i24 Blaster Changes

I agree when it comes to how powers work, but the aim should be that pretty much any selection of powers should have your character do X damage (Give or take a certain %). The way the damage is dealt (Burst, dot, aoe etc) can be vastly different to allow for playstyles, but the end product should be balanced numberically imho.

So chasing a fast activating snipe should force you to miss the opportunity to do damage in a different way.

Mitigation should be the same, though is far far harder to quantify and would probably rely on a lot of trial, datamining and tweaking when talking about active mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

If it is in your build anyway and is already well slotted, I agree.

If you have to tear out a power to put it in your build and have it well slotted, not so much. At that point you are trading bread and butter all the time utility for something that is situational and for most combinations will be bringing your overall damage down.

I can agree with good design having players make tradeoffs the problem is blasters have already traded survivability for damage. The snipe change really isn't addressing that.

OK, from what I understand, Field Op should grant about 360% regen once slotted.

If that is correct... my napkin calculations show that you would be getting... lets say... with only 3 slotted Health... 0.74% of your HP back per second.

So... if thats right... Field OP also 3 slotted for regen would get you 1.83% of your HP back total per second (that's on top of the Health regen.)

This means you can take 2.46 times the dps you would be able to take now on live*

(for reference, this Blaster was able to sustain 11.9 dps at lvl 50 without enemies denting his HP, now he can sustain 29.3 dps without the enemies eating at his HP)

Impressive? Not really, got to see how this plays with other things in play.

But your proposal is to give the blaster 20% resistance to one damage type. Unless you happen to have other sources of resistance to stack that over, you are only increasing the potential DPS you can survive to 1.25 times what you normally would be able to (or 20.08 dps at lvl 50 before enemies start denting his HP), and thats only to one damage type.


For reference, I looked at will power for stalkers (good reference point since they don't get RTTC) and, should I not be TOO rusty, the stalker with every power 3 slotted for full effects (including Stealth), and inherent Health also 3 slotted, and spamming it's click heal non-stop... would take about 60.55 (smash or lethal) dps before enemies can start denting his HP bar.

That's 5.08x the baseline Blaster and 2.07x the blaster running Field Op.

Suddenly... this is starting to sound more impressive... either that or my math is very messed up... and it may be, been ages since I do these calculations... or perhaps it’s just Willpower Stalkers that suck… (Arcanaville, I call forth thou math superiority!)


*I am, for the time being, ignoring defense you may get from Field Op

Edit:Found an error in the calculations, fixed, stalker now looks more reasonable but the values are still strong for blasters.

Edit 2: found another error... will just make a new post with the corrections. Just note numbers above do not account for base regeneration, just additional regeneration on top of base.

Not sure it is true that it will bring damage down ever. Sure, if you use the snipe all the time even when not buffed to make it fast, but I see players do that now. You don't have to push the button just because it is recharged.

I think even as a situational use the snipe fast cast change can improve damage for almost anyone. Does it improve it enough to bother changing? That is up to the player. I have occasionally wanted the utility of the long range, but couldn't justify it because of how infrequently useful snipes were. This makes them more useful outside of just the range advantage and could tip me over the edge on some of my blasters. I still will skip it on some characters, I don't think this makes snipes must take. But I do think it improves their value and makes them worthwhile.

That said, snipes were not the main part of trying to balance blasters. The snipe changes are there because snipes need something across every AT. Only the secondary mitigation additions will make me lose my bet so I am working on figuring out how to make sure the devs realize they need a broader revamp and that those changes should be pushed back to I25 (slightly broader revamp, yes, push back the changes, not really ).

WP stalkers get a heal. And from my experience blasters tend to fall down dead rather than get slowly whittled down. Regen doesn't give them any way of stopping an entire angry mob from flattening them like nearly every other AT has.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

If you took out a blast from your attack chain to put snipe in, every time snipe is unavailable your damage is going down way down from the original level. Unless you had large amounts of excess recharge you are going to be seeing a 1+second gap in the chain. (Most likely closer to 2)

If you don't lose a blast you have to come up with a power pick and enough slots to make the snipe work that will be real hard.

The more I look at this, the more I see it as a giant red flag telling people if you want to play this game you should play anything but a blaster.

I counted that heal in my calculations. Keep in mind: Stalker Willpower only gets 146.25% regen. Compared to that, even with the extra mitigation and Click heal they get.... 360% regen in a single power sounds insanely powerful... specially if the build also takes things like Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping and IO bonuses to soft cap defense.

Edit to expand:

It does not matter if you have resistances or regeneration or defences, etc (unless you mixing them together for insane builds) what matters is that the final build effectively regenerates more damage than it's being inflicted per second.

