I24 Snipe Alteration Suggestion

This change was NEVER aimed at any specific AT.

This change was done to make snipes more fun to use, less completely situational, and less of an insta-skip for nearly every AT. Full stop.

Remember, Issue 24 is NOT just the "buff blasters issues". It's the fix as many things as possible issue. Snipes being near USELESS power picks for most of the life of the game, I'd say falls under things that could be fixed in such an issue.

Eight years.

A mistake is only a mistake in retrospect if you can demonstrate that the outcome was predictable at the time the decision was made. It's a fallacy to assume that a past choice was a bad one simply because a bad result followed. If I take a risk with a 10% chance of failure, and I happen to get unlucky, then am I a wantonly irresponsible idiot in retrospect?

We can only evaluate what we know at any given time. It should go without saying that any relevant developments going forward will change the landscape of this discussion.

Your play habits are irrelevant. The above quote represents a common theme in the Blaster debate, by the way; people seem to think that an AT's capabilities are an insignificant balance consideration simply because those people don't choose to make full use of those capabilities. If Defenders were given a 200% AT damage scalar, I'm sure someone would chime in to say that the AT's damage advantage is unimportant because all they do is spam debuffs and Neutrino Bolt.

An extreme example, I know, but sometimes the extreme case is illustrative.

So you think the existence of fast snipes doesn't affect the balance of Blaster single-target damage?

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

And yet it gives certain ATs disproportionate benefit.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The change may not have been aimed at a specific AT but it sure as PANCAKE hit a specific AT.

Ignoring Scrappers and Stalkers from the moment (since they rarely use snipes) there are four ATs that are affected by this change and the change affects them all to a very different amount.

Blasters: No way to do it perma, have two powers that can potentially trigger it (but one requires a lot of slotting)
Defenders/Corruptors: Can do it perma with Tactics and Kismet at level 22, a few other options in specific sets, also have an APP with To Hit Debuff Resistance
Domiantors: Most sets have to use Tactics + Kismet + Power Boost to get it at all. One specific APP can do it perma with sufficient recharge.

So the question becomes is this the right way to change snipes?
Does it make sense to implement a change that has wildly different effects on different ATs?
If a change is implemented that affects different ATs differently how does it impact the balance between the ATs?
And the BIG one: is it going to encourage players to take Snipes on their characters?

So yeah for me I think that this change is a poor way to fix snipes. The big litmus test is whether it will make snipes worth taking for characters. Speaking for myself I think that while we'll see Defenders and Corruptors taking Snipes we'll see relatively few Blasters and Dominators taking them (except for Devices Blasters).

To me that means that the change is a failure. It's making snipes "more fun to use, less completely situational" for TWO ATs but leaving them virtually unchanged for the other two.

Snipes could be changed even if there were no blaster changes. As shown by today's cofee talk, Issue 24 is NOT just about buffing blasters.

And? You say this as if the devs never intend to touch AT balance again.

Except you really can't leave those other ATs off the table. They can use snipes also.

Again the change to snipes was NOT aimed at any specific AT.

The change isn't a failure if it gets more folks to use snipes. Which it will.

This is almost like saying don't change anything ever if it doesn't benefit everyone equally. That's an absurd argument to make.

No, I say it as if I've played a game for eight years and noticed a relatively slow (read: glacial) pace of balance changes.

More to the point, your rebuttal is a non-sequitor.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I never said that it was.

I said that the change disproportionately favors 2 of the 3 primary Archetypes with access to it, and neither of those 2 are in particular need of improvement, while the Archetype that is in need of improvement gets substantially less from it.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Thankfully there are more buffs to said AT coming SEPARATE for this QOL improvement to snipes.

Very well: Scrappers and Stalkers are slightly worse off than Blasters but better than Dominators. They only have Build Up for FastSnipe which gives them worse uptime. However they do have better self buff mods so they require less slotting in Build Up. Happy?

