I24 Snipe Alteration Suggestion

Again, our differences are irreconcilable, so I'm not going point-for-point with you anymore, but the above quote is a mischaracterization (or perhaps a misunderstanding) of the previous discussion about Freezing Rain.

The point wasn't that Freezing Rain is OMGuberpowerful and therefore Corrupters don't deserve any buffs. The point is that support ATs do have access to powerful damage buffs that are arguably as good or better than Build Up. The point was made in response to an assertion that the snipe change is designed around the availability of Build Up.

To sum up that little thread of the discussion:

Person A -- "The developers designed the snipe change to give extra benefit to ATs that don't have Build Up. They get more consistent access to fast Snipes to offset their lack of Build Up's damage bonus."

Person B -- "Many of the relevant builds that lack Build Up also get massive damage-boosting powers. Like Freezing Rain, etc."

You -- <comment about how Corrupters aren't overpowered because they have Freezing Rain.>

To be clear, I'm not accusing you of anything here. I honestly believe at this point that the acrimony between us (to the extent that there is any) is largely a result of the inevitable misunderstandings that crop up over a thread as long as this one.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Ahhh, then yeah that's still technically a snipe. I thought you meant completely remove them. The cottage rule would have had a stroke.

they were targeted at anyone who has a snipe and doesn't use it much and anyone who thought taking a snipe was useless, too situational to take, and outright skipped it as a useless power pick.

as the devs you know, actually STATED OUTRIGHT.

Yeah that was my point. I was responding to Leo's post where he said:
Personally I consider the targets of the change to be Blasters, Dominators, Defenders and Corruptors. Given your posts it sounds to me like you consider it to be those four ATs plus Scrappers and Stalkers. I consider that to be a reaosnable viewpoint, I don't entirely agree with it but it's a reasonable viewpoint.

I have no clue who Leo considers to be the target of the change (hence the sarcasm).

Yep. With that said I pvp (LOL, yes still--lol pvp and all that) and I see stalkers and scrappers taking and using snipes there . . . sooo take that for what you will.

To explain more: when one side is being camped and running in and out from their bases to attack then retreat, the side doing the camping will often try to snipe them, after hitting long ranged judgments. It works too.

Yes, pvp is weird.

It is possible, if the snipe changes are as strong as originally presented, the devs may be hesitant to add other damage increases as a whole. My own desire to tone the snipe buff down stems partly from that (but more from the fact that I prefer a less powerful snipe and also from the fact that I fear the animations will look goofy).

I still think you are overplaying the unevenness, but I certainly hope you are incorrect when you posit fast snipes are intended to be the catch-all single-target buff for snipe sets.

For all the times you say I'm accusing you or some such and you not doing the same to me...meh, I just feel you've got it backward. A lot of the things you think I'm saying you're saying, I'm not actually implying that you're saying them. If anything, most of the things I bring up are points I'm imploring you to consider when you're talking about the snipe changes. If I've accused you of anything, it's that your stance was weighed by bias and emotion and that's really it. If that has changed or not is, as you've mentioned yourself, irrelevant so I'm not bringing it up anymore.

And no, I'm not making some sideways comment about another thread when I bring up Freezing Rain, that's just one of the better resist debuff powers I'm familiar with since my go-to Corruptor is a fire/storm/soul.

Not that it really matters, but no, I'm not saying Corruptors are overpowered or not...to bring up that matter is an entirely different discussion that requires a whole new thread. I'm also not going to agree or be labeled as someone on either side since it's not relevant and will only be used against any further argument I have. If I say corruptors aren't overpowered, you just make comments like the one above. If I say they are, then you come back with "SEE!?! That's what I'm saying!". So the attempt to paint me in the corner will simply be dismissed as another discussion entirely.

That all aside, the only thing I can express to you is what I'm trying to express to the others that agree with your arguments: the snipe changes were *SAID* to be made to make the snipes fun and usable, particularly on teams. People ask "then who is the change targeted to?" and I have to repeat myself: They are targeted at *SNIPES* not a particular AT. If someone things a change must be targeted at a *PERSON* then these snipe changes are targeted at the *PEOPLE* that take snipes, wanted to take snipe but couldn't justify the space in the build and the people that view snipes as trash.

If you aren't any of those people, most likely the change won't have any affect on you.

