Dev Chat Summation: BLASTER CHANGES

That's your opinion. It's also subjective. Prior to Assassin's Focus every Stalker I ever played felt anemic and withered when compared to any of my other characters, even my buff-oriented Controllers. The change was for the better and I see absolutely no reason to look down on it. It seems like you're approaching the Stalker changes from a center of resentment, like your favorite AT didn't get the new shiny and you're upset that now an under-performing AT is performing well.

While it's not an option available to all Defenders or Corruptors, any I ever solo always have powerset choices that severely reduce foes' opportunity to mez me, their opportunity to defeat me while I'm mezzed, my susceptibility to mez, or sometimes all three. Very few Blasters have such tools unless you try to count the ability to defeat foes faster. Those who do have such tools never have them at the levels of potency that are available in Corruptor secondaries or Defender primaries.

I solo all three ATs, and believe me, my Blaster got mezzed a whole lot more. So much more that I really couldn't approach the same difficulty settings with my high-level Blaster that I could with my high level Defenders and Corruptors.

I play Stalkers, Nalrok. And even I acknowledge Assassin's Focus was overkill.

Spoiler Alert: I play every AT besides Brutes, really. Don't know why I never rolled a Brute. Weird.

Would you prefer the alternative?

Honestly I'd rather have overkill Stalkers than still-sub-par Stalkers.

Bleh. While I can taste the sarcasm through my monitor, I am sorry that my sleep-deprived insanity made me come off a bit rougher than I like to try to initially come off.

Like to try being the keyword.

In truth: Asking for the same change to Snipes that Stalkers got to their core mechanic is not going to happen, if I had any guesses, with out Snipes taking a power nerf. My suggestion is the following: Try it out on Beta first, then if you feel it's too clunky, go from there. But do not be surprised if that Scale 2.7 monster goes down to Scale 1.7 in exchange for a change that... doesn't need to happen.

Look at it from the point of view as: "It makes Devices suck a lot less, while making Blast Sets in general suck less. Except those four unfortunate smhucks that didn't have snipes included TEEHEE."


Maybe, but it further shows the Melee Power Creep, which is why I was going on and on about it in Water Blast.

... and now Water Blast is sort of hosed (HAHAHAHA) with the Snipe Change.

And I was SO EXCITED FOR IT Q_Q

I don't know, man, I have a 30 Water/Poison on Beta and I haven't had that much fun with a Corruptor since my Beam/Time, Beam Time.

... Clever.

And eh, I look toward the future as well. The Snipe Change is going to be massive. I just can't see them making up in any way for an Instant Scale 2.7 12 Second Recharge BLAM to the face for Water Blast, Ice Blast, Sonic Attack, and Dual Pistols. I don't think they'd adjust the Tier 1, 2, and 3 Blasts to equal up to an increase of 2.7 Across the board, and I'm not sure math really works that way.

Sure, Water Blast will remain with High AoE, but... No Snipe = No change to ST which means it's going to be left behind, and Blast Set ST is the major issue here, not AoE.

I can't justify an 800 point drop on something that WILL be inferior down the road. I can't foresee any logical change to make up for that lack of Snipe.

God I can't believe I'm actually saying this about SNIPES.

I want at least some idea of what Hawk and Synapse have planned if these four sets fall behind (and they will fall behind, period). Just some assurance that my purchase of Water Blast won't be in vain. RP Concepts are one thing, but money is money and performance is a thing.

I try.

Honestly, the recent AT 'upgrades' have been pretty phenomenal, and the numbers team is really on the ball as of late. I have a feeling that whatever they do with the non-snipe sets will make them just as desirable as the sets that have snipes.

EDIT: You know, thinking about it, I've realized Paragon does power/game change in a way that all developers should: instead of nerfing everyone for one set underperforming and/or nerfing one overperforming set (Looking at you, Blizzard), the team brings other sets up to overperforming ones and/or boosts up the one set that's underperforming.

