Sorcery Power Pool

I am just going to talk late game. Kin can have it tough, but if you got Fulcrum off, that can often buy you enough time because the damage output of the enemy is lowered enough to make it easier to survive and, of course, once you come out of the mez you have a huge heal to recover with and often some kind of damage and recharge buff to help kill fast (and heal more often if needed). And, of course, the buffs Kins have given out do not expire or suppress just because they get mezzed.

Dark's get mezzed? Of course they can, but with the very strong alpha of Fearsome Stare combined with Darkest Night, mezzes are much less problematic. Howling Twilight is another great way to take a whole spawn out of the picture. If the player gets mezzed, Fluffy often keeps on going. Petrifying gaze can stop a mezzer from being a problem. Then there is that heal to recover when something bad does happen. Tar Patch keeps doing its thing even if you are mezzed.

I've been mezzed on my Cold, but the mez usually wears off long before the enemy stops falling down because they are cold and wet (and that def/res debuff doesn't end just because I get mezzed).. If the enemy doesn't kill me early, their gonna have a tough time since all of their attacks will be recharging for a long time. And if I am teaming, even when I get mezzed, my whole team is still enjoying the benefits of my buffs.

Thermal has that benefit as well, plus that heal to recover from something unfortunate as well as some debuffs that do not shut off just because you get mezzed.

Old defiance used to give me a massive damage buff when the mez wore off (of course, this was because I had gotten hurt a lot). I found I could often come out of a mez and very quickly eliminate the enemies (but jumping into the next spawn could be dangerous, although done right, it also could be very rewarding due to the quick defeat of the whole spawn, yay for lucks stacked on Tough and Fire Shield). I think new defiance is more fun and les challenging to leverage, but I do not believe it is any more useful at surviving mez than old defiance (used well) was.

Yeah, buff/debuff can get mezzed, but they almost always have significant ways to prevent mez, recover from mez, and still be contributing to the team even though they are mezzed.

Many of them do approach or in some cases exceed Blaster levels of damage. But all of them are less than 0.01% Blaster, being 100% Controller, 100% Brute, and 100% Scrapper.

I thought the phrase "other archetypes lack being a blaster" would be sufficient red flag that I was being a bit facetious, but just to be more direct with the point, I believe Blasters are the last, and currently only archetype whose concept and balance parameters are still governed by "holy trinity" concerns, or in our game "holy quaternary" concerns. Life was broken up into offense, defense, control, and support at the beginning of time, and every City of Heroes primary and secondary specializes in one of them (notable grey area exception: Blaster Manipulation sets, which were originally Melee Damage sets). Post-launch, the only exception among conventional archetypes has been mastermind pet sets.

The original five archetypes were balanced by designing each archetype so that no archetype had more than two of the above deliberately - that's why we have two main powersets, the primary and secondary - and each would specialize in at most one. Scrappers didn't specialize at anything: they had balanced offense and defense and were designed to be the best soloers. Tankers specialized in defense but had low offense. Controllers specialized in control and had presumptively lower support than Defenders, who had higher support and low offense. Blasters had high offense and ... more high offense.

That was already a problem, but it was made a much bigger problem when the devs realized they didn't have a bunch of hard-core Evercrack players playing their game: they had casual players and a high percentage of soloers playing their game. So because of that and some other things going on the devs decreed that from now on, every archetype would have the minimum level of tools necessary to solo. And that was basically a code word for "everyone will have at least moderate damage."

When you have good offense and high defense, you're fine. When you have high control and moderate support and good offense, you're better than fine. When you already have high offense but nothing else, that decree doesn't really help you if the devs believe that offense is your defense.

The City of Villains archetypes went much farther: they took the concept and ran with it: all of them are designed to be independent, able to solo, and function in teams separately from being designed to function completely on their own.

