Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?
By
Adelie,
Posted on: 2009-12-21 03:59 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I reject your reality and substituted my own.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
And here I thought Siren's Call was a PvP zone.
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Okay, you win: defense ≠ defense. All hail Arcana.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Yeah, yeah, like I haven't heard this form of intellectually vacuous bravado a million times before.
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OK, I admit, I did not know that. As I said, Sonic Blast is the one Blaster Primary I have simply never played, partly because I always thought the visuals were silly and partly for lack of a sonic-related secondary, because someone apparently billed Sonic and Archery as Defender sets that just got ported over to Blasters mid-development. Or maybe because more ATs would benefit from a support set than from a manipulation set, who knows?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
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. |
I'm going to agree with your assessment - if I didn't know better, I'd say that is broken. I've seen large-scale AoE powers before, and used them to great effect in the form of Sleep Grenade on my Assault Rifle/Devices/Munitions Blaster, but the grenade lasted for a much shorter time than its actual recharge, and while the sleep was VERY good, it was still a death clock - kill them by then, or they wake up and shoot you. Granted, it slowed them down enough to where I could just shoot enough enemies for the rest to not matter when they woke up, but even then, they would still wake up.
"You can't out-control them" has been my experience with Blasters as a general thing. Siren's Call aside, I have never seen a Blaster able to control the entirety of a spawn for long, as they just don't have large-scale control effects, and while controlling a key few dangerous foes is a good strategy, it has never been enough to slow down incoming damage by as much as it feels like it should. It's always a mad dash between killing what isn't held and getting to what IS held before it wakes up, which gets really irritating with Malta. Hell, I could barely scrape together enough control to "control them" on a Dominator, though that probably owes to my prioritising blasting over control, which is what I evacuated the AT over.
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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.
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I rather like Siren's Song!
Makes my sonic/elec feel all controllery...in a non-whimpy fashion.
I am curious though, Arcana, as to how a new AoE system would be implemented if you removed the one we have now.
What would replace AoE attacks? And also...from a purely conceptual POV some powersets just make sense to be more AoE focused.
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Says the guy that doesn't understand that contributors to survivability (i.e. defensive mechanisms) aren't the same as outright defense. Survivability isn't a percent of incoming damage that gets mitigated over an infinite period of time; it's the ability to restrict the amount of damage that would arrive over any specific period of time, and increased damage, whether frontloaded or otherwise (though frontloaded damage is going to be significantly more effective), contributes to survivability in a significant manner by decreasing any specific period of time by a quantifiable amount. Assuming that every comparison of survivability needs to operate off of an assumption of immortality is simply ignorant and prejudicial.
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Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Okay, you win: defense ≠ defense. All hail Arcana.
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Eh? You're reinforcing my argument with this sentence. Are you sure you understand my stance correctly? My position is that offensive things such as Build Up may very well contribute to survivability, but in and of themselves are not classified as defensive simply because of that logic. Defense, by definition, means to protect (such as resisting damage) and redefining the term as having some nebulous connection to the amount of damage sustained over time puts a kink in the flow of communication.|
Originally Posted by Umbral
Says the guy that doesn't understand that contributors to survivability (i.e. defensive mechanisms) aren't the same as outright defense.
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We can all agree that hot dogs are called donuts, but that in no way changes the meaning of the word "donut" to specify a hot dog... especially if someone comes along who knows what a donut really is and tries to communicate with the hot dog crowd. I suppose if we had some glossary for every word that people use in contexts that differ from their denotations, things would be more bearable, but I'm against such nonsense as a matter of principle.
You know... In just the vein of this thread, I ran across a pretty curious suggestion over at Suggestions, and I apologise for cross-posting, but here it is.
What I took from this suggestion was a pretty... Interesting approach to giving support specialists some eccentric offensive potential, namely by allowing their ally-only powers to be used on enemies in return for negative effects. So a heal becomes a harm power, obviously doing a lot less damage than it can heal just because heals are typically so strong. A fire shield cast on an enemy would debuff and burn, an ice shield cast on an enemy would slow and so forth. And, heck, we can even retcon a protection bubble that pushes things out into an inside-out bubble that sucks things in, thereby making the target easier to hit
Granted, this sort of muddies the water between Dark Miasma and... Pretty much everything else, in that Dark Miasma powers are already enemy-target debuffs, and appending ally-targeted buffs might be... Weird. But, hey, if you can heal people with poison and protect them by setting them on fire, why can't you protect them by bathing them in EEEEEVIL darkness?
