Worst of the Worst

If you're going to do this, better set a time limit. Since TECHNICALLY an illusion or mental can just confuse a group until there's only 1 mob left, if they have some form of stealth.

Back to the OT, I feel Assault Rifle is one of the worst sets in the game. I probably sound like a broken record by now, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

troll/cocky/newb no doubt most annoying combo ever! oh wait u mean in ATs and that crap? i'd say like a lvl 10 that just switched builds so they have literally no powers, i love being a 50 tank with nothing but incarnate in PI or a mission just taking hits and using my one attack (which i delete and make into brawl)

Until Griff gets his new thread up, I'll post my results here.
Level 23/24 Elec/Elec Dom (I also dinged mid-mission)
Mission: "Defeat Paulie "The Gun Show" Morinni!"
Enemies: Mooks (mostly yellows, whites. One orange LT)
It wasn't a kill all, but I did treat it as such.
Location: Warehouse
Damage Taken: About 98. One machine gun spray that totaled about 44, and a shotgun hit that did about 54.
Basically, two Mooks hiding behind crates I didn't con when I came into the room. Not having Synaptic Overload hurt. Only 1 slot in Static Field wasnt great either. My technique was to drop the sleep from cover (if possible) , hold/kill one target, hold/kill next target, etc. If SF wasnt recharged, I sometimes did the ol' "Jack in the Box" hold move.

I also tried it with Arachnos. That went quite a bit worse. Crab Spiders were not impressed with my sleep OR my holds, although I did manage to completely end drain one Crab before he could even lay a finger on me. That mace got real heavy.

I guess I'll justify my nomination of AR.

Burst and Slug are perfectly serviceable ST attacks, if not lacking in creativity/visual flair.

Buckshot is tied for second for lowest damaging early Blaster cone attack. Only Sonic's cones do less base damage, but they all give good -res. It has the added "benefit" of random AoE KB. In a set full of cone AoEs, random KB is a detriment to the AoE chain. It's closest competitor is Fistful of Arrows, which has no Knockback. Considering Sonic's -res and the non-scattering reliability of Fistful, I consider Buckshot the worst Blaster early tier cone attack.

M30 Grenade does slightly less damage than Buckshot, is pure S/L damage, and has a huge mag random knockback effect. Again, in a set full of cones, KB is detrimental to your AoE chain. Starting to sense a theme here?

I know KB lovers may take issue with this complaint. You can mitigate the detrimental effects of KB with positioning, but you can't ever account for the totally random nature that these powers present. M30 is even harder with it's much higher mag and higher target limit.

Beanbag is OK if you like the stun effect. I'm not a fan.

Sniper Rifle is your bog standard Snipe. It's pure lethal damage in a set without Aim, so the damage isn't great, but if you like snipes then you probably like them for reasons other than pure damage.

Flamethrower. Ok. Where to start? First off, when they did the AR "buffs" they lowered the cast time to 2.33 seconds. That was good. But then they went and totally screwed up the projectile speed. That means the further away you are from your target, the longer it takes for your damage to start hitting the enemy. It's soooo slow. BaBs said at the time that this made more sense because the flame has travel time. Maybe he had never actually seen a flamethrower being used before. They are fast. Like OMG FIRE!!! fast. Seriously. Youtube it.

Once your damage does hit the targets, they will slowly begin to take moderately high damage. SEVEN SECONDS later, the DoT will have finally dealt all that damage. A lot can happen in seven seconds. In seven seconds you can unload the rest of your AoEs. In 7 seconds your team can murder the entire spawn. In seven seconds your targets are gonna be dead and the endurance that you spent to deal all of that damage is going to go to waste. Then you're stuck with a slow, expensive, narrow cone attack.

It's even worse on Corrs because this is typically gonna be an opener either before or after Full Auto. If you use it before Full Auto you have no chance of ever scourging and if you use it after Full Auto you might scourge, but you're pulling so much aggro that using another long animating, rooting attack like FA will be extremely dangerous.

Ignite: This power is good. Good IF you can immobilize enemies. Good IF you don't mind spending around 6-7 seconds to set up this combo (4s to cast, + ~2s to use your immob/slow/whatever AND redraw the rifle). Good IF you get more than a couple of guys in the microscopic AoE. Good IF you don't mind having an attack that takes so long to set up and deal all of it's damage that you could literally have used every other AoE attack in the set in the amount of time it takes to pay off this combo. Good IF your team doesn't just slaughter the enemies while you stand there like a moron hosting down corpses. Good IF... oh. It's not good. It sucks. Never mind.