If you are one of the people that take and use snipes, suddenly snipes have a few extra utilitarian uses and can boost performance greatly when on teams.

If you feel you could not justify the space in a build for a snipe but wanted to have one, suddenly snipes can be leveraged greatly by proper builds/team makeup/power usage. You can make a snipe work for you or you can go the extra mile to work to exploit that snipe to its fullest.

If you viewed snipes as trash before, well suddenly snipes are the talk of the town. Your perception is countered by the community that now see snipes are 'better on defenders' or 'hard hitting on doms' or 'a means to get a tier 3 strike on electric blast' or 'not an eternity and a day to animate on a stalker/scrapper'. They may not be the best, they may be annoyingly situational, but they won't be trash anymore. If you want to take them or not is purely up to flavor and build.

To chime in:

I already took snipes. I just recently built a Rad/Dark blaster *purely* because I wanted to use that snipe. I love the look of Blazing Bolt too. I enjoy the cool *ring* of Ranged Shot. Zapp has been an electric pick for all the characters I choose electric theme with. I take and find uses for snipes *regardless* of how good they are.

With these changes, I might respec a few so that they can either get perma fast snipe or 1-yellow-away fast snipe. Others, I will leave their build alone and just leverage fast snipe with Aim/BU or on teams. For me, insta-snipe is just a new build decision for more characters. You don't have to have it for snipes to be usable and you definitely don't need it to be perma. And that someone can leverage it more because of their build is little different from Blasters being able to leverage damage buffs better than Tanker or Defender because of their damage mods, or a Brute and Tanker leveraging +regen and +resist better than Stalkers because of HP mods.

Now if they go back and swap out the requirements for insta-snipe, I honestly wouldn't care. I do feel that the proposed insta-snipe requirements is a fun alternative because it gives more purpose to ToHit across the levels of the game...I wouldn't mind it having alternate requirements though (like debuffs on the foe or linked to specific powers like Build Up (without slotting)).

You had me go back and reread all my posts in the thread. I said no such thing.

That is, I didn't accuse him of looking at the snipe change as part of a suite of blaster changes. If you're talking about when he was mentioning the improvement to ST DPS, to again clarify: his stance is the snipe changes are solely to improve DPS when that is not what they are for. That the changes might do that to varying degrees is a side effect of the changes but is not the intended goal. However, that is a metric the devs said they'd be looking at and rebalancing other sets to account for.

The entire time, my point is that he isn't taking into account all the changes and when I say all the changes, I'm talking about QoL improvements, survivability improvements, utility improvements and not just damage.

Fair enough. Perhaps I read too much into that comment.

See, that's the thing: we're talking past each other, and have been for awhile. You've asserted (or at least implied, and perhaps understandably) that I think the snipe buff will overpower Corruptors, at least relative to Blasters. And then when I've responded to clarify my position, you (perhaps understandably) assume that I'm accusing you of advocating for Corruptors or some such. It's all downhill from there.

As threads like this one go on and on and on, they inevitably devolve into increasingly frustrated repetitions of the same positions, which leads to increasingly wide-ranging analogies and digressions, which lead to distortions because the various participants lose track of the various sub-threads of discussion. For example, I might make an offhanded comment about Freezing Rain in response to one particular argument, and then pages later someone might attack me because they only have a vague recollection of my mentioning Freezing Rain, and they (perhaps understandably) assume that I had an agenda in mentioning it.

And keep in mind, I'm as guilty as anyone of falling victim to the above-described trap. I've participated so actively here in part to pass the time, and in part because the subject interests me -- but, despite appearances, I'm really not interested in fighting a rhetorical war. No grudges, etc.

All of that said, and at the risk of inviting further controversy, I have no interest in discussing the overall power of support ATs, and I have no agenda for or against any potential balance changes to Corrupters (or Defenders). I believe the support ATs should receive any blast-set buffs that are applied to other ATs that have access to blast sets. I also believe that Corruptors are in a better place than Blasters generally, but that comment is a digression, and it has very little to do with Corruptors, per se; Blasters have been in (or tied for) last place on the balance food chain for pretty much forever.

