Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept

Not saying Blasters don't need looking over but I still wonder how much of this is "better at situation A, situation B never happens". An interesting comment was made a while back that difficulty in this game is measured by what gives melee trouble, even if other ATs have ways to marginalize the situation. Perfect example is Super Stunners. Particularly nasty in melee but if you stack controls they're a bunch of harmless kittens. Many complain about Croatoa witches or Longbow Eagles' runaway but that's a similar matter. While the specifics might need to be tweaked, I think these are needed. I mean, let's look at Brutes. As someone who's not a fan of them, I think it's actually great that Fury drains slower. However, some of the specifics in building Fury almost seem designed in a vacuum since there's simply not enough situations that slow down it's gain. Essentially, it was a change that was very good for the AT itself but questionable in the AT's strength compared to other ATs and the overall structure of the game.

My brain is also wondering if there's something small we're all missing that affects the situations we're seeing and could use key tweaks. I'm reminded of the time that the two of us opted not to turn in the Abandoned Sewer Trial, stayed exempted and duoed our way from the trial door to the Boomtown exit. I didn't die and pulled my weight yet elec/ Blasters are notoriously trash talked for being bad (requesting build and playstyle advice was usually replied with "reroll"). What made that situation, hazard zone spawns with control based enemies and a hospital very far away, different than most?

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

The point was you should have no trouble venturing into melee range to deploy Traps if you’re canceling the rooting animation because you’re never in melee range for more than a second at a time. The pink patches in the MoM iTrial aren’t deadly unless they’re overlapping, and you can easily slide into a patch to drop a Poison Trap if you’re quick about it. Even if you have to twiddle your fingers for a few moments due to overlapping pink patches, Poison Trap lasts long enough that - with enough recharge - the -regen debuff is never going to fall off before you can refresh it.

The AoE patches in MoM, Keyes, and Apex are there to catch sleepers and people who use Hail of Bullets. That those patches also disrupt Traps users from our normal routine of climbing onto the AV’s back and staying there for the entire fight is a definite change of pace, but it shouldn’t have a noticeable effect on our ability to contribute. I’m almost positive I was on one of your MoM runs last weekend (Tricky Enigma, right?), and I had no difficulty tossing out PT and other Traps. The first 30 seconds of the Penny fight aside, MoM is probably the most Traps-friendly iTrial we have right now due to the boss rush design.

Pretty much. I'm not saying Blasters don't have their strengths. There's a reason I was so insistent on playing them for so long. The trouble is they get so very few opportunities to actually use those, especially by themselves. Blasters just die faster than they can utilise their tools.

I disagree. What you're describing is essentially Void Hunters for generic ATs, and there are few things in this game I hate more than Void Hunters. Balancing an AT by giving it situations that suck *** just isn't a good way of balancing, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, I get that some situations are harder than other for some characters, but there's "harder" and then there's "Blaster vs. Hercules Class Titan." There's no need to punish people for having picked a specific AT, that's my point. And that's exactly where Blasters are - their AT is defined by the things it CAN'T handle much more so than the things it can, largely because most ATs can handle most everything.

Also... Super Stunners are supposed to be hard for melee? They drain endurance, I get that, but melee characters have more than enough margin for error to absorb that and kill these guys twice without being in that much trouble. At least, that's been my impression.

This is probably going to make me sound incredibly arrogant to say it, but what was different was my Brute. One of the reasons I suggested we run the Sewers was I'd done this by myself on that Brute the level before and it seemed like a fun idea. I'm not saying your Blaster didn't pull his weight. Hell, you made the whole thing far, FAR easier than it had been by myself, but your Blaster wasn't really facing the brunt of the controls of those control-based enemies. That's really the sticking point - if you have someone to tank for you, then Blasters work well enough. I just don't think they're superior by enough to merit them being as defenceless as they are when alone.

Also, while Electric Blasters get panned, they still deliver serious damage, and do so without needing any setup time. I don't believe we pulled anything in that sewers run, and I don't think we spent a lot of time standing around and "preparing." If you'd brought a Devices Blaster, instead, I'm honestly not sure if I'd have had the patience to corner-pull ever spawn we came across into mines and... To be honest, I'm not sure you'd have had the patience to do it, either.

I'm not trying to sing my own praises here, either. Crash is a decent Brute, but by far not power-built. What I'm trying to say is that with a Brute on a small team, a Blaster is actually avoiding much of what's the most threatening and that makes a big difference, because Blasters seem intentionally designed without ANY means of protecting themselves. Even Defenders have more of a self-preservation toolset

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.