That being said I do not consider the needs of Scrappers and Stalkers to be critical when discussing Snipe changes. Snipes come in three types of sets: Blast sets, Assault sets and Epic Power Pools. Epic Power Pools are, by definition, intended to be weaker than Primary and Secondary powers so I think it's ok if they don't benefit to the same degree. I think that they should be considered but their needs are secondary to the needs of those ATs that have Snipes and Primary or Secondary powers.

But they are. They are targeted primarily at the four ATs with a snipe in their Primary or Secondary Powerset and to a lesser degree at the two ATs with a Snipe in their Epic Power Pool.

How do you think Controllers feel about the snipe change? Are they excited about the fact that they can take Tactics and Kismet and get FastSnipe mode? Of course they aren't.


Except that it's only getting certain ATs to use snipes. I don't consider it a total failure but I do consider it a failure. This is basically a major change to Blast and Assault sets that provides a much larger bonus to some ATs than others.

Let's use a counter example. People still complain about the cast time of Total Focus in Energy Melee right? Suppose that the devs announced that they were going to reduce its cast time... for Brutes. How do you think the Energy Melee Tankers and Stalkers would feel?

This is where I take issue.

I am going to come out and say what I believe. This may not be true for most people, but I believe it is true for many.

Some people don't like ANYTHING that is even mildly situational. Some people just want perma-fast cast snipes straight up. Those people are clinging to this "defenders/corruptors get SO MUCH more out of the snipe" argument not because it is true, but because they are hoping they can use that fallacious argument to get perma-fast cast snipes straight up.

Frankly, I agree that that is the goal of some of the detractors.

Others would rather see, or be just as happy to see, the trigger changed to something that benefited all archetypes with snipes in a much more evenly proportionate manner, even if that meant getting less use out of it.

For what it's worth, I would be fine with either. As long as everyone with snipes got the same relative value from the change. THAT is my primary issue with the current proposed trigger.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

I like situational powers, especially if they don't need much in the way of slotting. I'm less fond of situational attacks due to the large amount of slotting most attacks need and the fact that they rarely provide much advantage over just taking a different attack.

That being said I don't actually want all ATs to get Perma-FastSnipe, I wouldn't object to it but I believe it's a poor solution. What I want is for either the FastSnipe feature to be changed to be more even applied across ATs or for Snipes to be eliminated entirely and replaced with standard single target attacks.

You clearly have been fooled then. Why do you think they called the game Bejeweled? Don't you think that sounds a little similar to the word 'bewitched'? I'd try to extrapolate what the creators of that game were intending but everytime I explore the ins and outs of that game, suddenly two weeks have passed and I don't remember a thing.

Personally, I think Energy Manipulation will be the new Regen for Blasters: very very very clicky. So clicky, some people will avoid it despite it's advantages. Personally, the managing of the self boosts sound fun to me but Ice will ultimately be more survivable with a bit more clicking and Fire will be more damaging without needing to click much of anything. Dark will feel like a contradiction and I'm kind of unsure what Elec will turn out like or Devices (since devices may receive more changes).


I will call the 'looking at the snipe changes in a vacuum' card again.

Blasters have plenty of tools to manage recovery: Besides Power Sink, Consume and Dark Consumption returning END, you've got Field Operative, Touch of the Beyond and Power of Thunder that also grant recovery.


Face it, you guys that are hounding on the changes just don't have the scope to look at them *ALL* at the same time and make the judgement on how the ATs will perform when its all through. Really, *NO ONE* should be able to tell because more changes are being announced and more changes will be made.
What's irrelevant is 'who gets fast snipe more? blasters or the other guys?'

Even if Defenders win the fast snipe race, it won't matter because at the end of the day, the devs are looking at the sum total of all the changes and how they affect the ATs' performance.

I will clarify: I did not say the buff to a single target attack is not designed to be a buff to single target damage. I said the snipe changes are not the sole buff coming to ranged sets and that particular change was to make the snipes more usable and fun.

You and your gang are dead set to get a ST dmg buff to the set where that probably isn't the design goal of *THAT* change. *THAT* change is to give snipes a semblance of usefulness, if not solo then more definitely on teams. You can then go ahead and argue about solo fast snipe while forgetting that Blasters are more team dependant and Def/Corr are more team focused.

