i24 Blaster Changes

No, my argument boils down to:
I said the snipe changes will allow builds to increase their single target DPS, but the increase is not so large that everyone will feel they must chase perma fast cast.

You then said the new snipe was very strong, the DPA of these things is twice that of any of the other power in most of these sets, and this would widen the performance gap between high end builds and other builds.

I then suggested that the difference in DPS between those who had perma fast cast snipe and those who just have occasional fast cast snipe will not be very large and depending on the builds the perma snipe build might not even be better DPS. I think chasing a perma snipe build will be a viable choice, I don't think it will be the only viable choice.

I'd say it is more like needing 20 gallons of gas to get there and blasters had 12 gallons and these changes added 4 more gallons. The sustain changes are significant, but we will still be scrambling for those other 4 gallons whereas every other AT has 20 or more gallons and can spend their time detailing and adding better parts.

I guess we disagree on just how significant the changes are.

I think the snipe changes are poor (Though well intentioned in part). I think they will probably create a fairly large ST disparity between those who leverage them and those who cannot. They should have used a mechanic easily leveraged by all, or that couldn't be abused at all. Thankfully in an AoE focussed game better ST damage is niche. My largest complaint about this is those sets that finish at 19% tohit, when you get on a team you might love your toon, then be dissapointed when you end up solo, even though a faster snipe would actually be MORE use when you are solo!

I think the sustain changes are woeful (In execution and intention), changing the downtime period on an AT who's downfall is being killed VERY quickly does next to nothing in my eyes (If I see a Fireball getting to the mob before me I know pretty soon there will be a dead blaster behind me, but it is only blasters that have such a problem), and the changes have been tacked onto powers that create an imbalance between the sets because some got good powers and some didn't. It also makes it harder to make the grand changes I think are necessary because now every set has an overpowered power that they rely on and are nearly required to take (Which is always bad design).

Lastly I think the very fact this is the way they chose to start means the devs either think the tank already has more than 12 gallons in it, or that they would be happy filling it to 18. Or worse, that they can't afford the petrol to fill it all the way to 20.

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 they mentioned having them no longer supressed, but I could be wrong.

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!"

That.

I'm mildly confused that nobody picked up on this huge change.

I think the quote was 'any toggle to do with survivability will no longer be supressed' or words to that effect.

I wonder if that is across all AT's? And if it would include debuffs like Darkest Night.

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 it just applies to these new Blaster survival powers. Not just any toggle that might make you more survivable in general.

Which really confuses me, why bother putting the survivability into a toggle at all if you have to change a second bit of code to stop it supressing? Just have it passive and be done, then you can still actually revamp the awful powers to make the sets appealing for more reasons that 'this sustain power keeps me alive better than that one'.

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!"

So far they all sound good to me, although I have worries about /Dark, even its power sounds good.

Back in the distant past, before I13, we didn't have all these IOd Defense builds running around because you couldn't really get there with what was available. I built my blaster around regen, because one of my problems was the fact that I could survive fights, but then had to wait before engaging more. While I am of the belief that this is not going to be enough, we are getting a lot of regen. This is significant and will be a large help (but blasters have a long way to go), especially on high end builds.

But that last bit is one that bothers me a little. I have a few blasters in the early twenties and those are what I will be transferring to beta to test with (although I will also test with my 50 Fire^3). I am very curious how this will help in the 20-40 range, and I just ran two blasters up (one is at 40 and one is at 32), so I have a fresh basis of comparison.

Well, they likely know more about how many gallons are in there than you or I. I understand their concern with giving too much though. If you give too little, you can feel free to add more. If you give too much, it is harder to take some away. Look at the hand-wringing they are doing over Drain Psyche. This is the perfect opportunity to adjust it so that it helps more at the low end (or even without any enemies needed) while also bringing its ridiculous high end in line. But they are hesitating, and rightly so, because they don't want to take away something they gave us in the past, even though they know they should.

