Guns for non-squishies?

Honestly? I could see a "Gun-Fu" melee set that mixed melee and ranged attacks in the same proportion as claws and kinetic melee (which both have a 40' ranged attack, a ranged cone, and a PBAoE).

1) Single shot: 15-20' range; light damage attack (less than normal in exchange for range).
2) Pistol whip: medium single-target melee attack.
3) Kick attack: heavy single target melee attack.
4) Twin shot: 40' ranged single target attack.
5) Build-Up: name says it all.
6) Warning shot: Taunt; you fire the gun at your target to get their attention.
7) Spinning shots: Your PBAoE; gun-fu spin and shoot with a 10' range.
8) Headshot: single target extreme damage with a 10' range.
9) Hail of Gunfire: Ranged cone attack.

You start out very single-target oriented as a price for range, but then pick up your AoE's in the late game to let you lay down hails of fire. Range is relatively short compared to a ranged AT (you get two attacks with a 40' range, one with 15-20', and the rest normal melee range), but still enough to actually feel like a semi-ranged set.

As to an actual AT I'd like to see would be a melee support class. My thinking is that they'd get a buff set like normal, while their other set was a combo damage/armor set that provides them with just enough defenses to make up for their being inside the "killball" (though not likely to be pulling nearly the aggro of the tanks and other melee AT's).

I'd think something like the following (with variations from set to set) would be a good mix...

1) Light melee damage attack
2) Medium melee damage attack
3) Common damage mitigation (S/L/set specific damage types)
4) Heavy melee damage attack
5) Mez protection (4-6 points worth)
6) Exotic damage mitigation (the rest of the main damage types)
7) Melee Cone attack
8) PBAoE attack.
9) Set specific attack power.

Actually, I know that at least one dev's wishlist is to revamp the power pools. I think a ranged attack power pool would be a great idea, and if they allow customization at the same time then a gun power pool would work great. There's plenty of power pools that have melee attacks in them.

I'd be happy just for an awesome Dual Pistols Epic Pool for the melee ATs. Yes, I'd want 5 powers ffrom Dual Pistols put into it, but so what! Take Hail of Bullets, lower it's range to 10-20ft, get rid of the +Def part of it, and put it at a 4minute recharge! I'd still take it, slot it and use it!

I know you said you don't like Corruptors, is it mainly because of their squishiness? If so, I recommend you look at a Dual Pistols/Sonic Resonance Corruptor. With Tough, Sonic Dispersion, and a patron shield, you can reach up to 68% resistance to Smashing/Lethal and for example, an electric shield, up to 50% energy resistance. Add Weave, Maneuvers, Hover or Combat Jumping, and Stealth and you can get up to 16.5% or so defense in combat without looking at any IO set. If you want to, you can invest minimally as many of the sets that go up to level 50 have HP bonuses in the third slot bonus. Not to mention, Sonic Dispersion protects you, the caster, from holds, stuns, and immobilization. You are still weak to sleeps, but since sleeps break when you take damage, it won't matter in solo play. Now that does mean running 6 toggles, but as a meleer, I'm sure you're used to it. It's no Scrapper, due to the lower HPs, but I do believe most Scrappers don't get S/L resists that high themselves.

If you go Defender, you can get up to 20% defense and your resists will cap out at 75% which you can reach yourself with the three aforementioned powers at the cost of getting your attacks later and suffering a noticeable damage loss when you team up with at least 3 players or more.

Some of my characters

I don't like Corruptors and Defenders because of their general design. Yes, if I take every pool power in the game, I'm sure a select few builds are very powerful, but I don't like playing ATs where a majority of powersets just don't work for my needs. I can make a Scrapper and pick his primary and secondary powersets at complete random, take not a single pool power aside from Combat Jumping and Super Jump, and still feel like the ultimate badass. That's more or less what I did with my Titan/Inv Brute that I'm playing right now, and she's awesome. Maybe a bit too awesome, but that's Titan Weapons for you.

Corruptors and Defenders have far too many powers I can't use on myself, and that bugs me. I'm sure "support" has its place in the grand scheme of things on a more global level that my self-centred view of the world permits me to see, but I don't want to be the one to play them. It bugs me to the point where taking the ally-only rez powers on my Masterminds is usually last on the list, if I pick them at all. I just don't want to play characters designed to be fragile and/or specialise in support. Sure, some support sets work better without team-mates than others, but that's an exception. If I'll play an AT with a support set, I'd rather play a Mastermind.

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.

I'm sorry if I'm bumping my own thread, but I just realised what one of my original inspirations in City of Heroes was, and it just happens to be a non-squishy NPC with a big gun.

I'm talking about the Crey Eliminators. You know the ones. They're the Crey power armour soldiers who have cyan armour, a big backpack and a minigun. This is something I've wanted to have for years and years now, but the game simply doesn't permit it, because the powersets necessary to depict power armour and the powersets necessary to depict a minigun just don't occur in the same AT. Hence, my original thread.

But this gets me to thinking - the slow-moving power armour "heavy" is not a recent concept, nor a rare one. The original power armour minigun guy that inspired me when I was a kid are, of course, the Brotherhood of Steel soldiers. Thinking about it now, the Brotherhood soldiers from the original Fallout bear a probably not-coincidental resemblance to the Crey Eliminators I mentioned above. I think before even that were the trenchcoat-wearing, minigun-packing enforcers. More recently, there has been the Heavy from Team Fortress, and though he's not actually armoured, he's still damn tough to kill.

Time and again, the concept for the character with a big gun and big armour shows up, and it usually seems to be limited by its mobility, being heavy and all. And yet I've never been able to make that here. I mean, I can make a big Blaster, but I can never play that like I would a heavy - opening fire walking forward and breaking the enemy lines.

And that's just one thing I'd like to make

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.

My Dual Pistols / Dark Miasma Corruptor is anything but squishy. Between Darkest Night, Howling Twilight, Shadow Fall, Fearsome Stare, Fluffy, and soft-capped smashing / lethal defense from Scorpion Shield and IO set bonuses, she's nigh untouchable. I realize this isn't quite what you're looking for, but it's about as close as you're going to get in game. Dark Miasma is a very powerful, and more importantly for this conversation, very safe secondary. The only issue is with mezzing, but you can get around that with Break Frees, and eventually Clarion Core Destiny.

Meh, APP, I'd say just make a Power Pool instead of making it an epic.

Assault Training:
Pistols/Dual Wield (DP)
Suppressive Fire (DP)
Hand/Stun? Grenade (invention craft)
Empty Clips (DP)

get a little bit of AoE, a little bit of CC and a range attack.

Minigun sounds like a lol powerset. Why don't Arachnos Soldiers get miniguns instead of crabpacks

I'm not sure pools would work very well because AT balance would likely force them to be weak. If you make these things into Epics, you have greater control over what each AT gets because it doesn't have to comply with the balance of any other AT but the one which gets it.

That said, pools/epics are just one way to go about this. It's entirely possible to go a different route. Perhaps by creating a new AT entirely. Speaking of which, I have a new idea about that:

I spent so long talking about Crey Eliminators and the "slow-walking minigun power armour guy" that I have to wonder if that's not a possible AT gimmick we can use. So, here's an AT that has an Assault primary, a proper defence secondary, but has the following gimmick:

To ever use its ranged attacks, this character has to be in Firing Mode, which slows the character down to Walk speed. Said character can still melee if enemies are in range, but if he wants to fire his minigun or rifle or what have you, he has to slow down and walk and fire. Essentially, the Team Fortress Heavy, come to think of it.

I'm sure this is broken or probably underpowered, but I also think it has the potential to at least be a meaningful thought experiment.

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.