New AT blast/defense

The same thing you do with an AT whose primary is melee? Really, I think you're segregating these mix sets too harshly, as if they're red-headed stepchildren of sets. No, an Assault set is simply a damage set. Just like Melee is a damage set.

Again, as for Manipulation, that's rather confusing because player expectations, tactical approaches and the style of the blaster itself can vary greatly.

Well, that was my idea. Probably not a fit with the OP's idea. What was suggested was Blast/defense followed up by Assault/defense.

I suggested Blast/survival myself along with probably Melee/survival. Because I really want to play a martial arts-type defender but just tossing melee attack sets onto a defender will just be frustrating. So some buff/debuff along with personal defense might really help. If they combined them into Assault/survival, well, I probably still wouldn't get my MA defender

I think that's an oversimplification.

First of all, there are five types of powers. There are similarly five types of Power Sets. The Power Sets are, primarily, made up of one of those five power types. This has been inherent to the design of the game since day one of the Archetype System:

Melee
Ranged
Defense
Buff/Debuff
Control

There is no "Assault" power. There is no "Manipulation" power. No power can be Ranged and Melee at the same time. No power can be Defense and Control at the same time. The lines are a bit blurred, for instance, a Ranged power can apply damage and hold a foe, and a Control power can apply damage and hold a foe, but in general it is easy to tell which is which. A given power fits into one and only one of those categories. (The one real exception seems to be those Buff/Debuff powers that both debuff and control in equal amounts)

Power Sets specialize with one of those given types of powers, but there are always "crossover" powers that allow more flexibility in the design of a character. Ranged Power Sets, for instance, usually consists of 7 Ranged attacks, one Control power, and one self buff, in the form of Aim. Some Melee sets add one or more Ranged attacks, Spectral Wounds from Illusion is more of a Ranged attack, and Buff/Debuff sets tend to be all over the place.

The problem is that a Power Set that is TOO concentrated doesn't provide the tools needed for a character to be effective. If Control powers did no damage, and Control Sets had only Control powers, (and the same for Buff/Debuff) no Controller could ever deal damage. If Blasters could only deal Ranged and Melee damage, no Control or Defense mitigation at all, they would die long before they could finish off a foe. Even Melee Sets as defined for Scrappers and Tankers are too specialized to provide enough defense to a Blaster, as was proven in Beta. I myself made the comment at the time that Melee with Defense is only half a power, you can't have Super Strength without being tough enough to withstand the impact on your own fists when you punch.

Now, it turned out Control was a viable alternative for damage mitigation as well. But that's where Manipulation comes from, it is Melee, plus additional powers required to make those Melee attacks USABLE. Likewise, Assault is not just "deal damage", the ability to deal damage from Range, before the foe is aggroed and able to attack you is a very different thing from being forced to fight in Melee. To ignore the combination of Ranged and Melee in Assault is to ignore what makes a Dominator's offensive strategy different from a theoretical Control/Melee or Control/Ranged. Certainly the two combinations would have their own strengths and weaknesses, just as Ranged/Melee did, and Dominators get to walk a line somewhere between.

Really when you get down to it, SoA and Human Form Kheldians are Ranged/Melee in the Primary, and Defense/Buff-Debuff in the Secondary. Perhaps a bit more Defense for Kheldians and a bit more Buff/Debuff for Arachnos, but neither are pure Ranged/Defense. Defenders and Controllers are pure Ranged, combined with those defenses which protect themselves as well as allies, and they do better with some Melee attacks, so that just gives you more flexibility. It's not like Ranged/Defense has really been shown to be a problem. It's just that it has drawbacks, as with any AT, that giving a little more flexibility in power choices does fix.

Well since the various EATs have powersets that are roughly analogous to Assault/Defense (with additional buffs/debuffs/controls thrown in) I think it's been demonstrated that an Assault/Defense character is by no means impossible to make balanced. Hard to balance? Probably. Not something the devs want to do? Quite likely. Impossible? Not at all.

There were plenty of other features we were told we couldn't have (like oh, say power customization). As with them there is absolutely no technical reason that this couldn't be done it's simply that the devs do not believe it to be a good use of resources. Honestly, I tend to agree with them but it still makes a fun thought exercise to consider how you would do it.

