Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept
It's also worth noting that the purple triangles do not cover Immobilize, so you should be able to immob anyone short of a Giant Monster provided you keep up a steady stream of webnades.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
I don't see how /Devices tripmine is any different from Fire Sword Circle or Psychic Shockwave and deserves to get an interrupt time. Sure, it does twice as much damage, but it does so from a crappy set that lacks build-up and melee attacks. /Traps tripmine, I'm not sure, but I don't think it'd be all that overpowered if it lost its interrupt time and you could place it midfight.
Timebomb is so horrible that I really don't see a solution for it outside of scrapping it - 24 seconds between pressing its button and detonation? What the hell were they smoking ^_^
As for sniper attacks, I don't use them. Waste of a power, and worse, waste of a power in a set that would probably be alot stronger without it. Really, how much better would Electric/ be if it had a tier 3 ST attack instead of a snipe? How much better would Psychic/ be with another AoE instead of a snipe? Does Ice/ suck because it has two holds instead of a snipe?
Finally, Rest with a shorter cooldown? Sam, how I wish you worked for Paragon Studios...
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Yeah. There aren't that many powers that are just good without slotting. Without slots, Web Grenade is too slow, too expensive, and too inaccurate. With 5 slots (I have Enfeebled Operation in there), Web Grenade recharges in less than 2 seconds, the immob lasts ~30 seconds, and the end cost is low enough that I could throw all day and never drain my end. It takes a little bit to ramp up, but you can pretty easily maintain high mag immob while weaving in other Traps powers.
It's also worth noting that the purple triangles do not cover Immobilize, so you should be able to immob anyone short of a Giant Monster provided you keep up a steady stream of webnades. |
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.
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Snipes is atricky one, the idea is that it's essentially a "alpha only" power that can easily remove a single enemy from the fight before it even starts.
The problem is that a lot of attacks can effectively do that, and it's not even THAT strong. That said it's very useful when soloing, since you can kill that sapper or ink man or whatever before they get a chance to do anything. What I'd do would be to simply buff the damage significantly, BU+AIM+Snipe should one-shot bosses for blasters and LT's for defenders. |
Blasters should not get a power that replaces the whole point of stalkers, just so that one extra power is more useful to them.
So what nerfs to the set are you proposing to balance the buffs to the powerset?
Here's something else, on the subject of "quality of life:"
We're all aware of powers that you can only use while on the ground, right? Foot Stomp, Fault, Arc of Destruction and, yes, Trip Mine. Do you know that of all of these powers, Trip Mine is the only one you actually CAN use while flying? If you're near the ground and try to activate the power, your character will land, kneel down, set the mine, then float back up. This is actually true for all "set-down"powers in Traps, including Poison Gas Trap, Acid Mortar and Triage Beacon, and I imagine Time Bomb though I've never tried it.
So here's my question - can anyone think of downsides to making ALL "ground-only" powers usable while flying if you're near the ground in the same way Trip Mine is?
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.
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Except that is what stalkers do, and they need Hide to do it.
Blasters should not get a power that replaces the whole point of stalkers, just so that one extra power is more useful to them. So what nerfs to the set are you proposing to balance the buffs to the powerset? |
It would not be problematic at all for Blasters to do more damage than all the melees in my opinion.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
Except that is what stalkers do, and they need Hide to do it.
Blasters should not get a power that replaces the whole point of stalkers, just so that one extra power is more useful to them. |
Blasters are really only explicitly designed to do one thing: damage. That's it. Everything else is incidental to their design. So tell me: which archetype's damage has been restrained to make absolutely certain they don't infringe on blasters? Scrappers have consistently had a higher damage modifier, the same damage cap, and even with the recent increase in Blaster ranged modifier Scrappers still trump that with criticals, and still have higher melee modifiers. Even *dominators* have a higher melee modifier than Blasters.
Conversely, look at the long list of things Blasters have to avoid: they have to avoid doing too much burst damage and infringing on Stalkers; they can't have personal defenses which would infringe on the melee archetypes; they can have significant control; they can't have ally buffing; they can't have too much foe debuffing.
Some archetypes have the problem of too much overlap: Defenders and Controllers on buff/debuff, or Defenders and Corruptors just plain everywhere. But Blasters *uniquely* have the problem of being fenced in on all sides. They can't have *anything* except damage.