To the extent that support ATs are relevant in this discussion at all, it is only because they are getting a larger relative boost, if they choose to take advantage of it, from the proposed fast-snipe mechanic. There is a fundamental difference between my saying that Corruptors get a bigger relative boost from one specific balance change, and my saying that the snipe change will make Corruptors vastly more powerful on the whole. As noted previously, I believe that blast sets are in need of boosting for all ATs that have them. And if blast sets are boosted equally, Blasters will naturally (and rightfully) benefit most, because they have fewer advantages apart from their attacks.

That is the extent of my pro-Blaster bias for the purpose of this discussion. In my view, Blasters also deserve survivability buffs -- and they're getting survivability buffs specific to them -- but as far as offensive buffs are concerned, I'm not asking for affirmatively Blaster-biased adjustments; I'm asking for across-the-board buffs to blast sets, because the reason that Blaster offense is not as high as it should be is that the developers have been historically biased against ranged offense, in general. The fact that other blast-set users (primarily Defenders/Corruptors, and to a lesser extent Dominators) have been better insulated against that design flaw is merely incidental.

If the developers also wanted to throw in a small boost to Blaster offense specifically, then I wouldn't object, but I'm not holding my breath. To date, and as far as I know, the only supplemental single-target-damage changes the devs have mentioned are to blast sets (Dual Pistols, possibly Ice) that don't have snipes, which leads me to believe that this convoluted context-dependent snipe change will prevent many blast sets from receiving the attention they deserve.

Now I understand that I will never get you to agree on the snipe change. We have a fundamental difference there, but I wanted to go on (rambling) record here that all the rest of this stuff is just noise. It is entirely possible that I have miscommunicated all of the above in the past, and I do not blame you for misinterpreting any of it.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Look, this isn't important, but you shouldn't have to dig through all of your posts. Just reread my post and look at the last two quote boxes. Read the bolded sections. My word-game snark doesn't deserve all of this attention, but rest assured that I was not using other people's quotes against you.

See previous reply.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Just to clarify then: saying you expected snipes to carry the same or higher benefit for Blasters because one feels their overall performance lacks enough that they deserve such compensation...is being confused for saying you're looking at too broadly at surrounding context of the game and realizing the full suite of capabilities of the ATs.

Which feels contradictory to the assertion that you're taking the snipe changes out of context with all the new changes planned.

*shakes head*

I suppose I could see where the confusion lies, but the first assertion (that Blasters need more out of snipes because they are the worst) still does not take into consideration the other things being added. To assert that they are the worst without considering the buffs they are getting is what I'd consider looking at the change out of context with all the other changes.

For all intents and purposes, one cannot assert that Blasters *need* more from the snipe because they are the worse due to whatever perceived picking order they are set in won't be the case in the future. Hell, Blasters could end up being far better soloers by the end of i24 than either AT that share their snipes.

If you had never implied blasters deserve more from the snipes, then miscommunication. But I never accused you of looking at all applicable changes working in sync.

PS: If you hadn't read the coffee talks, I really suggest you should. Arbiter Hawk was even asked if any of these new changes will make Blasters the 'kind of ranged damage' and his reply was something like 'no, we're trying to make all the ATs more even' which gives me the impression that changes to Blasters will be closer aimed at improving their survivability in addition to making the ranged sets less situational and more useful.

I have considered the other buffs to Blasters and blast sets that I know about. I think the misunderstanding is that I'm separating the buffs into categories -- survivability, AoE, and single-target damage. Or perhaps the misunderstanding stems from a difference in our expectations: I don't account for the prospect of buffs that haven't been announced yet. I can only evaluate what's in front of me; I'm not going to accept the argument that I should shut up because the devs might do something more, later, that renders my complaints moot.

(That last statement was not directed to you in particular, but I see the sentiment a lot: "Just wait! I-24 could change based on our feedback in BETA," or, "Arbiter Hawk could be working on any number of things that make you look stupid in retrospect!" All of that is true, but it's not relevant to a discussion that is taking place right now, except to the extent that our feedback could also change things before BETA. )

Yes, this is a matter on which we have an irreconcilable difference. You either disagree with the premise that Blasters are worst off now, or you believe (seemingly) that the sum total of the I-24 changes, other than or in addition to the Snipe change, will be enough to bring Blasters back into the middle of the pack, balance-wise.

I consider the first position obviously false; it's not even worth debating here. And based on what we know at this moment, I consider the second position false. A regen/absorb buff of roughly Energize's strength is not enough to raise Blaster survivability to the point at which Blasters have an equitable arrangement, relative to their damage-dealing peers (Scrappers, Brutes, Dominators), with respect to the ratio of damage to survivability.

