A discussion on Snipes and Other Interruptables

Based on this thread which I don't want to ressurect.

The Snipes

Small tweaks for the sometimes little used snipes. While serving their general purpose of being able to pick off a single target from a long distance, I often hear people skipping or avoiding snipes because AoEs are generally 'better' (I don't think this, just what I hear, here free to correct me).

What if snipes applied AoE effects? They keep their current damage, have a few seconds added to the recharge, but also do:

Ranged Shot and Sniper Rifle are turned into very small cones, like Piercing Rounds, 3 target limit.
Moonbeam's -tohit made AoE
Zapp adding a jumping chain for Charged Bolts damage, with end drain
Sniper Blast with an AoE knockdown
Psionic Lance with an AoE -speed -recharge
Proton Volley's -defense made AoE, perhaps with a very small -resistance too
Blazing Bolt with an AoE fire DoT equal to half of Fire Ball

Those which don't do damage wouldn't draw aggro, so a clean pull can be made by them still. Shoot the idea down if you want, but at least think about it or come up with your own idea/s for how a Snipe can be more fast-paced CoX friendly, hopefully with more care for the lone target pull.

And Other Interruptables

Gun Drone, Time Bomb, Crashing Nukes (interrupted by death).

I cannot say how useful Gun Drone could be for a smart Blaster, your own little tank, a large Defiance buff to try and make up for the lack of Build Up (but still not enough, sorry), a little damage on the side.. But it takes so long. Stops in a fight are boring as that's what they are, stops, pauses, breaks from the fun and meat of the game.

Time Bomb is like Gun Drone, without it really being useful. The amount of damage it does can be done in the amount of time it takes to be put down and explode anyway, especially in a team environment which equates to roughly 90% of gameplay with plenty more team-based activities on the way.

And there're the nukes, panic buttons or quick mob-sweepers, they are really good at what they do but sometimes, just sometimes, not quite fast enough. I don't care about my character's death, if I go down I've usually got a trick up my sleeve (thanks to years as a Blaster) or an ally to rely on, but I would much prefer if nukes can be relied on to take down a group.
As it is, the crash itself can be a problem with the current state of gameplay (Fast! Action! 15 minute ITFs!) but not an issue, I find it a fair trade-off for exploding everything, but can the Self-Destruct code be put over to set based nukes so that, if you happen to die during the animation, the damage is still done? As a squishy, when you find your health is low there's usually only a split second between the realisation and eating floor. Death is not the problem, waiting after exploding isn't the problem, being unable to utilise an ace up my sleeve due to long animations is.. Well, annoying at best admittedly, maybe not as big a problem as others, but it irks me.

And Other Interruptable, but shorter

I think the cast time for Gun Drone needs to be halved due to it being boring
I think Time Bomb either needs to be instant cast with the current count-down or turned into an Omega Maneuver clone due to it being boring and ineffective
I think Nukes with crashes should still do their damage even if you die during the animation because it's annoying (but not too important)

Please add your own evidence and thoughts on why I am wrong and add your own ideas and interpretations of my thoughts.

i pretty much agree with everything you stated here

maybe instead of the fire snipe doing a DoT (so it can still be used to pull) maybe do a -dmg or demoralize type thing (like assassin strikes)

as for the nukes though, i absolutely hate the end crash, and i pretty much avoid any nuke that has an end crash (except for blizzard because i dont have to be right smack in the middle of a mob to use it), ive never really had a lot of issue with the dying before the nuke finishes (except sometimes in the case of hail of bullets or rain of arrows which have absurdly long animation, one of which i need to be right in the mob, but those dont have crashes either so i use them more)

time bomb isnt too too bad, but i agree on fast moving teams its kind of useless, the only time ive found use for it is on ship raids when everyone is clustered into the bowl anyway, the interrupt is still a problem though

gun drone...needs improvment. i trioed playing 3 /device blasters because i like the idea of gun drone and i like the pets and stuff, but everytime i got to gun drone, i just deleted the toon because gun drone is just insanely pathetic compared to other pets, elec blast voltaic sentinel is better than gun drone. my suggestion for gun drone is to make it similar to voltaic sentinel, but increase the duration and rech to double, no interrupt time, reduce end cost, but leave the gun drone as targetable

Thats a novel suggestion for snipes that I'd never thought of before. I think they either need to do something useful like that, or simply have their damage ouytput boosted by about...a third? Something to make up for the long aim and firing time.

