Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: in the City of Heroes paradigm, Scrappers and Brutes are already tank-mages by almost any other MMO's criteria. Nothing in the standard game's portfolio of difficulty can kill them, and conversely nothing in the standard game's portfolio of targets can survive them. That's everything a tank-mage is supposed to be able to do except do it from range. And in City of Heroes that's irrelevant because its not hard to get within range. That's why most of the map-farming builds are melee: because getting into melee range is not a penalty for killing everything in sight.

The problem is CoH is not that the game can't survive tank-mages, its that they can't survive having a better tank-mage. If blasters had scrapper survivability, that would make scrappers redundant. Again, on paper scrappers can't make blasters redundant no matter how much survivability and damage they have, because they cannot do it from range.

The problem is that in City of Heroes, range has no bearing on performance. Its only a playstyle variation. In fact, its not quite meaningless, but within this context of comparing damage dealers it might as well be weapon customization.

20 feet, but it was indeed used more by blappers than anything else.


Back around I1ish, I think I once described Blasters as the game's worst Regen Scrappers.


I think its a real danger that with enough defense or mitigation Blasters could become overpowered, but the question is overpowered compared to what?

A scrapper standing in the middle of a lot of critters and killing them while not being threatened in return is not considered game-breaking. A controller standing far away from a lot of critters and holding them while pets kill them is not considered game-breaking. A defender standing far away from a lot of critters and debuffing their ability to fight back while they kill them from range is not considered game-breaking.

A blaster standing far away from a lot of critters and just plain killing them while not being threatened in return *is* considered game-breaking. I'm not saying there isn't a potential problem there, but what the fear does is prevent people from asking the important questions. *Why* is that game-breaking, or what is it specifically about that situation we need to defuse.

I had a suggestion to attempt to do an end-around this problem that I bounced off of Synapse before the devs went on holiday, and he offered to think about it, but I don't want to discuss it too much before the devs begin looking at Tankers as they've indicated they would. Its not my intent to derail that review, but rather set the foundation for the devs taking a look at Blasters next, within the context of what tools Blasters should have in the modern context of everything doing nominally high damage, everything having access to significant personal damage mitigation, and specifically Dominators, Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers *all* being explicitly classified as designed damage dealers.

Of course blasters also have the most attacks without penalties to them as well. They have the most attacks.

Create two powersets of 8 attacks (plus aim, build up) where none are situational. What's the point of that? How many non-situational attacks does a character need? (Of course there are no "non situational" attacks, but you seem to think there are.)

The problem with blasters is not snipes and crashing nukes, it is that their powersets do not synergize (combining ranged damage with melee damage is just silly) and they have too many attacks to be useful. I play corr's and dominators. I see no point in playing a blaster.

The solution to blasters is to mix in weak forms of control and buff/debuff. Of course ice blast has 2 holds, psi has a sleep. Blasters have controls and buffs/debuffs, just not many or not very powerful.

I'm not talking about attacks specifically. I mean powers with penalties of any kind. Cloaking Device's stealth and defence suppress. Cloak of Darkness' stealth and defence do not. Blasters are the only AT specifically designed without any real form of status protection or enemy control that's still given toggles which drop when held, making these toggles a pain and a half to use.

Blasters, by and large, are the ones who pay by far the most for the powers they get, and the real sore spot is that what they get fails to blow me away. And I'm not just saying that from the outside looking in. I spent something like four years of my life trying to find some way to work with Blasters on a comparable level to my other characters and utterly failed.

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.

This is a point I've been trying to make since 2004, which is when my Blaster first met enemies with consistently deadly ranged attacks, namely Nemesis Troops, Crey Security and high-level 5th Column troops, as well as enemies with strong control capabilities like Rikti Mentalists. For a long time, I actually tried to buy into it, making all my Blasters into fliers and keeping out of range with Hover... Only to die to Nemesis Grenades or Spectral Demon slaps because the things fly, or to be knocked out of the air by a Yellow Ink Man.

People talk about kiting and how you can avoid taking damage if you jump around like the Rooftop Raider used to once upon a time, but the more I think about it and the more I try it, the more it seems like just plain old herding enemies around you and AoE-ing them to death is safer and more productive. And you're right - Blaster range is seen as such a huge asset that they end up paying through the nose for it, and I don't it does as much for them as they suffer for having it.