The City of Villains archetypes were never trinity-balanced to begin with. Written into their DNA is the phrase "we can be awesome all by ourselves, its ok." The City of Heroes archetypes were trinity balanced except for Scrappers who were the original self-sufficient archetype. But what Tankers, Controllers, and Defenders were supposed to critically lack the most was Damage, and the new balancing rules entitled them to a lot more damage. What Blasters lacked was everything else, but the new design rules didn't give them any of it, because Blasters were still thought of as "offense only." Even things that had *low* offense at least had actual offense to buff. Blasters as an archetype didn't have low control to buff or low team support to buff in the general case. Adding it from scratch was a mental hurdle the devs were unwilling to leap over.

The net result is that Blasters are still living locked into a design envelope that treats them as if other things are supposed to give them support, defense, and control, but everything else can have damage. That makes them the Last Trinity Archetype.

Anything can have the power of a tankmage, but only Trinity Archetypes are thought about in that manner. A controller with a lot of damage is a high damage controller. A tanker with a lot of damage is a high damage controller. But a high defense blaster is seen as TankMage, because it breaks a trinity rule. The others don't break trinity rules, because long ago everyone stopped thinking about them as trinity archetypes.


Its a broken perspective, but one that is still locked into the minds of a lot of players and probably many developers as well.

We have plenty of high damage, high survivability options that aren't blasters. If you insist on having tank mage = Ranged High Damage + High survivability, all kinds of corruptors come to mind and any reasonably well built mastermind.

Edit: Missed post above.

Yeah for a new game I can see changes like that (or the ones I've mentioned)...since mez in this game atm is just "on or off" probably won't change.

Never know though

Noted (the edit). But as you mention corruptors and masterminds, a word on City of Villains. I mentioned above that the CoV designers took the "everyone should be able to solo" idea and ran with it. I also said that at the beginning of time the City of Heroes designers (i.e. Jack) divided the world into four, or five depending on how you count, capabilities: (Ranged/Melee) Damage, Defense, Control, Support.

Take a look at the CoV archetypes. What's the primary for Brutes? Damage. What's the primary for Stalkers? Damage. What's the primary for Corruptors? Damage. What's the primary for Masterminds? Pets and Damage. The only CoV archetype for which offense is not obviously the primary are Dominators, and their primary - Control - is sufficiently damage-heavy it *is* what passes for offense on Controllers.

Every CoV archetype has Offense/Other, except Dominators which were/are ControlOffense/Offense. Because when you believe every archetype must be able to solo, you no longer see the world as Damage, Defense, Control, and Support. You see the world as Damage, EverythingElse.

Every CoV archetype has damage, every CoV archetype *specializes* in damage, and every CoV archetype has something else that helps keep them alive.

Four out of five hero archetypes have retroactively tried to approach this rule. One has not. And the reason why that keeps coming up is that any attempt to do so creates tankmages.

Which is why I say: to be a tankmage, you apparently have to be a blaster as a prerequisite. I *think* the devs realize this now, but whether they move to address this aggressively or cautiously is a separate question.

1. Agreed. Unless we are also allowed to change our origin at respec.
2. Hmmm. I could certainly see making them mutually exclusive. That can be a good tool to use when designing, but it definitely works better (or at least is easier to do it well) when you design all the mutually exclusive stuff together.

Which is entirely possible. Just because the magic-origin pool might be implemented first, I wouldn't rule out others being designed at the same time.

I'm working on my Tankmage now.


IMO. I do think some steps have already been taken through the EPP/PPPs, IO system and the Incarnate System (as well as what seems to be some under utilized Accolade powers and Empowerment buffs). Even the modification allowing Blasters to use basic attacks while mezzed could be considered a cautious step.

Just how much this is going to help blasters is a giant question. 3 power picks is a hardship for most builds, 3 power picks and a pool is going to be a very hard choice

Lots of redundant powers that don't work as well as the similar powers other ATs have ?

Your answer alone sums up the problems with blasters.

Currently, it is still considered a leak, since the Sorcery Power Pool is not yet in open Beta testing. We can discuss the pool itself, since we got to see a closed-off option of it on open Beta not too long ago (that option has since been removed from the Power Pool list on Beta). The powers themselves were leaked due to someone illegally fiddling with pigg files, but discussing those on these forums is, for the moment, not allowed. If you want to find out more info, just google "City of Heroes Sorcery Power Pool" or something of the like, and you should be able to find some details on outside sites.

Thanks!