Thing is, I don't see it as anywhere near as binary as dropping in Void Hunters, just acknowledging strengths and weaknesses. It not doing so, some ATs/powersets will always have an edge in every scenario since the game is only catering to their strengths. I think it would also encourage a bit more build variance. While part of it might have been due to pre I18 flaws, my Fire/Fire scrapper's playability went up exponentially simply by adding Air Superiority. As much as "just high damage" is lauded, survivability went up due to control. And maybe it's just my own playstyle preferences since I highly value control.

C'mon, most melee players seem to complain when anything so much as gently strokes the endurance bar. The rez is the move mainly complained about and while the radius is fairly decent sized, it's primarily a melee problem. Arguably, it's a situation where the much maligned KB would be great.

Considering Traps and phasing synergize quite well, it's possible pulling and Devices might not have been so much of an issue if a similar thought process was employed. Thinking about some things concerning that...

Control heavy enemies does give me an interesting thought concerning Defiance. It's been suggested that part of the damage buff from Defiance be rolled into the base damage for most attacks. Why not give Defiance some stacking status resistance buffs? While resistance means you will be stopped initially, with high enough numbers it would give you the ability to keep in motion. In theory, it already fits the theme since the two primary/first secondary attacks are available while controlled. A little more could be added to the resistance based epic shields for layering and specific powers like snipes and nukes could get it in greater bursts. While it doesn't solve every problem, it would help mitigate being totally screwed with just a few control heavy enemies in a spawn when you just need a small edge to take them out and/or retreat and recover.

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

Like I said - some enemies are easier for some characters than others. That's fine. I have nothing against Malta, the Rogue Vanguard or Super Stunners, and I mostly play melee characters. They're harder, but not cheating hard. What I'm against is characters specifically intended to mess with specific ATs. That's precisely the kind of design I DON'T want. "Oh, your character is too powerful. Well, to balance that out, we'll make sure you can't enjoy it." There is never any reason to punish players for picking a specific AT.

And, really, the game doesn't "cater" to the strengths of the melee ATs. What makes them so strong is their strengths don't have to cater to the game in return. That's really the biggest advantage. Blasters can do some things, but not others. Scrappers can do pretty much all things, because their powers aren't dependent on what they fight. For Scrappers, there are no "right" enemies and "wrong" enemies. There are just enemies. For Blasters, that distinction is much more solidly placed.

And while you say "build variety," what you describe is pretty much taking the one or two specific Pool powers that everyone has insisted I take since Day 1. Really, ask most people and the answer will usually be the same - Air Superiority, Tough and Weave for melee characters. That's really not where I want to go. In fact, I'm not a big fan of "build" being the answer to every problem, because then I'm not actually playing a game, I'm enacting a script. I played the game in Mids' Hero and Villain Designer, on the Market and on the AT forums. All that's left to do in the game is play the tape.

I'd have liked to see the Supper Stunner self resurrection delayed a couple of second to give me time to back away, honestly. This is the sort of place where knowing what to do would be a greater advantage than "build." It's a lot like fighting the Nemesis Army. If you kill stuff willy-nilly, you end up with enemies with stacked Vengeance and a big problem. If you save the lieutenants for last, you succeed. This kind of situational awareness which nevertheless doesn't break the flow of combat and enforce waiting time is what I find the most entertaining. It's decisions made on the spot in reaction to events as they happen, not choices made long before the mission even started.

If I had a problem with Super Stunners, it's that they give me no time to react even if I were so inclined to. I'm forced to build for it since I can't react to it, and that just bugs me on an entirely separate topic of conversation.

It's an interesting idea and I have seen it before. Isn't that more or less how being held in PvP works, actually? Or used to work prior to I13? I don't know, but it sounds familiar.

Thing is, though, even with status resistance, your damage auras will still keep dropping, and drop so often that it starts to feel pointless to turn them on. That's half the reason I opted out of Blazing Aura and Hot Feet on my Fire/Fire Blaster, especially since Hot Feet requires me to be on the ground to activate, yet still works in the air.