Here are my hopes.
1) They can determine this will not be enough in beta and implement some additional mitigation by I24.

2) If that is not possible (and it very well may not be), that they have a form of additional mitigation laid out and prepped so that after gathering some data on live, if the changes made in I24 turn out not to be enough, they can more quickly implement additional changes (say by late fall) rather than having to wait until I33 to look at blasters again. Use this time focusing on blasters to be prepared and ready to deliver on the statement that the beati... er buffs will continue until performance improves.

3) Increase the blaster ranged dam mod to 1.25 and the melee dam mod to 1.125. Increase the corruptor ranged dam mod to 0.9. Increase the defender range dam mod to 0.8 and give defenders scrapper base HPs and the stalker HP cap. (what? )

Oh no. Many of us did. You cannot imagine the joy I am feeling about it. I hope they make Death Shroud, Lightning Field, and Hot Feet just suppress, rather than shut off as well.

While I don't think that this kind of boost should have been some sort of inherent passive, I do agree that the mechanism for the boost is a little odd. But I think they wanted to keep each set a bit different.

If it had been me doing a change to Blasters, I probably would have made Defiance add some sort of survival boost as well. Let blasters need to keep attacking to be more survivable. I think that fits well with the AT's offensive stance. Have Defiance grant +1.0 Mez protection and +50% regen with each attack, with a maximum amount of stacks possible for each of those.

But I'm not in charge, so probably not going to happen. I also thought they needed more damage to separate them from other damage ATs, but whatever.

Your big list isn't really comparative to Snipes, however. I love having sets be diverse and act in different ways, but Snipes are a consistent power across the board that works in the same way between sets currently. The proposed changes make them somewhat more useful, but not in a consistent way as they are now.

It's an added level of complexity mostly put in (as far as I can tell) to buff Devices a bit. That's not a particularly good reason to put in the odd to hit buff requirement. I call it odd, because when it came to other powers that affected multiple powersets, the devs have usually been a lot more inclusive (hence my looking at Assassin's Strike and other recent combo abilities). The new snipes don't mesh nicely with the sets they are in, they require extra powers or insps to use effectively, with the exclusion of Devices.

Can you imagine that being slapped on to Assassin's Strike? The thought makes me wrinkle my nose. And even if the insta snipe isn't supposed to be available at all times, there are other ways to limit it than letting Devices access it easily and not let others do so. The ability to insta-snipe should be clear and consistent from one snipe to the next. And doing so doesn't somehow eliminate diversity between the sets, either.

I think this is where our disagreement lies, before IO's (I can't actually remember much about that time to be honest) I was perfectly happy with the performance of my characters. It wasn't until the ability to run at */x8 came along that I really noticed some of my characters pulling ahead of the others.

Now when I look at blasters I don't expect to be able to take a full spawn alpha in the face, or run at that kind of difficulty on SO's, but I do expect them to have the potential to reach that kind of level (Because all other AT's have that potential, desipite different playstyles). My sadness comes because these powers to nothing to help that.

Picking nukes as the priority above snipes would have at least come closer to giving them enough damage to clear a spawn should you manage to survive the alpha, the snipe change doesn't really help even if abused.

I too hope this is just step 1 on their tentative plan to bring blasters in line, I just can't help feeling that they are aiming for a different performance level from me, or are badly judging the starting situation.

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 agree that it lacks consistency. I don't think the variance is very large and I like that the variance has been added.

I think you are incorrect. How the stalker changes work can vary based on a lot of factors. Stalker secondaries have always had some inconsistencies that affected their consistent powers across the board. Placate works a lot better on a defense set than it does on a regen stalker, for example. I've lost my focus when needing to click on my mitigation since regen is an active secondary. My regen benefited a lot more from the max HP increase than some other sets, etc.