This is something that I think we are thankfully past as a community. That's what amazes me about the forums these days - both the developers and the players are open to new ideas on a very broad scale. They may not always be good ideas... Or even always rational, but there always seems to be room to explore WHY these ideas are good or bad and if they really have much of a place in the game. There was a time when just so much as mentioning "range" and "defence" in the same sentence caused people to instinctively point their fingers and yell "TANK-MAGE!!!" but these times seem to have passed.

If you get the development team to re-examine Blasters, then that can only be a good thing. The AT has some serious issues. Personally, for the time being, I'll contend with re-examining powers with severe penalties and drawbacks and trying to figure out if these really still have a purpose that needs to be fulfilled. In some cases, I could see that. As you mentioned, "god mode" powers are designed to give you time to finish your fight, in return for the gamble that if you couldn't finish the fight in that time, you will either need to leave or die. A penalty at the end makes sense there.

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My real beef, though, is with powers which I can tell were intended to be awesome, but were balanced such that the game would slap us across the hands every time we went to use it. It's like the developers put in these awesome powers just to taunt us with, but didn't actually ever want us to use them but once in a blue moon. Ugh!

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.

Good question. At 80 feet, my energy/energy blaster has exactly three: Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Explosive Blast (which is an AoE). Is three the appropriate number for a blaster at range?

Just as an aside, this is one of the reasons that my Ice/Energy Blaster is my only level 50 Blaster. It still has many of the problems that other Blasters has, but she has non-insignificant control, decent range (BiB + Centrioles + Boost Range) means that I don't have to ever get up close and personal.

I do have Bone Smasher for times when the critters want to get fresh.

I have immob'd all those NPCs listed, as ArchVillain classes, using the web envelope power from patron pools. I am pretty sure that has a MUCH longer rech than dev/webnade.

As another suggestion..someone mentioned giving snipes the upcoming AS treatment. I can see this working well. Sets like elec could really benefit from a 3rd ST blast. Also, I HATE that to actually get max damage from a snipe, as make sure it drops the minions/lts, you have to use Aim/Bu before hand (unless its AR, then you just get robbed), which, combined with the 3ish second activation time, means you end up 'wasting' a lot of your damage buff. Especially if you use snipe at range, then have to move closer to use additional attacks.

How about increasing the damage on snipes, when they are used AS snipes? Maybe a almost certain kill on a +1 Lt. But change the powers somehow so they do NOT get effected by aim/bu. Think about it..if you are taking the time to snipe something..how can you 'aim' even more? The aiming goes hand in hand with such a power. Combined with the ideas about having snipes function like 'AS Mk Whatever it is' If you have aim/bu active, you can NOT use the long, max damage snipe. If you do, it reverts to teh quicker, moderate damage, not interrupt snipe.

Due to a quirk of scaling, elite bosses actually have higher status protection than Archvillains outside of the POTD. Normally, that makes up because the POTD offers very high status resistance, but because it doesn't cover immobilization, AVs are actually easier to immobilize than EBs.

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.

No it isn't. If a spawn is only lasting 12 seconds you are already doing much better than average and if anything should be arguing for a nerf to the set than a buff. The only reason more people are not running traps is that they cannot wrap their head around not having to set up a death zone. In the fast paced team aspect of toe trapping before the team catches up, traps are op'd. I can't imagine running at a setting that a spawn takes 12 seconds. I would be bored out of my skull.


Because with two out and slotted, the regen is not that far off of a regen scrapper. A single power in an offensive set is not meant to replace a power in a buff set like empathy.

Also, with the amount of survivability the set provides, triage beacon is superfluous in most situations. It is great to provide a safe zone for the squishier blasters, trollers and scrappers though. That is why I take it at least.

I am not arguing against Sams point. All powers are situational, at least they should be in order to give a little flavour to the set. If my answer to every single situation is x, why bother taking anything else. Kind of like Stone tanks. Granite is just too good that most people are happy to recommend dropping all the other armours in the set once you have granite slotted. That is definitely not how the devs imagined the players would use the set. Once we get our hands on something, I imagine we often make the devs spines crawl with what we manage to make a set do.

There isn't much else in the set I would be willing to give up. Maybe triage beacon. Although I will admit, especially with the option of incarnate powers, trip mine has lost a little of its shine.

