How many times must I die to ambushes before I can re-complain?

Except for not being a blapper, I used everything at my disposal at maximum ability. That included *converting* into a blapper when the critters themselves entered melee range. The only change I made to playstyle was not to aggressively pursue engaging immediately as a blapper. I handicapped myself in no other way. In that sense, I used every tool at my disposal *except* for the skill of initiating combat as a blapper.

With all of that, I perhaps died once out of every two or three missions, but particularly against mezzers like Carnies. One out of two missions for me translates into a lot of deaths for the average player I believe, that does not have my experience playing a blaster, nor a nine billion inf build backing them up. My build has combat jumping, tough, weave, temp invuln (all of which become worthless while mezzed), virtually unlimited endurance, practically non-stop firing ability while mezzed, and I can engage targets from outside their range initially with range boost.

Knowing my build, in theory I could buy a full tray of breaks and just keep them active throughout each mission, buying a new tray at the start of every mission, which would make me permanently mez protected, and that would then keep all of my defenses up continuously which would help a lot. But I don't think that's anything but a degenerate playstyle. If I'm trying to find out what the upper limits of what a typical player might ever expect to see, I can only do what they do as well as humanly possible, not do things few would ever think of doing.

Every time two illusionists home in on a blaster that does not have hard mez, I find that its a matter of luck or lots of insps that allows you to survive. Or rather, a matter of not getting unlucky. Between blind and phase, if you can't mez them, and they get you, you have to decide whether to take out the other minions that are likely to run up to you and attack from melee range or take out the illusionists first to break the mez and allow you to use things like respites (assuming you're out of break frees at this point). In my experience, you only get unlucky about one time in ten or twenty under these circumstances, but they come up a lot in a Carnie mission set to 0x2.

And incidentally, keep in mind I'm testing at 0x2 not 0x1 because I'm not testing the theory that 0x1 is too easy, but 0x2 is just right. Because if 0x2 is too hard, then it doesn't matter if 0x1 is too easy, because you can't jump up (theoretically speaking you could go to -1x2, but when I first thought about doing this sort of testing long ago -1 didn't exist, and -1 has other issues that make it an option, but not an option to balance around).

And as I said, even *I* can't figure out how you die with a combo like Ice/Ice, or if you have epic holds like Cryo from Munitions. But people do, which means I just don't understand what they lack in terms of using those powers to maximum effect.

Also, I seem to be getting better at it. The death rate drops slowly over time as my twitch instincts take hold and start doing things automatically, like rapidly rotating targets to spread knock around while mezzed. When mez locks out all my other attacks, particularly AoEs, I'm now simply rotating bolt, blast, and thrust while cycling targets, making sure to match the cycle to have thrust coincide with a melee range target. I really don't think the average player does that. I also have to deslot Alpha or shift up to +1x2 while testing, because level shift is just too powerful an effect in my experience to just factor out while testing. Even so, I'm not ashamed to admit 0x2 is not easy for me on a ranged blaster, and I don't think I'm on the low end of performance in that regard. I think the soft control that Energy has is average for a blaster: it isn't as effective as the hard controls some sets have, but its not completely lacking in mitigation like Fire. Its probably in the same ballpark as AR actually: maybe a little better in mitigation, a little worse in absolute kill speed. At least at the skill levels and difficulty settings we're talking about (I would probably do a little better with AR because I know how to manipulate Afraid).

Uh, you did catch where I said 'Old Hollows' or 'Hollows back in the day', right?

That said, I have to admit I didn't really die a lot in the Hollows back then but I did learn a lot. Particularly, how I was able to jump up walls and surfaces, how fences can block LoS, how to zoom in/out my camera quickly for safer travel, how to use SJ/Teleport without dying, etc.

As you said, dying a lot isn't the problem. Not for new players or threatening their subscription.

I just want to add that this has also been my experience on my own blaster. Being Fire/Dev, he essentially can't blap and must play at range. Mezzers are utterly destructive, and the Carnie tip missions are particularly painful, since even with bosses off they use LT-grade Master Illusionists. Defiance doesn't particularly help when you're surrounded by phantoms and a Dark Servant the moment you aggro the spawn. Even using a Break Free, I have to use hit and run tactics and burn greens to stay alive. He uses IO sets, but I didn't build him for S/L or Ranged defense, which I suspect is going to be more common for the average player, since building defense on a blaster is bloody tough and expensive.

I have managed to work through a 0x8 (or possibly 0x6) mission of Longbow with the level shift, but even then I died about 3 times in each room.

