tier 1 and Tier 2 attacks when mezzed, it will be able to cut incoming damage while mezzed due to the -recharge effect. No other set can do this. Whilst other sets can output damage and "killing enemies is a form of mitigation", Ice's damage is on-par with other sets so it can do this AND apply -recharge at the same time. IMO this brings it into line with Fire again.
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The conclusion?
Fire and Ice get buffed more than the other sets in terms of damage output (both raw and stacking) and nerfed slightly in animation time on one attack. It happens to be an attack that they use a lot, and naturally is creating lots of controversy on the forums. Ice also gets the ability to mitigate incoming damage whilst mezzed.
Higher base damage, MUCH higher damage when you're attacking 1v1 constantly (PvP duels?) and psuedo-mez-protection... at the cost of 0.47/0.67 seconds animation time on mid-damage attacks in the sets that benefit the most from the buffs. I'll probably get flamed slightly here: but this looks like a fairly big all-round buff to me.
When did you really get to use defiance? Now you get an effective "25% Damage buff" across the board (since it's BASE +damage), a version of Fury that doesn't rely on you getting hit, and Psuedo-mez protection. This is a *big deal*. 0.47/0.67 secs increase on your tier #2- roll an Energy Blaster and see if this really makes a big difference compared to all the cookies you're getting in return. Fire and Ice will still be the best cookie-cutter choices after the changes (see above) and ALL THE OTHER BLASTER SETS get nothing but buffs.
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Now you get an effective "25% Damage buff" across the board (since it's BASE +damage)
[/ QUOTE ]Assuming you use ranged attacks only.
Otherwise, a good summary.
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Now you get an effective "25% Damage buff" across the board (since it's BASE +damage)
[/ QUOTE ]Assuming you use ranged attacks only.
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Well, I was comparing the primaries... the only powers in them that don't have the "ranged" flag is 'Aim'.
Even the pseudopet "rains" have a ranged flag on the powers, though whether or not Defiance 2.1's damage buff ends up applying to them remains to be seen...
I imagine that if nothing else the secondaries would be buffed by the "Fury" aspect though.
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Otherwise, a good summary.
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Now thats a good summery Taking way more realistic numbers isntead of that DPC and DPA (whatever..) taking the more powers of the set into account. Going further in the sets still show weird unbalances (the cone attacks) but often get balanced out by the high-tier power.
So the major issue here only is rooting, archery and AR have serious rooting, followed by little energy and sonic. Elec seems to be in between of all, since they lack a shorter distance high damage (AR neither, but has a overall rooting). As mael says, the tier 1/2 stacked up damage will benefit fire and ice massive, since both shortrange-dmg powers remain fast casting (BIB and err forgot name), high dmg with high buff = better.
And be real, the majority of blasters in PvP only use the ranged powers to go in, until they are in range and unlease their elec or nrg secondairy. Yes, exceptions (im /ice for example), but the fights where the 'strong blasters' survived were those with the elec/nrg set.
PvE wise i see alot good things, dispite archery leaving behind, they compensate little by their nuke wich beats FA by far. AR still has ignite, flametrower and FA as massive rooters, ice left with BFR and Nrg with their short-ranger. But all those 'non-fire/ice' sets get a massive boost in their Tier 1/2 powers, while they remain loosing at the higher tiers in the set from fire/ice.
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Nice way to sum things up Maelwys. I need to see this in practice before I can agree with your point though. Theoretically it seems sound.
You do however fail to include one thing, namely playability or maybe player enjoyment. People playing Fire and Ice are used to playing a certain way. They have played this way since Issue 1, which has been for over 3 years now, am I correct? They like the way the blasts animate and are used to them animating this way. A lot of people have chosen these sets, for just this reason.
Personally I enjoy playing my Fire Blaster or Ice Blaster more than my Sonic Blaster because of this. I actually deleted a n Energy Blaster due to this as well(custom character title and all). I enjoy being able to move quickly while dropping blasts. I enjoy not being rooted very long whenever I hit something. Many times have I been frustrated with my Sonic Blaster, due to the long rooting of it's attacks. I do not wish to have this same frustration on my Ice or Fire blasters as well.
I like
Like alot 
Only they may remove the tier1/2 always fire mezz thingie, no good.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
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