Buff Assault Rifle

My biggest problem is that it's unreliable. I honestly can't replicate Goat's results, and I don't know why that is, but I'd REALLY like to see Igniteuseful for its full damage, or close to it, on at least one target without having to rely on the AI not running away or additional support powers.

But, yes, I do agree that its animation time is just... Stupid. It actually rivals Full Auto now...

The problem with Sniper Rifle isn't unique to it, it's a common problem with all snipes currently in the game. Their damage just BAD for what they cost to use, both in terms of opportunity, buff, time and endurance. I'm always told that I can just use snipes to take out dangerous lieutenants, which ignores the fact that anything which isn't AR/Dev has faster, safer ways to take out Lieutenants which STILL leave you with more time on Aim and Build Up to deliver more damage longer. A snipe's base power is 2.76 scale damage, which is actually worse than what a lot of melee sets get multiples of, and that's not counting things like Super Strength, Energy Melee or Fiery Melee that have ~3.56 scale damage attacks that don't suffer interruptibility and 4+ second cast times.

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.

Sure, if you're /dev. My mitigation from my secondary is....well, look at my sig and tell me how much mitigation I have in that PoS secondary. Knockback, knockdown and Cryo Freeze Ray, that's about all I've got unless I want to deal with redraw with Ring of Fire.

So that's what could make AR unique. Think about it. You are taking the time to aim a highly advanced weapon. Possibly one with sights on top if you picked one of those custom weapons. A high-powered rifle, especially one that you take the time to aim, should be more accurate than a big blast of fire.

Except that just because you took the time to aim one shot doesn't mean that you're going to be accurate for the next few shots. The other problem with this is that you're simultaneously attempting to make Sniper Rifle (which is a largely useless power among an entire series of largely useless powers) an integral part of how the set operates.

Honestly, I think it would be better if the devs simply tweaked Snipes overall and gave them stats that are a bit more... viable. Snipes, even when used in the situations they are intended to be used in, are simply not worth the effort. You spend so little time prepping for fights that the gains for devoting a power that is only particularly useful for the first attack of a fight just aren't worth it.

When you consider how often players actually use their Sniper attacks, they don't need to recharge as quickly as they do. The devs could increase their DPA to a reasonable level by adjusting their dam/rech/end formula on all snipes to a base 25-30 second recharge (increasing damage to ~3.5-4.25 damage scale; roughly 220-265 base damage; roughly 48-59 DPA assuming a 4.33 sec base animation time) without inhibiting usefulness. The power would still be balanced around the "risk" of losing the power, not to mention that it's not going to be available often enough to be especially exploitable. Even so, it would make it much more useful for opening fights because you'd be able to put impressive dents in even bosses (and take out a single lt or minion with relative ease for some greater frontloading).

Well, yeah, that's true, but I actually want to eventually get a fix for snipes in general, not just for this one in particular. There are quite a few snipes out there, and they almost always suck, so it's a bigger problem than just that. I suppose we could always buff Assault Rifle's Sniper Rifle even beyond that in some way, but it's a systemic problem that needs to be attacked at its source.

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 have Caltrops triple slotted for slow, maybe that's it?



Whoops, sorry about that! =P
I have my /dev blinders on lately.
I can absolutely see taking grenade if you don't have any better mitigation available.

I like this idea a lot. Snipes currently have basically no damage bonus to account for their interruptable long cast time, if the set has a 10 second recharge blast you get almost as much damage form that as from the snipe.

I wouldn't have thought so. Caltrops is pretty close to the -speed cap without any slotting at all, a single level 50 common IO will cap it for +2s or lower. I'll have to test it myself sometime.

I'll be able to check for myself after his upcoming respec as caltrops will be losing most of its plumage.

You have a toggle version of caltrops, but way better. Unfortunately it doesn't mesh with the cone/ranged nature of AR other than being decent at keeping things out of melee, but not all combo's can be high in synergy.

One jump backwards is also good at keeping things out of melee, and it doesn't cost a ton of end to run.

Yeah, it was my first character. On the upside, Build Up + Full Auto every 25 seconds is sweet, and if I'd actually asked "what's good with AR?" I would have probably ended up AR/Dev like everybody else was back then, with no Aim, no Build Up, and no seeing my costume.

The 4.2 seconds of fullauto is enough time for an enemy to cross independence port and hit you in the face.

Energy and Mental also have good synergy with AR.

Boost Range in Energy increases the range of the cones which makes it easier to target saturate them without needing to get as close. The downside is the risk of hitting the next spawn (especially with Full Auto). It also has good single target damage to help make up for ARs weakness there and a stun you can stack with Beanbag.

Mental basically adds even more AoE damage to AR's and rpovides a bit of close in protection through WoC.

I support this message.