My AR/Dev, now level 50, played on +0x2 starting in the 30s (when the capability became available) and with her current build runs at +1x2. She only just got Aid Self in i19 and has never had AirSup. She has never had any option to be anything but an "all-range Blaster".

My 45 DP/Dev is on +0x2 (should probably raise it) and my 34 Elec/Dev is on +1x2 (does have AirSup). My other Blasters are all below 22 and are still on base difficulty. I suppose someone will cry foul because the older ones are all Devices, but for my money, if your Blasters are dying on base difficulty I don't know what you're doing but you're doing it wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong (it was some time) but isn't blasters also among the most popular archetypes? That would certainly skew the numbers.

One would immediately figure solo defenders (or even corruptors) would fare similarily (depending on powerset). (this is probably offset by the fact that defenders, by and large, do not solo unlike blasters)

Whether I'm doing it right or wrong is a subjective opinion I don't really concern myself with. The fact is that blasters die, and the forums thought the devs must just be mistaken or datamining incorrectly. I know now with certainty they are not, and what kills them is capable of killing me, albeit at much lower rates.

If we're all doing it wrong, we're all doing it wrong. I can accept that, but that just means this game cannot be balanced around the extremely few that are capable of doing it right, because they are in the very small minority that doesn't even include me as an edge case. And I'm already way out past the edge of where the devs are supposed to be balancing around.

PS: If I want to creep around and pull each spawn apart, and never engage with less than near full health, I can pretty much guarantee not dying. But if I do that, I find my rate of progress in the game drops below what I believe the devs have as their target for average game progress. Which would mean by their definition I would still be broken and requiring corrective action.

If you think the devs just have too high expectations of progress rate, that's your prerogative. However, I'm not arguing that issue at all: I'm just examining the issue of *what* causes Blasters to die, not *if* they die or *if* its all their fault.

I remember when they said that... they're talking per capita, not just raw numbers of defeats.

And defenders and corrs each have an entire powerset dedicated to buff/debuff. It's enough to keep them up more consistently. Blasters just get more damage 'cept for those /dev weirdos

Rad/Rad Corrs, for example, can arguably be even more dangerous than a Blaster, due to increased mitigation (buffs and heal) and offensive tools (debuffs and damage)
Sure, Blasters have better hitty numbers, but thats not much use if you're dead, now is it?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Population numbers wouldn't directly affect averages.


Before the devs said what the datamining was telling them, the smart money on the forums was that non-debuffing defenders would solo the slowest of all heroside powerset combinations. Turns out that was false. I would *guess* non-debuffing defenders would start to edge into the same territory at high enough difficulty, but I'm not certain.

Also, when the devs did their datamining, they specifically looked at solo vs teamed performance, not just aggregate averages. So they could compare solo blasters vs solo defenders when they soloed, across all powerset combinations.

My experience tells me heals are very important, not only in combat, but because they tend to guarantee you always start from full. And when solo, there's no such thing as a weak heal. The rad PBAoE heal is huge for a soloer.

It its if you've got Rise of the Phoenix

I've met folks who don't understand that standard enhancements TURN OFF after a while. And have vet badges, and multiple characters played to SO levels. They just thought higher level enhancements were stronger, and that they could get them at their leisure.

I recently (within the last few months) had to badger three friends of mine to keep their inspiration tray open and to use them. They previously were just playing the game entirely without inspirations.

Mez is definitely something that gets glossed over by a lot of players, and protection seems to be poorly understood. I've seen players use a single mag 2 stun on a boss, then turn to face other enemies genuinely believing they've done something to mitigate damage from the boss.

To be honest, I don't really know large sections of the enemy groups very well, or what powers they can leverage. Mostly because I can't tell what they're doing most of the time, and I'd have to go look at an outside source and try to correlate it with the in-game entities. I think it would be helpful if the game had more feedback about what enemies were doing, especially when it's significant like tier 9s.

Similarly, the number of people I meet who actually understand what an anchored toggle is, what it does, what the implications are for the fight... is substantially lower than the number of people I've played with.

The difference between "power build up" and "build up" is totally lost on some people.. They see Build Up and conclude "It makes my powers stronger", and this leads to people using Build Up just for, say, a mez. While the hitrate benefit is there, it's certain suboptimal.

Of course, this goes both ways.. I still occasionally come across players that still seem to believe that confuse completely steals kills (and thus XP/inf) from players. About four or five months ago, I saw a mind control character get booted from a pug for "wrecking our rewards". My attempts to clarify what was happening were met with 'yeah, whatever'.