Balance, obviously, comes into play, but this WOULD actually solve a personal pet peeve I have with support powersets in general, which is that a lot of their powers are useless if you don't have a team-mate to cast it on. I mean COMPLETELY useless, in that you can't even activate them. An ally-targeted heal isn't usable on yourself, isn't usable on enemies, and isn't usable at all if you don't have an ally around. Being able to instead use it to "heal" an enemy strikes me as a decent compromise.
This also adds an interesting layer over how to build such a character. It's scientific fact that if a power has too many things to slot for and you try to slot for everything, you will not be able to really slot for anything in a meaningful way, so this gives us a choice between slotting the things for defence and slotting them for offence. Or, to use a system that isn't as popular as it should be, to have two builds - one for offence, one for defence.
Granted, I gave this exactly five minutes of genuine thought when I practically stole it from the original suggester, but at the very least, it's a decent point if just as an abstract concept.
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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.
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Defense by your own definition is to "protect from enemy attacks," which is satisfied by making enemies less capable of attacking you.|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
My position is that offensive things such as Build Up may very well contribute to survivability, but in and of themselves are not classified as defensive simply because of that logic. Defense, by definition, means to protect (such as resisting damage) and redefining the term as having some nebulous connection to the amount of damage sustained over time puts a kink in the flow of communication.
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By your arbitrary and vague definition that requires you don't interact with your opponent, building a wall to keep out attackers isn't a defensive maneuver because it actively slows down the enemy rather than affecting yourself.
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| We can all agree that hot dogs are called donuts, but that in no way changes the meaning of the word "donut" to specify a hot dog... especially if someone comes along who knows what a donut really is and tries to communicate with the hot dog crowd. |
You even said yourself, "I agree that deader enemies results in greater survivability than not-as-dead enemies," meaning you acknowledge that the net result means you survive better and mitigate damage better. Meaning you admit that you actively reduce incoming damage, but it's still not defensive. IE, you protect from enemy attacks, but it's not defensive (for no clear reason). The only person claiming defense is not defense is you.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Or, maybe, killing or otherwise taking out someone trying to kill you. We protect the population by putting criminals in prisons. Is that some way of resisting the damage that criminals have on society?|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Defense, by definition, means to protect (such as resisting damage)
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| and redefining the term as having some nebulous connection to the amount of damage sustained over time puts a kink in the flow of communication. |
If you feel like being obtuse, keep going on, but you're not making it seem like you actually have any clue what's going on when you're incapable of understanding that a word can have a different definition than the single use you're used to.
Or another way to state it: The best defense is a great offense.
By accepting what is and making the best use of every situation, life can be fulfilled without a constant demand for more.
--Wen Tzu
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"You know who said that? Mel, the cook on Alice!"|
Originally Posted by Adept
Or another way to state it: The best defense is a great offense.
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Sorry, had to channel a little bit of "boot to the head" there.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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Having recently gone through a battle between my Blaster and the Madame of Mystery, I'm no longer convinced this argument holds true for the fights that really matter. That's actually THE problem I have with "offence as defence" - there's no way any game will allow you to insta-kill everything, including the end boss, which means you're bound to fight battles where offence just doesn't work as a form of defence. What do you do then?
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Originally Posted by Adept
Or another way to state it: The best defense is a great offense.
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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.
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To assist here, a practical example: In late Issue 12 Beta (introducing Cimerora and a round of powerset-proliferation) I was running around with a Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Brute; trying to find the limits of the new-for-Brutes protective powerset. The character was lv50, but *not* soft-capped for Defense - having around 40% to all positions (or roughly a 1-in-10 chance to be struck before Accuracy).|
Originally Posted by Dispari
Defense by your own definition is to "protect from enemy attacks," which is satisfied by making enemies less capable of attacking you.
By your arbitrary and vague definition that requires you don't interact with your opponent, building a wall to keep out attackers isn't a defensive maneuver because it actively slows down the enemy rather than affecting yourself. Very bad analogy. We're not trying to claim that hot dog = donut or offense = defense. We're trying to explain that an offensive maneuver can = defense if the net result is that it "protects from enemy attacks." Which is YOUR definition. As Arc explained, there's an offensive and defensive benefit to frontloading your damage so that you can more quickly dispatch enemies. You even said yourself, "I agree that deader enemies results in greater survivability than not-as-dead enemies," meaning you acknowledge that the net result means you survive better and mitigate damage better. Meaning you admit that you actively reduce incoming damage, but it's still not defensive. IE, you protect from enemy attacks, but it's not defensive (for no clear reason). The only person claiming defense is not defense is you. |
During the Beta in Cimerora, there were a bunch of geometry holes that let you get below the map and work your way to the other side of the Fortress walls. I decided to slip under the walls and throw the Brute at the lv50 100-mob spawns on top of the Fortress. Essentially, you are permanently at the aggro cap until such time as you work your way through four-fifths of the mobs up there. It was a tough fight, but I managed to do it. (In vain did I search for SR's supposed "weakness" as a protective set when not soft-capped =P.)
