Adeon Hawkwood

No clue, I had it on a Devices blaster, rather than Energy.

Yes yes, sky falling. Blasters obsolete. Objectively does the snipe buff help Defenders and Corruptors more than Blasters? Probably. Does it invalidate Blasters? No more than Corruptors and Defenders already do.

The fact is there's been a strong argument for Blasters being obsolete long before the snipe change came along. To a large degree Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes can deal damage as well or better and are a lot tougher while doing so. Corruptors and Domiantors can deal damage almost as well and provide lovely team buffs/debuffs or control. This change doesn't really impact that.

As for Leadership now being "required" for Corruptors and Defenders I really don't see it. Sure Perma FastSnipe is nice but there are plenty of blast sets where it doesn't help as much. In fact Sonic Blast, which is generally considered the strongest Blast set for Defenders, doesn't even have a snipe. I'll also add that a lot of Defenders and Corruptors take Leadership already because it's a very useful set.

Now I do think that there should be a bit more AT-parity for the snipe changes. At the very least I think Build Up for Blasters should be buffed so that it can more easily trigger it but I really don't see it as the horrific change some people seem to think. I also think something should be done to give Dominators access to FastSnipe (adding it to Dominaton mode was suggested, I'm not sure how I feel about that, Perma Dom is already very good).

It's a toss up. My aim with Charge Up was to propose a power that has more total damage boost than Aim but doe sit in a different way. The actual damage boost is quite a bit lower but by stretching it out longer and making it give attacks a chance to chain the total damage increase over time from Charge Up would be higher than Aim.

The upside is that this would fit well with the current DoT heavy nature of the set. Electrical Blast is not a set that front loads the damage but it's sustained output is pretty decent and my goal was to enhance that aspect.

I wouldn't want to see the recharge on Short Circuit lowered since that would mean also lowering the damage or the radius.

Fulmens, I do agree with this. However I think the point that Lothic is trying to make (similar to the point I made a few pages back) is that there are people who enjoy Electrical Blast as it is now and any changes to the set should attempt to avoid breaking how the set plays for them.

Some of the changes proposed in this thread for Short Circuit in particular would probably end up breaking set for those of us who enjoy it now.

In general I would say that any attempt to fix Electrical Blast should probably keep two features:
1. Short Circuit remains as a large area AoE with strong endurance drain and reasonably fast recharge (i.e. recharge shouldn't increase above the current 20 seconds)
2. Voltaic Sentinel should remain a pet of some sort.

I could be wrong but I suspect that most people who like the current iteration of Electrical like it for one of those two reasons. Yes, Short Circuit is a hard power to use, especially on a Blaster, but if you can use it effectively it is extremely powerful. It's got a much wider area than most AoEs and the Endurance Drain is (I think) more powerful than people give it credit for. Similarly VS is power that is unique in that it's a semi-pet in a Blast set. I'm sure some people took Electrical Blast solely for that.


On that note here is how I would change the set. First the small changes:
1. Decrease the cast time for Short Circuit and change it so that it deals about 50% of it's damage up front. This makes it easier and safer for Blasters to use.
2. Increase the damage on VS, possibly by adding a chain effect or just a straight damage boost, decrease the cast time (and maybe change it so it just appears next to you rather than needing a summon location declared)

Now the big one. Remove Aim and replace it with a new power called Charge Up (because I suck at naming things). Charge Up would provide a moderate To Hit Buff (enough to hit FastSnipe with little or no slotting) and a small damage buff (probably less than 20%). Duration would be 30 seconds and recharge 90 seconds. While Charge Up is active Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, Zapp and Ball Lighting all have a chance to Chain and hit additional targets. I'm thinking something like 30% for Charged Bolts, 50% for Lightning Bolt, 100% for Zapp and maybe 10% per target for Ball Lightning (the Ball Lightning chain effect would only hit one target for each chain proc, not a full AoE).

The general effect of this change would be two-fold. First Electrical Blast using SOs gets FastSnipe two-thirds of the time on it's own about 90% of the time if Charge Up is cycled with Build Up (you can probably hit 100% with IOs). This would help with the single target strength of the set by allowing it to use Zapp to make up for the lack of a third ST blast. By adding chaining to it's single target attacks and Ball Lightning it gets a bit more AoE strength at range. An IO build with decent recharge should find it possible to get Charge Up permanent giving more options for IO'ing. Finally it doesn't technically break the cottage rule (Charge Up still buffs To Hit and Damage).

I'm sorry but I really don't see this happening. Yes Devices is getting a boost but it's in an area where it has traditionally lagged behind other sets: single target damage. The lack of Build Up and the lack of strong melee attacks has given a Devices Blaster weaker single target attacks than other sets (which can either make melee attacks or use Build Up to buff single target attacks from their primary).