Sure, you wont be taking an alpha, guess what? Nor do most non-IOed stalkers.

I honestly see this as changing snipes into a power on at best a 30second recharge, which is awful. And they weren't even boosted to 1 shot LT's.

People seem blinded by the tohit gimick.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I posted this in the other thread, but figure since people seem to be spread may repeat/rephrace it here:

The more I look at the snipe thing, accross multiple ATs, the lest I think it will work as an universal fix.

I think the mechanic is great, it's outlilned in a way that blasters are more likely to be able to take advantage of it than most other ATs, something I think is good.

But despite the uberness of AR/Devices once IOd or Overslotted, the effect may be entirely unaccessible to many defender, corruptors and dominator builds, who will in turn just feel the snipes are still just a burden in the set design.

Would be nice if they actually followed the full rendition of the stalker change, with Snipes becoming regular attacks that don't wooo if used outside of the tohit buff or under a 80ft range. Keep them interrupt snipes at over 80ft range if under +22% tohit.

This would make snipes useful for many sets without boosting dps drastically and at the same time helps Electric Blast and the complaints of the set having no viable ST damage chain.

Actually what I think people seem blinded at is the fact that most of what was discussed was not about changes to blasters. i24 = Changes to some ranged powers, to snipe, AND some minor boost to the blaster's sustained health between mobs.

To the point that Hawk even said that the goal of the new powers were so blasters didnt feel they have to use Rest between every single mob, and now have something to help them in between. Which still doesnt fix the fact they get flattened mid-fights without aggro control.

Which, pre-Incarnate levels is no issue, but once teaming with Incarnates when everyone and their pony have a crashless nuke now that is when blasters may start to feel useless because you either go, kill and get killed, or wait so you dont get killed and some hooligan defender did from range with one attack what you would have done with your whole attack chain.

That's true part of the time, but whittling down is something that does happen to Blasters quite often. I upped the pace and survivability of my Blasters by adding in Aid Self (and not always having the slots to give it more than the default), something that I generally don't use in combat. Having it lets me keep on moving from one spawn to the next, with Aid Self as a quick pause (or a quick boost if I need to retreat from a hard target).

Generally, if your health is dropping so fast that Aid Self single slotted can't help you, you're probably taking on more at once than you can handle. And I don't play at x2 and often do things like solo or duo a group that was meant for 8 when on teams. I'm not sure if the new regen numbers equate well to using aid self occasionally, but they probably will be a boost in a Blaster's pace between mobs and cut down on deaths.

You're hitting on the other side of the thing that bugs me about the snipe change. Besides having a to hit requirement that I don't care for, it also doesn't do much for the damage.

How much does making them uninterruptible increase their DPA? Does that make them worth using or at least competitive ST powers? I guess I don't know about that yet and maybe the devs just want to make them powers that players might want to pick, which I don't think they are right now.

I would like them to have some kind of merit to be used as an opener (though in your example, I could see the snipe being a good follow up to some AOEs on a boss or lt). I suppose they'll take out a minion if you use build up or aim first, but they won't without it, and that's not all that impressive. Assassin's Strike does ridiculous things with build up going (or if it crits) and the other capabilities of a Stalker have to roughly equate to a Blaster sniping from range, if not go beyond.

Regardless, the Snipe proposal, for what we know about it now, seems lacking. Lots of time to work on it, at least. Pity we aren't seeing nuke changes as well, even if they don't want to take on too much at once. I'd almost say crashing nukes are more of a concern in a game with Judgement powers than snipes are. But this is where we are and I'll roll with it.

Build choices often are hard. On my primary blaster I've always said I'd give up Blazing Aura if they made something else good (I had high hopes for Melt Armor, but they decided to make it craptastic for APPs). I was kind of hoping Inferno would lose the crash and maybe have the recharge changed to 4 minutes.

But, alas, they made BA my heal power, so I'll just have to keep it.

On my Fire/Fire/Force ranger I'll likely drop Fire Sword, which I only took in case something got in my face, for the snipe. I don't really have room for Cauterizing, but I might consider dropping Inferno. This character has a lot of recharge and while I have Tactics I will not chase perma fast cast because Aim and Build Up recharge fast enough for me (I do have vengeance though, which I get to use pretty often, and while that is up my to hit is plenty high).

So many other characters. I will likely drop something on my Nrg/Dev/Mun for the snipe since I already have TD and CD. The Fire/Mental will likely not change, no need for the snipe. My Sonic/Nrg will take Energize, I'll find a way to fit it in. It certainly does add choices.

My Nrg/Regen/Mace stalker will be pretty happy. It may only fast cast after Build Up, but I took the snipe for giggles anyway. I mean, 8 seconds, really. How awesome is that!