In my opinion snipes should be the blast equivalent of Stalkers assassination mechanism. As long as the enemy isn't aware (hidden not required) of the sniper or the sniper doesn't have aggro; then the damage should be truly SIGNIFICANT. Additionally, the Blaster version should be given a Defiance bonus that better reflect the cast time than what is currently the case.

These days all other ATs have encroached on original Blaster territory: Some Tankers do very good AoE damage while being virtually unkillable, Shield/Elec/Fire Scrappers put any Blaster to shame at dishing out pain at a mass scale, while being able to step in as mini-tankers to boot. Being able to keep from face planting despite significant aggro further increase the discrepancy. Going Rogue will put Dominators into the mix; another AT with superior single target damage, good AoE, good defenses (through control) and team support (through control). Buffing Blasters by making ALL snipes truly viable would give that AT at least a little something to hold over other ATs.

I never noticed this until you pointed out. I'm not even quite sure why. They provide the same +dam as basic tier 1/2 attacks, if not less, even though they take 3-4 times as long to animate. As ST attacks, they're not supposed to be using the AoE Defiance formula, though, that's the only possible reason I can imagine why they would be providing so little. That's even less reason to use them.

I don't think they include the interrupt period in the formula. So basically it is a 4.67 second attack, but only uses 1.67 to calculate defiance.

I guess that might be why, though I have no idea why the 3 second interrupt period isn't included. It's part of the animation time. It's not like interruptible animation time is somehow "better" so that there is a balance reason why it should be excluded. If anything, it should be weighed more heavily because it's actually worse.

I doubt it makes enough of a difference between us. I have mine double-slotted for slow (a convention I picked up from SOs which may no longer be relevant) so I'm sure we're both below the speed floor for critters on that one. I honestly don't know why you're able to keep them burning when I'm not, but even at floor speed, they're still able to leave the burn patch within around a second, suffering at most a quarter to a third damage. Granted, that's still not bad, but given my other arsenal of AoE, it's really nothing to write home about.

In my experience, the only real use for Ignite has been to damage a single enemy if I can keep it there for the Burn patch's full duration, and even then it's not THAT great since I waste SO MUCH TIME doing it I could have done about as much... If I had the powers to do it with, with AR/Devices simply does not. If I'd gone with another secondary, like Electric, I'd be able to outdamage Ignite by several times just using melee attacks, which is why my Electric/Electric Blaster doesn't suck as much as my AR/Dev.

I keep hearing about Ignite's use as area denial, but every time I've tried to use it, enemies have taken two steps out of the patch and kept shooting at me. It's even worse with Caltrops on, as they stop IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the patch, whereas unimpeded they tend to run around for something like 10-20 feet before turning around. Caltrops themselves don't do much to mitigate incoming damage. Enemies do try to run around on them, but as soon as their attacks recharge, they just turn around to shoot at me, actually achieving no reduction in damage. It keeps enemies away from me, sure, but Hover does that more reliably, and a Trip Mine at my feet does even better than that

I honestly feel that Ignite needs either a change or a buff of some kind, because it's just too eccentric a power in a set that really can't afford an empty power pick. If this were, say, Fire Blast, I could see an esoteric power like this, but AR is hurting for single-target attacks big-time.

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.

You know, last time I suggested... Pretty much exactly that, people came out of the woodwork to jump on my back with crampons and a bag of dumbbells. Guess it was my mistake to post it in the Blaster forum

I very much do agree with this, however. I've been saying it for years - Snipes are NOT useful as often as they're made to recharge. In fact, they recharge faster than Scrapper and Tanker big-hitters, which are 20 seconds and over. For something that's designed to be used at the start of combat and EXPLICITLY designed to discourage in-combat use, there's no reason for the power to recharge so quickly. The game doesn't "want" you to use it every 14 seconds, so all that does is lead to a power that does very little damage, yet takes FOREVER to animate.

I'd be hesitant to go as high as Energy Transfer damage, but why not? I would KILL for a powerful sniper that was worth using at the start of combat and was a good use of buff duration. I can live with its interruptibility, I can live with its animation time, I can deal with all that if only the power did decent damage. And it just doesn't. Not by a longshot.

In fact, I've been casting an envious eye at Dominators over the buff they got to their snipes, which was basically just that - they went up to 3.56 scale damage and got a corresponding increase of cost and recharge. Actually, Dominators do more damage with their snipes right now than Blasters do, which makes me O.o

Someone mentioned "ranged assassin's strike," and while I wouldn't go quite as far as THAT, I wouldn't mind going half-way. Currently, Assassin's Strikes deal a total of scale 7.0 damage with a damage mod of 1.0 on a Stalker. A Blaster shooting at 3.56 with a damage mod of 1.125 would be doing around a comparable 4.0 scale damage, which sounds like a good deal for an AT that has no practical protection available to it. Be a good use of buff time, too. Better than just cycling T1 and T2 blasts, possibly.

