Blaster Issues - Sniping

Theoretically, you could simply add the zooming reticule animation from the Munitions Blaster Epic pool, as found in the Surveillance power.

with build up it should do far, far more damage than that

I would like to point out the recharge and cast time, and ask what you are going to do during the 7 seconds you have to wait for snipe to recharge, when you attempt to shoot something from that range. Because no other attack is going to be able to follow up with that shot, which means Build Up is being wasted boosting snipe and then nothing else. Unless you tend to follow up Zapp with teleport foe.

Range is only useful when you actually use it, and engaging from outside the range of all but one of your attacks has limited usefulness unless you are the designated puller.

Also, that damage is three whole quarters of an LT at level 50.

In the time it takes you to just to fire Zapp, I can fire Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Power Bolt again and deal 32% more damage with no chance of being interrupted. And I can do that from 136 feet away, within the range of all of my long-ranged attacks: bolt, blast, explosive blast. Explosive blast, actually, hits from 148 feet, essentially base sniper range.

This is already outside normal perceptual aggro range, so engaging from even farther away than 130 feet has no significant advantage.


One other thing: the game tends not to render or allow you to directly target things more than about 200-250 feet away. So there's no way to use that range unless you target through another player to the target.

Read the rest of my post. I won't say no to more damage.



*shrug* I'm still using my 3 main blasts (Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt and Spirit Shark Jaws), as well as Ball Lightning from 183ft. I'm nuking (Thunderous Blast) from 133.7ft (I LOL'd at that one), and puking (Bile Spray) from 141ft, with School of Sharks at 105ft, so I can use it on anything that may have survived, and back out of range again.

So, since you brought it up, I can effectively use 90% of my main attack chain from 33ft farther than base snipe range, thank you very much.

I won't complain if the powers that be decide to up the damage or cut the cast time on snipes, I'm just saying they aren't nearly as broken or worthless as everyone seems to think they are.

Hrmm, I don't know...

Even with the Blaster ATO Set, 3 Range SOs and Cardiac Core Paragon I still could only get 144.2 feet out of Charged Bolts...man how......are you saying that if a set has a snipe one should build on range and range only? Or we should only roll /Energy Manipulation for our blaster toons? Even then this doesn't cover the other ATs. That's sacrificing a lot for one power and it's not even worth it *shrug*.

Boost Range, Blaster SATO, Intuition Partial Radial, plus slotting for range. Remember those Centrioles *NOBODY* wants? Yeah, they come in handy here.

No, I'm merely saying that just because some people don't like to utilize snipes doesn't instantly make the concept totally worthless, like they would like you to believe. Building for range is just another way to achieve the same goal. That being to melt more enemies, faster.

And before a troll comes along and tries to use their Jedi Mind Tricks on this thread, I'm NOT saying it is the ONLY way, or the BEST way, or even a BETTER way. It is merely *A* way, and one that works just fine for me. My "other" Blaster is a Rad/Fire/Force that only has ONE Ranged attack that actually has enhancements on it, and that's only because Cosmic Burst is just too awesome to NOT slot. Every other attack it has is either PBAoE, TAoE, or Melee. Fire Sword is fairly awesome, y'know. It runs both Hot Feet and Blazing Aura, because you can't have too much melee damage from toggles.

No, in fact, /Energy is one of the most self-defeating (or, in my preferred words, "spastic") Blaster secondaries there is. It's "signature" power is Boost Range, and the set does not contain a single power that benefits from it. Every attack is Melee. In my opinion, it really only has 3 "good" powers. Build Up, Boost Range, and Power Boost. Conserve Power is a "nice to have". All of the other powers are (in my opinion) entirely skippable, for the purposes of this discussion. (I will be one of the first to say that if you prefer to build a blapper {which is a perfectly good method of melting more mobs, faster}, /Energy is a *very* nice set to do it with)

I'm honestly not sure what you're saying here, So here's a picture of a bunny with a pancake on it's head.



Yay, BUNNEH! (Seriously though, I'm not sure what you meant with the last bit I quoted.)

Which doesn't answer my question at all, which is what are you doing while you're standing around waiting for Zapp to recharge, if you are using it from the range you are harping as a benefit. The point is that the *extra* range of snipes has limited functionality, because no matter how much range you build for, the *extra* range of snipes is practically worthless. How much different would your character play if Zapp had only 80 feet of base range like all the other attacks you claim are your "main blasts."

Sniper blasts *pay* for that extra range, but blasters *get* almost nothing from it. And your example does nothing to prove otherwise: if anything it only goes to show that if you want to hit something at 150 away, you don't need a sniper attack to do it.


If they weren't broken, you'd have said you have four main blasts, not three.

That makes more sense. However... What's funny is that I didn't go "out of my way" to make a "barely mediocre" power "work". I went into the build with the chosen powersets for the purpose of using as much range as possible to my advantage. Taking (and slotting as effectively as possible) the snipe included in the sets was a natural part of the package.

