Blaster Issues - Mezzing

The "right" answer here is that there isn't a right answer. Consider the lesson of things similar to "patrol XP"; if you give people an XP penalty, they are furious, if you double all XP requirements and give them a sometimes bonus, they are happy.

In general, withheld bonuses and applied penalties are logically equivalent, although they shift the baseline, which changes how people feel. And while it's easy to create cases in which that produces obviously bogus results, outside of contrived scenarios it may not be a bad set of heuristics. (If it were all that bad, we probably wouldn't have it.)

I don't know that I would say inf on both sides 'stabilized'. I'd say the redside market was fully subsumed into the blueside market.

Whether that's good result or not is a separate question from whether that's the result they wanted; they held on hope for a long time that each side could have a functioning economy.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Your perception is part of the problem. Comparing red side market with blue side market was like comparing Wal-mart to a road side fruit stand. In actuality the "red side" market was not subsumed into the "blue side" market. Both markets were combined into one "Super Market". The player base perception of some (which was unreasonable) was based on what happens in the real world when there is a hostile take over of a business. The "small towns" lose what little selection they had and they pay higher prices to boot. Prices dropped and availability of goods went up on both sides.

What actually happened was more like Wal-Mart bought out a fruit store chain but instead of closing them all down they opened Super Wal-Marts at each former Red side fruit market location and made all the blue side Wal-marts Super Wal-marts too by allowing the old fruit market to reach a broader base of customers. The instant the devs combined the markets there was no longer a red side or a blue side market just a single super CoX market.

I would say that it was a very good result. Judging by the drop in chatter on the market forums it solved the issues.

Indeed, long after it was demonstrated that they couldn't the devs held onto that (unreasonable?) hope. I think that's part of the problem. The devs cling to failed ideas for oft times inexplicable reasons. I think they need to look at what the customers want and try to provide it.

If the Blaster AT was a cell phone or internet service the devs would go out of business. No one wants to pay for constant disruptions in service (think of mez that you survive as massive lag and mez or unbalanced content that you die from as a service interruption) companies that provide crappy service like that go belly up. Its the exact phenomena of blasters being created the most and also abandoned the most. The advertising is good, and the service is good at first, but the more you use it and the farther from home (or level 1 in this case) the worse the service is. People change ATs not because blasters are hard but because blaster play style/mechanics is annoying rather than fun.

They are mathematically equivalent, not logically equivalent. They are only logically equivalent if we are talking about two different perspectives to analyze the same situation. They are not logically equivalent if one perspective causes the players to lose the benefit of the situation.

The logical flaw is the assumption that there are two possibilities: we get the buff and we see it as an occasional buff, or we get the buff and its seen as an occasional nerf. There is a third possibility: we don't get the buff because people see it as an occasional nerf.

You can only see an occasional buff as an occasional nerf if the possibility of actually having the buff all the time is real. That's why most people not completely insane at least come to the same conclusion that Build Up is an occasional buff, not a most-of-the-time nerf. The idea that we could just have Build Up's buff all the time, and BU actually nerfs that situation is ludicrous. But when the devs propose a possibility when its a somewhat smaller buff, people believe they are entitled to believe they could have gotten the buff all the time when that was never a possibility.

And people do not do themselves any favors when they believe that anything is possible, and the devs only withhold buffs when the buffs are obviously ridiculous, or they are just being cruel.

But...But...Kheldians? Shapeshifting is basically stances, and more extreme stances than the suggested at that. Maybe I'm warped because I was playing a druid in Some Other Game and a Kheldian in CoH at the same time.

The argument is that "glass cannon" isn't a viable role.

I am curious as to your impression that blasters worry less about mez than other non-melee ATs, because that is most emphatically not my experience. I play just about everything but Dominators and Stalkers and what I see is that most ATs have some way to deal with mez either proactively by mezzing and defeating the problem mobs or through some forms of self-applicable status protection, or both.

I think it is a viable role, it just may be that blasters as currently constituted are not suited to it, is all.

*shrug* I doubt I can suitably explain my perception of it, but it remains true. It could be due to my playing blasters enough before D2.0 that I still love the improvement. (Though I will say that if "defeating the problem mob" is part of the solution - blaster, after all, is fine at that.)

In short... a mez never stops me completely and I do not have to think about that. I only need to hit a breakfree situationally. If a mez hits my corrs,trollers, or defs - I am locked down unless I hit a breakfree or someone else frees me. If domination isn't up - my doms are vulnerable.