And since I doubt very much that the devs have any interest in giving Blasters significantly more survivability than they've already hinted, the obvious solution is to buff Blaster damage. Not by a huge amount, but by enough that the worst Blaster's single-target damage is at least on par with the average of a hat-picked other AT's.

The nuke change is great, but it's not enough on its own to address the offensive side of the equation. It's strictly an AoE damage buff. So what's left, as far as we know right now? The snipe buff, and a few as-yet-undescribed tweaks to blast sets that don't have a snipe.

That last sentence is the critical point here. If the snipe buff is being used as the catch-all single-target buff to every set that has a snipe, then it is idiotic to make the buff conditional or uneven. Keep in mind here that I'm talking about blast sets here, and not just Blasters; Cosmic Burst's activation time is just as bad on a Defender as it is on a Blaster. Cosmic Burst matters more to the Blaster, but that's incidental.

Oh, and to address your prediction in the quote above -- Blasters should be unequivocally better soloists than support ATs, because support ATs are the best at teaming. Blasters are currently mediocre in both categories. They should be at least in the same soloist league, generally, with Scrappers/Brutes/Dominators.

I'm a big fan of Arbiter Hawk, but if he truly doesn't think that Blasters are designed from the ground up to be the premiere damage dealers in the game, then he doesn't know what he's talking about. If he plans to give Blasters Scrapper-comparable (or even just Scrapper-analogous) defenses, or Dominator-comparable control powers, then that's great, but unless he does plan to do those things, the balance of the game demands that Blasters be the best damage dealers, even if it's only by a margin of 5% or 10% above the next-best competitor.

We can accept that there will never be a 1-to-1 relationship in the cross-AT ratios of damage and survivability; for instance, if a Tanker is (conservatively) 10 times more survivable than a Blaster, no one would honestly expect that a Tanker should do 1/10th of the Blaster's damage -- but come on. We have ATs running around that are several times more survivable with the same or a very similar damage potential. In some cases, those other ATs have better damage.

There should be some advantage for the squishiest damage dealer, by far.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Depends on the situation

Some situational stuff is just too situational. Old stalkers and old domination are 2 prime examples.

The changes to grav control are border case.

For me, I greet the snipe change as a transparent issue, I have snipe on exactly 2 characters (out of nearly 100). The Archer that has it uses it to pick off runners. My Empath has it to hold a Sting of the Manticore set and to shoot Hami once during a Hami raid.

I don't see this change to snipes affecting my powers choices on ANY of my characters that don't all ready have it as the change doesn't bring the power up to the minimum level of utility that I'm looking for in a power selection.

I may eventually build a defender that takes advantage of it but I highly doubt it.

I can give a metaphor that is a pretty good example:

The 900 pound man that has lost 100 pounds and now weighs 800 pounds. Yes, he has come a long way and made a huge change, but he is still grossly obese and will remain so until he's lost another 550 pounds.

The grav control and snipe changes are 100 pounds off of a 900 pound man.

DAMAGE has NEVER, EVER been an issue for my blasters. Lack of damage, single target or otherwise, has NEVER EVER been why my blasters die the times they do.

The last thing they need is more damage. The LAST LAST LAST thing they need is more SINGLE target damage in a game where 90% of it based around AOEs mobs of enemies.

I'd rather have blasters buffed any other freaking way than more damage.

We'll have agree to STRONGLY disagree.

EDIT: I can see where you are coming from now, and will say AGAIN if I wanted more damage for my blasters, which I don't think ANY of them ******* need, it WOULD sure as hell NOT be more single target damage. And I sure as hell would NOT be expecting it from snipes, some of the most useless powers in existence in this game. EVEN with the changes there is nothing about snipes that screams more damage.

Crashless nukes = giving blasters better and more options for damage WAAAY WAAAY WAAAY more than the snipes.

I don't think I can state it in more stronger terms about how useless the snipe changes are if that's the way they intend to give blasters more single target damage.

Luckily that was NEVER the point of the snipe change.

The POINT of the snipe change was to improve snipes. Full ******* stop.

What if the changes leave them at the "bottom", but bring them closer? Do blasters have to become obviously better than two or three ATs after I24 or else the changes are a failure?