Will Devices become more popular? Definitely, in fact it may even become the FotM for a while until people realize that FastSnipe is not actually that great. By taking Devices you gain FastSnipe but you lose access to the more varied abilities in other sets (besides Build Up) such as:
AoE Slows and controls in Ice
Sapping and Endurance recovery in Electricity
Range Boost and strong melee damage in Energy
AoE Stun and melee damage in Darkness, along with a scaling damage buff
LOTs of damage in Fire
AoE damage and recharge slows in Mental

So yeah I think Devices will probably end up being FotM for a while, but I don't expect it to last.

It is going to be current To Hit, else things like Aim and such wouldn't impact it.

As for perming snipe on Defenders I have two bits of advice. First try and build in some margin for debuffs. It's pretty easy for a Defender to get to 25% To Hit with Tactics and Kismet but having Aim to get you past Debuffs is not a bad idea if you can swing it in your build. Secondly consider using Mace Mastery for your Epic Pool. I realize it's not a good choice for all Defenders but it has Focused Accuracy which in addition to a small To Hit buff gives you a huge benefit for FastSnipe: 55.36% To Hit Debuff Resistance. As far as I'm aware the only powers in the game with To Hit Debuff Resistance are the various versions of Focused Accuracy and Targeting Drone (EDIT: Combat Training: Offensive for VEATs also provides it).

Just as a general thought on the issue of Defenders/Corruptors and the meta-game. While Defenders and Corruptors have it easier to perma with Tactics they are also much less likely to have room in their build for Aim. Defenders and Corruptors tend to need to dedicate more powers and slots to their non-blast set than Blasters do and Aim is often one of the casualties of that.

Actually the icon is correct it's just that the icon used in game for the To Hit buff and the debuff icons are the same symbol just in a slightly different color. It's actually rather silly when you think about it.

They used to work that way for Hamidon Enhancements but that got fixed a while back.

The problem with this is that it would mean making VS vulnerable to attacks (at least I think it would). Currently VS has untouchable and is immune to all damage. In order for the Taunt to affect it this would need to be changed and it would become vulnerable to attacks.

I'm not sure if this is a worthwhile tradeoff or not. Maybe if it was done like Singularity where it's targetable but has very high resistances?

It's buried in the long thread where he's answering player questions.

I will be very surprised if Fissure gets the buff. It's more like a long ranged melee attack than a short-ranged ranged attack.

That's a very good question. I thought I had gotten there from the Blaster AT page but I just checked and the links there are all correct so now I'm not sure.

The worst part is I've seen that bug before but now that I try to replicate I can't figure out where from.

For what it's worth the link was originally http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...Leadership&at= without the Blaster on the end I tried typing that in to see if that fixed it and didn't bother to remove it before copying it to the forums.

True, I was just referring to Blasters. Any Corruptor or Defender can perma-FastSnipe if they want so I'm not concerned about Ar on them.

Awwww. What about having the Time Bomb apply a high magnitude unresistable knockback effect to the Devices character when it goes off so we can at least go flying when we use it?

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer. Hoist with his own petard.

Summary is here, or check out Wednesday's coffee talk on twitch tv:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291665

Well Drain Psyche also requires targets to work (although personally I'm hoping that changes before this goes live).

Sure, Blaster mitigation tools aren't that great in Incarnate Trials but Incarnate trials are not all level 50 content. For playing non-trial content (either solo or on a team) slows and mezzes are still potent tools.

Ummmm... mitigation still matters a heck of a lot at 50. Even if you use IOs to softcap your Blaster layering on additional mitigation in the form of control and debuffs helps a lot. And not everyone has a softcapped blaster.

On the subject of Short Circuit, something to remember is that Electrical Blast does show up on three different ATs that have different ability to leverage it. While I concur that Short Circuit has problems for a lot of Blasters the same is not always true for Corruptors and Defenders.

I have a Time/Electrical Defender whom I absolutely love and Short Circuit is a large part of the reason. I can use the buffs and debuffs in Time to sit in the middle of a large crowd of enemies and spam Short Circuit to my hearts content. Between the recharge debuffs and endurance drain I don't face that many attacks and Farsight stops most of those. So in that situation Short Circuit is an awesome power. I'll admit I wouldn't mind seeing the cast time reduced but the I would be sad to lose its status as a large radius PBAoE with strong endurance drain and recovery debuff.

Now I realize that this is an edge case and that powers should be balanced for the majority of combos but please don't discount the current implementation of Short Circuit entirely.