You are assuming that adding defense or recharge would instantly "make my build better". Sure, more recharge is always good, but at what point do you stop sacrificing other bonuses to keep stacking on more recharge? By going "Recharge Lite" on this build, I managed to slot in 20.5% Damage bonus, plus Assault, which puts me at +31% Damage before Defiance, Aim, and Build Up. More damage = Less attacks, thus less necessary recharge. As far as adding in more defense... Why? By the time anything actually *gets* to me, it's more than likely out of endurance, or if not, is so close to dead that it getting in one or two attacks won't do such a significant amount of damage that Aid Self won't fix. If both of those fail for whatever unusual reason, I also have two ST Holds to help keep Bosses under control.

You're assuming that there's nothing else in range when I'm sniping my chosen target. With the amount of range I have in this build, I can (assuming the map layout permits) snipe a chosen target 2-3 spawns away and continue attacking the current spawn (on slower moving teams) when it's done animating. (Which, I will not argue, the animation is far longer than it really needs to be) I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I have a feeling that I can most likely snipe Nightstar on the BAF while standing at the wall with the rest of the team. No taunt-pull necessary, no putting myself in unnecessary danger by moving closer. (I hate to say that I *have* been on a few BAF's that did not have a single person with a taunt-type power) As an example, if memory serves, I can just about snipe Romulus from the top of the hill (the one across from his platform, 3rd mission of ITF), without getting aggro even from the pop-up turrets all over the place. From there, it's a short drop down to be in range of the computer.

So, to answer your question, if Zapp had a base 80ft range like all of my other attacks, it could potentially be a drastic change to my chosen playstyle for this character.

The only thing snipes "pay" for the extra range with is a very long (and interruptable) cast time, and increased endurance cost. However, they also get increased damage (almost double the damage of a T2 blast, base) to help counter it. (which, as I said at some point, I would not have a problem with shortening the cast time, and/or removing the interrupt)


I fail to see how the two are related. I would define a "main blast" as a power routinely used as a major part of a normal attack chain. If the fact that a power does not meet that definition makes it "broken", then by that definition, there's a rather massive pool of powers to choose from that are "broken". (AoE Holds, AoE Confuses, Recovery/Regen Aura, Adrenalin Boost come to mind, just to name a few)

Just because a power is not best used whenever it's available on every enemy (or friendly, as the case may be) doesn't make it inherently "broken".

Just to reiterate what I've been trying to say all along...
I'm not arguing against buffing snipes. I will gladly accept a damage buff or cast time reduction within reason (or even just removing the interrupt, I personally think snipes should still have a cast time somewhat longer than normal blasts). However, I am arguing against significantly changing the basic functionality of snipes. I think it's a bit late at this point in the development of the game to say "Oh wow, we have this power in 99.999% of the blast sets that almost nobody uses. Who cares if the people that do use it like it the way it is?". I like the added functionality/versatility that having a snipe gives me. Completely changing that functionality into "just another blast" is not the right way to "fix" a power that isn't actually "broken", just possibly weak. If the sets that contain a snipe (which, by the way, are all of them except Dual Pistols {commonly held to be one of the worst blast sets in the game. Irrelevant, but still worth pointing out, to me}, Ice {which gets other forms of added utility} and Sonic {which gets other forms of utility on top of the ever-useful -Res debuffs}) are just suffering that terribly at having such a terrible power in them that absolutely cannot be fixed without significantly changing the function of the power (and thus potentially significantly changing some players chosen style of play), maybe it's time to add a 10th power to blast sets.

I'm really skeptical about their doing much extra damage at all. As far as I'm aware most powers do damage based on their recharge, and if you compare the snipe's damage to some of the other 12 second recharge attacks they really don't measure up very well at all given their drawbacks.

Just looking over mids quickly there's only about a 10 point damage difference (fully slotted) between snipes and scrapper attacks like Eagle's Claw, and Golden Dragonfly (and a 10 point difference between Greater Fire Sword and Blazing Bolt). So for that extra range and 10 points of damage the power gets almost double the animation time and extra end cost.

Snipes in this game are just not all that great which is why they do really need something like extra damage, removed/shortened interrupt time, or even some new mechanics.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Zapp (the snipe in question in my posts) does a base 172.2 damage. Lightning Bolt (Elec's T2 Blast) does 102.6.

I agree (about the extra damage). In the example above, adding 30 damage would put it at exactly double the damage of the T2 Blast. I don't see a problem with this.

Like I said in my previous post, I wouldn't have a problem with this either. Possibly in addition to the damage, or alone as the only change.

This is where I potentially have a problem. Reference my previous post as to why, because I really don't want to type it all again. >.>

First I'd like to correct myself. I forgot to turn off the whole accounting for crits in mid's damage calculations. So snipes seem to do 30 damage more than other 12 second recharge attacks. My bad.

That aside, I'm really not comparing apples to oranges. Damage in this game seems largely based off of a power's recharge (for attack powers anyway). Seriously, look at it in mids sometimes you have most 4 second recharge single-target powers all doing 62.56 damage (Single Shot, Dark Blast, Pistols, Charged Bolts, Power Bolt, Beheader, Slash, Lunge ... you get the idea), 6 second attacks do 82.58, 8 second ones do 102.6. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to the calculation than just recharge, but it certainly seems to play a decently large role in the thing.

I was more sort of agreeing with the sentiment than trying to convince you otherwise with that.