I am pretty sure there is a difference between Milady's suggestion and the general outcry against a buff that sometimes turns off.

People are likely to rail against stances when the stance creates a postive/negative scenario, as several of the suggestions in that time created. When "stance" A is obviously and undeniably better than "stance" B, stance B is a penalty. Hopefully, the Aliens from ID kill me, because I know I was opposed to that kind of stance situation in the past (and still am), just like I was not a fan of Domination.

Players have repeatedly shown this to be true; thus we have stacking armors in armor sets that originally had either/or choices, Instant Healing is a click, Domination's damage buff was altered so it is now always on, etc.

Yet, players will use temporary buffs (although even these are more often left out than many forum users realize), as I know people use Aim, Build-Up, Soul Drain, etc. So there is a place for those types of buffs, but to me that place is in the short duration uses, as opposed to the stance concept.

Milady's suggestion is attempting to create a situation where stance A and stance B could be seen as (near?) equal in usefulness. People would love Swap Ammo a lot more if each stance was seen as equal in usefulness. One could argue that stance B may need help or something else added, but I do not think the idea falls squarely into the area Positron was worried about.

As to the topic in general, I accept Blaster's current susceptibility to mezzing and still find fun in the D2 mechanic to help against mez. I am still not convinced it is any more useful at helping people live after a mez than D1, but it is more fun to most, I think. The one thing I'd love to see added would be to have the offensive toggles merely suppress during a mez. It would be a unique offensive benefit for blasters, both allowing the offensive toggle to instantly kick back in when the mez ends and improving blaster offense by allowing them to animate some other attack instead of turning the toggle back on (I am, of course, biased, since I heavily favor /Fire Manip).

I don't think it's true at all, not in a general, objective sense. I learned a lot about learning to deal with mezzing with my first character, due to the way Dark Armor's toggles worked (that is, you had to choose a shield to resist damage or a shield to protect you from hard mezzes), and I spent most of my time with Dark Embrace up.

I mean, my D3 rarely gets mezzed at all. I don't need to carry many break frees with her because Most mobs can't even hit her. My Fire/Kin controller is similar, but for different reasons and has click mez protection (not Clarion) when I need it. My Ill/Rad is again similar, but yet again for somewhat different reasons. She practically never gets mezzed, and when she it only lasts for a short period of time. My Bots/Storm MM rarely gets mezzed because hardly anything actually shoots at her, and she has so many tools to handle mobs that even when they do they have relatively little success.

The other day my D3 actually got hit with sleep, and then I had to wait much of the full duration because the mob that did it was still debuffed too much to actually hit me.

I'm trying to understand how "hardly ever getting mezzed and having options even when mezzed" is worse off than "getting mezzed but being able to use your three weakest attacks." How does that correlate with "The worst performing AT across the board?" I mean, I could take on a full Malta spawn with my DM/DA scrapper pre-stacking armor, pre-endurance resistance, in the days when Malta sappers would often spawn in pairs. I've survived while all of my teammates got drained of end, detoggled, mezzed, and defeated, and then finished off the spawn. But this doesn't mean I had less trouble with end drains or mezzing than other scrappers, it just meant I had developed a playstyle around that weakness that compensated for a lot of the set's shortcomings. I have no illusions that /DA was equal to any other scrapper set at the time (Invulnerability, Regeneration, Super Reflexes).

Glass Cannon blasters are viable. Way before incarnates my fire/em blaster (built entirely for +rchg and +dmg with no defense) came very close to soloing the LGTF, and the only reason I didn't finish it was because the Honoree stalled me out with his Unstoppable (at which point I promptly gave up, since I was going for master and I hadn't died up until that point, I didn't feel like completing it without master). And that's probably the most difficult situation for a glass cannon blaster, on teams (especially those with good support) a glass cannon blaster will be able to perform just as well or better than a softcapped blaster.

This is the same mistake so many people seem to make. A lot of this discussion is centered around how blasters are less viable than other ATs while leveling up. Expensive IO builds and anecdotes about personal exceptions don't counter that, especially when other ATs can achieve similar goals with less effort and cost.

Minor correction: Sleep puts the character out until said character takes damage or is healed. It's one of the easiest status effects to respond to, since you don't need a status protection-type buff to remove it, just a heal.

1) You said glass cannon blasters. By that I assume you mean blasters built for +rchg and +dmg with no defense. If you just meant Blasters without defense, you should have said that.

2) You said glass cannon blasters flat out were not viable. They are and I provided an example.

