Blaster Changes? (I Fear)

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I'm sure the devs are breathing sighs of relief.

Seconding this. And I almost never pass on a snipe, as well. Sam's post is pretty much 100% anti-my-play-style.

*shrug*

Just going to keep enjoying mine more, I suppose.

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Well, running these numbers, my wife's fire/fire blaster can have permafastsnipe while duo'ing with my main (ill/kin controller), so it doesn't take TOO much. Granted, she's already damage incarnate after a good fulcrum shift, so I never really felt she needed a buff....

Even without perma, though, fitting it in-battle with a buildup or inspire chomp won't be too tough either.

The devs better keep an eye out for any AR/Devs hanging around clock towers. To-hit being schedule B and targeting drone only giving a base 13.875% would need a lot of slots (5ish by back of the napkin math) devoted to to-hit.

I guess my thing with snipes is that a situational change just doesn't feel like enough to justify picking up another power that will need significant slotting on AT that's already kind of starved for them. They're still ultimately too situational. Don't get me wrong regarding the buff itself. My characters who already have Snipes will appreciate getting to use them more often, I'm sure. But it doesn't inspire me to take them on characters that haven't already found a way to fit them in.

4 slots does it with SOs (22.06%). Alternately you get there just by slotting a single SO in TD and putting the kismet to-hit IO in cloaking device (field operative I suppose once this goes through).


Personally I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by the blaster specific changes nice though they are. The best changes here are simply the blast changes themselves and that applies to everyone who gets those powers. Of course that's just my gut reaction and experience might end up proving me wrong.

I'd rather they up the to-hit in targeting drone so it only needs 2-3 to-hits than needing an IO that not everyone will have access to. Ar/Dev is in edge case since it has a snipe but no aim or build up but that's what they should be paying attention to.

It's only one more slot than you'd like to get it with just TD itself and SOs, so there's at least that. 4 slotted TD will give enough to-hit by itself. You could also do the TD+tactics thing, that'll get you there readily as well.

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't everyone (assuming access to IO's at all) be able to use the kismet? It's not especially expensive nor difficult to acquire. And anyone can take a defensive pool power to slot it into.

If you're talking using strictly SO's I am fairly confident the devs intent isn't for you to have perma instant snipes out of the box and they intend you to build for that specifically IF you want it.

Well, I do love me some Blasters, so I also part company with Sam there, but Blasters can certainly use some help, especially in the snipe area, so I know where he is coming from.

The original concept of Blasters led to many troubles, depending on the powersets. The "ranged damage" aspect was never enough; the Devs set it up to where my squishable squishy had to run in close to use some powers, and until you have some finesse, it usually does not end well. At this juncture, I can skitter in and out of melee intact, but the learning curve was long and brutal. The exact powersets also make a vast difference in this regard.

The snipes really could use some love. Too long to fire and plagued with constant interruptions, not to mention moving targets that duck behind cover, they are extremely situational for me.

But stop Blasting? No way. Either I love a challenge or am a glutton for punishment, but I enjoy the heck out of those Blasters.

You need either a license or the proper reward level to use IOs or you have to buy the SBO, if they have Kismet in the market.

Permasnipe would the perk of the build up-less Devices and would make it a just a bit more team friendly.

And I did the math in the wrong direction, needing only 58.5% instead of 63% is a lot more reasonable.

When you say "situational" when would you not want to use an attack that has a higher DPA than all of your other attacks and fires in about one second?

The buffed snipe is not situational. Getting the buff, however, can be.

Build Up itself is situational in that it can't be up all the time. Is Build Up worth taking and slotting?

Honestly? I find it pretty marginal. It's a nice opener, but not generally something I'm inclined to fire off mid-combat. And that's exactly what Snipes already are. Though that is, admittedly, playstyle and not numbers talking, and I'll admit that, so please, nobody, mistake me for being objective here.

However, that said, Build Up is also pretty effective at what it does out of the box, especially because with just a bit of set bonuses for Recharge (which are already going to be a fair draw for Blasters), it really can pretty much sit with its single slot and do its job.

A snipe, on the other hand, is going to need much more love in the slots department, and Blasters (and Dominators) tend to really need their slots in my experience. So I'm just not sure it's worth that for one attack, even if that one attack does really good DPA every 40 seconds or so.

As I said before, it's not like this change will "cost" anything to my Blasters who already took their Snipes. It's a welcome benefit that will be used every once in a while. But at the same time, it's not going to inspire me, for the most part, to take Snipes on characters who didn't already have them. Even the one exception I can think of, my BR/Devices, will be replacing an attack with the Snipe, rather than adding it to the aresnal, so to speak.

