Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?

When I say "win," I mean "get through to me." There are certain things I'm open to being convinced about, and there are certain things where I'm simply immune to it. Concept tends to be one of those. In this case, it's theme. Dominators hold THEN kill. Blasters just kill. I pick Blasters for the job.

[/quote]I disagree that Doms aren't damage-centric. Castle even said he was worried about suggesting the Dom change because the numbers he was suggesting would basically mean that Doms have two primaries. Secondaries are usually built to be weaker and to augment the primary, but in the case of Dominators, they have the highest base damage of any toon you can make redside. If that makes them "not damage dealers," I don't what to say.[/quote]

Dominators are damage-dealers, but they are not damage-centric. This isn't a criticism of the AT, and it's hardly the reason I stopped playing them, but insomuch as it concerns the concept, it's the clincher. Dominators are control-centric, with the ability to deal decent damage, but unlike Blasters, they cannot survive on their damage alone. For one, a lot of them lack Build Up, and ALL of them lack Aim + Build Up. they have a lower damage mod than Blasters, especially on Ranged attacks, and lower by a not-insignificant amount. They have lower damage still by lacking Defiance, which I've found can contribute quite a bit if try to use it. They fall farther behind when you consider that they have far fewer direct attacks than Blasters, and that the bulk of them are single-target or small AoE. Blasters, by comparison, tend to have one, two and sometimes even more AoEs, all with gigantic areas of coverage and all with decent damage, to the point where most Blasters can insta-wipe minion spawns with them.

Dominators also suffer from Defender hit points, which makes reckless abandon and direct offence a LOT more dangerous, to a degree that I was AMAZED at. You wouldn't think something so simple would make such a difference, but it does. Dominators can be survivable, but as I examined mine and asked for help with it, the recurring feedback was that I should focus less on my attacks and more on my controls, and possibly even leave attacks for later in the levels. Let me put it this way - having to pull slots out of already underslotted attacks just so that I can survive is not something I will do, and any AT which requires me to do so is not an AT I want to play. That, and being continually advised to tweak my difficulty so I was fighting fewer enemies but higher in level, which I consider a massive step DOWN in terms of visual appeal, is what caused me to delete my Dominator when I ended up needing the slot, though what I needed it for I don't remember. Another Mastermind, most likely.

I played one up until level 31. And, yes, I'm aware of level 32. I have a friend who took the time to gasp at the stupidity of that choice on at least three separate occasions, but I had my reasons. For one, no AT that I despise playing for the first 32 levels is worth the remaining 28. For another, I'm not looking for just a single character I can play if I pick exactly the right powerset combo. I'm looking for an AT I can play with most any combo, and when I realised how much I did NOT look forward to starting a new one, I realised that I didn't want to stick with the AT. It deals damage well enough, certainly, but that is still overshadowed by the need to also dish out control, meaning it cannot be played like a Blaster (something that Dominator players told me probably a dozen times over), which is exactly what I was looking at them to replace CoV-side. These days, I don't need to bother, since I'll be able to just take Blasters CoV-side and will be able to stop shoehorning characters and playstyles in an AT that doesn't fit.

The one biggest regret I have about not being able to jive with Dominators is that Control sets are the last thing in the game that I have never, in five years, had access to, courtesy of lacking an AT I could play that had them. Everything else I can get on the cheap. Melee, defence, blast, manipulation and summon are obvious, and I get support via Masterminds, but I just can't get a control set, as both control ATs play in a way I do not enjoy. Of course, I also lack access to Ice Melee and Ice Armour due to my dislike of Tankers, but that's one powerset combo, so it's not THAT big a deal, even though my first and favourite Brute started out as Ice/Ice in Beta.

I think the only AT I haven't even tried playing seriously was Controllers, the prospect of which I just detest. Everything else I've played to some level, with Defenders and Corrupters not holding me for too long once I realise how many powers they have that I can't use on myself. I'm still trying to make peace with Mastermind resurrection powers. On the one hand, I don't want them, but on the other hand, needing one on the off chance I team and not having it both sucks and kind of puts me in an awkward position.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Other than Blasters. I'm looking at my Fire/Fire right now and, unless I'm missing something, I can't see much else.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, on a purely personal level of purely personal preference, certainly. Everyone I play with will pretty much tell you that nothing ever does enough damage for me. But that's not the point in the long run, so much so as the ability to deliver this damage quickly enough to have a steady pace of progress and the ability to not die before doing so, and preferably not get hurt to the point of having to rest before Rest is recharged. Not all ATs can actually measure up to this, at least not from what I've seen.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Blasters cannot survive on their damage alone either. The biggest complaint about the fire primary and the fire secondary has been that it lacks mitigation. Furthermore, until Defiance added the ability to shoot while mezzed, Blasters on average were faceplanting at rates so much higher than everyone else that Blasters - All Powerset Combinations, All Levels, All Team Situations - were individually averaging lower performance than the average of all players in the same situation by sizable amounts *and* this was so unusual that *only* for the Blaster archetype could this be said.