The last statement here is possibly not what you mean. It seems likely blasters are at that point now (I am sure when you said "hat-picked other AT's" you were thinking other damage ATs, but the average single target DPS of scrappers is not as high as some think). Do you mean blaster's single-target primary only damage?

Is making the snipe integral to those sets single target DPS your preferred solution or just the one you think we may be able to best convince the devs to do? If it is not your preferred solution, do you have a suggestion?

I see your point, but it strikes me as semantic objection rather than a substantive one. When discussing balance, if you (or I) say something like, "middle of the pack," you needn't be referencing a strict heirarchy of ATs, from least to best. In other words, and although I think it's clear that Blasters are on the bottom, I can't assign strict numerical ranks to every AT on the list, and that's a good thing; balance should dictate that the various options aren't so cut-and-dried. The balance heirarchy is, and should be, more like a milling crowd than a leader board; all or most of its constituents should be occupying more or less the same space, with this-or-that AT perhaps having a small advantage at any given time.

So bringing Blasters up to the "middle of the pack" doesn't even necessarily mean that they'll be obviously and holistically better than any other AT. It just means that they should be in the same general area occupying the middle of the range, with clear areas of strength and clear areas of weakness relative to their peers.

The last statement means that if you pick any AT out of a hat, no matter how strong or weak, you should be able to compare it to a Blaster and find that the Blaster has a clear advantage somewhere. Because of the underlying design, it's most likely that that advantage should be damage.

And without comparing numbers, I'm just going to go ahead and disagree with your assertion about Scrappers. It is my experience that the average single-target damage of Blasters is heavily overrated both on the forum and in the game. And yes, I also mean that blast-set DPS should be competitive, all else being equal, with melee-set damage. Ranged attackers have been saddled with too many disadvantages for too long. In the case of Blasters specifically, you should be able to pick any powersets and make of them a ranged build capable of putting out elite DPS.

I know you're big into Blappers, and therefore you're unlikely to agree with me here, but think of it this way: melee ATs have one attack set, from which they derive all of their offensive clout (with some small exceptions like damage auras or Burn). Why shouldn't a Blaster (or any other blast-set AT) be able to achieve to do the same thing with just their ranged attack set? Why should the presumption be that Blasters, if they're capable of competing with a given Scrapper at all, should have to use two attack sets to the Scrapper's one? Are we simply to ignore that the Scrapper's Secondary gives him many times the survivability of the Blaster? In any case, the Rikti Pylon thread in the Scrapper forum demonstrates quite well that even the best Blaster builds, using optimized attack chains combining Primary and Secondary powers, are only in the conversation for best single-target damage. They're not the winners, not even by a slight margin.

No, I don't care about snipes in particular; that's been my problem from the very beginning. Based on what we know now, it seems like the snipe is being used as the catch-all single-target DPS buff for blast sets that have access to a snipe.

And that would be fine, if it were a consistently applicable and evenly distributed bonus, or if it were clear that the snipe boost won't stand in the way of other changes to various sets that need attention. But the snipe change fails the first test, and the jury's out as to whether it will fail the second, and if so, for how long.

The fact that the devs appear to be making Spines' animations faster to improve its single-target damage only reinforces my current suspicion. There was actually a comment in the Scrapper forum last night that made me laugh when it shouldn't have: someone noted that Spines would probably get a 0.83 second attack to match Shadow Punch and Storm Kick. Do blast sets have any attacks that fast? Nope. And you know what else? If blast sets did have an attack that fast, it might actually be a detriment to the design of those sets at the low end, because unlike melee sets, ranged sets aren't necessarily given the tools to form a seamless single-target attack chain with generic enhancements.

It's interesting that Spines, which has always been regarded as a great AoE and bad single-target Scrapper set, is getting single-target buffage, but when I bring up single-target damage for Blasters, I'm told I'm short-sighted because all that matters is AoE.

(That last is not directed at Strato; it's just a general observation.)

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The AT's capabilities are wanting. How or whether you personally choose to use those capabilities is irrelevant in a balance discussion. I offered two possibilities for buffage. The first option is higher survivability (above and beyond the relatively modest survivability boosts that have been proposed so far; and keep in mind that supplemental survivability buffs could take the form of proactive measures like control). The second option is higher damage. (And that's higher average damage, by the way; it's not necessarily an invitation to buff Fire Blast into the stratosphere and leave Electric gimpy by comparison.)