And the best part is, they can't have too much of that either.
So once Stalkers are looked at, and Tankers are looked at, after Dominators were looked at and Kheldians were looked at, after everything else has the damage players believe *everything* should have in the "current game" and after every game mechanic from mez to AoE effects to damage buffs to ally buffs are doled out to "fix" the other archetypes, what are the devs going to be able to do with Blasters?
Nothing. They will be painted into a corner with no options left that other archetypes haven't already laid claim to.
The honest truth is that blasters are the designated killer of things that don't matter, provided its not too many of them, and they take a lot of damage while they are doing it. And preferably, they should die periodically to prove they aren't too defensively strong while they are killing those things that don't matter.
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I've got two /traps to 50 and deleted 'em both because ultimately they are dogpile. They are totally gimped in teams and not up to much solo
That said, my main is an all-Elec blaster and how I manged to keep Scarlet going all these years I really don't know.
I take the point Sam's making but I think that the entire AT pool needs a serious look at and maybe that's best left to CoHII
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Thelonious Monk
Some archetypes have the problem of too much overlap: Defenders and Controllers on buff/debuff, or Defenders and Corruptors just plain everywhere. But Blasters *uniquely* have the problem of being fenced in on all sides. They can't have *anything* except damage. And the best part is, they can't have too much of that either.
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![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
And while that's the heart of the problem of what Blasters in general are most at fault for, you have to admit that that's not really the whole story, or even most of the story. Blaster design is a mire of unknowns, but it's also plagued by a series of problem power design decisions which contribute to the problem and which would likely survive any AT-wide design.
Blasters are an AT cursed to be "hard mode" in return for performance which fails to impress, that much is true, but on top of being hard mode, they're also cursed with powers they plain can't use, and that aren't all that amazing even when they're used. Blasters are an AT which simply got crowded out of the game and now exists in a limbo, and the tools it is given to try and carve some place for itself are flawed at best.
Think about it realistically - of all the ATs out there, which is the one which has the most attacks which come with penalties to them? Blasters. Their nukes have hideous crashes, their Snipes are "situational" and one whole secondary is full of powers that are either useless or cumbersome. No other AT has to suffer as many indignities as that. Scrappers and Brutes have crashing T9 powers, sometimes, but that's about it. Rage kind of crashes... Sort of, but it's not that bad, and that's about it. Stalkers are right now cursed with a "melee snipe," but it's stronger and faster than Blaster snipes... And it's getting fixed. OK, I suppose Defenders and Corruptors are somewhat in the same situation, but at least their AT isn't full of holes.
To my eyes, though, the concept of cumbersome powers with drawbacks and penalties needs to be re-examined separately from the larger problem of Blaster balance, partly because it affects more than just Blasters and partly because Blaster changes likely won't focus around it.
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.
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Thank you, Arcana! That's very well said. It's both painfully true and damn entertaining
![]() And while that's the heart of the problem of what Blasters in general are most at fault for, you have to admit that that's not really the whole story, or even most of the story. Blaster design is a mire of unknowns, but it's also plagued by a series of problem power design decisions which contribute to the problem and which would likely survive any AT-wide design. Blasters are an AT cursed to be "hard mode" in return for performance which fails to impress, that much is true, but on top of being hard mode, they're also cursed with powers they plain can't use, and that aren't all that amazing even when they're used. Blasters are an AT which simply got crowded out of the game and now exists in a limbo, and the tools it is given to try and carve some place for itself are flawed at best. Think about it realistically - of all the ATs out there, which is the one which has the most attacks which come with penalties to them? Blasters. Their nukes have hideous crashes, their Snipes are "situational" and one whole secondary is full of powers that are either useless or cumbersome. No other AT has to suffer as many indignities as that. Scrappers and Brutes have crashing T9 powers, sometimes, but that's about it. Rage kind of crashes... Sort of, but it's not that bad, and that's about it. Stalkers are right now cursed with a "melee snipe," but it's stronger and faster than Blaster snipes... And it's getting fixed. OK, I suppose Defenders and Corruptors are somewhat in the same situation, but at least their AT isn't full of holes. To my eyes, though, the concept of cumbersome powers with drawbacks and penalties needs to be re-examined separately from the larger problem of Blaster balance, partly because it affects more than just Blasters and partly because Blaster changes likely won't focus around it. |
The problems with crashing nukes has already been aired, but I'll mention a related point. (Some) nukes crash and (some) tier 9 defense powers crash but the crash isn't the same for this simple reason. Question: what are you supposed to do after the power crashes? Simple question. In the case of Elude, it has a simple answer: we gave you three minutes of near invulnerability and unlimited endurance, when it runs out and crashes you're supposed to have killed everything already and be standing in a safe spot. If you're not, tough.