In other words, the average of every single Blaster combination - that means Fire/Energy, Ice/Ice, Sonic/Energy, all of them - were underperforming the average. Not only that, all of them underperformed the average at all combat levels. Not only that, all of them underperformed solo or teamed. That's an incredible statement, and one that if I had made it before the datamining done pre-I11 I would have been laughed off the forums. And while I cannot say by how much, I can say if it was by something like only ten or twenty percent, the devs probably wouldn't have done anything about it. It was *much* more than that.**

Blasters can survive on damage alone for some players but not for the majority of players.

There really should be an estoppel rule that covers Blaster performance.


Also: BU and Aim are burst damage tools. They don't really increase damage by all that much. Assault is actually competitive with Aim, and not that far behind BU. The problem with both is that they have significant activation time (significant relative to their damage buff). Its this activation time - during which you cannot attack - that actually allows powers like Follow Up to provide similar (sometimes superior) return even though its numbers seem much lower.

(I always found it interesting that back in the old days when people would argue over which one was better that one objection made against Follow Up was that it was an attack that did relatively low damage, which "hurt" Claws attack chains. No one tended to point out that BU was essentially an attack that did zero damage and hurt a lot more.)

Burst damage can be important if that's all you have in terms of damage mitigation (it allows a Blaster confronted with a three on one situation to immediately reduce it to a two on one situation, which is what a lot of soloing blasters tend to do with BU and snipes that aren't blappers). But the difference is so low and the break in action so high that I often find myself forgetting I even have BU on things like Scrappers and Brutes (Brutes especially).


This is true, but its also true - since we were originally talking about how MMOs should be designed in the future - that you'll never see that again. The absolutely wild amounts of AoE that the game has, and the trivially miniscule compensating costs to using them, are one of the biggest offensive-side design errors the original team made. Its an error that I can say with 99% certainty will never be repeated again. Such massive AoE was never revisited by Cryptic in CoV, avoided to a large extent in CO, and along with superstacking buffs, accelerating survival curves, and AoE ally effects are probably on Castle's list of things to erase from Geko's spreadsheets if he ever finds himself in possession of a time machine.

And he would be right to do so. I'm sure there are lots of people who will say I'm missing the point and not seeing all the fun to be had in a superhero game where you can vaporize a city block, but I'm sure lots of people thought the broken smoke grenade was fun and the 100% resistance cap was just a really good imitation of Superman.



** Castle never told me explicitly by how much overall for all cases (he wasn't allowed to at the time), but he gave me enough of a nudge in the right direction that I can say it was pretty bad.

This is all based on the assumption of "FUN = DEFEATS/TIME".

I don't believe everyone subscribes to that particular formula exclusively. I know I don't. If everyone did, then yes, one would wonder why bother even including controllers or defs or tanks in the game, right? City of Scrappers. Simple.

But, not everyone likes playing scrappers. Or, playing them exclusively (my Claw/SR is fun as hell). Some players will enjoy a more lockdown-centric build, or buff build, or tank build or artillery build.

This is also assuming that everyone solos. This is NOT the case - most of us enjoy teaming to some degree, and it's the synergy of powers and tactics that makes teams rock and roll.

I'm not getting the impression that you view this as a tactical game as much as a brawler or shooter. I'm not saying either way is the right way (the nice thing about MMO's is how we all adapt our playstyles and still enjoy the underlying game) but at the same time, I'm finding it difficult to buy into the premise that since Damage is the only real way to defeat foes, that everyone really SHOULD do a lot of damage first, and other stuff second.

And, I'd like to refer you to many many many mission arcs where my Stalker snuck past most (sometimes all!) of the mobs on the map, and took care of the objective and nothing else, completing the missions in a fraction of the expected timeframe. Was that fun? Oh hell yes.

Only in the vaguest and ambiguous sort of sense are secondary powers deliberately designed to be weaker and augment the primary. The canonical example is Scrappers. Its impossible to argue that their secondary is "weaker" than their primary, except to invoke the damage bias. And if you do, its impossible to argue that Defender secondaries are weaker than their Primary.

Scrappers were intended to be the balanced soloers. In their case, and their case specifically, the archetype was designed to have a balance of offense and defense. Offense was made "primary" simply because something had to be, and Tankers were going to be taking up the alternative ordering.

