So... who made out in the change?

I think this is just picking on words. It's really not that different than the old argument that you didn't "have" to take Stamina and can't be "forced" to do anything. PVP has nothing to do with it, that's just diving into semantics.

None of that has anything to do with whether the system is well designed. And this one isn't.

And no, you can't say that about Stalkers, because Stalkers are not pushed into a Power Pool to make their powers work.

No one else is either. You can still just ignore snipes if you don't want to break your build to fit them in. It's simply that now they can be leveraged if desired.

Really comparing it to Stalkers just doesn't work because the assassin strike power is a core element of the AT design. Snipes are hardly core to any AT, blasters or otherwise, they're not even really core to range sets in general.

This change has been years in coming, we've already got ideal attack chains set up. Now we just have a viable alternate if we so choose.

I disagree. I think if this change rolls in as designed that a lot of people are going to be disappointed about what it means, because this is really no different than powers with high endurance costs that we're meant to use "strategically" but instead power our way around, because that is the choice that makes sense. I'm actually floored that so many people seem to see access to an additional high damage single target attack as "optional" or an "alternative." An alternative to what? To not leveraging the set?

Not everyone is a min/maxer. Again, we've got ideal attack chains worked out that have been years in the making that have let people run about perfectly adequately in terms of damage dealing.

The only ones that're going to feel required to work it in are those individuals that have to have -the best- attack chain.

But the game isn't solely based on DPS performance. If people feel getting the snipe to perma is a worthwhile endeavor, they will, if not, we've been going without snipes pretty much since their inception.

So exactly what do you mean by 'competitive' then?

At the end of the day, slots are slots and that's one slot the stalker is being 'forced' into taking. Two if you include Build Up.

And that's not even getting into the likelihood that a majority of defenders and corrs already had Leadership to begin with.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

You've really lost me here, I have no idea where you're going with this.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

I think they said somewhere that they would keep working on blasters until they are good. It makes sense to fix snipes (and then nukes) before fixing blasters as a whole. Once those changes are done, they can see what blasters still need. Doing that in reverse would be a bigger mess.

I am using the word "competitive" in the strict sense that when you make a build you expect some level of performance.

You could build a Corruptor without fastsnipe, but only in the same way that you could build a character without Stamina before they made that globally available. But why would you?

If this goes live, in I24, if you play a Corruptor with a Snipe, you will either take and slot Tactics or you will not be leveraging your blast set. That isn't an interesting build decision or particularly strategic. It's just Stamina again.


My apologies. Some background:

There is a long standing issue in City of Heroes with powers being designed with the intent of "strategic use" at a cost. Several toggle powers, for example, were originally designed so that we'd be incented to turn them off.

The problem is, what toggle powers really did was push players to find ways to find the endurance to run the toggle all the time. And since that was an achievable feat, in part because of Stamina, Stamina became a de facto "required" power. Actually, Stamina became a power that was talked about exactly the way we are talking about Tactics here: maybe you won't have room in your build, maybe you'd be taking Stamina anyway, only min-maxers will care, but it may mean giving up a fun travel power, a few sets won't need it, etc.

In the end none of that really mattered. Any (EDIT: I'll soften this to "most") build without Stamina was "uncompetitive." Choose another word if you don't like that terminology, but what I'm talking about has nothing to do with PVP or even necessarily competitiveness between players, only build decisions.

The same goes for AR. There are two issues that I have with this argument. First if the combo was viable before FastSnipe it's still viable after FastSnipe even if it can't FastSnipe. Yes it's a buff but I don't really see it as essential.

Secondly as far as I'm concerned Tactics (or an equivalent power such as Targeting Drone or Farsight) has always been essential. Missing an attack really, really sucks and the newer content has featured more and more enemies with either to hit debuffs, defense buffs or simply higher level than us so stacking a bit more To Hit on my characters has always been high priority. The majority of them have two (or even three) leadership toggles and unless I have a To Hit buff already one of the two will be Tactics. Now I'll admit most of them don't have 22% To Hit buff because I generally aimed for 15% but that's just a slotting change.

If it's not that essential or effective then why...
1) ...is it being advertised as a major buff for Devices? Is it really effective or is it not? Because if it is really effective for Devices, it is really effective for Tactics. There is no 2 ways to argue with that.
2) ...do we need a "magic number" at all? If it's not that great, why set it up this way?