But in context, what is an Assault set for? And how are Assault sets balanced? Pretty much like all other damage sets, with the weaker quick attacks sooner and the bigger stronger ones later. (not like armor sets or control sets were the bread-n-butter powers are toward the center/beginning)

The question was, 'If Assault sets are to fill/round out the primary, then what do you do when Assault *is* the primary?'

It's basically saying Assault sets are some strange congregation of like-theme powers with no type of consistency or direction meant to only go with a specific type of primary. In context, do you disagree that Assault is just a damage set? Would an Assault set not 'function' if coupled with an armor set? Or a support set?

I think Assault would be underperform when coupled with an armor set when compared to melee sets (Remember: if you're not in melee, your armor set's probably not pulling its weight, and if you ARE in melee, your ranged attacks aren't pulling their weight) and would be suicidal when combined with a Support set. The reason corruptors and defenders use ranged as their pairing is that they generally can't survive melee.

But I think at this point we should stop combining Assault and Manipulation. Looking them over repeatedly they're /very/ different sets. Assault is designed to be paired with Control: It gives you melee attacks for when it's safe and ranged for when it's not, and it's your primary that determines safety or not. Manipulation has a lot more damage mitigation and other weird effects than Assault. Manipulation as a primary and a non-damaging secondary would result in a character with less DPS than many Controllers, wheras Assault as a primary is plausible, but just weird and really needs a reason to be in and out of melee to compare with Blaster/Scrapper.

And that's only true if you actually believe being at range is comparable to a set of armor powers or that enemies for some reason can't shoot you and therefore armor is pointless.

There's a reason the pairing of ranged attacks with self defense is called a 'Tankmage' and it's not because anything is underperforming.

As for the use of Assault and Manipulation for other ATs, I'm already of the opinion that they are better used by their respective ATs but that isn't to say some new combination of powers to make a unique set isn't right for a new AT that it's intended for.

You made me recall a writeup from memory after I specifically said I didn't remember much of it or my thinking behind it, only for you to turn around and hate it. Call me weird, but this just doesn't seem fair. I don't remember what I had back then, and this is as close as I could get to.

As far as excising AoE into the secondary, that was a conscious choice. Even dropping the snipe and the nuke, I just can't fit enough powers in the same set to handle all of melee, range and AoE damage. JUST an Assault set simply doesn't work for a damage dealer without solid defences, because it doesn't deal damage quickly enough, especially on a bigger team. And if I'd butted AoE into the actual set, I'd have had to but melee or range out of it, in turn. I decided to put exclusively single-target attacks in the primary and retain AoE in the secondary in a way not too dissimilar from a Psi/Psi Blaster.

Personally, I prefer it that way.

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.

Hardy har har.

Considering Tankers go without Taunt and swear by Gauntlet, I question your assessment.

Other Controller players would seem to disagree with you, from all the praises people have been singing about Controller damage, Controller farming, Controller soloing and so forth.

A Blaster without Defiance damage buffs is weak at best. Too weak to survive his own aggro, at any rate. A Blaster without the ability to shoot out of a status effect is gimped and useless solo. The Defiance changes are the only reason Blasters are at all playable to me, so I'd appreciate not trying to dismiss what utterly makes the AT.

Except unlike Scrappers, Corrupter damage sucks BIG time, and unlike Scrappers, their criticals are predictable and very high percentage towards the end of a critter's life bar. Scourge is what gives Corruptors their damage. Without it, they're just gimped Defenders.

As someone with multiple Masterminds, I question the validity of your observation. Supremacy is there to ensure the Mastermind stays WITH his minions and isn't hiding around a corner or inside a personal forcefield. Simply making the henchmen stronger is NOT the same thing.

Considering how STRONG of a buff it can be, I really have to call you out on that one.

First of all, if the power is in the attacks, then so what? Half the inherents are written into the attacks and no-one bats an eye. You're arguing low-level mechanics that don't actually have any relevance on high-level design. Secondly, the Stalker Inherent is NOT in the powers, it's in the Stalker. Hide is a state attainable only by Stalkers, and it's what his powers check against.

And again, that's like saying "Well, only a quarter of the existing regular ATs are defined by their inherents, so clearly pretty much none are." Even just ONE AT defined by its inherent is enough to set up precedent, and the one AT you can't argue against in any way is the Brute. If we have one AT that does this, there is no reason we can't have more.