Its extremely difficult to make the "archetype is focused on the primary" argument in the case of Scrappers, Corruptors, and Dominators. Its also not easy to make it in the case of Blasters: I asked Castle this question directly in the case of Blasters:

Are Blasters intended to be Ranged Offensive archetypes that happen to have Melee support attacks, or are they intended to be Offensive archetypes that have both Ranged and Melee options?

The answer, which I confirmed *twice*, was: Blasters are offensive specialists, who have ranged and melee options. Both ranged and melee options are intended to be valid and roughly equal options. In fact, the ranged modifier boost was *not* intended to create a preference for ranged damage. I asked him that question as well. The boost was actually intended to compensate for the perceived belief that the melee options were better than the ranged options - i.e. the Blapper mentality.

Castle believed that the perception that the melee options were so much better in the case of hard targets (they do tend to have better DPA and control, although they tend to have less AoE potential) meant blasters were putting themselves at greater risk more often than intended. The ranged damage modifier boost was intended to balance the ranged and melee options better so that Blasters felt firing away on a boss with ranged attacks was just as valid of an option as whacking away with total focus and bonesmasher. This was all part of the "stop blasters from commiting suicide" objective for the I11-ish changes to Blasters.


The primary difference between primary powersets and secondary powersets is not strength, its developmental: you get access to primary powerset options earlier than secondary powerset options. So in CoH, archetypes tend to get access to their team role-focused powerset first. But in CoV, where team roles are much more jumbled, in almost every case each archetype gets access to damage first: Stalkers, Brutes, Masterminds, Corruptors. Only in the case of Dominators is that not exactly true, and its telling that in their case the powersets they *do* get access to first is what Controllers call "damage." In a very real sense, Dominators are the archetype that are like Blasters in having two damage sets. If they don't have two damage sets, then Controllers have no damage sets. As Controllers end up maturing into one of the higher damage archetypes on the Blue side, that would be a weird statement to make (and no: I'm not forgetting or ignoring containment).

Given the decision to make the damage powerset the primary in just about every case in CoV, its clear you cannot easily make arguments about which one was supposed to be "the focus" or "most important" because its clear they were not thinking that way at all: they were thinking that damage was important to soloing, damage was conceptually consistent with villains, so all the primary sets will be the ones that allow the villains to kill/defeat stuff. But I don't think they ever explicitly thought "damage is more important than defense for brutes, so the primary will be the melee offense sets." It seems pretty clear that in terms of "focus" the CoV archetypes are far more balanced than they are weighted. All CoV archetypes are a lot more like Scrappers than they are like any of the other four CoH archetypes in this regard.

Oh, I know. There's no automatic process making secondaries weaker. In fact I know there are a lot of exceptions that can sometimes cause people to complain. Trick Arrow being pretty spiffy on Controllers due to their mez numbers being one example. Shield Charge doing just as much damage as Lightning Rod in a primary being another one.

But I recall Castle saying things about Dominators being now designed so that they essentially have "two primaries," in the sense that the strength of both their primary and their secondary are high enough that they could warrant being the primary (and therefore, the intended role/goal/purpose) of any given AT. Doms have the highest base damage on redside, which is unusual for someone who has attacks in their secondary. Normally having attacks in your secondary would mean your attacks do pretty low damage (Tankers, Defenders) because your AT does other things, and considers damage less important.

But from what Castle said about wanting to take away the up and down feeling of Doms, beefing up their damage to that level was the best way to go about it. After all, high-end players were already playing that way, having a Dom that could mez as well as do great damage.

Another way to take it would be that Castle may have been worried that the okay guys would think Doms too powerful if their numbers were so high in damage AND in mez at the same time. But it seems to have been something that worked out.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

*Channels Topper from Dilbert*

That's nothing! I did that with my mastermind, while having no pets out and nothing more than a stealth proc in my teleport! While blindfolded!

*Leans back smugly in chair*

This is true, but I don't think Castle specifically ever said he was "worried" about it, as if it was a paradigm-breaking change. He did, if I recall, publicly describe the change in terms that suggested this might be a special situation, but I think Castle was thinking less in terms of the "two primaries" aspect as being unique (Blasters and Scrappers are basically already there) and more in terms of having two different primaries that are targeted towards two different design purposes: control and damage (the two blaster "primaries" are both directed at damage, and the two scrapper "primaries" are both directed towards soloing prowess). And I think he was thinking more about selling the change than describing a radical change in design philosophy.


He did have some private reservations, but I can't comment on those specifically. Those reservations did not stop Dominators from basically getting more or less what Castle originally cooked up anyway.