3) Both discussion about blasters with IOs and blasters without IOs is important, you can't just ignore a major part of the game.

4) Even on just SOs (and comparing said blaster to other ATs with SOs also) a blaster will do just as well on teams as any other AT, even if they are built entirely for dps with no mitigation powers.

5) A blaster shouldn't be having any issues when soloing on missions set for 1 player, regardless of being IO'd or not. If you want to make a case against blasters not being able to solo missions set for x8 without IOs (since other ATs can) then that's fair up to the point that soloing on x8 is technically above balancing standards.

I meant the role that blasters were designed for in teams. I didn't mean high-end IO builds. I shouldn't have had to specify that I meant "blasters without defense" or anything else, because "glass cannon" is a design goal for the entire AT, and such was the context of the discussion in which I posted that. I am not able to predict how egregiously other people are going to misinterpret my words, so I am not going to try to preemptively correct them.

Further, I am curious how you could manage LGTF, especially the AV and EB fights, without dying once, without any defenses, and without any mez protection.

I said it's not a viable role, and I do not believe it is. It's the only role designed/intended to require support in CoH currently. This doesn't mean it's impossible to play a blaster solo or on teams and make any progress, but it does mean that blasters are dealing with imposed limitations that no other AT has to be designed around. There's a reason said AT was found to be the lowest performing across all aspects of the game when the devs decided to upgrade defiance.

But you are ignoring a major part of the game, when you say blasters have no problems because you can spend billions of influence to produce a functional character. This is like arguing that blasters are fine with mezzing because you can take Clarion at 50.

It depends on the teams. But blasters require the support on teams that other ATs do not, and that support is not always guaranteed, and less support can (and in reality, does) mean a dramatic drop in performance.

And blasters do much worse solo than other ATs.

I believe this is called a false dilemma. The difficulty options range from -1 to +4, from 1 to 8 players, whether you face bosses solo and whether you face AVs solo. The question isn't whether blasters can solo on 1 and have troubles on 8, but whether blasters can make use of those options to a degree similar to other ATs, or if they're restricted due to certain difficulties other ATs can typically handle and blasters cannot.

This response is all over the map, and I have had some trouble responding to it. I know that when my non-melee ATs get mezzed, they are... mezzed (specific power combinations beging besides the point). Except for my blasters - they have freedom of action all the time. That was my point, and my only point.

I have no data mined information, nor will I gather any, for that means in game play viability. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go run SO only builds of different power combinations across multiple ATs against exactly the same mission/opposition.

My perception, as firmly stated as perception, remains that I feel that the current blaster mez mechanic is fine. I have even offered a possibility of why I feel that way. Telling me my perception/feeling is not true in an objective sense is redundant and pointless, but succeeded in making me smile.

Yet, in your previous post you offered anecdotal evidence. I do not see why then discounting a contrary anecdote is somehow a valid stance to take.

In your experience. Others have offered their own experience to the contrary.

I think all our experiences are irrelevant. If the data shows that they are harder to solo the Devs will adjust that. Just like they did last time. There were people screaming bloody murder on the forums that blasters didn't need adjustment, and that didn't matter when they made the changes they did. There are also people saying stalkers didn't need that much. Also irrelevant as Stalkers are about to get a major buff come issue 22.

I think it's more time-use effective to put forth ideas that the devs could use to improve blasters, as to avoid having to do this all over again in 2 years if they don't get the next buff right . . . if they decide that blasters need buffs.

EDIT: Also tired of seeing all the discussion of how top IO'd builds let you do this or that. I think THAT is particularly irrelevant in a game where the devs keep saying "SOs are not needed at all." Also keep in mind this is NOW a game where a significant number of players MIGHT NOT HAVE access to IOs OR the Incarnate buffs. Just saying.

IOs should not be completely ignored when thinking of balance, but it's NOT the BASELINE of balance. Talking about soloing +4/x8 with a 10 billion inf build is great, but it always starts at "what can this AT do with just SOs" first.

At this point in the discussion, I agree, and that was indirectly my point in the quoted text.

That has always been true in the past, and it has largely contributed to the *actual* problem I think Blasters have, which is that every archetype has, over time, gained capability in at least two different areas based on their functional definition, as the devs see those archetypes. One of those things is offensive output, due to the "every archetype should be able to solo at a reasonable pace" design rule. And one or more other things based on the individual archetype's specific design imperatives.