I feel that there's an even more fundamental problem that status resistance can't solve, however: Blasters have no margin for error whatsoever. If your plan of attack works out, you can win a lot of fights. If a single power misses - ESPECIALLY the opening one - you're pretty much SOL right from the start. I could, if I played my cards right, smoke one Malta TacOps with Char while Blaze-killing another before he could hold me with my Fire/Fire Blaster. If you attack TacOps from outside their Flashbang range, they'll open with Burst and thus give you time to speed-kill them before they cycle around to Flashbang itself, so if you smoke one from range, then close in and kill the other mid-animation, then you effectively win. If you MISS with Char, however, you eat Flashbang and the game is over. You can't recover from this outside of downing a break-free, in the "use inspirations or die, I suppose" line of thinking.

What I'm saying is it's not JUST status effects that tanked my Blasters. It's status effects that showed me just how precise my actions had to be to succeed with a Blaster, and even then my success was almost entirely based on crapshoot accuracy. I know it may sound hypocritical that I just got done talking about how much I want my actions and reactions in battle to matter, but even so, I appreciate having at least SOME margin for error to account for unreliable accuracy and just plain old mistakes on my part. Maybe I that Commando is actually a TacOps I hadn't recognised, maybe I got too close to the neighbouring spawn, maybe my control power missed, maybe a lucky enemy hold got through my Personal Frocefield... All of those have the potential do damn near insta-kill a Blaster, yet most Scrappers can absorb one or two big mistakes like this and survive, such that when I fail, it really is my own fault.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I hate instant failure for the smallest of miscalculations, and I feel cheated when it happens. I feel cheated when the only way I can play with any degree of respectable success is to be perfect every time, because I'm just not that good of a player, and because that's very stressful to me. I don't mind failing if I accidentally aggro four separate Nemesis spawns and accidentally kill all their lieutenants like I did with my Mastermind a few days ago (damn Snipers!), because really... That one was kind of my own fault. But failing because Blaze missed one time is just... Ugh!

And "set up time" really isn't the answer, I don't think. In fact, I've almost never seen Trip Mines - for all the praise they get - used defensively in a way that didn't take bloody ages. I used to have the habit of laying one down at my feet before I open combat so that anyone who approached me would eat mine, but even then the most it hit was one or two minions. To truly use Trip Mine for its full potential, you kind of have to toe-bomb. Even pulling isn't always successful in getting more than one or two out of ten enemies in range for the explosion. As Arcana mentions earlier, set up time doesn't actually help Blaster performance, but actually hurts it as it takes significantly longer to accomplish anything when you have to set traps up and pull into them than another Blaster would with open warfare. Yes, it's safer, but it's also a lot like having debt, in that your gains are significantly slowed.

In a way, I find it somewhat degrading when pausing the game to set up a trap is seen as strength of Blasters. I'm not saying it's an invalid tactic, just that with as long as it takes to do, it's a last resort tactic, and it's bad that an AT has to resort to its last resort so often. Again, if you could toss these things at range and do so quickly, setting up a minefiled WHILE FIGHTING, that I could see as a popular tactic because it would be "trapping" without having to devote spring break to it. Maybe if you could toss Trip Mine at range nearly instantly but it took two or three seconds to become active so you can't just use it as a hand grenade?

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 was probably more out of the loop with Air Superiority at that time since I was newer than many gave credit. And I do prefer situations that reward smart play which was my intention with the build comment but came out wrong. Basically, rather than just blindly "build for softcap, lol" there should be options that cater to other aspects of your powers and AT.

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

In this context, there are three specific situations worth looking at.

First, every powerset should be able to solo at +0x1. I suspect *in general* every blaster set can do that, but the question is at what rate, when piloted by the average player? If they have to slow down to make sure they have BU and Aim often, or are resting because they always win the fight but they get big chunks of health knocked out when they do, that may fall below the minimum rate of acceptable soloing in some missions or with some critter types.

I suspect all blaster powerset combinations can do this to at least some degree: it would be debatable if they were able to do so as well as we'd like, but this is not the most critical problem area.


Second, Blasters should, on average, perform at least about average. In the past, they've consistently performed far below average. And here, +0x1 is meaningless. What matters is what average players do because that's what's being datamined and compared. So this is average performance across solo missions, team missions, task forces, and the like. Whatever the average content mix is, we're looking at blaster performance in that content vs everyone else's, whatever that content is.

I suspect things are better than they were before, but I have my doubts D2.0 completely fixed the problem given how bad it was originally.