/Signed in general, very good suggestions overall

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

I'd personally want to see a much more basic fix - make snipes uninterruptible. People skip snipes, in large part, because they're so situational that you rarely get to use them. Being able to use snipes in combat would make them much more useful and much less skipped, especially for sets like Assault Rifle and Electrical Blast.

Quote:

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.

That'd work too.
I mean, NPCs dont have theirs interupt...and some of theirs do ludicrous ammounts of damage. (And AoE...looking at YOU Nemesis!)

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

Snipes are a weird situation because I think they were designed before it became clear that teamed combat post-level 25 moves too quickly to generally make use of them. I really don't mind a situational power, but I will say they lose a lot of their punch when you're constantly damage-capped and fighting things that die lightning fast thanks to stacked buffs/debuffs.

But they do have their uses on smaller teams and while solo. A theoretically risk-less alpha-strike that gets the ball rolling both on dealing damage and building up Defiance for Blasters is not bad. And Praetoria has shown that pulling is still the tactic of choice when the game decides to spawn 60+ enemies in one room.

That said, I don't see the point in getting rid of the interrupt. Not only is it a sensible drawback, I don't really see why they need to be 100% reliable mid-combat...that's not what they're meant for and you're basically introducing a 150 foot range Tier 4 blast otherwise. An interrupt is also much more preferable to being locked down in a long, rooted animation - that can get a Blaster killed. I am not entirely unopposed to slightly upping their damage and slightly reducing the animation time, though.

As for the AoE effects...meh. I've always been highly resistant to the "single target sucks" crowd, and I don't see TAoE snipes being all that popular when they slow you down due to being a snipe and otherwise being half as good as just using your existing AoEs. Plus they add another AoE to sets that don't necessarily need it.

I'm more generally concerned with the fact that snipe debuff numbers are off in a number of places. Dark and Psy snipes only do base debuff values instead of having a bonus and apparently there's no difference in endurance drain between Blaster and Defender Zapp...except in PVP?

Snipe is good power and I'm using that a lot and its not hard to use in combat either. It needs slightly more damage but not any area effects. That is called LRM-missile. Demoralizing is good idea but if that affect them all it could ruin one of most important use of snipes as pulling power. Perhaps some scrapper style critical change would work with sniping?

Just my toughts and I love to sniping people

edit I'm not against about small area effects but I don't think thats the main idea of sniping.

edit2. It's true that sniping does not have a lot of use in teams of 8 but in teams of 3 or 4 its great.

There could be complications to rebalancing such powers by improving their damage or lowering their activation. Some blast sets don't have snipes so making them into high powered blasts (even if interruptible) may require rebalancing the rest of the containing set.

Also, bleh, another dmg dealing blast in a set full of ranged blast? Isn't that what the rest of the set is for?

Anyway, the way I see it, you could either tweek the values of the snipes to better balance them vs the utility they currently provide, or you can add more utility to the snipe to better balance it with its values.

If I were given the option of a sub-optimal ranged blast that did something special vs an on par ranged blast, I'd probably pick the former if only because, as a blaster you've got plenty of damaging powers and as a Def/Corr, you've got plenty of other powers you need to be using too.

Adding AoE effects would be interesting but it kind of removes one current use of a Snipe as a pulling tool.

I personally don't think snipes in general need to be made AOE. It's not what I grab the power for. Yes, it's a situational power, but I do find it useful. An AOE would, to me, make it *less* useful, actually.

For their animation time, though - yes, they could use more damage. (And while we're at it, how about reducing Stalker PPP snipe animation down to something reasonable? 8 seconds is just flat out stupid. THAT's designing a power so that nobody will use it.)

My biggest drawback for snipes would have to be that second tohit (and visibility) check - it fails for some of the most ridiculous things. (Mob wandering back and forth passes behind a skinny I-beam type support, perfectly visible the OTHER 3.8 seconds - nope, it fails.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

Might be easier to create a few new Snipe IO sets that let people alter what the power does, like IOs were promised to do. For example since it's what was suggested: add an AoE effect "proc" *. As it is, most current Snipe sets are near worthless (IMO).

* Personally, I hate most procs. If I want the power to do something else, then let it for 100% of the time. Even if it takes 2 enhancements adding it up, like each one adds 50% chance to activate then 2 will make it 100%. But I digress.