We can continue, by extension, to label the change to snipes as useless because one cannot perma its affect solo on a blaster while forgetting the extremely nice uses for pulling snipes offer while solo.

Then go on to forget about all the other improvements powers and sets are getting *AT THE SAME TIME*.

I'm not sure how many visits to Mother's clinic you'd need or how many smacks on the head it'd take to forget all that, but if that is how you'd like to continue your argument, all I can really say is "Wait for the changes to come on beta, then see" because your arguments are more based on speculation of the intent of a change rather than the changes actual effect.

I don't care what someone else accuses you of. You're talking with me. Winning some shouting match with someone else doesn't get you a win for every new resulting discussion.



It's context. Yes, all those buffs mentioned apply to all ATs...because none of them are aimed at any of the ATs, just the ranged sets in general *INCLUDING* the snipe changes. They all will sum to different results with different ATs: Defenders won't be 1-shotting Lts with their nukes while Blasters will. Some focused Corruptor builds will get perma insta-snipe solo but only get marginal effect (Blazing Bolt is hardly better than Blaze without requiring the effort) while Blasters may not need to use it at all or get just what they need out of it (hello Aim + Moonbeam...sorry Corruptors/Defenders, you don't get aim). Suddenly, Blasters will be a good deal more survivable with the change which will stack favorably with any team mitigation effects.

But sure, once the changes release for testing, I'm sure if it overpowers Corruptors like you say, something will be done to fix it. I doubt that will have anything to do with the snipes, but we'll find out when that ship comes in.

And bonus points for pointing out the mention of those changes and *NOT* considering them whatsoever in your rebuttle despite all of them affecting future performance.

I'm not going to respond to the generalized ad hominem, except to say that although I'm not secretly campaigning for perma-fast snipes to be added to my pet AT, I also don't think such a change would be unwarranted for Blasters. (Personally, I have more invested in my Dominator than I do in my Blaster, and as far as I'm concerned Dominators don't need any buff, via snipes or otherwise, so take that for what you will.)

More to the point in the above-quoted post, Oathbound may have misused the word, "substantially," to describe the advantage perma-fast Snipe will give to Defenders, relative to a generic Blaster's snipes. There isn't a huge quantitative difference between perma-fast snipe and, say, fast snipe with 70 or 80% uptime. From that standpoint, you're right.

However, I believe the problem isn't that the disparity in the snipe buff is "substantial;" my problem is that the Snipe buff (as we understand it right now) represents a "substantial" theoretical boost to single-target damage. And if the snipe buff is irregularly applied, it could therefore stand in the way of more generalized (less conditional) single-target buffs to sets or ATs or builds for which the fast snipe isn't even all that much help, practically.

That's why I can't entirely divorce the snipe buff from the Blaster balance pass. Yes, blast sets generally need help. Many of us have written pages and pages on that subject. Yes, snipes could use a boost to make them more attractive. But no boost occurs in a vacuum; it seems needless to add a convoluted context-dependent single-target-damage buff to blast sets in the midst of the long-awaited Blaster balance pass.

The fact that a different AT benefits more from the change is illustrative of the snipe change's unnecessary balance complexity, but it's not in itself objectionable. This isn't a matter of Defenders or Corruptors versus Blasters; it's a matter of blast sets' receiving an obscure and balance-complicating quirk when what they could really use is an across-the-board, brute-force improvement.

Let's normalize tier 3 blasts, for instance; make Shout and Power Burst and Cosmic Burst activate as fast as Blaze. Too much? Melee sets beg to differ.

The TL;DR of this rambling exposition is that it concerns me to see that (as far as I know) the only sets that are slated to get "extra" attention are the sets that lack snipes, which leads me to believe that yes, in fact the developers do consider the snipe buff to be a big deal, and they will take fast snipes into consideration when they evaluate sets that have a snipe. Sets that have both a snipe and crap attacks otherwise? They may very well be S.O.L. until the next balance pass, which may not occur till 2017.