Everyone is different. I rarely take blast tier 9's for example because the drawbacks are too much to balance the awesomeness.

In the end, this thread isn't about changing traps specifically. Half the set definitely doesn't need buffs, it is already uber. That said, if the devs are willing to buff it, I will still be willing to play the set. But if more people start playing it, don't be shocked if it gets re-adjusted.

Devices just gets no respect.

I can only assume there is something about this particular issue that gets to you. Normally you are good at reason and facts and making a solid case. But here you are declaring that 80 feet qualifies as "at range". I can only assume you came up with that number to minimize the number of "ranged" powers. Why not select 120 feet and declare that you have no ranged powers?

Additionally, how many of your powers are slotted for range? Blasters do lousy damage - unless they put in damage enhancements. Complaining that your range is too short if you have no range enhancements is simply silly.

I'm not saying blasters are not lame - they are. I don't play them. You cannot balance a character on just damage with no mitigation - of course blasters do have mitigation, just not as much as others (and not fire). The real solution for blasters is to dramatically boost the side effects on their powers but have very short duration. So blasters are safe as long as they are hitting everyone rapidly - a very active defense.

But I am saying you are better than what you are presenting here. Random comments and snippy replies are fine for me and most other posters - but you are Arcanaville.

that's because it is lame

but really only needs 2 changes:

Targetting Drone should be the Follow Up to the other blaster's Build Up. Give a constant bonus to accuracy and damage. They've done it for scrappers, it just makes sense for blasters to have a version.

Cloaking Device should have significantly more defense. Make devices the sustained fight version of blaster and give them more defense.

You must tell me where you are getting these extra slots for slotting range.

Even with a boat load of global accuracy I still want one accuracy in there, so five slots left for recharge and damage, each of which need at least 2 and want 3.

If I frankenslot triples and quads I might have a slot left but generally I frankenslot to get everything evenly slotted at the edge of the red ED band so those slots go to underslotted powers, not to range.

To be precise, only three non-situational (as you put it) Energy Blast attacks have a range higher than 40 feet: Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Explosive Blast. The other two powers with range above 40 feet are Sniper Blast and Power Push. One is a situational attack that is interruptible, and the other is more of a soft control than a legitimate attack.

Energy Torrent has a range of 40 feet, as does Power Burst.

If one of the offensive advantages of Blasters is that they have plenty of attacks, and another one is that they have range, the problem is that those two don't overlap much. They only have a lot of attacks in melee range, and only a moderate amount of attacks outside of melee range and often only a few attacks outside of 40 feet.


There's an enormous difference between saying Blasters have range as an advantage, and Blasters have the ability to slot for range as an advantage. Range is already competing with accuracy, damage, recharge, and endurance slotting in attacks.

The problem is not just a trivial matter of not having as much range as I would like. The problem is two-fold. First leveraging range isn't binary: the more you have the more advantage you get: being at longer range reduces the amount of attacks the critters have that are also in range (sometimes) and increases the amount of time it takes for them to close to melee range. 40 feet is very low tactically speaking. Second because Blasters have attacks with different ranges, the advantage of having long range is diluted by the fact that being at those ranges is in effect a damage debuff: you're eliminating the possibility of having your own attacks usable.

Perversely, having incompatible ranges can actually kill you, or threaten you worse than if you didn't have it at all. The devs give a lot of critters attacks that have more than 80 feet of range, so that Blasters can't kite them (I guess unless they slot for range, which reduces their damage and thus does the devs dirty work regardless). So if you snipe a critter from sniper range, the rest of the spawn sometimes runs towards you until *they* are in range and then start shooting. At that point *you* might not be in range. It would have been better to move all the way to being in range of *your own* non-situational attacks and *then* snipe, because the advantage of the snipe is primarily the burst damage, not the range. Except for certain kinds of pulling, the actual range of sniper blast above 80 feet is really an on-paper advantage only: it has no value in conventional combat.


Which is why you think I'm being snippy, when in fact just about every blaster reading what I said understood what I said as a simple fact of life and not a quip. The "80 feet" issue is an obvious long-standing one to people who play blasters: it isn't a special thing about 80 feet of distance, its a set of problems that surround the fact that although Blaster standard attacks have 80 feet of range, there aren't actually that many of those attacks.