Blasters had only one design imperative. Be the best at damage. And when the devs added the rule everyone must be able to solo well they in effect undercut that rule. Without that rule we could enforce it by giving everything else low or lower damage. With the rule we cannot.

Blasters have no other design imperative, except for the overall design rule that says they cannot be datamined to severely underperform everything else.

Look at how the devs have approached Stalkers, Dominators, Kheldians, and Tankers over time. They have always asked, and usually answered publicly, what those things are supposed to be, or what they used to be and what the devs are now trying to make them. We know Tankers aggro role, Dominators past domination dependence and their now more stable damage dealing design, we know the prior reliance on stealth and current focus on burst damage of stalkers. There are people that argue with those design decisions, but we know what they are because they guide the devs in telling them what those things should have, and what the devs should buff when they feel the archetype needs a boost.

When Blasters were reviewed for D2.0, we found out what the devs believe Blasters to be, because I explicitly asked the question and got an authoritative answer, at least at that time. Blasters are supposed to be damage dealers. Not ranged damage dealers or melee damage dealers or AoE damage dealers. Damage dealers.

Wait: not "the best damage dealers?" Not once did I see any developer make that claim. But scrappers are damage dealers, dominators are damage dealers, stalkers are damage dealers, brutes are damage dealers. Are blasters explicitly supposed to be the best damage dealers?

Technically yes, because they do nothing else. However, even the devs are extremely cautious to put that down on paper, because in practice it would be extremely difficult to buff blasters in a way that would make this obvious. They are worried about giving anything too much damage.

However, there is an unspoken additional Blaster design imperative that I've never heard a dev explicitly state, but I have seen used to justify changes or a non-changes in the past. And that is this one: Blasters are supposed to be vulnerable.

And that is the Blaster problem. Maybe someone thinks they underperform. Maybe someone else thinks they perform fine. What is definitely true is the devs would not be comfortable with a change to Blasters that made them not vulnerable. That is not true for any other archetype.


Is the issue mezzing, or snipes, or damage, or melee secondary focus? Those are symptoms of the problem, not the problem. The problem is that the one thing the devs believe Blasters should have is something they are not willing to ensure they have the most of. And the only other thing they really think about Blasters collectively is that they should be vulnerable.

The problem that needs to be solved is that Blasters need a new definition, one that doesn't suck. Right now Blasters are not vulnerable to mez because there's a numerical or quantitative or balance-specific reason. Its because someone has to be, and Blasters are the vulnerable archetype, so they volunteer. Does that mean making Blasters less vulnerable to mez would "fix" them? Not necessarily. Its just one symptom in a long laundry list of symptoms, all of which end up saying the same thing: Blasters must be vulnerable. That's why the original tier 9 blasts crash: because we can't have Blasters killing Lts without being vulnerable for half a minute. We can have scrappers killing everything in sight with impunity for *three minutes* before they have to pay with a crash, but three seconds is all Blasters get. And everyone knows why sniper blasts don't do more damage: because one-shotting an Lt would be horribly unbalanced. Being totally invulnerable to LTs is okay, but one shotting them from long range is out of the question for blasters. They wouldn't be vulnerable any more. And that's why Blasters, even when the devs had overwhelming evidence that mez was causing them to horribly underperform, only got a *hedge* against mez. If it was determined that *tankers* underperformed because of mez they would have been given mag 50 protection the next day. If Controllers were determined to underperform because of mez they almost certainly would have been given actual mez protection.

We don't actually know if D2.0 goes far enough to solve the underperformance problem. But that's the point: if it was any other archetype, the devs would have made sure they did enough to solve the problem. As long as Blasters are the only archetype that simultaneously is the only one known to have severely underperformed in the past and yet is also apparently the one one that is too dangerous to buff in any more than a moderate capacity, they will have problems. Because that *is* a problem.

Has that always been true?

That's not much of a point when other ATs have many tools to prevent mezzing in the first place. This is why I questioned your claim that blasters are better off with mezzing than other ATs, because it seems that other ATs tend to be less likely to be mezzed. That the effects may be more severe isn't particularly relevant if they're not getting mezzed as often in the first place.

In the sense that it very likely does not reflect overall blaster performance, yes. My point in posting an anecdote about playing /Dark Armor was not, in fact, to provide anecdotal evidence about how /Dark Armor performed when it was still at its worst. Rather, it was to point out that my play experience with /Dark Armor didn't mean it didn't need adjustments.

Actually, that wasn't my experience. That was datamined information from the devs, at the time when they revamped Defiance.

Is that a yes?