I'm not married to any particular solution, believe it or not. You can pick one or the other, but unless you wish to argue that Blasters are well-balanced in the grand scheme of things (which would be fine, but I'm not interested in having that debate here), you can't say neither.

As a point of interest, though: is your experience with blasters limited to any particular primary sets?

Except that fast snipes do offer more damage, specifically more single-target damage. And at least theoretically, the boost is significant, which means that the developers have to take it into account when they look at rebalancing snipe-capable blast sets. Check out the following link:

Breakdown of Blaster i24 Performance

The snipes are important, whether we want them to be or not. I keep saying this, and it keeps getting missed or misunderstood or misinterpreted: I don't want the snipe buff to be the end-all be-all single-target damage buff, but I'm concerned that the developers will treat it as such.

I couldn't agree with you more in your assessment of snipes. The very reason I'm annoyed is that I feel like the developers are using the quirky fast-snipe mechanic to make an end run around the issues that are important. If the snipes need to be more attractive on their own merits, then that's bleeping dandy, but we've played the game for eight years, most of us, just fine without using Snipes at all. Why the devs would decide suddenly to tie long-awaited blast-set buffs to a power very few of us care about, and in any case a power that is only tenuously relevant to the question of generic-combat performance -- and then tie a quirky conditional trigger to the power that arbitrarily favors certain builds' use of it -- is freaking beyond me.

But I'm sure that my above commentary will simply be construed as an expression of myopic prejudice against improvements for snipes.

If the AT's specialty is damage, and the AT pays demonstrable and significant penalties for that supposed status, then shouldn't the AT be great at both single-target and AoE damage?

Exactly my point.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Preferentially, I believe you're simply investing too much into DPS when DPS tends to rely more on sustainability rather than raw damage. At least in the case damage ATs like Doms, Scrappers, Stalkers and Blasters, it's more about 'can you keep it up' vs 'how much you can do'. Because, IMO, sets are balanced enough (most of the time) that whatever attacks a set has available, they can do enough damage to complete a task...that's what the whole balancing act the devs have done in the past up until now...giving damage where damage is needed.

But why I bring that up is, well, again, you're investing probably more than need be into DPS. Blasters can already achieve adequate DPS without any alterations. They have options for more DPS by using secondary attacks. The point I'm making though is that, forcing a paradigm of superiority of DPS with only range above what others can achieve with their available palette of attacks just undermines the secondary melee attacks available to Blasters. You want seamless high DPS at range, but what does that do to the very same Blaster who decides to slip into using melee powers?

So, IMO, the whole argument that Blasters need high DPS and it needs to come from their ranged set (a ranged set, mind you, that might also have melee oriented PBAoEs in it) underminds the very same Blaster who decides to broaden their bucket of skills to include melee range. That isn't to say there shouldn't be options for high DPS at range, but that should be a set-by-set focus, not an AT focus which further differentiates the Blaster from its ranged kin. Def/Corr have to make due with what's in their ranged sets while a Blaster can take advantage of other tools.

This could tangent into another issue with blasters though, that they seem split in their personality of damage dealing vectors. But that is a ship that has long sailed. The secondaries have melee ranged attacks and it's too late to go back and make the Blaster all ranged...

But speaking as a player who is widening his experiences with ranged ATs, I have to say they all have their advantages and disadvantages. One advantage of Blasters in melee is that they do more damage. Giving that at range really does give up that advantage since it comes with great disadvantages.

I do hope that the devs look at improving Blasters' survival some more. I had proposed before, an 'Overpower' ability on a Blasters' single target mez that scales by rank like a crit: Use any ST mez and it has a low % of a longer duration +1 mag on minions, mid-low % of the same on Lts and a high % on bosses and up. It won't turn them completely into Doms but it will give them better active defense to high threat targets.

OK. I should have figured that, but I had to make sure. I agree with the general premise.

If we go to ANY AT, then blasters definitely meet your qualification. What is bothersome is that their damage advantage over other, more survivable, strong damage ATs is not clear (and in some cases, not actually in existence).