Let me turn this question on you, instead. Describe the Brute AT in such a way that covers your criteria. Then we'll talk. Because Brutes have the potential to consistently deal more damage than Scrappers AND have significantly more hit points AND Tanker caps for their protection abilities. Yet they are allowed to exist, and pretty soon coexist with Scrappers.

That's interesting... You fail to mention Devices and the count of attacks in manipulation sets seems to be off somehow. Let's have a look:

Energy Manipulation has Power Thrust, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher and Total Focus. That's four powers out of 9, hardly "most," and Power Thrust shouldn't even count as an attack much more than Power Push, as both its DPS and EPS are crap. But I'll give you four, anyway.

Electrical Manipulation has a whole truckfull. I concede on that and I won't even bother.

Fire Manipulation has Fire Sword, Fire Sword Circle and Combustion. Burn REALLY doesn't count, but if you really want to push it, I can count Blazing Aura and Maybe Hot Feet. That's still not the whole set.

Ice Manipulation has Ice Fists, Ice Sword and... What else, actually? Freezing Touch, maybe? That has really bad damage to cost ratio, but let's count it anyway.

Mental Manipulation is... Odd. It does have a decent number of attacks, with both Mind Probe and Telekinetic Thrust as melee and Psychic Scream and Psychic Shockwave doing decent damage, but I DO NOT count World of Confusion as a damage aura any more than I'd count Beanbag as a damage-dealing power. So that's still four out of nine.

You'll note I skipped all the immobilize powers. I do this for a reason. While they do damage in the most technical sense of the word, the damage they do is horribly imbalanced with their cost and recharge that they are NOT damage-dealing powers. Yes, you can use them as such if and when you get around to dumping any number of slots into them, but for most people I've spoken with, that doesn't happen until the later 40s, and even then you waste immobilization potential AND you have plenty of other attacks to slot for damage.

The whole idea that Manipulation sets are just quasi-melee sets is something that never sat well with me. Note how all the melee attacks are concentrated in the first 10 levels of the powerset, as if to help you out when your Blast powers are few and underpowered, but then the set switches over to direct support. Energy Manipulation switches to many self-buffs, just as a random example

Assault/Manipulation in general is a very poor idea, since Assault sets already draw probably half of their attacks from their respective manipulations sets anyway. I don't see Assault as presented to Dominators as being enough as a SOLE damage set, specifically because it lacks AoE in any capacity. The closest analogue to this is the Stalker, but Stalkers have a whole powerset devoted to self-defence AND an assassination inherent, which would make this AT require solid defences AND a significant damage boost, which just can't be balanced in a static way. I firmly believe it can be balanced in a DYNAMIC way, by giving the AT higher sustained damage, but at the cost of having to jump through hoops to maintain it. However, if you deny it AT, that damage buff needs to be significantly stronger, or its defences much tougher.

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.

See, that's kind of a problem question to ask. A lot of ATs wouldn't be allowed to have the kind of performance they can reach by gaming their inherent if the inherent were replaced by a straight stat boost. Brutes would most definitely lose a LOT of their damage potential if they lost Fury and their damage were just upped, but it goes beyond that. Let's look at just Masterminds - their Henchmen are designed to be weak, but strengthened when the Mastermind isn't around specifically to mandate presence and susceptibility to return fire. Remove that need for presence and you're limiting how high you can buff henchmen, if at all.

Gimmicky inherents allow ATs to reach performance levels that flat stats just wouldn't permit, but at the cost of an increased workload to play to the gimmick. It's true, under certain circumstances, Brutes can outdamage Scrappers. However, this requires a lot more effort than it does for a Scrapper, who can do his full level of damage just rolling out of bed. It's a tradeoff - performance for cost of participation. That's why I'm saying that such an AT as I propose CAN be allowed to attain both good damage AND good protection (possibly alternately) via gimmicky inherent, yet still not pose to outclass other ATs which find their performance through less complicated gimmicks.

If it worked for Fury, it ought to work for other concepts.

To be honest, very little on a Mastermind does. I don't know whether it's because the AT is more complicated and less direct, whether direct feedback is harder to process or just because there's so much going on, but it's really hard to judge what your Mastermind is doing by just looking at it play. Hell, it's even hard to judge if your henchmen are missing much because you don't get Miss messages and there's so much fire coming down. As such, alterations in their performance aren't directly evident in the sense that "HOLY CRAP! I'M DOING TRIPLE DAMAGE!" Supremacy Adds a bit of extra damage and accuracy. The accuracy you can't tell because it's hard to follow and the damage is hard to feel unless you're specifically looking for it. It's not like on a Scrapper where things suddenly die in one hit instead of three. Here the whole fight ends up being over in 23 seconds instead of 26, and it's just hard to spot. Trust me, I've looked.