Prior to the Defiance changes, I completely agree. Post the defiance changes... They actually kind of can, and I can say this as the owner of quite a few. It's not safe, it's not easy, it's not pretty, but it is, at least in theory, possible for all Blaster combos, and I've tried everything short of Sonic. And it's no just a question of unloading all your damage and crossing your fingers. Some approaches work remarkably well and some approaches have the nasty tendency to kill you before you realise things aren't going very well.

You know, Arcana, I've followed your numbers from the old days, and while I tend to unconditionally agree with them for the most part, I continually feel like you constantly neglect the benefit of pure, large-scale burst damage. Your description of it (which I lost track of to quote) sounds kind of out of scale with what I've been doing... Pretty much all day today. Yes, you can use Aim and Build Up to quickly reduce three enemies into two. If that's what you choose to do with them. I tend to use them to reduce 8 enemies to... Maybe 2. And I know I'll be kicked in the balls for saying this, but every Blaster combo should be able to do this, with the possible exception of Psychic Blast not paired up with Mental Manipulation thanks to a bizarre design choice to migrate the Psi cone from primary to secondary.

The reason I've been bringing up burst damage over the years is that, yes, it doesn't really help all that much over time, but for Blasters more than for anyone else, "over time" metrics are comparatively a lot less meaningful. Especially for powers on a 90 second timer. As far as I've seen, if a solo Blaster allows a battle to last too much longer than 10-20 seconds, he's already in deep trouble before these metrics are even considered, because for it to have gone so far, something must have gone wrong. A Blaster who's on the ball can end a fight without suffering more than one attack from most enemies, which Blaster hit points can generally absorb with a good degree of comfort.

And even if you don't feel like just cycling your AoEs every time, Aim and Build Up with the proper power choice can still pot-shot quite a few enemies before they run out. For instance, with a Fire/Fire Blaster, I can take down at least three enemies in 10 seconds, leaving at least three more within an inch of their life, to be one-hit-finished thereafter anyway. It comes down to proper application of firepower, and while it is NOT safe and NOT easy, it's not exactly rocket science to replicate fight after fight. And even basic slotting can give you Aim and Build Up back every other fight.

Burst damage matters, especially in the hands of Blasters, and in their hands, it is a force of nature. I will say that, without a shadow of a doubt, NO ONE possesses as much burst damage as a Blaster at full tilt. Not even remotely in the same principality. THAT is a big ace up the sleeve.

Well... I've heard that said a lot, and I can kind of agree, but then I kind of have to disagree. Large-scale AoE in terms of Blaster damage is something I see as being on the order of Scrapper complete soloability and performance. It was never intended, but I'd really have to roll my eyes backwards to describe it as a bad thing. Specifically since it has painted Blasters into a corner that has denied them direct self-protection of any kind for fear of the tank-mage boogie man. I, personally, enjoy Blaster AoEs not because they are some kind of instant I Win button (which they actually aren't), but because they give a lone character who is otherwise completely unprepared to deal with large amounts of enemies a tool with which to make progress. And that counts for a lot in my book.

Frankly, Blasters wouldn't be the "kings of damage" without this. At best they'd be able to slightly out-match Scrappers in damage output, and at worst they would be (and were) just Scrappers but without the defences. Even today, with all the buffs, Blaster single-target damage isn't all that, and their single-target burst is still not that impressive compared to Scrappers. Yes, yes, they do more, but the difference isn't as big as the difference in survivability. What Blasters have is the ability to make spawns disappear under the right conditions, and that Scrappers CANNOT do. If you remove large-scale AoEs from the equation, you remove the point to having Blasters to begin with. I guess that might lead to something cooler, like an Assault/Defence powerset, but the raw power of Blaster destruction is one serious draw to the game, at least for me.

In fact, it is this single-minded focus on large-scale destruction that keeps getting me to put up with all the niggling problems, all the annoying deaths, all the close calls and all the trudge and toil that come with playing a Blaster and just stubbornly keep playing them. Yes, it makes me want to tare the hair out of my nose a lot of the time, but one well-executed devastation and it all goes away in the face of self-satisfaction.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I suppose if your idea of fun is taking years to level up to any decent level, I could go with that, and I know some people don't mind, but I'd bet my metal tipped tail that a lot of people WOULD have the most fun if it coincided with a decent levelling speed. The Architect, its abuse and its loss of activity ought to be evidence of that. I have fun with the game itself as much as the next guy, or I wouldn't have stuck with it for coming on six years, but when I get stuck on the same character at the same level day after day, week after week, I start to smell a big fat rat.

Fun doesn't have to equal efficiency, but fun very often equal progress, and some characters played alone will NOT give you much progress.