I started talking about this with someone else who was in Cimerora at the same time, told him about the geometry holes, and he said "Oh cool, let me get my Stone Tank and do that". He brought in an IO-ed and Accoladed Stoner and threw himself at the same situation.
He failed. He failed miserably. I don't think he got half of them down though he tried multiple times. He had *soft-capped Defense, large Resistances, and a heap-ton more HP than the Brute did. But the reduction in damage and attack rate meant that he didn't kill the enemies fast enough for all that extra protection to matter. The Brute's higher damage and faster attack rate meant it had *much* higher survivability than the "king of Tank primaries" (whatever that means =P) in that situation.
EDIT* =P
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Defense doesn't have to apply in all situations. In fact, it never should. If it could, we'd be able to have 100% RES or 100% evasion.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Having recently gone through a battle between my Blaster and the Madame of Mystery, I'm no longer convinced this argument holds true for the fights that really matter. That's actually THE problem I have with "offence as defence" - there's no way any game will allow you to insta-kill everything, including the end boss, which means you're bound to fight battles where offence just doesn't work as a form of defence. What do you do then?
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Dead enemies do no damage. So do mezzed enemies. In literal terms, the most you can mitigate off regular living, non-mezzed enemies is something like 99.5%. Meaning 90% RES and 95% evasion. I suppose you could also count -400% recharge and -90% damage too. But for most purposes, you aren't going to get anywhere near that. Point is, no amount of RES, DEF, recharge, and -DMG will ever amount to 100% immunity to damage. But death and mez can. Mez is prone to resistances and immunity as well as duration. Death works on everything.
There's no better way to reduce incoming damage than to kill the enemy dealing it. True a Blaster can't rely on killing an AV to keep himself from dying. But no defense in this game is absolute.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I recall that there was a battle in Final Fantasy X-2 where you need to let the enemy turn your party into zombies, because she later uses a terrible dark energy attack that, while zombies, basically heals your party for full health. The gut reaction is to cure your party of the status effect, but there are game mechanics that make it worthwhile in the long run.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You know... In just the vein of this thread, I ran across a pretty curious suggestion over at Suggestions, and I apologise for cross-posting, but here it is.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
Defense by your own definition is to "protect from enemy attacks," which is satisfied by making enemies less capable of attacking you.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
By your arbitrary and vague definition that requires you don't interact with your opponent, building a wall to keep out attackers isn't a defensive maneuver because it actively slows down the enemy rather than affecting yourself.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
You even said yourself, "I agree that deader enemies results in greater survivability than not-as-dead enemies," meaning you acknowledge that the net result means you survive better and mitigate damage better. Meaning you admit that you actively reduce incoming damage, but it's still not defensive.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
IE, you protect from enemy attacks, but it's not defensive (for no clear reason).
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Originally Posted by Umbral
We protect the population by putting criminals in prisons. Is that some way of resisting the damage that criminals have on society?
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The problem, as it were, is building an AT around damage as a sole means of defence, when that damage can't defend them in specific situations that WILL occur with regularity. It's kind of like Controllers and the POTD. Even when a |
Originally Posted by Dispari
There's no better way to reduce incoming damage than to kill the enemy dealing it. True a Blaster can't rely on killing an AV to keep himself from dying. But no defense in this game is absolute.
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Scrapper runs afoul of a damage type he can't fight resist or defend against, he typically has other means to defend himself, either smaller amounts of another defensive type, heals, enemy debuffs or SOMETHING. When a Blaster finds something he can't kill, which is also something he typically can't control, he has no alternative but to cross his fingers.
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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.
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You are right. Blasters need some sort of control or self buffs to help them defend themselves.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The problem, as it were, is building an AT around damage as a sole means of defence, when that damage can't defend them in specific situations that WILL occur with regularity. It's kind of like Controllers and the POTD. Even when a
Scrapper runs afoul of a damage type he can't fight resist or defend against, he typically has other means to defend himself, either smaller amounts of another defensive type, heals, enemy debuffs or SOMETHING. When a Blaster finds something he can't kill, which is also something he typically can't control, he has no alternative but to cross his fingers. |
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You can be protected from an attack that's never made if you're the reason they can't make the attack, through your actions, preventing the attack from happening. Grabbing someone's hand to keep them from shooting you is the same as dodging or blocking. It's a pre-emptive and defensive maneuver. It's also the plot to a movie called Minority Report. |
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Incorrect. You can't be protected from an attack that is never made.