I wouldn't be worried. Brute playstile requires a spaz approach, which not everyone can do. I can't, for instance, which is why I don't worry about maintaining Fury between fights. Scrappers, on the other hand, deal their damage full on at all times with no maintenance required from the player. That just works for me.

Agreed on Assault sets. They're pure attack sets, which is why they get added to Assault/Defence ATs so much. I used to add them, myself, but having played a Dominator, I can clearly see that Assault without some form of self-protection just doesn't work. Even with Dominators' high damage mods, there isn't enough outgoing damage to survive on it like a Blaster would. Specifically, there isn't enough AoE, which REALLY hurts on larger spawns. As well, many Assault sets lack Build Up, which is even more problematic, and many also contain Snipes, which honestly don't help with anything. I do think an Assault/Defence character could work, but it would need a LOT of defence. At least approaching Stalker levels, and I know that's unlikely to happen. The only way to get away with less defence is to give it more damage, and there just isn't room in Assault sets for this.

And, yes, Manipulation sets are just awkward. To this day I can't pin down exactly what the thinking behind them was. Some look like tweaked melee sets, some look like esoteric messes and some look like they were put together from whatever powers were left over for that element. I'm honestly not sure WHAT they're supposed to help with, but I just find it best to try and NOT use them on any more ATs.

OK, here's what I had:

Assuming by some magical stroke of technology that we could buff melee attacks (the specific melee attacks in the set, not just "melee" attacks in general) and ranged attacks (redux) separately, then I propose an inherent that consists of two components.

One component rewards situational awareness, giving you greater melee damage in melee and greater ranged damage at range. This will basically work as Invincibility does, granting a buff damage to melee attacks and debuff damage to ranged attacks for each enemy in melee, possibly weighted so bosses grant more. This would induce these characters to emphasise their melee attacks when they're in melee, not just fire whatever's available, and also to have a reason to pull back at range and do that.

The other component would be an "opposite" component, which rewards you with a buff to the opposite kind of damage to the powers you are currently using. This would mean that using melee attacks in melee would buff you ranged attacks, making it a good idea to switch ranges and pull back to range to shoot some. Once you're at range, shooting those ranged attacks would "consume" your ranged damage buff and instead grant you a melee damage buff, making it a good idea to go back to melee and fight there.

Ideally, if the two systems are used together, they could provide a LOT of additional damage, but at the cost of having to be aware of them and having to move around a lot. This would also make the AT different from all others in that it wouldn't have an "ideal" range that it will want to stick to and only deviate from under special circumstances. Scrappers with ranged attacks will fight in melee and fire their ranged attacks point-blank. Blasters with melee attacks will fight at range and close in only for a few quick attacks before pulling back. This AT would stand and fight in both melee and range combat and switch between dynamically. This is both a defining gimmick AND an inherent that could provide some serious perfomance.

It's not an IDEAL gimmick, granted, but at least it sounds good

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.

Hey, I was just offering my opinion

Remember your write-ups better next time

I think you're approaching it from a strange perspective, tho.

You say you're trying to fit in powers to handle melee, range and AoE dmg. What's to say this AT should have the best of all worlds here? I think the way Assault sets are designed, it's not so much 'get as much omph in there as possible' but 'make sure they all mesh into a viable style'.

Thinking from the dom secondaries I've played: Thorns is built for good AoE and decent ST; it has the right powers to back up someone wanting to deal a quick burst of AoE. Energy is more ST burst; it has some hefty attacks but rather weak AoE but it's not so bad considering the control you get along with it. Fire....meh, never liked fire...Psi is well rounded but with light (and rather slow, IMO) ST but the dmg it deals is psi so that's a plus (sometime). Earth...I haven't played enough earth but most of the good stuff is melee ST.

Now that I think about it, the same goes for any damage set. Some just do better ST dmg, others AoE, some a balance of both. That's not a bad thing, that's just how damage sets are. From Electric Melee, to Icy Assault to Archery.