Nova? It goes boom and then crashes. If you haven't killed everything yet, you're supposed to - use insps or die I suppose, because Nova doesn't actually give you any time to do anything. Either it kills everything or it doesn't, and if it doesn't the explicit *intent* of the crash is to make you vulnerable to getting killed.
I mention this because it occurs to me that "use insps or die I suppose" is the most common tactical answer to most Blaster questions now that I think about it.
I think the real fear surrounding blasters is that they are Mages. And what I mean by that is that there is a legitimate but irrationally handled fear of Tank-Mages, and the mental picture of a tank-mage is a ranged attacker with high defense. So you need three components: range, high damage, high defense. Blasters actually have two out of three. On paper nothing else does. No matter how much damage we give Tankers, they won't be Tank-Mages because they won't have range. Brutes can be farming whole maps of critters without dying but that's not a tank-mage because the brute has to walk to the targets, rather than shooting them from a distance. Controllers don't even have a damage powerset: they only have control and buff. They are fortunate they at least have brawl. Stuff just magically dies all around them, but they can't be tank-mages because they don't have a damage set.
But Blasters? They are already 66% of the way to tank-magedom. If we're not careful one day they'll discover Combat Jumping and the world will end.
Ok that last part was hyperbolic. But I'm serious about the idea. City of Heroes revolves around melee damage, ranged damage, buff/debuff, control, and defense. Blasters have Ranged Damage and Melee Damage. All that's left is Control, Buff/Debuff, and Defense. Giving them Control makes them Controllers; can't do that. Giving them Buff/Debuff makes them Defenders; can't do that. Can't give them Defense, because that makes them tank-mages.
That's a bit oversimplified, but I believe there's more than a germ of truth to it. And that's not to say there aren't creative ways around the problem that could work, but that perception probably works strongly against Blasters and any suggestion to help Blasters.
And I think that's also why they are saddled with the funkiest powers in terms of usage and tradeoffs. Because they are the most dangerous archetype to balance, if my theory above is correct, and that means in all seriousness they have to be constantly put down by The Man, lest it achieve its full potential and go tank-magey on everyone.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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And I think that's also why they are saddled with the funkiest powers in terms of usage and tradeoffs. Because they are the most dangerous archetype to balance, if my theory above is correct, and that means in all seriousness they have to be constantly put down by The Man, lest it achieve its full potential and go tank-magey on everyone. |
In lieu of VEAT's, I'm inclined to believe that the overarching fear is the mental construct, rather than any given potential reality. In any case, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
For me, in games, the essence of fun is interesting choices. That means a couple of things in this context; balance and difference. A 9 second cast time is fine so long as the other aspcts of the power make it overall as useful as many other powers with the same cost. If not, the power needs buffed or additional uses. As a last resort you can make it more like other powers by reducing downsides.
This applies to archetypes as well. Is there room to buff blasters? What should happen when a solo blaster meets a +0 x1 spawn, and how should that differ from the scrapper experience?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Something I expressed to the devs recently is the fact that among the problems Blasters have is a harsh meta problem unique to them. While the devs have some concerns about one archetype stepping on the toes of another, that *doesn't* include blasters. Uniquely, Blasters are defined in terms of what they are not allowed to be but not given *any* protection against other archetypes stepping on them.