It is possible I am mistaken. I am basing my belief on general recollection of scrapper/brute DPS numbers for all the sets with my recollection of blaster DPS numbers (and I may be glossing over /Dev in that recollection, Arch/Dev or Nrg/Dev seem like prime candidates for lowest single target DPS blasters, and my gut tells me that could be lower than the scrapper average).

I am not actually opposed to this. I am not gung-ho for it, because as you note, I feel the secondary sets of blasters should matter and if you choose to be a range-only blaster, you should be at some kind of disadvantage compared to one who utilizes both sets, just as any scrapper or brute who only takes a few of their secondary powers would be at a disadvantage to those who take most of their secondary.

Why? Because in order for scrappers to get that survivability advantage, they have to use two sets instead of one. Note, I agree that blasters using both sets should not just compete with scrappers but should CLEARLY be outdamaging them. I do agree that using just the primary they should be able to compete. I am not convinced they don't generally compete now. Compete. I don't particularly think blasters that just use their primary should clearly outdamage scrappers, but I do agree they should not be noticeably behind.

Also, the best scrapper/brute damage numbers come from also using secondary powers like AAO and FE and damage auras. So while their attacks do mostly come from the primary, a significant portion of their offensive strength actually does come from utilizing both primary and secondary.

The big problem with my position is that the very times you want to focus on single target damage are also usually the times where the range advantage could be very useful. Standing next to the AV with a blaster in order to gain my dreamworld better DPS is not always a good plan and the new sustain powers are not likely to change that fact. It is the one thing I wrestle with as a blaster lover, my best damage comes from melee (generally), but melee is dangerous.

The trend in the last few years to buff blaster range strength is not wrong, but it is marginalizing the original design and making the trade-off to use the melee powers worse. We are already pretty close to the point where taking and using the melee powers is actually a bad decision thanks to buffs to range as well as how NPC powers function (go ahead and be a blaster with two damage auras who likes to stand in the middle of a spawn when the Talons of Vengeance are dropping their doom patches).

Agreed, but I want to note that this still doesn't mean I agree that the lowest single target DPS blaster is not as good as the average single target DPS scrapper, scrappers/brutes have some interesting outliers thanks to powers like AAO; and buff/debuff, of course, has significant advantages in that Pylon situation.

I can only hope you are wrong and continue to add my opinion that this shouldn't be the case and advocate changes that make it clearly not the case.

At the risk of invoking an appeal to authority, I'm just going to post a link (concerning the potency of Blaster melee attacks) and invite you to read it. I've been over this Blaster debate here til I'm blue in the face and I have no expectation that I can describe the matter better than Arcanaville:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=162

Notice for amusement's sake that she's replying to an assertion, by me, that's very similar to your objection above. The following links might also be of interest, with respect to the general AT-balance debate here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=141

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=195

(It's also worth disclaiming that my quoting A-Ville here isn't an attempt to argue that she necessarily agrees with my position in this particular thread; I'm just using her posts as a convenient summary of some of the more generalized Blaster issues that keep coming up tangentially.)

DPS is raw damage; it's just raw damage averaged over time. Although it's true that an extremely long-term fight like a Pylon (or I should say formerly long-term, because the addition of Incarnates has made the fight pretty short for a lot of builds in that thread) doesn't exactly reflect a build's short-term damage potential, it's also true that there is a correlation between short and long term damage potential.

To use an over-simplified example, unless you're talking about jousting, there's no inherent advantage to a single 3 second attack dealing 1,000 damage, as compared to a pair of chainable, 1.5 second attacks dealing 500 each. Both approaches do the same DPS, but both approaches also do the same burst damage. In any case, I often hear the objection that DPS is overrated as a balance metric -- and I agree with that, in principle. But in this particular instance, I have to ask: Ok, so DPS isn't everything, but is there any particular reason that Blasters shouldn't have great DPS? Are we simply to discard a whole huge chunk of the quantitative analysis we have on the subject of single-target damage and declare that Blaster damage is unconditionally elite based on anecdotes?

Yes, the design is screwy. No, that doesn't mean that ranged attack sets should be penalized versus melee sets. Personally and given the limitations of the design, I think that Blasters should get a supplementary damage boost for using melee attacks, but given their lack of other advantages, a pure-ranged Blaster should still be as good or better than a given Scrapper, all other build considerations being equal (IOs, Incarnates, etc).