No, nothing of the sort. This is assuming few people only ever play on teams and never, ever, ever solo. Since you are solo when you log into the game and you have to actually DO something to not be solo, I'd wager that many do solo from time to time. You have to do absolutely nothing to be solo, and there is NOT A SINGLE SITUATION where you cannot be solo. There are only situations where you ARE solo, but the game won't let you progress, which I would describe as universally unpleasant even to those who don't mind them. I have a really, REALLY hard time imagining someone going "I can't do this alone? Yes! Cool! Man, if I were able to do this by myself, this would have sucked so much!" I've nothing against wanting to team, I have nothing against disliking playing alone. I don't get WANTING to be unable to play alone.

That depends on what you define as a "tactical game." Because from what I've seen, the majority of people here seem to define tactics as "follow this guide I read/wrote for this particular situation." While that may indeed fit the dictionary definition of the word (it may, though I haven't checked), I would define this as "a job." Tactics, to me, is situational awareness - the ability to decide how to react to a given situation AS IT OCCURS. In this case, I very much view this as a tactical game, because I do my best to be constantly aware of my environment, my enemies and my allies. It is also why I avoid large teams because the chaos and sheer numbers make it impossible to for me to keep a sense of everything, so I'm reduce to just punching what's in front of me, having kicked tactics in the teeth as soon as I entered the mission.

Furthermore, I don't define as "tactics" any of the approaches that are, essentially, "let's take 10 minutes per enemy group because it's safer that way." Constant pulls, constant minefields, constant waiting for this, setting up of that, preparing this other thing... If I'm going to be sitting on my hands while someone else "prepares," then I might as well go have lunch, and if I go have lunch I'm not exactly making much of my play time, am I? This is the big problem with both a lot of teams these days, as well as with a lot of "advice" people tend to give out. It always involves taking bloody ages to do even the simplest of things, and when you get to that point, you've already lost before the fight even started.

Doing this nets you next to nothing. Yes, you complete the mission in a fraction of the time, but you get an even smaller fraction of the total reward. I'm not going to get involved in the argument on stealthing missions, but when you try to define "fun" in this context, you tread deep waters that there is no escape from. Yes, it's fun. Hanging out in Pocket D, chatting with friends, racing, hunting for badges and so on and so forth - all of these things are fun for somebody, but they're hardly things that either the combat system in particular or the game in general ought to be balanced around. Much as it surprises me to be the one to say it, balance revolves around progress, with progress being defined as the game's ultimate goal. You can always make your own fun in the game, but if you're not progressing at a decent pace, something is wrong, as ultimately, design should strive to let people advance while doing what they enjoy.

There is one and only one way to advance in City of Heroes - kill stuff, either directly or by teaming with someone who does. Everything else, even things that reward, is secondary to this. OK, caveat - Inventions. So let's rephrase it like this: two ways to progress - gain experience or garner drops. The only actually reliable way to gain experience is to kill stuff, by far and wide. A variety of things grant experience rewards, but none of them are as potent as killing stuff, not by a long shot. Not unless you find a specifically exploitable mission. Drops you get, once again, from killing things, or from completing specific tasks which, once again, require killing stuff for the most part.

You can make your own fun, but as long as we're looking at an actual in-game system with its own balance, then the we HAVE to fallback on either the trite "risk vs. reward," or on the much more realistic "time vs. reward." You don't have to play for the rewards if you don't want to, but the game HAS to be balanced for them, or it creates a variety of unpleasant problems.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

But the point is that what you are talking about is non-offensive utility of burst damage, not increased kill speed. And while Blasters *do* benefit from that things that won't die anyway won't. So the problem here is not that you're giving credit to BU for Blasters but that you are penalizing archetypes like Dominators for not having it when it wouldn't matter as much.

You say Dominators are "not offensively focused" and one of the reasons why is because of their lack of BU and Aim. But here you're saying that Blasters gain survival benefits from BU and Aim, which is not an offensive benefit, and its one that Dominators won't get much benefit from.

It should only count against Dominators that they do not have BU and Aim if BU and Aim would have actually helped them offensively in the first place. Since Dominators do not actually *need* burst damage to gain full benefit of their intrinsic average damage (i.e.: they don't tend to drop dead) you're penalizing them for lacking an offensive tool that only marginally increases offense. That would be comparable to me saying that Blasters aren't offensively focused because they don't get the same benefit from Assault that Defenders do.

And being able to cut eight down to two is a function of AoEs, not BU and Aim. Penalizing something for lacking BU because they are lacking a tool that can buff AoEs and also penalizing the same something for lacking AoEs is a very weird form of double-counting.


In any case, I don't discount the benefits of burst damage for blasters. I just don't count it as an offensive benefit unless it also increases kill speed. Frontloading (borrowing damage from tomorrow and using it today) is a defensive benefit. BU has a high defensive benefit and a low offensive one in general. This can be influenced to some degree by playstyle, but so can most things.