Blasters are really only explicitly designed to do one thing: damage. That's it. Everything else is incidental to their design. So tell me: which archetype's damage has been restrained to make absolutely certain they don't infringe on blasters? Scrappers have consistently had a higher damage modifier, the same damage cap, and even with the recent increase in Blaster ranged modifier Scrappers still trump that with criticals, and still have higher melee modifiers. Even *dominators* have a higher melee modifier than Blasters. Conversely, look at the long list of things Blasters have to avoid: they have to avoid doing too much burst damage and infringing on Stalkers; they can't have personal defenses which would infringe on the melee archetypes; they can have significant control; they can't have ally buffing; they can't have too much foe debuffing. Some archetypes have the problem of too much overlap: Defenders and Controllers on buff/debuff, or Defenders and Corruptors just plain everywhere. But Blasters *uniquely* have the problem of being fenced in on all sides. They can't have *anything* except damage. And the best part is, they can't have too much of that either. So once Stalkers are looked at, and Tankers are looked at, after Dominators were looked at and Kheldians were looked at, after everything else has the damage players believe *everything* should have in the "current game" and after every game mechanic from mez to AoE effects to damage buffs to ally buffs are doled out to "fix" the other archetypes, what are the devs going to be able to do with Blasters? Nothing. They will be painted into a corner with no options left that other archetypes haven't already laid claim to. The honest truth is that blasters are the designated killer of things that don't matter, provided its not too many of them, and they take a lot of damage while they are doing it. And preferably, they should die periodically to prove they aren't too defensively strong while they are killing those things that don't matter. |
Originally Posted by Megajoule
We're being invaded. Again. This time, instead of aliens, zombies, or eyeballs with teeth, it's the marching band.
Problem is, Blasters were designed when Mobs did not have ranged attaches (at least most of them). The all range = defense does not work anymore now. They need to seriously look at Blasters.
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What's the standard performance of a blaster, Elecric/Devices or Fire/Mental? I honestly don't know. Add to that a bunch of weird quality of life issues - Arcana suggested the 40ft range thing on Power Burst and Nova's crash, I'll add the 50ft range on Fire Ring and Webnade, plus the lack of damage in blaster mezzes like Tesla Cage and Taser - and you'll come to the conclusion that ALL blasters need help, but some do alot more than others.
It's not really an Archetype problem, me says, it's some of the old set designs that are slowing blasters down, and to a lesser extent, also corruptors and defenders. The devs already fixed Dark blast recently, maybe they'll fix the other primaries in time.
What's the standard performance of a blaster, Elecric/Devices or Fire/Mental? I honestly don't know.
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The real question is what the standard performance of a Blaster ought to be compared to the other archetypes; particularly Scrappers (and therefore Stalkers and Brutes).
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
I think this dev team is sufficiently distant from the original one that they are more amenable to questioning and reevaluating past decisions. For example, why does power burst have shorter range than power bolt and power blast? What's the specific point to that? Its really a completely arbitrary decision that creates issues when it comes to actually using the powers in the current game - you can't chain powers with different ranges together without running into issues. I think this dev team is willing to ask questions like that and as time permits try to resolve them.
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![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
As for Power Burst, sometimes I chuckle to myself when I remember that power used to have a range of 10 feet. Yeah, the same as Titan Weapons' melee range right now. The same range as Head Splitter. That's what made me scratch my head when Jack Emmert insisted that range is a Blasters' defence. If it were, then why the hell did you make some of their most powerful attacks have to be fired either point-blank or from a range so short it may as well have been point blank? That's what I mean when I say powers that are supposed to be strong become weaker because of the "tradeoffs" they are given. And Blasters are the AT with the most "tradeoffs" of all.
Nova? It goes boom and then crashes. If you haven't killed everything yet, you're supposed to - use insps or die I suppose, because Nova doesn't actually give you any time to do anything. Either it kills everything or it doesn't, and if it doesn't the explicit *intent* of the crash is to make you vulnerable to getting killed.
I mention this because it occurs to me that "use insps or die I suppose" is the most common tactical answer to most Blaster questions now that I think about it. |
And the worst part of it, that seems to have been intentional. As you say, "use inspirations or die I suppose" is more or less what Blasters end up falling back on more often than not. They simply don't have the tools to do anything else, because their secondaries do not help them.
I think the real fear surrounding blasters is that they are Mages. And what I mean by that is that there is a legitimate but irrationally handled fear of Tank-Mages, and the mental picture of a tank-mage is a ranged attacker with high defense. So you need three components: range, high damage, high defense. Blasters actually have two out of three. On paper nothing else does. No matter how much damage we give Tankers, they won't be Tank-Mages because they won't have range. Brutes can be farming whole maps of critters without dying but that's not a tank-mage because the brute has to walk to the targets, rather than shooting them from a distance. Controllers don't even have a damage powerset: they only have control and buff. They are fortunate they at least have brawl. Stuff just magically dies all around them, but they can't be tank-mages because they don't have a damage set.