I am not sure why you think this; outside of Assault Rifle, every set with a snipe can use Aim. It doesn't have to be perma to be useful. They could use a lockout mechanic to make it more consistent, but I still don't think it is strong enough to worry about and I don't think the variance between builds that have it perma and builds that don't even take the snipe is going to be as high as some are worried about.

This does seem likely. They have mentioned they don't want the kind of mitigation that would allow them to take Alpha strikes in general. That said, with IOs, blasters can get pretty good at avoiding a lot of damage. The I24 sustain addition is not strong enough on its own to survive large spawns, but on a solid blaster build it should be very noticeable. My main concern over this being all they might add is not what my level 50 IOd, Incarnate blasters can do, which I think is going to be quite a bit improved, but rather if this will help blasters (enough) from 20-40+.

The snipe change is supposed to improve snipes, not solve all the blaster problems. I think it makes the snipes very attractive while also not making them must haves. The snipe change hits its mark very close, you are looking at the wrong target.

I too wish this was a change for I24. I have avoided commenting on it, because the devs have been clear and upfront by saying "not at this time." However, it is probably not necessary for me to hold this back (I just think that if I was in their shoes, I might be thinking, "come on, we already acknowledged that and said, not now, maybe later").

True nukes being on a longish recharge is OK with me. I don't need them to be up as often as HoB or RoA. But the long recharge is limit enough. None of the crash is necessary, although I do understand it is thematically appropriate. I would want the -recovery eliminated and I think the end drain should be to 10%, instead of 0 (if it wants to be kept for theme). Perhaps add a -33% damage debuff for 20 seconds after nuking for thematic reasons (current nuke's negative can be overcome with a blue, this one could be overcome with a red).

I thought it was that the survival aspects of the toggle wouldn't suppress.

So if you had an aura that did damage and added regen, you'd keep regen but not the damage while mezzed.

I am guessing that is how it will work, but that is still a HUGE improvement because right now Blazing Aura shuts off when mezzed.

Ah. Now it makes sense. Thanks. That takes it from a -40 DPS to +40, if your existing characters happen to have Devices to sustain the +22% ToHit, or you have enough team mates around with Tactics running. Otherwise, it'll cost 1.17 seconds to activate Aim or BU every time. I think it will be very awkward/annoying, however, if you're firing at a good clip, and suddenly your team mate wanders out of range, and your snipe starts doing interrupts again.

Actually with minimal effort (tactics + kismet) every Corruptor and Defender can have the permanent fast snipe. The only blasters that can have the fast snipe on a permanent basis, are devices and energy. Energy has to take tactics, the kismet, and has to rotate Aim, build up and power boost (while wearing a chicken on their head)*




*Actually the chicken is part of the changes to nukes coming soon.

That's why I find it confusing that Mids shows 90 for the damage of Blazing Aura, 40 base plus 5x13.39 (75%). It should show "5x13.39 (75%) special every 10 seconds", which would then result in a total of 40 + 10 = 50. (50 / 2s tick divided by 5 ticks every 10 seconds).

The 40 base includes effects from T4 Musculature and T4 Assault. Which makes me wonder: Does anyone know what the effects of Hybrid Assault are on an always on damage toggle power? Would the amount of damage from a damage aura be fixed based on the Dmg multiplier when it's toggled on, or would the amount of damage vary based on the current damage buff every 10 seconds?

That's a problem faced by any measurement scale. For convention's sake, we often choose a base point that makes intuitive sense from our own experience.

For temperature, we choose the melting point of water to peg 0 degrees Celsius
For COX, base defence is the melting point for Blasters.

Sorry to be a pedant, but 0 degrees Celsuis is arctually not the point at which I melts nor at which ice freezes as some think, but the point at which water can exist in all 3 states, liquid, solid and gasious.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

Based on the British show "QI", the triple point of water is actually 0.01 degrees Celcius. And yes, this is even more pedant. But hey, if Dara O'Briain is going to lose points for it, so should you.