Sorcery Power Pool

Not sure if I'll get modded for this...I just read about it from posters on another forum. I never actually got to see anything but...

It's suppose to have 5 powers in it so my guess is it's like the travel pool powers we have and one of those powers is a type of travel that's suppose to combine flight and teleportation in some way. I'd say, if you're trying to squeeze in one of the powers that grants mez protection, nixing flight or super jump or something for this may help...

But then I've never been under the assumption that I *need* mez protection...even on melees, I tend to not really care (depending what foes I face). All in all, I've got high hopes for these new pools...they sound better than the old pools. If I don't outright remake characters with these powers in mind, I'd definitely think about skipping Tough/Weave, Leadership, Medicine or Concealment....depending on the numbers, I might even think about dropping Epics to make room.

Now I'm curious if those 'pool power' builds would actually be good

No you don't. You are as far away from "get it" as it is possible to be and still be in this plane of existence . Tank implies defense and resistance. No one is asking for that.

We just want to be blasters and be able to keep blasting. Being a damage dealer and being unable to deal damage in mid/late game content is pretty counter intuitive (for some at least.) Playing the game is fun. Sitting at the keyboard perma mezzed and having a total of 3 powers you can use while the other non-blaster members of the team continue along as if mez didn't exist is not fun.

To be fair, I think some people might argue that blasters are currently one of the few ATs CoH has that currently doesn't easily fall into the tankmage category. Unfortunately I'm only half-joking when I say that.

A quick check of the various Blaster campaigning threads reveals that there are people in the improved blasters camp that DO want defense and resistance AND mez protection. Those people DO want blasters to be turned into tankmages YMMV.

And those people DO want them to be tankmages as they have stated in the various blaster threads for over a month.

What does this have to do with the Sorcery Power Pool?

I hope this is not another baiting attempt so I will try to take it as such......

The sorcery pool has a power that brought up the discussion of mez protection and blasters. I made a statement and then entered into a normal discussion with several here in the thread and expressed my feelings about that subject.

Not asking you in particular anything so you are more than welcomed to ignore us involved in said discussion and all is well.

Because (apparently) mez protection == tankmage.

Personally I don't really know if I want always-on mez protection on squishies, or at least not beyond a couple points of it. I'd much prefer a breakfree sort of power if they gave anyone one.

If you are going to give damage auras to blasters they really should have mez protection to go with them.

Becoming tankmages is not going to happen. But as to getting them looked at and improved, I'm fairly certain that's going to happen.

Why not ? Every other AT in the game is. Masterminds even get to be several tankmages.

What I don't understand is the 2nd paragraph. Being "perma mez'd" by a Rikti Chief Mentalist is no fun...I've been there with plenty of toons.

But this isn't something that happens only to Blasters, it happens to every "squishy" that doesn't have a mez protection power in their primary or secondary.

Again in the 1-50 content; my defenders, controllers, dominators (I don't get perma-dom until lvl 50 usually), etc...all get held/mez'ed and they can't do their job.

I'd love it if my kinetics toons could heal while being held, or if my controllers could apply a hold of my own to the mob while mez'ed, etc...

I guess my question is:

So...what would you propose to have Blasters "keep blasting" without giving them a mez. protection power (in their primary/secondary)? At least Blasters can still attack while mez'd.

To be a tankmage in City of Heroes, you have to be a Blaster with high defense. As the other archetypes either lack high defense or lack being a blaster, there are no other tankmages in City of Heroes.

If this was also true back in I10, then either you play Blasters far better than the average player, or you play defenders, controllers, and dominators far worse than the average player, because the impact of mez on Blasters was measured to be significantly worse.

I would give them tanker level mez protection.

• Tanks, Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers all have mez protection. Some of them also have defense which reduces the number of mezzes that land.
• Veats, Heats both have mez protection. Veats also have defenses available that further reduce the number of mezzes that land.
• Defenders and Corruptors (with the notable exception of TA) either have mez protection as part of their power set, have powerful debuffs/and/or defenses that reduce the number of mezzes that land to a mere 5%, or in the case of Empathy/Pain Dom, need not enter combat at all.
• Controllers and Doms can lock an entire spawn down by themselves eliminating incoming mez. Controllers get a weaker version of of the above defenses and debuffs but can stack that on top of their control. Dominators get mez protection when Domination is up which is easily more than half the time on SOs alone.
• Masterminds get Debuffs, power sets with mez protection, and henchmen that take most of the mezzes for them and those henchmen can still fight even if the MM is mezzed.