It is huge. It makes them better than Blaze. Some will be better than Widow LUNGE.

One of the worst things I read about the nukes was a dev showing how the damage formula would have nukes doing 6.5 damage scale (Or something) which they said was clearly rediculous (I don't see why, destroying a spawn once every few minutes doesn't seem to bad to me) so they made nukes break that formula and nerfed the damage. But they never thought to adjust the recharge or end cost in order to make the damage fit the formula, and still aren't planning on doing so. And having a formula surely means you stick to it, or it is not fit for purpose.

So not only do nukes have a crash, but that actually only do something like 2/3's of the damage they should, which people would be screaming about on other powers.

Then when I see the changes proposed I get the feeling that the devs just want to patch blaster up to the point where they aren't totally sucky by expending the bare minimum amount of effort on them, rather than have a proper plan in place to put them at a specific level of performance.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I had a similar conversation already with Synapse over the nukes. Honestly the fact that judgement got added to the game is a huge part of why Blasters have been feeling underperforming since a year+ ago. Personally I suggested that only blasters don't crash with the nukes, corruptors and defenders could keep the power as a "situational" power that they could keep or drop but neither of those ATs are in need of balance. No matter how you look at it 2 judgement(and sometimes 1) outdo a blaster on every situation and still clearing a full spawn(maybe sans bosses).

They do, it's called missing or having your recharge debuffed enough that you have no more StJ attacks to use.


Perhaps we need a review, boys and girls:

Energy Manipulation.Conserve Power >> Energize This Energize will have less of a heal and have more and longer lasting regen so that it can be made perma with slotting.

Devices.Cloaking Device >> Field Operative Field Operative will have an all-the-time regen and recovery buff added to its defense and stealth. Part of the regen is enhanceable, all of the recovery is enhanceable.

Dark Manipulation.Touch of Fear >> Touch of the Beyond This is still a melee click that needs a target. Using it on a foe grants a long duration (60 sec?) regen buff along with fearing and debuffing the target. This buff, AFAIR, does not stack on the caster.

Electric Manipulation.Lightning Clap >> Might of Thunder Just like LC, MoT is a click PBAoE that does not need a target to use. It always grants the user a regen and recovery buff when used for a long duration (60 sec?) so can be made perma. The range of this power is also improved so any foes caught in this power are also knocked back and/or stunned.

Fire Manipulation.Burning Aura >> Cauterizing Aura This aura always grants the user a heal-over-time and this power will not shut off while mezzed (but it will suppress the offensive part). No targets are needed for the healing but if there are targets, they will simply take fire damage.

Ice Manipulation.Chilling Embrace >> Protection of Coldorsomesuch This aura has been slowed down to tick much slower than Chilling Embrace but has been compensated by improving its range to 30ft. This is because the new aura grants +absorb every tic (every 3 seconds) that refreshes. The +absorb requires no targets but if there are targets, their recharge and damage will be debuffed. Oh, and the new aura does not shut off when mezzed, just the offensive component suppressed.

Mental Manipulation.Drain Psyche No changes.

I didn't get to listen to the whatsit because I have no sound at work so I was only going from player notes (Because the community team don't think a transcript is worthwhile since we clearly browse an internet forum because we want to listen to stuff...) so I didn't know this.

They also specifically made a 'blasters look here!' post which actually makes everyone think this is meant to be a proper buff, so shot themselves in the foot there.

Either way the changes range from poor snipe improvements, to a shockingly bad attempt to buff blasters.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Thank you for this

No real downside.

No real downside.

Melee only, so not useful for certain playstyles. Including the playstyle that the word 'blaster' sounds like it should have.

Good that it works out of combat, but it still does the KB which is the reason the power is skipped, so now you will be stuck between wanting that extra regen in combat and annoying the whole team if you use the power. And if you leave combat to cast the power then you are being carried by the team.

Ok, but this needs constant endurance (Most likely) unlike other sets.

Ok, but again needs endurance, and doesn't a 30' range really increase the chance of unwanted aggro?

An admission that a set propped up by a single power is ok

So this solidifies my theory that these are awful changes. And that is ignoring the fact that I think regen is a bad idea.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I think you are mis-using the word 'big'.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I'd agree with that except that, baring judgement, the blasters are the most effective when they are on a team. If someone has aggro they will unleash DPS like little other ATs can. They are not a hidrance to the team, the team is a hidrance to them as it currently works... the AT is effective at what it does, but it's not fun to play to most people in their current incarnation.

My fire/fire blaster with blazing aura and hot feet would disagree.

Lightning Clap sucks it does Radial KB. It would go much better in Lightning Field. Blaster needs teamates not angry ones because of radial KB.