We'll see, I guess. They did say they'll figure something out, and I hope it's something 'good'. As I said, the only thing they could do is just increasing the base power of those sets standard blasts. Super charging the Tier 3 Blast probably wouldn't work.

I'll probably still Day 1 Water Blast. At least it's pretty, I have a concept brewing still, and at the very least at least it's not Beast Mastery.

Ell. O. Ell.

Now I'm going to sit here and try to remember what Nature Affinity did.

That'd be interesting. On top of that they COULD up the range on the non-snipe sets to compensate somehow. Or, hell, they could strengthen the secondary effects.

Lots of HoT's, some debuff, and absorb mechanics.

Me? I'm waiting patiently for Sorcery.

I'll have to disagree with you there, Reppu. It's not an I win button.

Maybe I'm just fighting harder enemies at higher difficulties, but AS one shotting a minion in my own experience didn't make for an I win button.

What the new AS did was give Stalkers better ST DPS, which they lacked, and which was only ever really useful (in my own experience anyways) on hard targets, like AVs.

Yes, it's nice to see large chunks of life drain from a minion target, but then Scrappers could do that just the same.

It's more a perception thing. You see them get hurt fast, so it looks OMG SO AWESOMELY OPed, but in typical play it's still about AOEs, and if one is able to really leverage AS for the best sustained ST DPS, they've had to build for the recharge, end red/rec, and survivability to keep dishing it out.

Admittedly, even with a gap in one's ST DPS, AS helps the ST DPS stay competitive with Brutes/Scrappers...but then Stalkers should be in that department.

This isn't to say I don't think Blasters shouldn't be competitive or outright beat the melees in damage.

AoE's haven't been as relevant since Judgment happened nearly two years ago. Seriously. This is why Water Blast's superior AoE means nothing to me.

Yes, yes. A game exists before 50 but a game starts at 50, too.

The major focus of the game's harder content has shifted to really devastating single targets. Mass Mobs are handled by >1< Judgment. 1. Single. Judgment.

So... yeah. Have to disagree there. Scale 5.4 or whatever 1 Second fast enough recharging BLAM means more than any AoE you can offer me.

Also I can just pick up Fireball like a good little Stalker and go "KYUU" and everything died.

Or something.

Maybe instead of asking for changes to powers to help get the new shiney Snipe able to be perma'ed. Try getting other forms of +ToHit, either in IO set bonuses, or as Procs or what have you.

Might be a nice boon to have Decimation's Chance for Build Up to have a better chance to proc now.

game play is to be balanced at +0/x1 with SO's

"I can only solo +3/x8" is not an indication that something is not overpowered

I can't see one shotting a single minion as being an I win button, though

one shotting a boss is

I think community accepted soloing is +0/x3, although obviously +0/x1 should be soloable.

But yeah. AS can do that. And it does.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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No. BLAST SETS in general are bad. This is not a Blaster Specific issue. Unless you want the other 3 ATs to have the ToHit gimmick, and Blasters this gimmick.

But that'll make Dominators buttmad.

Then again there is nothing wrong with the Super Snipes being mildly situational solo, and reliable in teams.

As. Designed.

"Way too much" is precisely what I like in this game. Brutes, Scrappers and Masterminds have been getting away with having way too much of a lot of things. Consequently, they're my favourite ATs. Stalkers were always an AT I played but never quite enjoyed until the Stalker changes because I always felt I could do more with less effort if I played a Scrapper. Not any more. Now when I play a Stalker, I feel like I'm pretty much on par. Sure, Stalkers can occasionally do a little too much damage, but the bother of managing Assassin's Strike and dealing with the fairly broken "Hide" mechanic balances this out.

I like RPGs the most when they don't try to fit some crippling weakness into my character that forces me to seek out other people to plug it up. In fact, I like RPGs the most when I get to feel like I'm overpowered against most enemies and only ever face true challenge from the few, the rare, the strong mission end bosses. This informs the ATs I choose to play.