Fair enough. The sniper change wasn't meant to "fix" blasters so no one should be compelled to take them either. It was meant to make them more attractive, but that doesn't mean they will be attractive to everyone.

Don't get me wrong, I REALLY tried to like Blaster. I got an AR/Dev/Muntitions to 50, I got an Energy/Energy/Foce to 50, I got a Fire/Fire/Flame to 50, I got a Pistols/Electric/Electric to 42, an Ice3 to 42, and my experience just kept getting worse and worse with all of them. By far the easiest of those to play, counter-intuitively, was my Fire/Fire/Flame since I could easily take out those pesky Gunslingers and Mentalists and so forth before they became a problem. Char one Malta Spec Ops, Blaze + Fire Sword the Gunslinger, lay into the Spec Ops before he wakes up.

And it worked when I was still having to have my Brutes wait between every two fights and my Scrappers take so many endurance reduction slots. Then inherent Fitness came around, and all of my Scrappers and Brutes and especially my Masterminds became ten times better. All of a sudden my Brute could do what my Blaster could - wipe out huge spawns quickly - and all it took was a spawn or two to get moving since I didn't really need to stop and rest. And then the Fury changes happened which made gaining and maintaining Fury up to 75 was very easy. All of a sudden my Masterminds could resummon mid-battle and NOT run out of endurance. Then their upgrades became AoE. Then they became much cheaper and their buffs became AoE, too. Then Stalkers gained amazing damage AND more survivability AND Demoralisation on every Assassin's Strike even if the target died.

And all this time, my Blasters were playing the same way they played back in 2005 - very slowly, very carefully, dreading any and every encounter. See, my Brutes really didn't care too much what they fought. Mentalist, Gunslinger, Mushroom or basic soldier. Sure, they all had different quirks to them, but at no point did I have to stop and say to myself "I really don't want to do this..." Because that's what was going through my head while playing a Blaster all the time. Oh, no! What's around that corner? Oh, no! A boss! Oh, no, an ambush! Help! With a Brute or a Scrapper or a Mastermind, the most I'd think was "Boss, huh? Bring it on!"

I get why people like Blasters as a "challenge," but what they did to me is make me feel weak, insignificant and afraid. I had to work twice as hard to be only half as good... Or I could go play a Scrapper and be awesome and welcome more enemies. With my Blasters, especially in the 40s, every fight felt like a boss fight, and it was so, so draining. I ran through the Mender Ramiel arc with my Fire/Fire/Pyre, and despite making good time, I simply never enjoyed the experience. In fact, it was so unpleasant that's more or less what made me scrap all my Blasters, no pun intended. And having seen Praetoria, and seeing what the late game was becoming and how the game damn well EXPECTED me to play well on the top end of the difficulty scale... Yeah, playing characters that were struggling to impress me even at base difficulty just wasn't gonna' happen.

And it still won't. It'll take more than a token downtime mitigation tool and a non-crappy Snipe to get me to return to that AT. As a point of fact, it'll probably take a whole new AT that's either Range/Defence or Assault/Defence.

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.

You.... do realize that the point of changing unpopular powers is to make them popular. So the point of changing nukes would be to get people who don't currently take them TO TAKE THEM.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

I'm not sure if you've tried it yet, Sam, as irecall posts saying you didn't care to use them, and while still not as effective as going melee, I did find IOing Blasters for defense (especially Range Def + Hover) made a huge difference in survival and feeling tougher. Not as tough as any of the melee's, mostly because even at softcap, that one mez attack can get through, but it does become less of a worry, when one remains hovering above the enemies.

Inventions are really one of those things that I want to be as tangentially involved with as possible, for the simple fact that I don't appreciate the loot aspect of it. That, and planning around inventions is easiest when a build is "final" and has all of its slots, since then I can just plan around final values and I don't have to worry about which combination of what is available at which level and so forth. Considering all my 50 Blasters are gone, that pretty much leaves Inventions out in the cold.

But again - it's a bother for me, and a bother I didn't have to go through with any of my other characters. SR is kind of reaching that level of bother in Incarnate content so we'll see how that goes, but other than that? It just doesn't seem like it's worth the effort to reinvest in an AT that pissed me off so much when the most I can look forward to is about break-even performance. I can get that much easier from the ATs I actually like. Besides, I clearly have a different idea of how Blasters should be than most people, so it just makes sense to let the AT be what it will for others to enjoy and just stick to the ones I like.

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.