Here's the entire breakdown of Energy Blast:

Power Bolt: standard attack, 80 feet range
Power Blast: standard attack, 80 feet range
Power Burst: short range attack, 40 feet range
Energy Torrent: Cone, 40 feet range
Sniper Blast: interruptible sniper attack, 150 feet range
Explosive Blast: targeted AoE, 80 feet range
Power Push: ranged knockback, 70 feet range
Aim: Self buff
Nova: crashing PBAoE.

Standard attack usable outside 40 feet
Situational attack or attack restricted to 40 feet or less
Non-attacks

So even if I count explosive blast as a "standard attack" I only have three with the same standard range. To get access to more attacks I have to close from 80 feet all the way down to 40 feet, and that still only nets me five. To get more I have to be in actual melee range.

So the direct answer to your question "How many non-situational attacks does a character need?" the answer for blasters is "more than they tend to have at meaningful ranges."


Not quite: the meta problem is that blasters don't all have consistent and meaningful side effects that would benefit from such a treatment directly. But that drifts into areas I'm trying not to discuss too much before the devs get to tankers.

It actually used to give much better defense. Then with the GDN they not only nerfed its defensive value but took what was left and made half of it suppress when in combat (because /devices is not a defensive set). Waaay back in the day I believe I had something like mid-high 20% defense with CD and hover toggled on (might have been higher than that, it's been a while).

See, this actually kind of bugs me. Not what you said there, but the whole idea of slotting for range. I'd love to slot for range (I used to have all my ranged attacks 6 slotted with damage/range HOs ... it was glorious), but if I want to really utilize the IO system I can't because the IOs don't enhance it.

Far Strike and Salvo are the only two single-target ranged IO sets with any range enhancement to them at all. They're level 10-25 sets and I could get 12% range enhancement from Far Strike and 8.4% out of Salvo. The ranged AoE sets are much better as both of the affordable high-end IO sets have range enhancement to them and detonation actually does a pretty good job of enhancing range (almost 29% as a level 50 set almost 1.5 range SOs). They just don't really give you the option of slotting for range on your single target attacks in the IO system. I know, I know, frankenslot, but you can't really do that and slot thunderstrikes for much defense, so that knocks out one of the big (current) draws of the IO system.

Oddly enough though, sniper attack IOs have range in them ... because sniper attacks really need that longer range in there.

To this day, my old blaster still has 3x Nucleolus Exposures and 3x Centriole Exposures, all at 50++. I only wish they were all level 53.

For a time, I did play with those sniper IO sets, but none of them ever impressed me. I haven't done anything with my blaster with regards to the Incarnate system yet, save for unlocking the Alpha slot almost a year ago. My intention though is to boost damage as much as possible: I really want to be able to 1-shot even con minions again! Haha.

In spite of my little rant about range and IOs, I have a high-recharge build on my blaster that 5 slots a lot of attacks and has a dam/range HO in that 6th slot (I just wish I didn't HAVE to do it like that ... why can't some high-level IOs enhance range too?). I have my snipe solely to 5 slot sting of the manticore for 7.5% recharge. I don't ever really use the thing since I don't have build up and can't use it to one-shot many non-minions reliably and in normal combat I can out-dps it using my normal attacks. But hey, 7.5% recharge.

This is almost word-for-word one of the arguments I've always had about Snipes having range as one of their perks. They don't. They have range, but it's not a perks. At best it's wasted, at worst it's counter-productive and in only very rare, very specific situations where you're forced to take the slowest, most unwieldy route does it actually help, and even then not by that much.

Sniping at full range is pointless unless all you wanted to do was snipe once and then leave. If you actually want to defeat a spawn, you need to attack more than once, and the only attack with Snipe range that you have is your Snipe (and possibly Long Range Missile Rocket, occasionally). If you want to use your other powers, you need to move closer, and while you're moving closer, your enemies are already in range to attack YOU, potentially stun or hold you at this long range and keep you out of range of your Defiance attacks but within range of their attacks.

The only other thing to do is to move in close so you're within range of your other attacks, which is what I used to do before sniping when I still played Blasters. I'd snipe, queue up Aim and Build Up and use their activation time to approach to within 40 feet, then continue on with Blaze and Fire Blast, then usually Fireball and Fire Breath if I'm not dead or held yet. But here's the thing - that makes range pointless. So pointless, in fact, that I'd often forego Blazing Bolt entirely and move in directly for Blaze, because under 40 feet is where the bulk of my damage was.

