Hail of Bullets annoys me.

The 60% chance to damage really annoys me. I understand it's unique and thematic and different, but that doesn't translate into "good." As I understand it, the power is supposed to be wild and potentially inaccurate. Why not just give it like 50% to-hit, balance the damage and recharge around that, and then make it "thematic" in the sense that as your character becomes more skilled with the power, he gets more accurate (slotting). This solves two issues.

A. The mechanics don't rely on a hard-coded gimmick
B. You get incentive to build and slot a certain way to improve your abilities.

It's so bad, they then had to go out of the way to make it worthwhile by adding a defense buff to it just to prevent it from being an automatic death sentence while you're twirling around in the air shooting butterflies and giving the bad guys a hair cut and a close trim with bullets that only have a 60% chance of actually doing anything.

I guess I don't like it for the reason I don't like powers like Strength of Will and One With the Shield. The whole game is built on the ability for players to modify and customize their powers. That idea is burned into my brain after years of playing. Having powers where common aspects you're used to modifying are hard-coded and unenhanceable just doesn't jive well, despite the fact that they are "balanced" around it.

Quick question about HoB, though. Does it have a to-hit check at all, or is it "auto-hit" in the sense that it can't miss, and relies on the 60% chance to damage? If it does have a hit check... that's even more lame.

It rolls a hit check on all the targets in the AoE until it hits the maximum possible. Anyone missed takes no damage. Anyone hit gets all 24 chance to damage rolls made against them (even if they leave the AoE in the meantime).

The 60% chance for damage makes perfect thematic sense when you look at the animation of the power. When you're flailing yourself around like that firing handguns in random directions you can't really expect it to be that accurate.

If you wanted to make it even MORE realistic, it should cause Fear and stand a small chance of hitting any allies that happen to be within it's radius. You're pretty much firing guns indiscriminately around you, and bullets don't know who's on your side or not. It's not going to happen because there's no friendly fire in CoH, but that would be the likely result if you were to actually fire two guns like that.

I've read this complaint many times, but honestly never understood it. In practice, HoB still does a significant amount of damage for being a crashless nuke.

DP.....bleh....stupidly enough i'll play assault rifle over it....ofcourse my friend shawn will strangle me with the "its fun and it lookz so coolz!" Yeah but.....stuff wont die damnit!

Oh sorry - thought you got shot in his volley.

"I was tanking recluse when all of the sudden this DP blaster went all dick cheney on the towers and ended up shooting me in the face!"

U know I would probably take boomerang attacks over dp they probably coulda did more with it, ofcourse then we'd have a bunch of robin's father's killer running around but that would have been interesting to see a power set with a double attack chances and they could still pull off the dp damage if it has a chance to attack twice anyway. But im getting off subject here >_>.....

"Okay, guys we've almost got the hamidon down. Okay, [generic spy name here], do your stuff! Everyone back off! BACK OFF!

Honestly, I had no idea it was a 60% chance to hit until I started reading this thread, then looked at the power. I'm so used to jumping into a mob, hitting it, and watching all of the minions and most, if not all of the lieutenants go down. While I may not completely like the idea, I can't say it's affected me enough that I have any complaints.

Doesn't it still do more damage then full auto, when you average out the 60% chance for damage, and its higher target caps? on a slightly higher recharge? (plus fire ammo + HoB = higher damage for free)