New AT

Basically looking at a new damage AT.

Primary - Damage
Port over Dominator's Assault secondary.

Secondary - Defence/Resistance
Scrapper Secondary.

The idea is to make an AT that can play in melee and range and have medium/high damage with the benfits of mez protection and good defence/resistance.

The primary would need to have the powers modified to account for damage verses risk.
Ranged powers do less damage.
Melee does more damage.

With the right modification of the primary it would allow people to make the Iron Man type character that does a mix of range and melee damage without being overpowered.

Essentially, you'd be making Scrappers and Blasters largely obsolete. The balance issues would be horrible. The probability that you'd end up with TankMages too high.

I understand what you want to do, I just don't think it'd function the way you think.

I could see some issues with SR and Shields, and maybe with Willpower and Regen (although if the HP pool of the new set is somewhere between Domi and Blaster levels not so much maybe).*


From the Assault sets it really depends on the Ranged and Melee modifiers for them, Khelds and Soldiers already have mixed ranged and melee attacks plus defenses and they aren't that unbalanced (? over Crab Soldiers perhaps).


The only really troublesome power I can see from glancing at the Domi Assault sets is Drain Psyche. And the fact Power Boost would be basically useless (replace it with Aim I guess).

So, you want basically the definition of a tankmage?

Ability to deal significant damage at range? Check.
Ability to deal significant damage in melee? Check.
Ability to survive return fire, perhaps indefinitely? Check.

That's a tankmage. A well rounded character with no real weaknesses to overcome.

A blaster has the first two covered, they deal damage from anywhere, but they lack the ability to survive large amounts of return fire. That is the cost of their damage dealing ability.

Scrappers, tanks, brutes and stalkers have the second two covered. They deal good damage in melee. And they can survive return fire, some of whom can do so indefinitely. But...they must be in melee range to be effective. That's the price THEY pay for what they can do.

Defenders and corruptors are more support classes. They have damage dealing ability of their own (at range), but they aren't well suited to surviving damage dealt to them. Their survival depends on A) teammates, and/or B) Intelligent use of their abilities.

Controllers do exactly what their name implies, they control the battlefield, but they are pretty frail. Most controllers also do very little damage of their own, instead relying on pets or teammates to defeat things for them. Don't believe me? Try soloing an Earth/FF before it gets it's pet.

Dominators have control and damage, but if they encounter something that cannot be controlled easily and is difficult to kill they're in trouble, because they lack any passive survival tools like resistance or defense. If you've ever run into a Fortunata Mistress on a low level Dominator you know what I'm talking about here.

Then we come to Masterminds. They can be extremely powerful......until you take their pets away. By themselves Masterminds are just barely this side of helpless. They have decent buffs and debuffs, but without their pets sthey deal very little damage. Also, buffs are useless without something to use them on.

EATs are already tankmages in a way, but they're balanced by the fact that they have access to a wide range of abilities, but they can't have them all at once on the same build. If you choose to have everything on a Kheldian you run into a severe slot shortage, so you are better off choosing something to specialize in most of the time. Choosing a build on a VEAT means you completely shut out half their abilities because they're closed to you.

What you're asking for here is something that has all the strengths of blasters, tanks, scrappers, brutes and stalkers, with none of the weaknesses associated with them. I very seriously doubt you will ever see something like that put into the game.

Scrappers and blasters probably would end up obsolete. Why would you invite someone who can survive in melee and deal damage there -OR- someone who can deal a lot of damage at range, when you can invite someone that can do BOTH instead?

Maybe assault sets would work with it, but personally, I'd go with Ranged/Defense Set.

First off not all Assault sets are the same. Some more range than melee, some more melee than range (look at Earth Assault).

I also don't think a Range/Defense Set would be over powered. Look at VEATS. That's what they are. All an AT of Range/Defense would do is open more variety past what the VEATS are.

ROGUE AT

Hit Points: Low (Stalker level. Stalkers cap at the low mark, while VEATS have a higher cap)
Damage: VEAT lvl damage
Inherent: Crit out of Stealth

Secondaries: Stalker Versions, making Hide a stealth versus an invisibility. No big AOE defense bonus, just the normal Defense of Stealths (That's 3.75% unehanced). It returns every 8 (maybe 6-7 seconds), but doesn't drop aggro.

No placate with this AT.

Thusly they still get a 0 end cost stealth, but as they can use their crit from range, they lose the full invis. Standard stacks with Stealth IO/Superspeed, but whether it stacks with Stealth from the Concealment pool, I'd leave up to Devs.

Now, they'd be low hit points, no way to go back into stealth outside of running away. Think of them alot like a stalker...first strike specialists, with no way to go back to strike big except by waiting or running away then coming back.

Epic/PPP powers...3 Buff/debuff powers, 1 melee attack and a pet.

There ya go

I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE a character that was Energy Assault/Willpower. That's pretty much what build my main Hero would have were it available at the start of the game.

In order to balance the AT myself, I'd do the following:

Primary: Assault Powers -- ranged damage on par with Corruptors (sans Scourge), melee damage on par with Scrappers (sans critical hits); Scrapper-level damage cap. Ranged powers have lower than normal accuracy (base 65% instead of 75%).

Secondary: Defense -- 60% as effective as Tanker defenses (Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers are already at 75% of Tanker effectiveness).

HP: Stalker-level base HP, with similar HP cap.

Possible Inherent choices:
Point Blank: When in melee range, you get a bonus to accuracy (bringing base accuracy up to 75%) and damage (+10ish%) for all ranged attacks.

Blind Rage: As your hitpoints decrease, your melee damage increases (max +20ish%) while your ranged damage decreases (max -20ish%).

All-Out: You build a bar as you use your melee attacks, which enables a click power when filled (similar to Domination). The power, called "Go All-Out" enables a 30-second "super mode," increasing your damage and To-Hit (on par with Aim), your defense and resistance (+10% global Def, +20% global Resist), your recharge and even lowers endurance costs. However, after the power crashes, your endurance is dropped to zero (specifically to detoggle you), but you are able to immediately begin recovering endurance (unlike T9s such as Elude), perhaps even with a brief 5 second period of +25% end recovery as you catch your breath. You can not build your "All-Out" meter while in super mode, so you can not attempt to stack the power as you could with Domination. The bar does not decrease during periods of inactivity, but does specifically reset when you zone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I really like the idea of an assault/defenses character could go defenses/assault for its opposite. One of heroes, one for villians.

Type of character that I envision having this would be Iron man sorts of characters. A mix of melee/range and defensive shields to protect them. A whole slew of character concepts.

No idea what to call it other then Power Armor. Guess you could call it Armored. Focus on a team would be a switch roles sort of play. Not really focused on argo generation and pulling people off of others ala scrappers and tanks but also not heavy damage AT. IMO its weakness should be no control like powers and no self healing. Just swap out self heals with some other power perhaps a placate to shed a foes focus?

I could see this sort of AT having a switch mode sort of inherent power. They active a toggle and are in offensive mode doing more damage but taking more damage. Toggle off and they are in defensive mode resisting more damage but doing less damage.
Damage output would be similiar to dominators outside and inside of domination, defenses would be stalker outside and scrapper inside of buffs. So you could have domination like damage with stalker like shields or dominator (no domination) damage and scrapper like shields.

I don't think it would be overly powerful and cool in concept but doesn't really have a team role outside of them being pitch hitters.

Epic pools would need to be designed for them.. not sure what fits them though. No controls or heals, ranged aoe's and debuffs maybe.