Pretty much this.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Not *directly* no, but it assumes that the archetype choices are average. Eg. if a significant number of new/less skilled whatever players pick a particular AT it would definitely show up in the statistics, no?

Again, this assumes that the population (soloing blaster vs. soloing defender) is identical: It's quite possible (for instance, just throwing this out) that a large number of blasters solo "casually" while defenders by and large only solo once they know exactly what they are doing. (presumably because well, it says "blasters can solo" and "defenders can't solo" (well, not exactly, but almost) on the char select screen)

(Which again, I'm not saying is the case, but this is one of those tricky bits you have to keep an eye on when doing statistics)

From the stance of "absolute XP earned" - or even "XP earned per mission", it does. Confuse does not steal XP from "rate of earned XP", but it does "steal XP".

I run my AR/Fire on +0/x3, with no defenses besides Maneuvers, Combat Jumping and Acrobatics, and no APP armor, although I do have Aid Self and a boatload of recharge. I have nothing from my secondary except Ring of Fire, Build Up, and Fire Sword Circle although I should probably swap it out for Burn.

Although the more I think about it, the more I realize that people can and do indeed die horribly, painfully, and repeatedly playing Blasters. I remember one friend of mine taking down a single Nemesis minion in the time it took my Elec/Elec Blaster to take down a Warhulk, with a build that was nearly identical to mine. I remember back in the day watching my husband play his perma-debt Fire/Fire Blaster on a small SG team...I remember seeing him launch a Fireball into a swarm of DE who were merrily trying and failing to kill the Spines Scrapper while a single minion in melee range killed him (that was the precise moment I told him to move over and let me drive. He's gotten much better, but he still tries to play them like Scrappers sometimes.)

People dying with full inspiration trays. People who glue themselves to the tank's butt. People who seem to not know what "line of sight" means. People who stand in one spot and refuse to move until the spawn is dead. People who don't take Aim or Build Up, or just never seem to use them. People who "look out for the rest of the team" while not looking out for themselves. Bad habits that people develop, that are especially lethal to a Blaster.

I said "completely". As in, folks believe if a confused enemy kills another enemy, no matter what the circumstances, zero XP and inf are earned for the players.

Which is decidedly not how it works.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

That is assuming confuse doesn't help raise your kill speed. So it very well may help absolute XP earned.

Yes and no. I considered that possibility and even discussed it with Castle. However, the population statistics independently released by BaB painted a picture that tended to soften that objection, which I discussed in the "archetype popularity" thread to some degree.

And folks wonder why I like to play solo.

Conversely? We wouldn't have a game without those folks. It wouldn't be profitable without the high volume of 'average and under' players.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Which is an excellent argument against excessive difficulty, as well.

Here's what my original build had that my current one doesn't have that I think is significant:

1. Air Superiority
2. Stealth
3. Aid Self

These were originally put in there to support a blapper lifestyle, particularly leveraging Defiance 1.0. I believe the difference between having them in combination and not having them is an order of magnitude in difficulty. This gets to Venture's claim about a well designed game not having wild differences in potential power level. I'm not sure how you do that with a power system that allows for relative freedom in picking powers and has heals anywhere near the strength CoH allows. Most CoH heals swamp even the resting rate of out of combat healing on games that support that mechanic.

That, and combat is designed to be far faster in pace, which means bosses become critical to take out quickly. You usually can't kill them quickly, so effective counter-mez becomes important if you don't have high personal defenses. Stealth plus AS used to guarantee me an almost 100% chance of nullifying a boss or mezzing LT within the first few seconds of the fight, long enough to stack stuns on him.

A game that was designed to be slower would have greater latitude to tweak power levels and effective offense and defense. But speed forces the devs hands in many ways that are not trivial to solve. Even if they do it wrong, there's no obvious way to do it right without eliminating the specific characteristic of combat speed in the game, something that cannot be changed at this point in its lifetime. At least not I think in the standard game.

Nor do I think it was necessarily a mistake, it was just one of those decisions we will have to live with. One of the very first posts I ever made discussed my concern about combat being so fast in this game, a concern most people believed ran counter to the very reason the game was liked by its players. They were probably right, but so was I.

So far, I'm only learning things I already suspected to be true. Defense and resistance are not worth much without mez protection. Blapping is as much about mez as damage. Enemy mez kills. The insp tray works like a ram jet. All these things work against ranged blasters. I'm hoping for a non-obvious revelation at some point.