Full Auto: This power is awesome, but it angers me. Why? Well, because it's got a pathetically narrow cone. On top of that, it's got a measly 10 target cap. It's next closest competitor, Rain of Arrows (especially on Corrs), is so much better in so many ways it's astonishing. This is supposed to be the big awesome power that completes the set. You wait till level 32/38 to get it, and when you finally get it, it's really really... boring. Unimpressive. Just bland.


Assault Rifle stands out to me because it's a set that has some good ideas, but constantly trips over it's own feet. It's a cone focused set with random scattering KB. It has narrow cones that are the complete opposite of what you want with all those spread out enemies. It has long animation times even after the buffs and the only powers that aren't hampered by lowish S/L damage or random KB are both excruciatingly long DoTs. One of which requires insane time to cast and use effectively because it is utterly useless unless you can somehow manage to keep an enemy from instantly escaping it's area of effect.

With just a few minor changes AR could be really awesome. With some visual improvements it could become very cool and with some minor mechanical tweaks it can become so much more playable.

Visual: Add tracer trails to burst.

Take M30 off of the rifle and make it an actual tossed grenade. Pull the pin with your teeth and lob it into the crowd.

Have the character get down on one knee to aim down the sight for Snipe.

Make Flamethrower a quick, fiery, smokey blast of fire.

Ignite can be a canister tossed with one hand, then your character holds up a triggering device with the other hand and pushes the button, resulting in an explosion that sets the ground on fire.

Full Auto can start with your character pulling back the cocking mechanism on the gun, holding the weapon at the hip, and unloading a massive spray of bullets with tracer rounds flying everywhere and tons of bullet casings flying out of the gun all over the place. When the shooting stops, your character holds the gun up at a 45 degree angle, and pulls the cocking mechanism again to "reload" as the barrel sends up trails of white smoke.

Mechanical:

Flamethrower should get the same treatment that Midnight Grasp got. I'm thinking 75% upfront damage, 25% percent DoT and it should be LESS than 7 seconds. This is super annoying to me because IIRC the AR buffs came out in the same update as the Dark Melee buffs, but they overlooked Flamethrower and didn't apply the logic of changing Midnight Grasp to Flamethower.

Ignite would actually be ok if the animation time was shorter and the area of effect was larger. Maybe not Oil Slick Arrow huge, but if it was bigger it would be much easier to keep enemies inside of it. You can even give it a slow effect and call it a sticky, napalm like substance.

M30 and Buckshot should have their KB mag reduced to .63 so they can only knock down enemies. This allows you to strategically combo these attacks with the larger radius of Ignite in order to create *gasp* synergy within the damn powerset!! The random knock down will give you the ability to control enemies inside of your ignite patch ensuring they never get out. Because the KD chance is only somewhere like 60%, you won't be able to keep them all in the patch, but that's what makes it exciting, fun, and balanced.

Full Auto should either get a damage increase and a cone size increase OR a target cap of 16 and a cone size increase. Either way, it needs a bigger cone. Archery is the closest basis for comparison. The sets are very very similar in many ways. If Rain of Arrows is balanced for Archery, then 16 targets and a bigger cone would be balanced for AR.

AR with Boost Range, is a thing of beauty. Full Auto > Flamethrower > Buckshot before the spawn even gets to melee range on me. The KB from Buckshot pushing back the fastest runners, in time for...Ignite! Fear > Aggro . Slug to finish off the boss. Oh! Look! All those powers have recharged for the next spawn.... What's that? Some of them don't try to run into melee? No problem, M30 has huge range, I'll just push them into the next spawn for the next rinse and repeat. I feel sorry for melee members of my team, trying to beat my bullets to the spawn .

In all seriousness though, AR could use some lovin. Not something I would put forward as Worst of the Worst though. Not with Electric Blast around....

I didn't read your whole quote counter-quote thing but I did see a little excerpt I'd like to correct you on. I like storm summoning.

Edit: Ok I read it all now. I see your points about hovering but that requires you to have a high ceiling. If you don't have a high ceiling you will be in melee range, and chances are you won't get a good cone angle from shooting directly above close targets. Hovering also presents many scenarios where secondary powers and even other powers in the primary aren't ideal for a hovering character. It could also clash with a player's theme. Traps is a good example of a set that doesn't play well with hovering. You need to be on the ground to use all of those powers. It's a pretty big caveat to work around the completely random KB.

I don't think we'll ever agree on Ignite so it's not worth arguing the point, but my experience with that power was purely negative.

While I can't argue that Peacebringers couldn't definitely stand to use some attention from the devs (yes, I'm aware they were made "better" a while back, but there's plenty of room for improvement), I definitely don't think they're as useless as some people have said. I love my 50 Peacebringer. He may not do a ton of damage, and he gets mezzed like a chump, but he can survive situations that even cause some Tankers to faceplant.