I may be wrong; it may very well be that Arbiter Hawk is rolling up his sleeves as we speak to improve all sets on a case-by-case basis whether they have a snipe or not, but I can be forgiven for refusing to take that on faith.

In any case, if I-24 fast snipes are intended to be the catch-all single-target buff for snipe sets, as I suspect they are, then there's no reason that buff shouldn't apply more or less evenly for all ATs and all builds. There will always be special cases, unusually good synergies, but this binary, usable-or-not-in-the-midst-of-combat change to Snipes is a whole nother beast.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

We've exhausted the rest of the argument, but I do feel the need to respond to this one quote, because it bespeaks a fundamental misunderstanding: I used two quotes from you, one in which you accuse me of having a "corrupted" viewpoint because I want the snipe changes to take overall AT balance into account, and then a second quote in which you accused me of looking at the snipe change in a vacuum.

Feel free to go back and look at the relevant quotes. Yeah, it's irrelevant gotcha-game nonsense, but I wasn't using other people's quotes against you.

Edit - Also:

I never said anything of the kind.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Except to keep it analogous, in this case they would also be reducing it for Melee Tankers and Stalkers.

The are NOT adjusting snipes just for corrputers, or just for blasters, or just for defenders.

They are adjusting it for everyone who has access to a snipe.

When the bolded happens I'll have my shot gun out to shoot those flying oinkers out of the sky. I could use some free bacon.

But, but... You are the one who accused him of looking at the snipe change as part of the whole suite of blaster changes and then later accused him of looking at the snipe changes in a vacuum.

To be honest with you I don't care either way.

I'm just pointing out that the goal of the snipe change was just to improve snipes. It wasn't targeted at any specific AT. It's completely separate from any upcoming BLASTER or blast set changes that are coming.

I take the devs at their word at what they say.

And that is where we have a disconnect. Personally I consider the situation I proposed to be exaclty analogous to the snipe situation. Defenders and Corruptors are getting an awesome buff. Blasters and Dominators... aren't.

I guess if you want to be really exact then the analogy would be that Brutes get Total Focused reduced form 3.3s cast to 1s while Tankers and Stalkers get it reduced to 3s.

Stranger things have happened. I remember when people told me I was mad for requesting that the single target shields in Cold, FF and Thermal be made AoE and that doing so would break the balance of the game entirely.

Now don't get me wrong, when I ask for Snipes to be changed to Single Target attacks I don't mean keep them as they are and remove the interrupt, that would be to good. I mean remove the interrupt and rebalance them as a 12second recharge blast (which means dropping the damage and probably upping the cast time to around 2seconds).

The other side of the debate will chime in about how extremely powerful Corruptors are compared to Blasters and sight the damage difference between then then powers like Freezing Rain or some such, as if those powers just magically happen without consideration, cast time and aiming affecting anything.

Not saying we're taking full consideration of all aspects of an AT either, but at least we say so. You're claiming more closely to absolute superiority with these changes while ignoring so so many variables of the ATs since they *DO* play significantly different. You can't just point out ToHit buffs and forget about all the rest here.

*shrugs*

What about the nuke changes? How proportionally do those affect each AT? I can see a high damage PBAoE mag 3 hold or a ranged AoE -END/recovery that can hit 16 foes that's up every couple spawns as a huge benefit to survivability...moreso than Def or Corruptor who have another powerset for that...and they'll do less damage with it. Couple that with sustain and you can be survivable enough while contributing greatly.

Gaining a certain amount of benefit from a change isn't the same as being the target of the change.

Even if Defenders could get perma insta-snipe effortlessly, I don't think it would change them from non-DPS machines into DPS beasts.

Ok, so who WERE the changes targeted at? It clearly isn't Blasters and Dominators since they get a lot less benefit form the changes than other ATs. Obviously the snipe change is intended solely as a buff to Defenders and Corruptors that Blasters and Dominators happen to get some benefit from. Thank you for clearing that up. [/sarcasm]