Building a wall is defensive. Taking away their weapons is offensive. |
But for the sake of argument, by your NEW definition, which I reckon you just made up:* -ToHit and -DMG are defensive because the enemies are still making attacks at you.
* -recharge and fear are defensive on the assumption that they do eventually get to attack, but aren't defensive if they don't get to.
* Mezzes are defensive only if they exist long enough to only SLOW DOWN the attack rate, but are not defensive if you kill them before it wears off.
* Building a wall is not defensive because you prevent the enemy from being able to attack in the first place (your new definition says you can't be protected from attacks that can't be made) by preventing them from reaching you.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Regardless of how often an enemy attacks or even if he's able to attack, status effects and debuffs have nothing to do with defending against the effects of the attacks that are made. An enemy attacking less frequently or with less damage is not defensive any more than oneself attacking with more damage is defensive.|
Originally Posted by Dispari
* -ToHit and -DMG are defensive because the enemies are still making attacks at you.
* -recharge and fear are defensive on the assumption that they do eventually get to attack, but aren't defensive if they don't get to. * Mezzes are defensive only if they exist long enough to only SLOW DOWN the attack rate, but are not defensive if you kill them before it wears off. |
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Originally Posted by Dispari
Building a wall is not defensive because you prevent the enemy from being able to attack in the first place (your new definition says you can't be protected from attacks that can't be made) by preventing them from reaching you.
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We could go back and forth on this until the City Vault displays Cathedral of Pain rewards, but at this point it really depends on how much you insist on the two of us not being on the same page simply because of a difference in opinion. I've stated my position and the evidence supporting it, and will continue to clarify until you understand the concept I'm attempting to express... But only one of us can determine when this particular exchange will come to an end.
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That really depends on the gun...
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Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
If you had a gun and I built a brick wall in front of myself to protect myself, it would not prevent you from attacking. I trust you'd be smart enough to recognize that shooting at the wall would not be of much effect...
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While I realise you are going for sarcasm, that kind of skips over a point I made in the post you quoted. Things Blasters can't kill tend to be things Blasters can't control, either. Bosses, elite bosses and large groups of enemies in the absence of four AoE attacks are good examples. You can reduce incoming damage by killing things, but you can't kill faster than you are being killed. This is GUARANTEED to happen simply by how encounters are designed. Things you can't kill faster than they kill you, you can't actually control, either, not for the most part.|
Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
You are right. Blasters need some sort of control or self buffs to help them defend themselves.
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As for buffs go, Blasters don't have any buffs that directly protect them from what I have seen, and buffs that boost their offence don't protect them when offence DOES NOT WORK as defence. A few sets to have debuffs which do offer some degree of protection, thinking of Ice Manipulation, specifically, but from my own experience, while they do help, they're not enough to protect you from a hard target.
That's not to say Blasters can't solo hard targets. I made it a point to try all the common complaints of unsoloable targets, namely Nosferatu, Ghost Widow and the Madame of Mystery. Each I soloed with a Blaster that is not in the slightest power built. Hard targets are very much soloable, with inspirations and with the proper preparation. That is, if you expect a hard target and buy up, or it shows up so rarely that you can amass inspirations, then that works fine. But with the new difficulty changes, bosses have been showing up head over heel, and some enemy factions have bosses that, to a protection-less Blaster, act more like elite bosses, and I am simply incapable of taking on seven elite bosses per mission.
In fact, I had a mission a while ago that spawned a Dark Ring Mistress or a Master Illusionist on HALF of its spawns. And that was on the Moth Cemetery map, so that's a lot of spawns to count. Thankfully, that was on a pretty kickass Scrapper, so it wasn't impossible, but it still took forever and killed me several times. That would have been out and out impossible on a Blaster, I can tell you right now. Following that, I turned off bosses in my missions and have not looked back. Eliminating the constantly recurring hard targets from missions has made my Blasters play a LOT more smoothly, and I can actually appreciate the occasional elite boss who won't scale down from his rank. I don't gripe about this, but I realise that saying that always makes people look down on me, like I'm cheating and therefore should have no right to hold opinions on difficulty.
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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.