In the end I would be just as happy with no buff to Corruptors or moving the target value so it's not achievable with Tactics as I would with just having the Snipe always be instant regardless of your ToHit value. I don't particularly care which way they go with it as long as it's not set up like this.


EDIT: I want to add that I have no particular beef with you Adeon, or anyone else in this thread. In fact, I enjoy reading your posts. Even though we disagree on this particular issue, I hope I can retain some of your respect. I really like some of your ideas for Defenders and Corruptors.

Tactics is hardly needed to be certain of hitting until you start talking about better than +4 enemies. Its very easy to build so you are hitting 95% of the time against +4s worst case you take a kismet.

No. The snipe changes are a response to snipes themselves being unpopular and underpowered; and the inferiority of ranged damage sets compared to melee ones.

The additions to the blaster only 'manipulation' secondaries are where blasters themselves are getting major buffs.

To be Honest, the reason I like tactics on my characters (especially the squishy ones) is being blinded by those damn Arachnos. You could say ; then dont fight them. Sadly, they are an ever-present part of my characters regular game experience while solo. I don't always get to choose WHO is the villain in the story.

Dumb answer: My corruptor's Dual Pistols.

OK, I see where you're coming from. However...

Not dumb answer: Corruptor's get a nice modifier for the Leadership toggles. Defenders get a really nice modifier. If I'm playing my class for support, I should already have the pool picked up. Even more than that, there are only a handful of powers that give corrs and defenders defense, so if I'm gunning for defense cap I'm picking up Manuevers. And if I already have the pool, then why not the to hit bonus in Tactics too? I can't see it as Stamina again if its already in a good chunk of builds to begin with.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

It is a major buff for Devices and Tactics (although the amount varies depending on the blast set), I just don't see it as making Tactics "required" for Defenders and Corruptors. Part of the reason it's such a buff for Devices is not due to the nature of Snipes but due to the nature of Devices. Devices has always had weak damage due to the lack of Build Up added onto a lack of melee attacks (which even if you don't use them provide the option for hard hitting ST attacks). This change enhances it's ST damage relative to other sets.

As for Defenders and Corruptors. Yes, it is effectively buffing the single target damage of those ATs relative to Blasters the question is, is that a problem? Personally I would say no but for a weird reason. Soloing on Defenders and Corruptors tends to be painful on a lot fo sets because they lack good tools for taking down bosses. Even with Def/Corr damage modifiers you can normally AoE the minions in less time than it takes to kill the boos (at least in my experience). Blasters, even using sets like AR and Electric don't have that problem due to their higher damage modifiers. So I guess I'm less concerned about them having less FastSnipe time.

As for the "Magic Number" issue I can see where you're coming from and it is a valid point, I just don't see an option I like more. The damage and recharge times for the current snipes are balanced around them having an interrupt time. If the interrupt time is taken away then either the damage/recharge need to be rebalanced as if they were a standard single target attack or there needs to be some limiter on the ability to FastSnipe either limited uptime or forcing some sacrifices elsewhere in the build. The current 22% to Hit does a bit of both. Most Blasters will have limited uptime on it and other characters will require some build sacrifices (since even if you take Tactics normally you probably don't have 22% To Hit).

Using To Hit does have some advantages from a development point of view. It's a generic rule that can be (in theory) evenly applied to all characters and means that a character with limited ability to FastSnipe solo can benefit from team buffs.


As for changing it there are a few options I can see:

First is the obvious one, drop the idea entirely and make all snipes standard single target attacks. Kind of boring and would violate the Cottage Rule but may end up being the least controversial.

Next option would be to set the To Hit bar per AT so as to severely limit which powersets can hit it. The problem there is two-fold. First how do you decide which sets get it? Devices is an obvious choice but what about Defenders and Corruptors? The buff/debuff sets that most need the help (Force Fields, Empathy etc.) generally don't have self To Hit buffs. Overall I think this would be a bad idea.

Decreasing the To Hit bar to 17% would mean that any character with a snipe has the option to get perma-FastSnipe. The upside of this is that it would allow players to decide if they want to take Tactics in their build just to get perma-FastSnipe or if they are with just having it through Aim and Build Up. The downside is potential power creep and instilling the idea that Tactics is mandatory for all characters with a Snipe (except Scrappers and Stalkers who are unlikely to take it anyway). I'm not sure it would be necessary, especially for Blasters who get almost 50% uptime anyway, but I can definitely see people thinking that way. I'd also be concerned about power creep, if everyone can get perma FastSnipe it might be better just to rebalance the attacks as standard attacks.