In any case, that's why, if I had to choose between +100% damage 10% of the time or +12% damage all of the time, my blasters will probably take the former and my scrappers will take the latter. My blasters can make better use of the damage now than later. My scrappers, who aren't going to die, would rather just have more, period.


Only true for Fire blasters. Not true for all the rest, because all the rest have mitigating controls. For example, sometimes on my sonic blaster I like just putting the entire group to sleep and then bashing them to death one at a time while their friends are snoring all around them. And Ice Patch is practically cheating.

Outside of control, to be able to end the fight after one volley requires being able to defeat the enemy basically in a single volley of your own, which is something only some blasters can do (usually Fire, and not all of them). The reason why this is totally broken as a design decision is that when you decide to give a class the defensive ability called "kill everything before it can shoot back" it will have this surprising tendency to level a gazillion times faster than everything else. The only reason why Fire blasters *don't* level a gazillion times faster than everyone else is because most players aren't experienced enough to avoid dropping dead while attempting this. But you do create the problem for yourself that AoE recharge is largely irrelevant in teams (recharge buffs, more than one attacker) and AoE steamrolling means all that work you spent designing attacks for minions gets flushed down the toilet (since they never get to use them).


Yes, they would. They'd just get there with tools that would get them there without creating balance problems, but are too dangerous to give them so long as they *do* have those AoEs.

(For example, they should gain more for self-damage buffs and have higher damage caps, but AoEs make that too dangerous. AoEs come up so often in balance discussions that if I could simultaneously make the playerbase forget that they ever existed and thus never miss them, I *would* snap my fingers and make them go away in their current form, without further discussion or reservation. I don't say that lightly.)

I dunno, I've never been killed by a dead guy. They have low damage output. I try to use the "dead" mez on as many guys as possible.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Actually, it is.

I'm not going to redo the BU calculations because they aren't really relevant. Lets just picture two blasters, one with BU and one without, and lets temporarily make them invulnerable just to measure their kill speed. After we measure the one with BU, we then add a constant damage buffing power to the second one (something like assault) that makes the second one's kill speed basically the same. At this point they are both generating the same amount of damage, because they are killing things at the same rate (for our purposes, critters do not usually regenerate fast enough to matter in this comparison). *Whatever* the value of Assault we had to give to the second blaster, we can say that BU and that damage buff provide the same overall offensive benefit (by definition: both are killing at the same speed).

Now lets shut off the invulnerability. Will both blasters be equally well off? Probably not, because now the second one is taking more damage than the first one, because the first one frontloads its kills at least some of the time. Killing faster initially and slower later on is better than killing at a constant speed that is the average of the two, because the former eliminates incoming damage faster.

What this means is that Build Up provides two real benefits to blasters. First, it provides an offensive benefit that on average will allow the blaster to kill a few more things, which translates to some average offensive damage buff. Second, it provides the means to eliminate damage earlier rather than later, and as a consequence mitigate damage. It provides offensive damage mitigation.

So yes: BU offers both an offensive benefit and a defensive one for blasters. If you don't believe that, then you believe replacing BU with something that provides its average benefit over time without the frontloading is just as good, because your kill speed will still be the same.

Assuming, of course, you're alive long enough for the situation to actually average out.

Its not a question of blasting bigger holes. Its a question of blasting bigger holes now and smaller holes later compared to blasting a slightly larger sized hole all the time.

Practically speaking, double counting is precisely what I'm doing. Just having either on its own may or may not be enough to count, but having both is what cements Blasters as truly damage-focused in my mind. I guess I could just count both as one, but since I'm not actually assigning points and doing a numeric tally, I could count the same issue twelve times and it shouldn't make a difference. Granted, I was going for the dramatic effect of listing a long list, and a few double-counts do swell that up in a largely under-handed way, but I don't believe that particular specificity actually changes the overriding point.

Basically, Dominators lack decent AoEs, which prevents them from effectively dealing with large groups of enemies in a timely manner (e.i. before my AoE controls run out), and they lack a Build Up + Aim combo which would allow them to deliver enough burst damage to turn the tide of battle. Of course, the final and most important argument here is also subjective. Dominators deal damage. A lot of it. But in terms of playstyle, the first thing a solo Dominator wants to do is NOT to deal damage, but rather to control. Hold things first, THEN start killing them, and whenever it comes down to that order of business, that is not something I can accept as damage-centric.