After all, the Scrapper has an undeniable advantage from his secondary (defenses). As things stand now, the Blaster needs both Primary and Secondary to be competitive with the Scrapper's offense. If there's to be an equitable balance between the two ATs, then they should start in the same vicinity, damage-wise, if both use only their Primary sets, and Blasters should have a marked advantage if they use their Secondary to boost their offense.

In other words, the Scrapper is given defenses in his secondary set to compensate him for having to fight in melee range. The Blaster is given inferior ranged (single-target) damage from his primary, on average, to compensate for the Blaster's ranged advantage. So a ranged Blaster is penalized twice for the same asset (range). A Blapper has to turn the whole comparison on its head by giving up that asset, in which case the Scrapper is still ahead by virtue of having huge honking defenses, which were given to him in return for the very disadvantage that the Blapper has now assumed by closing to melee.

And incidentally, an improvement to ranged blast sets will also naturally improve Blapper DPS. This isn't a zero-sum game; even the most stubbornly melee-biased Blapper will tend to use at least one, probably two, ranged attacks in his attack chain.

1. Yes, the main problem with Blasters, as I see it, stems from an inequity in the design of ranged sets. I have never denied that. All I'm asking for is that those ranged sets be buffed equally for the relevant ATs. Since Blasters rely on attacks moreso than other ATs, they would naturally benefit more from generalized blast-set changes.

2. Def/Corr do have other tools, tools that make them better ATs in general than Blasters are. Those tools just aren't necessarily attacks.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

This is just a wording disconnect. If you have a hat, with every AT's name inside, mixed up on tiny little pieces of paper -- and you pull from that hat any AT's name, you should be able to compare a Blaster with that AT and find clear advantages for the Blaster. You should be able to repeat that process (draw a name and compare) until the hat is empty.

But yes, you're probably right that I didn't phrase that clearly; obviously the most relevant analogues to Blasters are Scrappers, Brutes, and Dominators. If Blasters are balanced against that sub-group of ATs, then they'll be balanced against all ATs, outliers in other sub-groups notwithstanding.

Well, like you said, it's a tricky issue. Blasters don't get uniform access to melee attacks, and the attacks to which they do have access vary from spectacular to lame. You could choose to do a balance pass on Blaster melee attacks to help Blappers, but it seems more efficient to buff ranged sets because those affect everyone (ranged Blasters, Blappers, Defenders, Corruptors, to a lesser extent Dominators).

The devs really dropped the ball at the beginning, by failing to take into account activation time. There's a limit to how many attacks you can realistically use, and so there's a diminished return on the offensive benefit blappers can derive -- unless, of course, the developers buff Blaster melee attacks to absolutely preposterous levels, in which case a new problem arises: the blaster's whole secondary set, and arguably the source of the damage advantage that gives the Blaster purpose, can be effectively nullified by the circumstances. (Like that AV encounter you mentioned.)

Some of those powers (AAO, FE) are the equivalent of a Blaster using Build Up from his secondary. For the purpose of this conversation, we don't consider a pure-ranged Blaster who uses Build Up to be "using attacks from his secondary." Or I don't, anyway. Do you? If Build Up is off the table for the purpose of comparing ranged Blaster offense to Scrapper offense, then the ranged Blaster is even more screwed.

The fact that AAO/FE are perhaps better than Build Up doesn't mean that they should be considered as a class apart. Damage Auras? Yeah, they're directly analogous to damage auras in Blaster secondaries, except that damage auras are intrinsically more useful to ATs with high defenses and with mez protection.

To clarify: When I commented on the Pylon thread, I was ignoring support-build outliers. Regen debuffs are equivalent to DPS in a long-term solo fight, but their value isn't fixed; it scales with the HP and regeneration of the target. And if you're in a team that's already capable of flooring the target's regen, your regen debuff is pointless.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

There is no assumption when the devs outright TELL US what the point of the snipe change was.

If you think any AT needs more damage, ask for that. Don't assume that one particular change that relys soley on to-hit, which is not standardized across ATs is supposed to be a catch damage buff. That is NOT what the devs STATED was the point of the snipe change.

There's not assumption to be made when their words are on video.

For all we know the devs may not intend to buff single target blaster damage at all. I think assuming that they mean to at all, when they have NOT said that, is the larger assumption here.

Also I think you can guess the solutions I would pick for fixing blasters would NOT be more damage.