Proposed Snipe Changes - Please no "Magic Number" for useful snipes

great point.

The corruptor or the defender or blaster with 21.5% hit has at least one of the following options open to them to have that "sometimes" fast snipe: Aim, Build Up, Power Build Up (I consider targeting drone an "perma-fast snipe" ability). Sometimes they have two of those. ALL of them can jump over the 22% hurdle with team buffs or even just using inspirations.

Equating the snipe change to the fitness pool is laughable. So many people were gasping for end just getting to 20 that stamina really did feel like a huge change in performance in just what you could do regardless of AT and most power sets. The snipe change amounts to a stronger attack. It has far less reaching effects than the fitness pool ever did. If you think that the snipe change is as dramatic as the fitness pool than I'd say your idea of what's "required" and "game changing" is seriously... odd.

OK. So they can use their best rotation attack, with a ~6 sec recharge (slotted), maybe...20% of the time? (10 sec of aim with a 45 sec recharge) Oh, but Blasters will also have Build Up on the same cooldown. So 40% there. Power Build Up is...10 sec every 120 seconds. 30% for that guy. And this is *after* stacking a bunch of hit but missing an arbitrary cutoff.

Yes, I suppose they can just huff yellows constantly. But there is no other ability, anywhere in the game, that changes my core rotation based on inspiration usage. And how has the suggestion "just be constantly inspiration-buffed" been received in other situations it's been offered as an answer?

Oh, and teams? You mean the team that is now full of Blasters who are now counting on my Corr/Def/Controller to bring the +hit that makes their snipes perma-fast? I'm arguing that this change will make Tactics mandatory on Defenders and Corruptors - bringing the party aspect of +hit bonuses into it does nothing to allay that fear.

As I've said earlier... I do not believe the devs intend for you to have perma-fast snipes out of the box. I believe they intend for you to build for that if you decide it is worth the investment. If you decide not to do so the snipes are still useful. Too many people here seem to believe that if the snipe is not perma-fast it is not useful. I disagree. Especially considering the number of tools available to have that fast snipe available fairly often even if not perma.

As opposed to huffing purples and/or oranges to simply survive? Because no AT ever has to do that... And your core rotation does NOT, I repeat, DOES NOT require you to have the snipe as part of it regardless of how much you or anyone else wishes it to be just because it does higher damage. Too many people here have stars in their eyes over this new strong attack and then those stars get replaced with tears when they realize the effort needed to actually make it perma.

Or it could be the teams full of blasters with tactics stacking it to make them all uber and telling the defenders and corruptors to go F themselves? (I'm sure at least one blaster player smiled reading that he he)

What you just said is Greek to 99.9% of the people playing this game.

Which is why I don't think most of your objections are anything to worry about. Most players are going to look at this change as "oh, sometimes I can fire off an instant snipe? COOL!" and maybe now they take it instead of something else.

Again, not that many players care about maximum efficiency. I expect the number of players who feel compelled to chase perma-instasnipe because OMG IT IS JUST THAT GOOD to be modest. Min maxers, sure. People like me with an obviously underperforming ar/dev, yeah. But our friend the "casual gamer"? Not likely. Anything involving %'s of this or that leaves behind most of the playerbase.

Yeah I never thought making fitness inherent was a good idea and just catered to the power gamer for so many reasons. Here? I think you're overstating these changes. Free stamina enabled power gamers, this just puts a new carrot out that may or may not be obtained in a build.

Besides, if you feel being 22% tohit is so mandatory, then good news! Inherent fitness will make that goal easier for you!

The snipe change amounts to the strongest attack. In every power pool that has one. And with a ~6 sec recharge, it is an attack that will be used very, very often. I would, indeed argue that using your set's best attack is "required" and "game changing," at least for builds with any airs of being optimized. Put it this way - Blaze is, far and away, the best DPA in Fire Blast (the best DPS set in the game right now). Would you concede Blaze is "required" and "game changing" for Fire Blast? Because every set with a snipe just picked up something on par with Blaze, provided they hit the (also useful) +22% to hit.

Not disagreeing that this is not as far-reaching as fitness - for starters, it only affects three archetypes. But the matters are ones of degree and not kind. The arguments you made against this - choices should be available, just because it's good doesn't mean you need it, think of what you're giving up - can be used to argue against any overly-useful combination of optional powers. At what point does the combination become too useful? I think tying it to your most powerful rotation attack, the one that will be cast 9-10 times per minute, is too much - and you disagree.

Wow.

Now that's an interesting perspective...

See? We've actually located our point of disagreement here. You don't think that the developers should be concerned about powerful options in a build becoming mandatory (for optimization purposes, at least). I do. And I don't think there's anything either of us could say to change the other's mind.

Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter so quickly.