But Blasters? They are already 66% of the way to tank-magedom. If we're not careful one day they'll discover Combat Jumping and the world will end. |
Trip Mine is seen as a big problem if it were usable without the interrupt. But the thing is, even without it, it's still a slow power you place at your feet that doesn't even always trigger when things walk over it. And all of this when a Shield Scrapper can do almost as much damage with about the same radius, but nearly instantly and at a significant range and do so in the air. And what we have now is the WEAKER version of what this was when it was first introduced. Or, even simpler, Spring Attack from Leaping that's available to just about everybody, but which does more damage for Scrappers than for Blasters.
I realise that overpowered characters and powersets are a bad thing, but the fear of it in some cases is irrational and damaging to the subjects it's applied over.
And I think that's also why they are saddled with the funkiest powers in terms of usage and tradeoffs. Because they are the most dangerous archetype to balance, if my theory above is correct, and that means in all seriousness they have to be constantly put down by The Man, lest it achieve its full potential and go tank-magey on everyone.
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More than just idle contemplation, though, I do seriously question if this sort of approach to power design is even merited at this point. I know it's not something I should be saying, but at this point, people are used to this game being convenient, and inconvenience is seen as a massive, massive tradeoff. Just look at Masterminds - they ARE tank-mages able to deliver massive damage at range, survive hideous punishment and wield support powers, yet you almost never hear anyone complain about them. Because so few people play them. And it's not because they're paid or because they're weak. Almost universally, it's because they're a pain in the *** to play, especially if you don't have the right binds. Henchman AI is kind of dumb, they draw a lot of aggro, henchmen keep falling off things, you spend a lot of time giving orders and it's just cumbersome overall.
Trying to counter numerically superior powers behind *** backwards limitations doesn't "balance" them. It just makes people not bother. Not all people, obviously, but I can say this for a fact - I have not seen a Devices Blaster in a very, very long time, my own notwithstanding.
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.
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Traps is a very good solo set, but it requires significant slot investment for it to be fully realized. On teams, Traps isn't hard to use, but I agree it is a challenge if you are trying to lay down a mine or two. Surprisingly, the reason why I shelved my AR/Traps for a AR/Sonic Resonance Corruptor was because I wanted to blast more, and keep up with fast moving teams (shield teammates, put anchor on teammate, occasionally sonic siphon hard target and then go to town).
Personally my trapper has no isssues running with fast teams, and honestly usually I am out infront.
My caveat is that I have a softcapped to all positions and types (exepting psi) Traps/Ice with Hasten (70%) + 130% global recharge and T4 Spiritual Alpha. I also have Force of Nature on top of all that, with no crash
(I don't really care for the SO arguements as I don't play the game on SOs.)
I love the power time bomb... Because its a wonderful auto skip power. No grief there!
I can toebomb with both PGT, and Tripmine at will.
I make other support types and even tanks redundant with the ability that traps has to gut the defensive and offensive capabilities of npcs.
What I love about traps is that to use it at its best it takes a bit of "Know how," just like Storm Summoning.
I submit that if you can't keep up with teams on your trapper, you re-roll and make a Dark Miasma, Time Manipulation, or Radiation toon, as I hear they are easier to play.
When something good happens to me, I can never enjoy it....
I am always too busy looking for the inevitable punchline...
BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE!
Just to add it again: I don't think anything is wrong with Traps, I love my DP/Traps incarnate. We're talking about out of combat powers here, like Time Bomb or Snipes. Plus you can't compare Traps to Devices. Traps is awesome.
Originally Posted by Megajoule
We're being invaded. Again. This time, instead of aliens, zombies, or eyeballs with teeth, it's the marching band.
Just to add it again: I don't think anything is wrong with Traps, I love my DP/Traps incarnate. We're talking about out of combat powers here, like Time Bomb or Snipes. Plus you can't compare Traps to Devices. Traps is awesome.
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Devices is balanced around blaster secondaries = it must suck or the world will end.
When something good happens to me, I can never enjoy it....
I am always too busy looking for the inevitable punchline...
BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE!
When something good happens to me, I can never enjoy it....
I am always too busy looking for the inevitable punchline...
BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE!