The meta game has changed

How does this apply to Sets without snipes getting pushed down the ladder of relative performance?

EDIT Do you really want to do the quote boat thing? I mean the 1 liner quoting back and forth?

Assault Rifle and Electrical Blast beg to differ.

So Energy Blast, which didn't have a single attack above 1.0 DPA, is now going to push Ice "down the ladder" by acquiring an attack with the same DPA that Ice Blast already had, and the remedy for this situation is to give Ice another such attack so that its two will allow it to keep pace with Energy's one? Or do we just buff the rest of Ice's attacks so that Energy can't never catch up?

Some of the Ranged Blast sets were penalized for having snipes displace alternate attacks, such as Electric and Energy. They aren't pushing anyone down the ladder of anything. They are just getting what they should have had from the start, if that. Complaining that the other sets are automatically disadvantaged for not having snipes is like saying that a bug fix hurts sets that didn't have the bug in the first place.

Some things were good (damage-wise) and are getting better: Fire Blast, for example. But that's not universal, or even the majority.

Like Power Burst, for example, a power I don't take now and won't be taking in I24, because its very tiny DPA increase over Power Blast doesn't make up for its much higher recharge and the fact it can't be fired while mezzed.

Energy Blast DPA (arcanatime factored):

Power Bolt: 0.84 DS/sec
Power Blast: 0.89 DS/sec
Power Burst: 0.94 DS/sec

And Ice landed the grand prize in the crashing nuke sweepstakes: a crashless rain that deals over 6.75 DS and recharges in 170 seconds. Nova and most standard PBAoE nukes deal 4.0 DS and recharge in 145 seconds: Blizzard does 44% more damage over time. Even Inferno only deals 16% more damage over time than Blizzard, and its a PBAoE and doesn't have the damage mitigation of Blizzard.

So, prioritize that and choose your sets accordingly.

That's what I do with my AoE fetish.

Unless they're going to move to cookie-cutter AT design where everybody gets the same stuff in a different package disparities like this will always exist.

There was a time -- just before I5 + I6 kicked Blasters in their collective crotches -- that having a Blaster was an absolute blast. (Anyone recall the whole "City of Blasters" thing?) After that Blastpocalypse, it seemed like only Fire still had any of its former oomph. because of the control element, Ice was still safe if a slog. The changes Arbiter Hawk-eye Want to Marry Him (Even Though I'm Straight) has talked about looks like they'll make Blasters fun again.

And for Blasters, "fun" has been something that's been sorely lacking for too many years.

Also what Arca said.

Troofs.

If I wanted to solo Xmas or Valentine's Day critters, I pulled the Ice Blaster out of storage. it wasn't a hoot, but it definitely got the job done with minimal face-planting. Bringing snipes up to that level of zappy goodness doesn't diminish Ice's unique role from what I can see.

Sniper Blast DPA: 1.74 DS/sec
Bitter Ice Blast DPA: 1.73 DS/sec.

Ice is getting a 50 foot range 1.73 DS/sec attack increased to 80 feet. Energy is getting a currently 150 foot range 0.61 DS/sec attack increased to 1.74 DS/sec, sometimes. Bitter Ice Blast has that DPA all the time.

Ice always had stronger single target than I think most people gave it credit for. The irony of Defiance 2.0 is that it reduced that advantage. But it didn't nullify it: Ice was always better than Energy and Electric in that regard. The sniper changes probably make Energy about even with Ice, but Electric probably still lags slightly even with the sniper change.

The other irony is that Fire isn't going to improve by as much as some other sets, its "insta" snipe is relatively slow compared to others, and it already had a single target attack with vastly superior DPA:

Blazing Bolt DPA: 1.78 DS/sec
Blaze DPA: 2.29 DS/sec

It certainly will improve, because Blazing Bolt can displace lower DPA attacks like Fire Blast. But just not as much as some other sets, because its average single target DPA with Blaze was much higher than most sets.

The biggest winners with regard to insta-snipe are Assault Rifle and Psi Blast. The biggest loser is Archery. Everyone else with a snipe is in the middle. I see some shuffling around, but I don't see a widening of a performance gap in general. But with that shuffling a power that was not often taken and rarely used outside of alpha strikes and pulling is now far more useful. To me that's a net win. And while I think Dual Pistols might still need work, I don't think Ice and Sonic were lagging Energy, Electric, and Radiation Blast such that the snipe buffs those sets are getting catapult them even farther ahead of those sets. In the case of Electric, its arguable that it needs even more single target damage on top of the snipe buff.

Just to make sure I'm clear on what my concern is. I don't think achieving 90% s/l resistance is game-breaking in and of itself. I think in this case the invention system just erased an advantage Invuln was designed to have.

Inventions are powerful, and they will, through their power, blur distinctions and advantages. The question is whether they do so to a detrimental degree. If you can do it with Dark, I'm sure you can do it with Fire and Electric as well. As the resistance bonuses start erasing powerset design advantages, as the defense bonuses did with defense sets, I think we're losing something the game worked really hard to gain in the first place: distinct archetype and powerset choices. Not completely to be sure, but significantly.

You can hit the smashing/lethal cap on an Electric Tank already with Resilient Core (or really aggressive resistance slotting and Cardiac). And that's without the Might of the Tanker proc. Willpower can hit the smashing/lethal cap with Resilient and 1 stack of the Might of the Tanker proc and the Shield Wall +3% resist all, Fire and Dark can do the same.

But then, on tanks, it is much easier to hit 90%.

I will admit I'm concerned that a Dark Brute can hit 90%. It says things about balance in the game as a whole, but it seems like it could also hurt the balance between tanks and brutes.