I guess I just see it differently. Yes the snipes are high damage attacks. And yes I can understand the desire to only use the highest damaging attacks as part of your rotation. But just because you choose not to or find the investment to get to perma-fast snipes prohibitive, doesn't mean your character is now "gimped" and "not viable". It simply means your attack chain uses one attack thats lower dps than the snipe... and if you took the snipe even using moderate abilities like Aim or simple yellow inspirations allows you to use that attack for a little while in the heat of battle. And of course the non-fast snipe still serves its age old role of being a nice opener.

I don't think the devs are looking at snipes in the way you do. I don't believe hey don't intend it to be part of your (or anyone elses) primary attack chain. That it's possible to make it so is a more of a side benefit with creative building and using rare IO's in some cases. Not for nothing but this discussion could very well cause the devs to push that to-hit plateau HIGHER simply to make perma-fast snipes impossible.

Pillory me for this if you like, but...I'd actually prefer that. Nethergoat is talking about how casual players will only encounter this as an occasional fast snipe when they hit Build Up or Aim. If that's what the devs want it to be - please make it that way. (And clarifying - plus perma fast-snipe for AR, since that also seems to be the goal.)

If they want it to be perma in parties of, say, 4 or more, make it that way. Don't trust things to sort themselves out, because people will be irate when they do not. Kyriani was mentioning the idea of Blasters taking tactics themselves and stacking that to achieve perma fast-snipe - which two or three Blasters could indeed do. But I'm getting a vision of everybody taking Tactics to achieve this, then a bunch of people dropping it because "everybody has it", then a bunch of complaining about parties no longer giving the buff.

If the plateau were some stupidly high number (say, the 40% that Aim gives), then it would be a much simpler matter. The amount of +hit needed would be substantially beyond any readily achievable or, frankly, useful number, and snipes would revert to the intermittently-useful attack the devs intended. Again, feel free to hate me for saying it, but I'd rather see that than people shaking there heads at newbs using non-snipe rotations or people getting angry when a party doesn't give them perma-snipe.

I try not to worry about what other people think of how I play or how other people decide to play the game even if it differs from my own way. Saves me much stress in the long run. What other people can do or decide to do really has little to do with me what I can do or what I decide to do.

Indeed it set a standard of reward speed because waiting, resting, pausing and pacing are deemed unfun. Not in regard to actual mechanics like difficulty settings and leveling speed, no. the change was in regard to a speed of aquiring rewards because any build can function and even strive without stamina by either accounting for it with pacing or to slot for it's absence.

But look who I'm taking to. You don't care about anyone's opinion, you're more concerned with posting snark.

Don't mistake my opinion for anyone's but my own. I speak for myself.

But what you can take from my post is, just because someone has certain stances on certain subjects don't mean they'll agree on every potential subject. Just because I was not a proponent of inherent fitness doesn't mean you discovered some inner motivation in regards to this subject.

Wow, what a... meaningless statement? Seriously, someone posts their opinion of a game change based on how the game works, and that's how you respond (with your opinion)? I'll be sure to do the same to you at some point... or not, actually, since I generally try to understand the point of view from others and at least talk from there. I believe this is one of the more rude and insulting things I have ever seen you post, and you're not really known for doing so, at least in my experience.

There are posts (and an entire thread) examining what gives to hit in the game already and people are talking about restructuring their builds entirely to accommodate this snipe change. Is it as bad as non-inherent Fitness, as Kyriani has brought up? No, it's not. But it's the same kind of thinking, which the devs were supposedly trying to remove from the game by giving inherent fitness. Why encourage it with something that is supposed to be an improvement to a power that is seen as needing of a buff?

If I24 went live with the changes to Snipe we know of, are there any other attacks in the game that require so many other power picks or build approaches to use? And I'm not talking obvious things like damage or accuracy here, so don't get sidetracked for that. Assassin's Strike, tier 3 blasts, melee attacks, etc., all get their mechanics working from themselves or the set they are in. Can you imagine needing to take a power pool to use the various mechanics of Assassin's Strike?

Why is it better for Snipes to suddenly break this approach? There are more ways to limit an insta-snipe than with a to hit requirement, and ways to buff Devices with Snipes as well. Why is this the best approach?

Again, keep in mind that the majority of people arguing for adjustments to the snipe proposal are not saying it's a terrible thing. They're saying it could work better and have stronger implementation. There is a lot of negativity coming from the other side arguing for the snipe changes as is that suggests we don't like the idea of snipe changes at all. Or something. I'm not sure what merits the negativity I keep seeing from posters in this and other threads.

As for the "you don't HAVE to build for insta-snipe," that thinking can certainly work for some people. But many people like things to be simple and to use a good power as often as they can. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of the groups and arguing which group is a larger percentage of players is needless and moot. You can easily cater to the "I want things simple or I feel the need to build for insta-snipe" crowd while satisfying the "you don't have to" group. How? That's been posted on plenty. This post is long enough already.