The problem with Blasters has always been the same - while other ATs get to be balanced like they're in a single-player game and are thus given significantly overpowered main strengths, Blasters are always balanced around trying to be fair against content. Because pretty much no-one else is balanced to be fair against content, this puts them dead last on any comparison scale. Me? I'd rather they too were overpowered, because that's what makes this particular game fun. If I want to be "well-balanced" there are a thousand other games out there I could play. I'm in this one in large part because here I'm not balanced, I'm strong. It's why Jack Emmert's "1 hero = 3 white minions" idea was so opposed.

In short, there's no such thing as "too much." The whole game's tank-mages, and that's just fine.

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 can't ask for another AT's toy, and then "forget" the AT.

The To-Hit enabled quick snipe isn't better. But you also get the snipes full damage and effects.

The fact that they have nearly full-strength support that's only really limited by range and only slightly by cost. That as of the last round of changes, a complete resummon is relatively cheap and very fast and equal to a VERY large effective heal. That they can deal very serious damage over a very large AoE range and have significant survivability on top of that. That I can more or less forget I have a secondary and do just fine for most normal missions. Of all the characters I've ever played, Masterminds have done most thing the easiest. Sure, certain enemies can rip the various henchmen apart, but that's where support comes in. For instance a Bots/FF Mastermind can run around with robots at the defence soft-cap who put off considerable AoE damage.

I don't know how they do in Trials since I've run a grand total of two iTrials, both of them BAF, and in both cases having absolutely zero idea what I or anyone else is actually doing to contribute to the success of the task. So I guess Masterminds might not be that good at Trials. For me, that's not a meaningful concern since I really don't intend to run many more than I already have. Now that solo options exist to obtain Incarnate rewards, that's not as pressing a concern any more.

So you'd think, but that's really not the case if you have an even half-way decent set of binds, and I happen to have one that's packaged such that I can give it to other people over in-game chat. It's a variation of the Mastermind Numpad Binds that I worked out along with that system's original creator that requires no bind files, no messing with your PC and nothing more complicated than being able to paste into the game.

And even otherwise, most of what I do with my Mastermind is order all henchmen to attack one target after another, order all henchmen to move to a location in aggressive mode to pick their own targets, move all henchmen to a location in passive mode to avoid ground patches and occasionally have all henchmen drop into Bodyguard mode. The system of binds I have set up for myself is many times more complex than anything I actually need to do, since all I really do over 90% of the time is order all henchmen to attack my target and then key my Mastermind attacks so I'm not sitting on my hands.

Occasionally, some secondaries might require a more active participation. Dark and Poison come to mind, but even they aren't that bad. Occasionally, some secondaries actively refuse to allow me to be involved in anything that happens. Forcefields is one such. Throw up the big bubble, cast the AoE buffs exactly once, then let the robots do their thing while I try to figure out what lies I told myself to justify taking Pulse Rifle Blast, Pulse Rifle Burst and Photon Grenade.

And for as overpowered as Masterminds are, I STILL want to see their personal attacks made either stronger or faster or cheaper so they're not a complete waste of space. So, yeah, even though I just spent so long saying how overpowered the AT is, I still want it to be slightly stronger.

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.

i20 was just a touch over one year ago. And the post-50 game is made up of: 2 TFs, 8 extended missions, and 1 (rather small) zone. The pre-Incarnate game has, for reference...nah, screw it. "Too many to count" is a better way to put it. Incarnate content is so incredibly infinitesimal compared to the rest of the game that to balance anything other than Incarnate-related stuff around it is downright silly. Incarnate content should be balanced around the rest of the game, not vice-versa.

Reliable if you have at least two people running slotted Tactics is not necessarily "reliable".

Perhaps, but it doesn't change the fact that it fails to make Snipes more desirable, which one would presume is kind of the point.