To give an obtuse opening: yes and no. On the one hand, yes, borrowing from later to use today does not increase performance... Not numerically, at least. But from my experience, it concentrates damage in the moments when it actually matters in an OFFENSIVE capacity, e.i. when all my powers are recharged and my health and endurance are full. You see, this may be just a playstyle thing, a multitude of factors mandate that I wait or delay a lot of the time. It could be travel from spawn to spawn, it could be clicking a glowie, it could be just exploring or it could be something as simple as getting up to visit the loo. These are waiting times during which I WILL wait regardless of anything else, and times when doing damage is out of the question. However, even during these times, my powers still recharge.

In actual fact, I AM taking damage from one place to pile it up in another, but where I'm taking damage is a place where it isn't useful anyway. If damage were a tangible resource like, say, gold, then I trust you will agree with the following assessment: as long as there are times it's going to go to waste anyway, it makes sense to take it away from those times and use it at other times when it WILL make a difference.

Here's how things go, for me at least - I say Build Up and Aim are up every couple of battles, but that assumes I go from battle to battle to battle. I do not. At the end of each battle, I typically spend some time sitting on my hands, appraising the situation, some time exploring the fog of war, some time travelling, some time scanning through the enemy ranks, some time thinking, and possibly some time resting. By the time I'm done, Build Up and Aim are up and ready to be used again. Purely numerically, mine recharge in around 50 seconds (I think), which would give them an uptime of 1 in 5 (less, in fact, since they take some time to animate, but not by much). In actual practice, however, Build Up and Aim are up for over half the time I'm actually in battle and doing damage. To me and how I play, they are a MASSIVE boost to outgoing damage.

Just today, I have been able to afford to start over 3/4 of my fights with Build Up and Aim going, and I have been able to finish at least half of my fights before they have expired. It may be aberrant, it may be a bit wasteful, but for what I see them do for me, they are a SERIOUS boost to my damage, far greater than a small, consistent buff would be. Yes, a consistent buff is consistently buffing, but since I'm not consistently fighting, a lot of that goes to waste. Build Up and Aim almost never go to waste unless I do something remarkably stupid and end up held with no break frees while they time out in neutral gear.


Controls expire, endurance runs ever downward, health gets drained and the enemies just keep on shooting. Any Blaster that I have fought has always been on a death clock. Some have a death clock much more lenient than others, but they all have one. Where a Scrapper can basically fall asleep in a spawn in a lot of cases, a Blaster doing the same is going DOWN. You can't out-control the enemies, only slow them down. Sooner or later they WILL overwhelm you, and the only way to beat them is to kill them fast. Any Blaster I have every played has suffered and suffered hard if a battle drags on, to the point where if a battle runs much longer than 10 seconds and I'm not down to a couple of minions or a straggler lieutenant, this immediately rings alarm bells in my head and I look to save my *** RIGHT NOW.

A couple of points here. First of all, and this probably comes down to difficulty settings, but in my experience, almost all Blaster combos are capable of full spawn wipes, just not all as early as Fire Blast, and not all quite as easily. But any Blaster that has two AoEs, when slotted well and under the influence of Aim and Build Up, will either spawn-wipe, or get close enough to it that it doesn't matter. This doesn't have to be done as simply and directly as cycling AoEs, and I've found it works best by opening with a control or insta-kill power, but it works.

Secondly, yes, I fully realise that such massive AoEs are problematic if you want to give the AT a little more survivability. But it's a self-sustaining problem. Blasters lack survivability in a BIG way, so they NEED those AoEs to compensate. If they had survivability, they wouldn't be as reliant on AoE and I, at least, wouldn't be THAT heartbroken to have them tightened up. Not removed, mind you, just tightened up. And going from Fire Breath to Breath of Fire IS removal. That's why, whenever I re-suggest my Ranger AT, I always go for Assault/Defence. Without the massive AoEs, what the hell is such an AT going to do that a Scrapper isn't already doing?

The problem, if I may say that, is that Blasters were built as "glass cannons" in a game where they ended up being the only ones made out of glass. As such, they had to carry the biggest cannons, or their whole AT design was pointless. Which it was, until the Defiance changes, and its point is at best mediocre even today. And I say this as an avid player of Blasters.

Incidentally, how do you feel about what I like to refer to as the "garbage filler" in Blaster secondaries? Things like Burn or Smoke Grenade, just to pull two names out of a hat. I have no provable reason to feel that way, but to me it just feels like they ended up with too few powers and jammed in whatever fit the theme, leaving a lot of Blasters with a lot of powers that don't do much to help them, yet with the need of some extra help.

Yes, they would. They'd just get there with tools that would get them there without creating balance problems, but are too dangerous to give them so long as they *do* have those AoEs.

