Beam Rifle?

On the contrary, cross the Beams. It would be good (for Disintegration.)

I think that should trigger an AoE if that ever happened.

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.

Not the thread for it, but no, such a thing won't happen. The knee attack is called Rib Cracker (I think) and is aimed at your opponent's chest. The one that does bother me, though, is shin-breaker, as it's a relatively low-key attack that nevertheless does a lot of damage.

If you're pinning your hopes on a new set, Street Justice is the one to bet on. It's completely awesome, especially if you find the right character for it. And when I say "right," I mean "not obvious."

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.

Also not liable to be all that convincing against Banished Pantheon masks, Council Hoverbots, et al., but hey, it's not like Martial Arts doesn't look crap against those guys too. Either way, I'm not enamored of the Street Justice concept myself - mostly because I didn't like the combo mechanism in Dual Blades and had rather hoped it was a flash in the pan, not the on-ramp to more fighting-game emulation.

As for Beam Rifle, I'm with whoever it was a bit ago who said he was hoping for a pistol version. Off the top of my head, I can think of a much richer heritage of one-handed zap guns in sci-fi and comics. But hey, maybe someday. They have the mechanism in place for alternate animations now. Like we used to say back in the comm server business, it's only software. (It was our new-feature mantra. Sort of an inverse Standard Code Rant. We built our hardware for maximum flexibility, which meant it could do almost nothing natively but almost anything if our software guys had enough time. )

Eh, the combo system in Street Justice isn't nearly as bad as the button mashing you have with Dual Blades. Basically, you have 3 finishers, 1 BU powers, and 5 combo builders. Any of those 5 combo builders, when hitting a target, will build 1 or more combo points (AS builds 2 on stalkers, but placate doesn't build any, so its made up in AS) Plus BU automatically gives you 3 combo points.

Then, you just hit a finishers (which is either 2 AOEs, or a very hard hitting single target attack) and you do additional, free damage based on the number of combo points you have.

Unlock Dual Blades where you literally have to hit power A then power B then power C, hope they all land, and then you'll get your combo. Street Justice is much more forgiving of misses, and much easier to build up combos.

Soooo...it was a deflector dish? Just reroute the plasma feed and invert the subspace flux...

Not quite as glamorous, but sort of the same concept, yeah. You want multilink PPP on several ISDN ports at once? Give us a few weeks. The DSPs can do it, it's only software.

::: quietly deletes saved name "Brawly McFighter" :::

Minor quibble:

Build Up in Street Justice (which is only available for Stalkers) does NOT give 3 Combo Points. It just gives +DMG and +ToHit like all the other versions of Build Up.

Combat Readiness (which is in the version of Street Justice available to Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers) DOES give 3 Combo Points as well as a minor bit of +DMG and +ToHit, albeit not as much as BU.

I stand corrected. I mistook CR for build up. But the point still kinda stands, the Combo system is Street Justice is leaps and bounds better then the combo system in Dual Blades.

This I agree with. It's much more flexible and therefore open to different styles.

The DB system requires more finesse which is probably why its effects are more pronounced rather than StJ's more robust and mundane effects. But that's neither here nor there.

I rather like the DB combos. Not the least reason because it is unique, so it's not overdone. It's not like they've gone crazy and added it to all the new powersets they've created since then. While it would be nice if they were more flexible (especially early on), I enjoy that powerset quite a lot. (In fact, I just got done playing my DB/WP Scrapper, Capt. Blood.)

It's good as a background for your character screenshots - which I guess is also teh lolz.

For a better look at the beam/laser in each animation, here's a preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luxLH_LKdlk

Power customization could render it closer to what you're looking for.

"Minor" nothing. It's a 62.5% damage buff, which is on the level of Aim. That may not be huge, but it's more than very decent, and the Level 3 combo it grants adds a significant damage boost to whatever finisher you use it with, along with some other nasties that I haven't quite memorised yet.

And, yes, the Combo system in Street Justice is ten times better than the combo system in Dual Blades. For starters, it isn't annoying fiddly busywork that only comes into its own past level 32. You'll be popping off full combos at LEVEL 2!

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.

OOOOH....this makes me excited.

I may have to reroll Backup Dancer...which sucks sorts cuz I leveled her so hard on XP weekend with MA/Regen. But this sounds much more her style of fighting than MA...which I am loving though.

Curse you and your dreaded Math and temptation!

Thanks.

Wish they'd get rid of the recoil part of the animation. Looks silly for the beam to react the way it does with the recoil effect, besides that, energy weapons don't have recoil.

Heh, get in line. I'll be deleting a level 33 MA/SR Scrapper to remake her as a level 1 SJ/SR Scrapper Honestly, I don't remember being THIS excited about a powerset in years. Titanic Weapons is still my first love, but that's WAAAY out in the future, far enough that I can let sleeping dogs lie until that comes around. But Street Justice has me doing the /em cheer and yelling at my screen to "Go! Go! Go! We want Street Justice!"

Honestly, it's an awesome set, all told.

This concerns me a little bit, and it's something I noticed in my own preview - the set has the "Zapp problem," where the beams are attached to your muzzle, so when the muzzle climbs with recoil, the beam displaces up and keeps animating as leaving your rifle, but at an angle to the barrel. It looks REALLY bad, and I was hoping I was just overthinking it. I'm not.

I'll put this in the Feedback thread as well, but what needs to happen is one of two things:

1. The beams need to be cast instantaneously and disconnected from the rifle so when the muzzle climbs, the beam doesn't displace. It might look a bit odd, but "lingering beams" are not actually that uncommon in games.

2. The Beam Rifle firing animations need to be made without muzzle climb recoil, so that you keep the rifle in line with the beam at all times. If it has to recoil, it can always recoils straight back into your gut or shoulder, with the rifle vibrating but still pointing forward.

In either case, any weapon firing a continuous mean CANNOT recoil or that beam will just shoot into the sky.

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.

Yeah that's my only real nitpick from what I saw. Beam weapons shouldn't have any noticeable recoil. In fact that's supposedly (theoretically?) one of their main advantages over standard gunpowder-type weapons. It seems like they just left in some recoil animation from previous gun models. Hope they end up cleaning it up a bit before launch.

Like Assault Rifle, a lot of the set reuses the same one animation for most of its powers, that of Slug, Beanbag, M30 Grenade and so on, or the one from Sniper Rifle and Long Range Missile Rocket. And I agree completely - Beam Rifle needs new animations. Preferably before it launches and gets subjected to the "grandfather rule" of retaining shoddy visuals for the sake of those accustomed to them.

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.