Third, Blasters should, just like every other archetype, have a focus, a specialty, a role that their design explicitly grants the tools to excel at, relative to the other archetypes. The devs are and have been looking at this a lot recently: what should Dominators be, what should Kheldians be, what should Stalkers be, what should Tankers be. This concern is separate from any performance issues: it deals with whether players feel they are getting a good deal from the bag of tools each archetype provides.

The problem here is that the Blaster role has always been damage, and damage has continued to rise for every other archetype. Tankers overlap Blaster damage. Dominators have been promoted to explicit damage dealers, and with that they actually get better melee damage modifiers than Blasters. Scrappers have always been damage dealers and Stalkers have been stated to have the burst damage specialty role. Specializing in "just damage" has become about as interesting as specializing in sprinting. Everyone does damage. What makes Blaster damage specifically interesting, and worth giving up every other tool in the game to get.

More than anything else, I want an answer to that question.


Specifically how Blasters branch out from soloing +0x1 to teamed content, higher difficulty content, and the like is not relevant to the +0x1 minimum powerset design rule. But that's a bare minimum rule. Everyone has to be able to do that, but that's necessary not sufficient. How blasters function beyond that is at least as important. If its not, then there's no justification for boosting Regen in iTrials or boosting Dominator damage or looking at Stalkers or Tankers either. None of them have problems in the +0x1 realm. Its an important realm, but its only a necessary prerequisite, not the definition of being completely balanced against all the things Blasters should be balanced against.

To be honest, I don't actually mind having missions and mission objectives that cater to different characters in some way or another. The trouble is that this really has to be planned for and designed for, not just left up to chaos theory, as it were. For instance, one of the crucial aspects of a Stalker is stealth, yet the way the game is designed, you're only hurting your own reward rates if you skip past enemies, since that's where all the XP and drops are. However, imagine if most missions had a hidden terminal somewhere that activated security turrets to help you if you got to it, THEN stealth would help skip enemies to that so that they become easier to fight.

On the subject of traps in general, these would be a lot more useful if the game had more explicit tower defence situations, but with enough time between enemy waves to set up traps and prepare. These days, when there ARE ambush spam situations, they're always targeted at you and they always come in a single, never-ending wave with each ambush stacking with the previous one or directly spawning on top of you. If, on the other hand, I had to stay alive in a room and I knew that enemies would come in from one of those three doors over there and that I would have exactly 20 seconds between ambush waves, then I could use traps to their potential. Yeah, the Terra Volta respec Trial is kind of like this, but the wait time between ambush waves is... Weird.

That said, though, I might still end up wondering if these powers are worth taking at all if these situations are rare. Do I want to take a power I can never really use efficiently, or a power that's maybe not as strong but that I actually have a use for? This shouldn't be such an easy question.

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.

Yes you were on one of them. That was the one of the two I spoke about where due to the makeup of the team I didn't have to use PT or AM as much. On the other run however we lacked debuffs, maybe I'm just not quick enough (too many buttons to mash) because I died at least 12 times and I was +3.

I understand the devs can't develop trials and scenarios that fit to every power, but I believe based on the evolution of the game they should examine how certain staple powers interact with new content and possibly adjust said powers.

For example does PT really still need to have a a 2.7 cast time considering how exposed the already squishy player is? Compared to Enervating Field having a 1.5 second cast time and can be activated at a safer distance. I do know that EF has slightly more -res than PT and you can have more PTs out by the same player compared to one EF, but once you die all your traps despawn. So you can successfully plant one, try to plant another, die and have nothing to show for it.

With that said, although I'd like to see powers like PT and AM changed so they don't root you as long, I'm content with how they are currently because there are other trials or portions of trials that favor Traps players (If I could BaF all day for Emps I'd be happy). I'm also hoping that the solo path when released keeps Traps in mind.

I believe that traps was designed to be a set up and pull type of set, but once we(players) got our hands on it for awhile, we discovered that as long as you can do it, traps is way more affective in a proactive role. I would have to wonder if they tweaked the set in order to reflect the more active play style, would it still be just as affective?

Also in Keyes, and lamb, why not set up your traps on the rally points for the Av's? So in lamb, on the four corners where he runs like a little girl to, and on a Keyes, to his regeneration points at the truck depot. It is even easier on a Keyes because he hits them in the same order at the same hp percentage marks.

Mind you I have never had issues toe bombing either of them. Just something to consider.

Good suggestion, I never thought about planting them before the AV gets there, I will have to try it out on the next runs.

Thanks!