If I had to answer "How many attacks do Blasters have?" I'd say they have far more than they ever really get to use. And that's the big joke on them - Blasters have amazing potential for damage - more than any other AT, I still insist. But they don't ever get to realise that. A Fire/Fire Blaster using Combustion, Fire Sword Circle, Fireball, Fire Breath and Burn is HIDEOUSLY impressive. Or would be, if mine had ever been able to get farther than step three regardless of the order of attacks.

Blasters have more attacks than they need, because what they need isn't more attacks.

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's a pleasant experience? That better have been a damn good book

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 specifically responding to dugfromtheearth here, I'm actually responding to Sam, but in a roundabout way which will become obvious. Technically speaking, this isn't a true statement because its ill-defined: what does it mean to be "balanced."

A thing can't be balanced: balance involves at least two things. You balance A against B, you don't "balance A." When we say a character or a powerset combination is balanced, we usually mean "against the PvE content" by default.

But what does *that* mean? I think too many people assume that "balance" means "a balanced fight." I win, but it wasn't too easy. But that's not actually the most important thing in MMOs. The most important thing in MMOs is actually reward earning rate. We assume that the best way to regulate that is to regulate combat difficulty: "harder" things generate more rewards, "easier" things generate less rewards.

But "harder" and "easier" don't actually mean much if you always succeed, and most players fight fights in which they almost always succeed. And the secondary balancing factors that would kick in within other games don't work as well here: cooldown, recharge, endurance (or other power meter). We don't have resources that we run out of that we can't get back trivially quickly in broad terms.

What's really important isn't how much rewards something gives, but how long it takes to get it, because its all about reward *rate*. That last word seems to get forgotten a lot. Question: how much rewards per unit time would it be fair to get at *zero* risk?

I'll bet a lot of people think the correct answer is "none." I'll bet the devs think that also. But that's not true. In a sense, the game is designed around a certain reward earning rate. Anything lower than that rate is actually a penalty of sorts. That's what debt does: debt penalizes the player by slowing them down. In effect, any activity that earns rewards slower than some base rate is in effect a form of debt penalty.

Now lets look at a blaster sniping a long-range target. As Sam points out, that's pointless in a sense because once you fire that one shot, you can't do anything anymore until snipe recharges (and its recharge is long) *and* meanwhile the other critters will start to close towards you and start shooting when they enter their range, which might be longer than your range outside of snipe. But what about hover sniping, as mentioned above? That eliminates the problem of the critters closing into range. But it retains the downside of being a very slow way to kill. Is that problematic?

The devs seemed to think so in the general case: they actually took steps to prevent hover blasting *except* for that one case of extreme range hover sniping. The question, though, is was it actually problematic? As we've seen, in general most of the offense that blasters have requires being within 40 feet of the target or less. Beyond that range, blasters have a lot less attacks, and thus a lot less offense. They kill slower outside of 40 feet than within it, in other words.

Technically, you could use that fact to balance an archetype with no (or little) mitigation by default. We could make it so that blasters had one kill speed at long range and a faster one at short range. At long range they would be relatively safe, but at shorter range they would be in greater jeopardy. In effect, range would be their mitigation, but it would also be a damage debuff. And that's theoretically a valid method of balancing blasters, at least in theory.

Which gets to the question of do blasters really have too many attacks or alternatively not enough useable ones? Right now, yes. But that very problem could be leveraged in theory to create a better balancing model for blasters. Draw three circles around a blaster: point blank, 40 feet, and 80 feet. Now, instead of "balancing blasters" we instead balance blaster offense and vulnerability at each of those three ranges, and couple that with balancing the combined damage and vulnerability against the PvE content.

That might be too much work, but it would at least work, in theory. Also, I wish I could point to my Make Range Mean Something thread, but its long gone.

If blasters were designed to have intrinsically appropriate offense and mitigation at different ranges, then by definition they would always be correctly balanced against the PvE content regardless of what range you were forced to fight at. Being forced to fight at close range would eliminate a tactical option, but the remaining options would have been explicitly designed to be better balanced against the content than they likely currently are.

In other words, in a system like I'm describing, you'd be paid for your trouble of being forced to fight at close range. Balancing around ranges doesn't mean there's a preferred range. It means all of them work for all blasters.