The final option would be to get rid of the To Hit requirement and just make certain powers trigger FastSnipe mode. Specifically Targeting Drone (Devices version only, not the APP version), Aim, Build Up, Power Boost and the various renamed/combined versions of them in different sets and Epic pools. The advantage of this is that it would give relatively consistent access to FastSnipe fro different characters. Devices does get a specific boost but as I mentioned earlier I think it could use the help. The majority of Blasters would get about 50% up time using Aim and Build Up with Energy doing a little better. Defenders, Corruptors and Dominators would (mostly) get about 25% uptime from their attack set and have the option to take another FastSnipe power in their epic pool if they want. There are two sets that would be a problem in this scheme (and I'm actually concerned are a problem with the current scheme as well): Assault Rifle and Dark Manipulation. For Dark I'd probably make it so that Soul Drain trigger 30seconds of FastSnipe even if you don't hit any enemies. Assault Rifle is a bit trickier, it doesn't really have anywhere to stick a FastSnipe tag an it's one of the two powersets that could really use it.

Don't worry about that. I'll happily argue with anyone about anything. As long as you have a reasonable argument I'm fine with it. Plus I have a short memory so I forget any arguments in a week or so anyway .

Also, I'm sorry for being sarcastic in my last post, you didn't deserve that, I was just getting frustrated with the various sky-falling posts regarding that change.

It depends on what you're fighting. If you just go up against the older non-Arachnos groups then yes you are fine. The problem is that the power level of NPC groups has been going up. Newer groups tend to have a lot more defense or to hit debuffs than older groups so building in a bit more To Hit margin makes a lot of sense to me.

That's not what happened. Sniper attacks are being buffed because the devs felt sniper attacks needed improvement. Sniper attacks period. Although this was announced as a blaster improvement, its not a singularly blaster improvement. Its an improvement to snipes.

That's not a guess: Arbiter Hawk confirmed the changes were meant to improve sniper attacks across the board, and not intended to focus exclusively on Blasters.

There's some other stuff related to blasters they aren't ready to announce yet. Some directly related to improvements to blasters, and some ... not directly related to improvements to blasters.

Beam Rifle is a toss up. On the one hand it's a powerful single target attack with an automatic disintegration spread. On the other hand the term "short of single target damage" cannot be used to describe Beam Rifle . It also depends a bit on AT, Corruptors and Defenders I think will definitely benefit by dropping Single Shot or Charged Shot for Penetrating Ray but Blasters will need to decide if it's worth dropping one of their two "use while mezzed" attacks for an extra single target attack or if they want to take an extra ST attack and accept that they'll probably only use Single Shot while mezzed (I'm assuming perma FastSnipe here).

That's good to hear. My only problem is that the changes were advertised as "hey blasters, we have something amazing coming up for you!!!".....while leaving out the follow-up "and we're also giving it to other AT's, and it will benefit them even more".

Now I don't know how powerful the secondary manipulation buffs will be, but from what it sounds like, they'll be only moderate at best. With how much aggro blasters create and how fast they take damage, a tiny bit of +regen isn't going to "fix" anything. So hopefully they do have some other major improvements.

The issue, for years, has been that if you're choosing between a blaster and a corr/def to round out your team, all else being equal, you always choose the corr/def. Now blasters can get a better ST attack chain...but so can the corrs/defs, and the latter can actually do it easier. So nothing changes. There is still no reason to pick a blaster, other than just for the hell of it.

Granted, the whole idea of "choosing between a blaster and a corr/def" is mostly a theoretical idea. In my experience, even when doing trials, people just invite the first people that ask, and nobody turns people down for their AT. But still.

Sonic blast gets a power range changed to 80 and thats it.
And mental manipulation...they decided the 5 second buff from the russian roulette run forward to hit enemies power was super great so they left that unchanged.

Which is one of the good things about this game's community. Ideally, we want blasters to be different enough from defenders/corruptors that comparison between the two isn't appropriate in many circumstances.

I have no problems waiting until i24 beta before I make any final judgement.