Super Reflexes asked me to pass on a message: "I know how that feels!" Not sure what he's on about.

P.S. Yes, I read all of your post.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You're looking at it strictly from the Blaster perspective. I referred to Defender and Corruptor versions of the set. A Defender or Corruptor can't use a t1/t2 blast while mezzed so that point is irrelevant to the discussion, and you do have higher DPA on Power Burst - which helps when you're also trying to keep up buffs and debuffs.

In addition, and Blizzard and Ice Storm were both (finally) adjusted for AT modifiers, so relative to where they are on live right now it's a huge drop in damage for Defenders and Corruptors on those two powers. That's what I meant by Ice not staying where it was - it loses big on AoE damage relative to live and doesn't gain anything by the changes. Corruptors can also (via Kinetics) self-cap damage, so the lower cap on Blizzard shuffles things around a bit as well. It's still a great power - but less so (I never worried about the crash when I dropped Blizzard anyway).

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

The endurance drain secondary? Even a redname in the blaster changes discussion has admitted that it is very binary in utility/ It is useless against high-tier enemies and they said that they will be looking at it to see if it still lags behind the other blasters.

To be fair, and I have been attempting to argue this for a while:

Invuln does not have a huge advantage in SL, not directly. Invulns "advantage" is how much more powerful Fighting > Tough is for them, and this in turn, of course, makes them so powerful against SL.

It was also an advantage that was not fully inherited by the Brute and Scrapper versions of the set.

At first I thought this would be a bad thing, but now I realize it may be a good thing.

Invuln has kept what I would consider to be damage type holes for every damage type but Smashing and Lethal due to how insanely strong Invuln Tankers can be, once they take Tough. Now that this advantage is not so big (since most other tankers will be able to do similar) we can finally get tanker's weak spots looked at, at least I know I will do my best... as soon as I'm done looking at this huge IO list of changes.


And Willpower. *glup*


Hmmm, I got to admit I am not sure I agree. We have, for most purposes, a darn well balanced offensive game system. Most offensive sets are, thanks to heavy rebalancing and the work of players like you, been improved to be within a few percentage points of each other in sustained DPS.

Survival sets, though, are all over the place, some with holes to things entire groups the game forces you to fight [if you do story content]. As long as the delivery (HP/Res/Def/Abs/etc), and build paths are different, you will retain distinction.

I don't want homogenization, but I would like some standardization on survivability performance. The IO change may help in that direction.

Datapoint - my Invulnerability tanker will be dropping Tough in I24 (ceteris paribus, of course.) I won't need it anymore.

And it looks as though I won't be giving up very much, if anything, for that - the current IO build he has on live gives him 81% S/L resist on beta with Tough toggled off. Throw on the (buffed) Shield Wall proc, and that leaves about 4% S/L resist to chase down. Trivial with the new values. (As a purely side benefit, F/C resists will be somewhere north of 70% on that build, as well.) That's in addition to softcapped S/L/E/N defenses and a goodly bit of global recharge.

Once Mids updates, I'll be looking at other options that may be in the realm of possible. S/L resist capped Shields tanker? S/L resist capped Fire Armor brute? Multi-resist capped Masterminds? The mind boggles.

On the other hand it's also providing the means for Invuln to virtually eliminate it's Psionic Vulnerability (Psionic Defense is still going to be low but you can easily get Psionic Resistance up to 40% using just the special IOs not to mention at least 12% from Purples possibly more depending on your build).

Don't make plans just yet unless you doing it just for fun. This is just the first wave of beta. Thigs are extremely likely to change. In fact, Synapse already mentione he will look at x2 and x3 bonuses.

Oh, I'm just theoretically building at this point. I'm not making any purchases just yet.

As someone who plays mostly squishy characters I'm definitely not getting as much benefit form this as melee characters. I do have a Cold/Ice/Soul Defender that I'm toying with building for Resistance but he already has pretty sizeable resistance boosts from combining Arctic Fog and Dark Embrace so it makes some sense. Honestly though even there I'm not sure it's worth it for him compared to just soft capping Ranged defense.

I could see it being worth doing with sets like Time and Traps where softcapping is pretty easy but they're basically in the same boat as melee characters.

That being said Arcanaville made some good points about stacking Resistance on a Blaster with an Absorb sustain in one thread so maybe for them it's worth doing.

My gut instinct is that they are. The average mitigation they provide is lower than defense bonuses but there are a lot of tradeoffs between Defense and Resistance in real game situations which make the resistance bonuses more appealing. In particular NPCs get defense debuffs handed out like candy while resistance debuffs are less common (although they tend to be nastier when they do turn up). Secondly in a team situation Defense Buffs are a lot more common than resistance buffs so a team is more likely to make up for a lack of defense than a lack of resistance.

Additionally the availability of Resistance buffs in IOs is different from Defense bonuses which is really going to impact it. A good example is the purple sets, with this change there are several purple sets that offer 6% F/C/T/P Resistance and 10% Recharge. I can't think of any defense based set that is offering a combo like that and several characters could easily stack 5 of these sets without impacting their overall build much (Dominators and Fortunata Widows being prime examples). There are a number of other sets that offer two or even three resistance bonuses which is much rarer for Defense bonuses.

It was not intended to have a "huge" advantage, as the players typically define huge. It was intended to have an advantage, which it does. That advantage can become huge under certain high end build conditions which amplify it. But Invuln wasn't designed to have several times the s/l survivability of other sets any more than SR was designed to run around soft-capped. Invuln's designed s/l advantage is like SR's designed defensive advantage over Ninjitsu.

This has been my experience as well, summed up quite nicely. I was just very disappointed that the conversation excluded the equivalent in long-standing buffs from ios used to softcap defense.