That's been a popular quandary and a popular complaint pretty much since Defiance first came out. I don't think we've ever gotten a real answer to it, but given how much Snipes suck, I doubt too many people still care. Which is a pity, because they have the potential to be really cool, rather than a cheap, unnecessary gimmick.

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.

Eh, I can only assume that the people that jumped out of the woodworks to attack you were likely under the assumption that you were attempting to make the power less useful. Considering how little the power already gets used, I doubt it would really do much.

I don't think that Energy Transfer grade damage would be all that out of the realm of possibility. The only possible problem that some people might have with it is for PvP, though I doubt any large scale improvement to the snipes would touch PvP since burst damage is king there. If anything, the power kind of needs it just to be a worthwhile power pick. As it stands, the only role it really fulfills is that of an IO set mule (because those Snipe sets have some nice set bonuses).

On a side note, I've always wondered why the Snipe procs follows the same damage rules as the normal procs. It's not like it can be used in the same array of powers that the other procs can. I think it would be interesting if the Snipe proc got some vastly increased damage just to make up for the fact that it can only be used in a Snipe (which, by default, is supposed to be heavily weighted damage). Cranking the proc damage up from .67 damage scale to 1.0 or even higher would be an interesting way to encourage using the procs (and giving some kind of critical equivalent to a very specific subset of powers).

Yes, well, I've suspected for a while that the devs are big fans of Dominators. When the changes went through, Blasters lost their "top damage" role pretty quickly and even got rendered largely redundant when you consider that Dominators are also bringing heavy control on top of damage that is, if not better, at least competitive, with Blasters. GoRo is likely going to make that even more apparent.

I don't have it memorised, but here's how it goes.

I've suggested this a few times, and more than half of the responses are somewhere between "Snipes are just fine! Leave it alone!" which always baffled me, because they're not and "You can use it for pulling!" and the only pulling I seem to be doing with a snipe is pulling my hair out. Then there's the response that it may not be great DPA, but since you're not using it in an attack chain but rather as an opener, this shouldn't matter, which is untrue since you want to stuff as much DPA into the time you have with Build Up and/or Aim, hence why it really matters. Finally, there's the argument that it's RANGED damage, and so should never be allowed to reach the level of damage that, say, Head Splitter does, despite the fact that Head Splitter does the exact same scale damage but without interruptibility.

I honestly just end up giving up in these discussions, because people ascribe so much weight to Snipe powers' range that they cannot even consider them being better powers. But having ONE power you can fire from twice the range of your other blasts has very, very little use beyond pulling, because you can't FIGHT at the range at which a snipe fires. I guess that's what Geko was thinking when he was making snipes in the first place, but I dare say he was wrong at the time. It's a decent concept thematically, but in actual practice, it's just a terrible design for a power.

I'm not sure I'd call Dominator damage "better," partly because they lack Aim AND Build Up, partly because they lack AoE as a general rule and partly because their damage mods are kind of weaker, but I can go with "competitive," because it is. I tried playing Dominators, though, and it didn't work. They're not Blasters, that's what I learned.

More to point, however, the balancing decisions of Dominators are what I'd consider the right way to go. Decent damage, BETTER DPA and worthwhile snipes, even at 0.95 ranged damage mod. I actually hope that Going Rogue will have Blasters outclassed by Dominators and/or Corruptors because one hopes that would lead to a further retweak of the AT to tie up those last few loose ends like Snipes and possibly secondary power logic. The AT isn't bad, but compared to many others... It's not very good, either.

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, Aim and BU aren't really stellar providers of additional damage over time. Their primary purpose is to provide heavy frontloading capability, which Dominators don't really need because they have substantial control capabilities so they won't die after the first few seconds of fighting. It is, however, a very different playstyle. Even so, I'm still always amazed at the sheer potency of the Assault sets. In general, it seems like the sets were designed by taking the best powers in the commensurate "pure" sets. While I admit I don't have a lot of experience with Dominators, it looks to me like most of the chaff was removed when they combined the melee and ranged sets to make the assault sets.

Dominators have access to Fiery Embrace (or Build Up) as well as Soul Drain and Poisonous Ray from their epic pools, so I wouldn't exactly say they are inferior to Blasters when it comes to direct damage boosting powers.

Dominators single target damage is in general better than that of Blasters, while their AoE damage easily rivals or exceed half of the Blaster sets. At the same time their defenses is several times as good as Blasters through heavy control which also support the entire team. Dominators benefit slightly better from pool powers. Dominators are vastly better soloists and bring more to their teams.

Dominators having superior snipes is just adding insult to injury. I've long suspected the developers of this game have a really strange and outdated view on AT balance. Despite their obvious shortcomings, Blasters remain quite popular, at least at low to medium levels. The living on the edge game style is certainly more exciting than any of the other much safer ATs! I believe this popularity is holding back fixes which the class by all means should get.