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This is why I am wondering how Arcanaville's removal of the current AoE system would help. She hinted that blasters could get higher self-damage buffs and damage caps. Still, a higher damage cap does not equate to higher base damage. And higher self-damage buffs cannot be so high that we 2 shot EBs(although that would be amusing).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
While I realise you are going for sarcasm, that kind of skips over a point I made in the post you quoted. Things Blasters can't kill tend to be things Blasters can't control, either. Bosses, elite bosses and large groups of enemies in the absence of four AoE attacks are good examples. You can reduce incoming damage by killing things, but you can't kill faster than you are being killed. This is GUARANTEED to happen simply by how encounters are designed. Things you can't kill faster than they kill you, you can't actually control, either, not for the most part.
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My most survivable blaster is currently my Archery/Devices. I have literally soloed an 8-man Nemesis spawn with him. Devices, though, is not a 'typical' blaster secondary. And it's nature makes it a bit annoying to use on teams where people will literally ignore the fact that you're dropping a time bomb/mine to help soften up a spawn. Even when the team is having a tough time and could use the help, no one likes to wait.
So anyway, I'd like to hear what the alternate options to AoEs are that we could use, and also how blasters could be further improved because of a new AoE system.
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Devices is also a very SLOW secondary, especially if you try to play to its strengths. Teams tend to be a good litmus test - if a team would never, ever wait for you to do something, it might be a hint that what you're trying to do just might be too slow to be worth the benefit. There are other factors, certainly, but this right here is a giant red flag for me. Yes, it is technically possible to lay enough mines to wipe out full spawns, but the time this takes is COLOSSAL, especially compared to the benefit, and as mine was AR/Dev, he lacked any sort of self-damage buff if we don't count Ignite, so hard targets and general "kill first" strategies did not do well.|
Originally Posted by Slashman
My most survivable blaster is currently my Archery/Devices. I have literally soloed an 8-man Nemesis spawn with him. Devices, though, is not a 'typical' blaster secondary. And it's nature makes it a bit annoying to use on teams where people will literally ignore the fact that you're dropping a time bomb/mine to help soften up a spawn. Even when the team is having a tough time and could use the help, no one likes to wait.
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This is, of course, another case where "decent" comes into play, but I look at things in this light - if a powerset trades off TOO much speed for safety, especially a Blaster set, then that set is not well designed. Yes, it may be safe, but it still lags behind all others. Personally, I'd see several of the Devices powers scrapped or heavily reworked, because as they stand, they either have such poor effects, such high cost or so little use that they're hardly worth the power picks.
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| This is why I am wondering how Arcanaville's removal of the current AoE system would help. She hinted that blasters could get higher self-damage buffs and damage caps. Still, a higher damage cap does not equate to higher base damage. And higher self-damage buffs cannot be so high that we 2 shot EBs(although that would be amusing). |
The thing with the AoE sizes is that Blasters don't really have problems with large spawns of enemies, they have problems with hard targets. I don't think this will change even WITH changes to their AoEs, because hard targets need to remain hard or they lose their point.
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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.
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Wait, what AOE proposal is this? I guess I haven't heard of it... but I know I don't want any AOE taken from my Archery, AR, Fire, or Energy Blasters... it's what makes them special.
Anyway, I know what you are saying about hard targets, Sam, but you can solo through most of the game as a Blaster. If I wasn't in the mood, I might dodge Maria Jenkins's Praetorian arc and the Madame of Mystery, but as you have shown, you can defeat EBs as a Blaster. I know my AR/En Blaster has cleared out the Dark Watcher's story arc in the RWZ solo, though Manticore was a bit of a nasty fight with all those Nemesis lieutenants around him buffing him up with Vengeance. Other EBs in game are about the same difficulty or weaker than the Manticore and Positron, and I know my AR/En has mostly soloed his way to 47, without dodging much in the way of fights.
If anything, two bosses is often harder than just an EB for my Blasters. Avoiding melee range with one target is easier than two, as well as the extra hit chances two targets get.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
Moreover, you missed the point I tried to draw a big flaming arrow towards:
Build Up is not just a damage boosting power. In general, we don't consider straight damage alone to be a form of damage mitigation in the general case, because that is not a useful perspective to have. But we *do* consider frontloading of damage to be a damage mitigation mechanism, because it *is* a useful perspective to have. If we take the simplistic view that Assault is damage and BU is just damage, then for some value of Assault BU and Assault would have an identical value. There's no *offensive* benefit to SHIFTING damage from ten seconds from now to now. The benefit is purely damage mitigative in nature (the largest exception: high regeneration situations).
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