Honestly? The devs said they chose to-hit because it was something that exists across the board for all AT's and something every snipe user has access to in some fashion (whether you can perma it or not). Otherwise they'd have to create individual methods for snipes to work for each AT. We've already seen the specter of that possibility crop up with devs mentioning potentially letting snipes be perma-fast during domination... and of course no doms have any problem with that since most high end dom builds result in perma dom anyways so no extra effort has to be made there.

Can we expect the devs to do something like that for every AT on an individual basis? I don't know. That's not only a lot of work but may be difficult since the AT's are all so different. Using domination is easy since it is already a click that isn't up all of the time out of the box (but can be made perma with the right build).

On the same token the devs may decide that since most doms do go for perma-dom that adding perma-fast snipes to it would just be too good to give them... especially when they DO have an alternative build method to achieve the perm-fast snipe using the 22% plateau. That method involves far more investment than just letting your already perma-dom do the work for you and the devs may well decide they'd prefer that.

An excellent, excellent approach to have as a player. But not as a developer, the people I'm hoping may get this opinion forwarded to them at some point. (No, I don't expect all my whims to be fulfilled, but they seem to want feedback, so I'm giving it.) I think the developers should be concerned about how everybody plays the game, and very specifically about the fact that (IMHO) this change will create a distinct break between folks who read the forums and folks who just play the game. The relative ease with which +22% hit is achieved (on Corruptors and Defenders), plus the comparatively high power of perma-fast snipe, means folks who hit an arbitrary target become substantially more powerful.

And since the breaking point is a hard cap with no indications or documentation, it very, VERY heavily favors wiki and forum readers. A guy who just looks at abilities and set bonuses could figure out that perma-hasten is good and work towards it (plus it'll get better as he gets closer). A Super Reflexes tank can look at his combat stats and compare it to some enemy scans to figure out that he is, in fact, stacking too much +def. But this all-or-nothing, undocumented change simply cannot be deduced from data in-game. And the benefits for achieving it, based on Arcanaville's numbers, seem really substantial. *shrug* I think that's the kind of situation the developers are hoping to avoid.

Perhaps the devs will simply let those ranged AT's that have snipes and have the lowest values on to-hit buffs use the corruptor table for those values instead. It's something they said they might do for Blasters since their base values are so abysmally low (though they do seem reluctant to do so). If the devs went this route then everyone except defenders would generally be on even footing for difficulty to perma using Tactics and kismet. Defenders and those with various +to-hit self buffs would have the advantage due to their higher base values for buffs and/or more stacking potential but I doubt anyone would hold a grudge over them for it. That might be the answer to everyone's issues.

That gets around the Blaster and Dom difficulty achieving +22% to hit, but not the "+30% damage for reading the forums" issue. It also undoes, or at least massively reduces, the buff to Devices. I'm also afraid of people seeing some groups with 101% to hit ("Let's go kill Captain Mako!"), speccing out of Tactics, and then having the whole thing turn into a round of Buff-Bringer blame game when nobody has fast snipes.

Yeah, I'm paranoid, but I figure this is the kind of paranoia to bring up when the change is in pre-beta.

Those who take the time to educate themselves have always and will always have the advantage. This has been true from day one and will be true until the end of time. No specific change in the game mechanics will change this. There are people who have *gasp* never heard of, let alone used Mid's!!! Can you believe it!!!??? And somehow... someway... they've managed to get past level 20! (I'm not trying to be snide there... just funny. Although even I can't imagine how anyone plays without Mid's. >.>)

Yes, but other target numbers (perma-hasten, defense softcaps) could be deduced from data in-game. And none altered anything as central to the character as their attack rotation.

I'm aware that people who study resources available outside the game itself will always have the edge. They just usually aren't handed advantages this big and this easily attainable.

Thought experiment - acknowledging that this is an advantage in DPS, how much is too much? I'll admit, if after all my hemming and hawing adding perma-snipe only means 5% more damage, I'll drop my argument as a false alarm. At 15% I'd feel vindicated, and 10% I'd still argue something should be done. Where do other people stand on this?

Also keep in mind it's highly likely that, when this change goes live, the tooltip on all snipes will likely tell you about the 22% to-hit plateau making even non forum goers aware of it and if they can do simple math they should be able to deduce how to achieve that for their AT/power set combo.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291837

If the numbers in that thread are correct it looks like between 30-50% AR looks even higher

Here's the 'attack rotation' of nearly everyone playing this game:

"Uh, what's up? *MASH* Now what's up? *MASH*"

repeat until the mission ends.

That's how I do it! Though... that amounts to Blind, Spectral Wounds, Power Blast over and over on my ill/rad/primal controller >_> The Phantom Army and the Phantasm do their own thing... though I do have to hit the Phantom Army button every 58 seconds or so. But sometimes... sometimes I don't summon any pets and just hold the whole mess with power boosted em pulse + flash (with hold procs!)) and wreck it without their help!