(For example, they should gain more for self-damage buffs and have higher damage caps, but AoEs make that too dangerous. AoEs come up so often in balance discussions that if I could simultaneously make the playerbase forget that they ever existed and thus never miss them, I *would* snap my fingers and make them go away in their current form, without further discussion or reservation. I don't say that lightly.)[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That, and doms have always done more damage in melee than at range. Most of the melee attacks are single-target, too.

You remind me of those statisticians who draw the strangest conclusions by defining terms in careless ways, like the ones that say the bedroom is the deadliest room in the house (deaths per room) or that airplane travel is safer than car travel (deaths per year). It's easy to define a term, run some numbers, then draw the wrong conclusion or express the wrong idea...

Look at the following list and identify which ones you deem to be "defensive" in nature:

• Increasing one's damage resistance
• Putting the enemy to sleep
• Healing damage dealt to oneself
• Phasing the enemy
• Increasing one's hit points
• Debuffing enemy ToHit

According to my understanding of defensiveness (meaning to protect, as noted in any dictionary), you can define "defensive" in this game as "protects from enemy attack." Damage resistance does this. Defense as a game mechanic (avoiding or deflecting attacks) does this. Increased hit points does this. On the other hand, controlling enemies with mez does not do this. Debuffing enemy recharge does not do this. Preventing enemies from attacking--including defeating them before they can fight back--does not do this. These are all offensive tactics, as they aggressively affect the enemy and not oneself.

Your definition of "defensive" seems to be "higher percent HP retained over time," in which case defeating enemies more quickly certainly fits the bill along with a hodepodge of other two-fold strategies and maneuvers.

Your assertion is that that defeating enemies more quickly (thusly sustaining less damage during an encounter) qualifies as defensive activity. While I agree that deader enemies results in greater survivability than not-as-dead enemies, I do not regard a boost in damage to be defensive because it's aggressive and affects the enemy; not protective and affects self or allies. You said it yourself: it's offensive damage mitigation... that is to say, NOT defensive damage mitigation.

What makes it "wrong" though? Just because to you killing enemies faster doesn't "feel" like a defensive behavior? Are airplanes not safer because they don't "feel" safer? What are you basing it on that would suggest what other people say isn't true? You claim that Arc is just making up things out of thin air using vague wording and stretched truths. Based on what?

Enemies dying faster doesn't protect you from their attacks? Does an enemy that lasts 30 seconds, and an enemy that lasts 10 seconds, do the same amount of damage to you?

Is holding an enemy a defensive behavior? According to you, no. Either way, they aren't attacking you or doing any damage. Their damage output is 0 whether they're asleep, stunned, held, or dead. People say all the time that the best defense is a good offense. If your enemies are dead, they aren't going to hurt you much.

I'm confused. Having defense so enemies miss you "protects from enemy attacks" but reducing enemy accuracy so they miss you does not "protect from enemy attacks" ? The net result is identical. The enemy misses. +RES and -DMG do the same thing. They protect from enemy attacks.

I don't see that. What I see as Arc's definition of "defensive" is "protecting from enemy attacks." Making it so the enemies can't hit you at all, making it so the enemies hit you for almost no damage, or making it so the enemies are unable to attack through mez or death, is protecting you from their attacks.

Your definition, you claim, is "protecting from enemy attacks," but it's actually "protecting from enemy attacks, but only if you don't affect the enemies to do it." This isn't actually based on anything solid. It's arbitrary. You just "feel" that it's right.

It's offensive damage mitigation in the same way that you have passive and active damage mitigation. The "offensive" portion is only a means to an end. It doesn't matter whether it's an offensive maneuver. It's still damage mitigation. And it's still defensive. I can't even fathom how you'd be able to reduce incoming damage, but not have it be defensive in any way.

Unless you're just nitpicking semantics for the sake of nitpicking. Since you admit that it's damage mitigation, but not damage mitigation that would qualify as "defensive" to you... which would imply it mitigates damage in some way that somehow doesn't contribute to your survival. But that's not even true. Or possible.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Sam, meet Sirens Song.

Its an AoE (Cone).
It has a 10 target cap.
Its mag 3 (it affects minions and LTs).
It isn't a percentage chance effect (the sleep has 100% chance of taking effect)
Its duration is perma out of the box at all levels (its recharge is 20s, and its duration is 28 seconds at level 18 when you can first get it, increasing to about 36 seconds at level 50).

Technically, it isn't autohit so you could miss something, but as a practical matter a Sonic blaster that slots this power reasonably well has a first-strike spawn eliminator when solo (sleeps are of course problematic in teams, but Blasters are supposed to have help on teams). Its good enough that most people thought it was bugged when Sonic blast first came out.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And here I thought Siren's Call was a PvP zone.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.