Blasters get..... defiance. They can use all the powers they have at level 2 provided they are not KB'd. There are several magnitudes of underpowered/under performing in that comparison.

A total of 2 blaster epics provide defense. This defense is Smash/Lethal. There are very few mezzes that are stopped by this defense type. Against even level foes blasters ARE going to get hit by 45% of all mezzes launched their direction. Because of the amount of damage a blaster deals a good chunk of agro is going to be directed at them even on teams.

A perfect example is what my wife and I are doing right now. We are playing a themed team. I am playing a Fire/MM blaster named Adam Bombed. She is playing a Dark/Time Corruptor named Eve Entually. We have duo'd (or had additional team members but we are always together) since creation.

I started playing CoX a year before she did and I average more play hours per week so have more experience playing. We are level 18 now and Lost, Circle, Tsoo, and Arachnos are common mobs that we fight. We are playing on +0/x4 and have been since level 12 (access to DOs).

On a typical CoT map I can easily go through an entire tray of breakfrees and be completely out when we reach the final mission boss. She will need to use 1 or 2. I have (and use) Return to Battle and Inner Inspiration. My wife still lacks these. I eat insps like candy. My wife rarely needs to use any.

She has and uses her AoE attacks. They do less damage but have a built in debuff. I have and use AoEs. They do much more damage but lack debuffs. Even with her standing in front of me (nearer to the mobs) I draw significantly more agro.

At this point in time I have used 1 experienced charge (she has used none). I have logged out in the police station to gain additional XP from the day job (she has not). I am 1.5 bubs of XP behind her with all the above things considered.

Blasters with out mez protection are broken conceptually and mathematically in comparison to every other AT in the game.

I'm not sure what to make of this so....


Where is the mez protection in Kinetics, Dark Miasma, Cold Domination, Thermal Radiation, etc... (for the caster)?



Maybe you're talking/thinking of teaming situations? If so, then to me the whole argument is not worth talking about since Blasters can team up with someone that can give them mez protection.


That is if the hold (st or aoe) lands. There's always ambushes as well. I'm still a bit unclear as to what you mean by defenses to mez attacks? There are no shield powers that give +def in the Controller (or dom) primary that I can think of. Do you mean "Defenses" as in debuffs like Radiation Infection?



Sounds like my Storm/Psy Defender when I was lvl'ing him up back in the day (4 yrs ago or so I'd say). He was always in debt heh.


Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree then.


Edit:


I've said it before though, I think that there should be some sort of "scaling" mez. protection for everyone so that by lvl 50 (or the max lvl in whatever game you may play) you can at least withstand 1 application of a mez attack (be it sleep, hold, disorient, etc...).

After that the "tankers, scrappers, etc..." should still be ahead in mez protection.

I think you're misunderstanding the argument. No one is arguing that controllers or defenders are immune to mez. The argument is that blasters have fewer tools to deal with mez compared to the other archetypes, and that's an accurate one in general.

Absolutely 100% correct. This has been my experience playing Blasters since the early days of CoH, even though they are my favorite AT. I've been away for a while, but I re-subbed and this description remains true.

If we're going to talk about changing mez balance in general, what I've been thinking is that mezzes should use the mez suppression mechanic from pvp. You can't be affected by mezzes or knockback until a certain amount of time after recovering from one, and there's a limit to how long you can be mezzed.

Plenty of ATs exceed, match, or come reasonably close to Blaster damage. Brutes, scrappers etc, or endgame controllers if you're only willing to consider ranged damage.

Conversely, the ability of Blasters to build for defense is much lesser than any of the above ATs, even among ranged squishies alone: Blasters get the worst modifiers for both tough/weave/APP toggle and leadership, and do not have PBAoE ally buffs that give mitigation or heals. It's not exactly clear what Blasters have got in exchange for these disadvantages.

That would be a great change, and if the recharge and tohit of aoe holds were improved as well, I'd love having it applied to critters. It'd add a little strategy to mezzing - that guy can't be stunned anymore so here comes the aoe confuse!