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Quote:My first MMO was Ragnarok Online. A game with 30+ classes, of which about 4 are useful. Except for PvP, where people wanted niche builds and specific things for specific situations. But weren't willing to help you level in PvE.And now you've discovered the reason why I keep returning to this game. I tried WoW but between the gear elitism and the limited teaming options it just didn't interest me. My general policy for filling teams is to broadcast a message, take the first 7 people who turn up and hope for the best. It normally works out and I like that.
Of course, my interest in things tended to push me toward things like alchemist, gunslinger, rogue, blacksmith, and basically everything else that nobody else wanted to play or team with. So after soloing my way to 99 a couple times with classes and builds that aren't designed for soloing, I went "Why am I playing this," and moved to CoH fulltime.
Now I can play whatever I want whenever I want! -
Just saying, there's no way a Stalker can offer a team 22% DEF and ToHit with 30% DMG.
Each VEAT also buffs the team. That means widows are Stalkers + Corruptors. And Fortunatas are Dominators + Corruptors with defense. And Crabs are Blasters + Corruptors with Invuln-ish defenses. Of course, all the things they have are weakened and inbetween those roles. Fortunatas don't have as many or as powerful mezzes as a real Mind Dom, and a Crab's defenses aren't as potent as an actual Invuln. But they're still hybrid ATs with bonuses like range while having defense and still getting team buffs. -
To be specific, certain ATs do fulfill certain roles. Tankers and some Brutes for instance, are designed to (you guessed it), tank. Blasters and Scrappers pretty much just exist to "DPS," and you have the general support toons.
Thing is, NONE of those roles are "necessary" at any given time. Sure, you can take a Tanker that's asking for a team and he will benefit the team by taking aggro and making sure the weaker chars don't get attacked. But if there isn't a Tanker around, you don't have to take one. With enough buffs or kill speed you can kill things before they become a problem. All the roles are useful, but not required.
For instance, I started a "guns only" superteam recently. This means Dual Pistols, Assault Rifle, Merceneries, and Huntsmen. All pretty much things that are considered underpowered. We had Devices, a couple Traps, and the Huntsmen bonuses, but those support powers don't come until 10-16. So up until that point we compensated with pure damage, just killing everything as fast as we could. After 16, we upped the difficulty to handle more challenging things because we could with all the buffs. And we still don't have a tank, because we don't need one. -
For the record, I love Corrs. They're one of the things I look for first when putting a team together. But there are several things that keep me from just filling the entire team with Corruptors and calling it a day (not that I haven't done that before as a joke; did it with MMs too and even did an all MM ITF).
One is that not every Corruptor is a damage dealing maniac. I'd find it hard to locate a Blaster who isn't that interested in dealing damage, but I could find plenty of Corruptors who are more buff/debuff centric with sets like Dark Blast. Not that there aren't a fair share of Fire Blast Corrs out there, just that not every one is. If I take a Blaster I know what I'm getting.
Two, not every Corruptor dishes out huge amounts of -RES or +DMG to make the team a damage-dealing steamroller. It's interesting to note that every Corr set has either some form of +DMG or -RES. But not all of them hit huge amounts, like Dark Miasma or Traps. And even the good ones don't come until 38.
Three, considering how many people just steamroll on +0 content for shards now, there's no need to take a bunch of Corrs to buff everyone up. Consider if you're doing an LGTF and you have a bunch of Corrs ready to drop damage patches and do Fulcrum Shift so they can use their AoEs. Or, you know, an unbuffed Blaster could just kill the enemies since they're +0. I just ran an LGTF on my DP/Dark Corr last night. I switched to fire ammo over my usual chem because enemies died too fast to bother debuffing. I usually do fear and then patch and then nuke, but by the time I used two powers everything was dead anyway because we had two Blasters. Is there really a need for all these hypothetical buffs when the enemies are already dead by the time I finish animating?
And finally, once you get to a certain amount of buffs and debuffs, you start to wonder if it might be a good idea to take along someone who can REALLY take advantage of those, instead of people with lower damage to start. Yeah, enough taps on the glass can break it, especially if you up the firepower, but at some point it might be fun to just use a sledgehammer and see stuff really explode.
I don't think any amount of math on the forums will convince people that Blasters are useless. If that sort of thing were even possible, I'd be more concerned about melees first, once buffs get to the point where everyone is unkillable instead of just the melees. -
Controllers can do double damage all the time thanks to containment. That means their damage scale is a constant 0.55 * 2 = 1.1. That's as much a fringe argument as assuming everyone's damage capped all the time which is why musculature is a waste.
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Quote:Hmm, good idea. I'll remove all my sets for DEF so I can get another 45% recharge or so slotted into my build.Running 170% global recharge it was small for me.
Maybe you need to learn how to use sets.
Or I could just get the recharge incarnate as it does the same thing, while still maintaining the other bonuses I built for.
No... I think it'd be easier to make a build that can't benefit from incarnate in any way and then complain that incarnate doesn't do anything for Blasters!
According to the chart you just posted, a lot more considering they have BU, Aim, and Defiance. -
Someone who crunches numbers and pushes a character to the maximum performance or output possible. Making a character into as good as it can possibly be. This usually also involves taking sets that have higher potential or maximum performance.
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Actually, yeah, not sure what I was thinking. Probably leftover from the previous discussion about Brutes, because with normal damage boosts, the rule is "higher damage scale wins," though crits effectively add base damage and change that.
Still doesn't change the fact that even in completely ideal situations where all 7 teammates are standing near the Stalker, his claim to fame is only 6% more damage than the Scrapper that more than likely beats him in everything else. -
Quote:My Blaster's AoEs weren't slotted past about 60% for recharge. Now they're at the cap. Not only that, my BU, Aim, and Nukes all come up faster. So do my epic godmode, and my single target attacks, and everything I own. Maybe you just aren't any good at Blasters?I haven't seen one case where there was an alpha slot boost that was "wow that is just beautiful for my blaster" I have seen that on my characters for every other AT I have looked at.
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Quote:Not saying it's not possible, but I wouldn't recommend it. I even recall being teamed with a Thermal who kept neglecting shields. When they were up we did fine. When they were down they healed like mad and we still died. Having nothing but heals to rely on is frantic and sometimes painful. Unless it's a small team and/or on +0.This game is also designed with the intent that random, pick up teams should work reasonably well in most content. So if all you've got is a healer, and no bubbler or defensive buffer, its perfectly acceptable if the character with the heals goes nuts with his or her heals. There's nothing wrong with that per se.
Even on my Ill/Rad there were days when I was leveling up that I was spamming the heal to keep the team in the fight. And looking back with six years more experience, my tactical evaluation is that I was doing it right.
But really, relying on ANY one thing doesn't work for me. JUST DEF has its flaws, JUST RES has its flaws, etc. That's why our defense sets aren't built that way. -
Quote:There seem to be two solid camps when it comes to healing powers and "healing" sets like Empathy.@ the risk of sounding unpopular
Teams really do benefit from healing.
One is, LF HEALER, WE NEED HEALS. People who came from another MMO, or are just stuck in this line of reasoning. They want to fill up their team with "healers," as in people who just spam heals constantly.
The other is, THERE ARE NO HEALERS, BUFFS MAKE HEALS USELESS. People who push the line way back to the other side and dictate that this is a buff-based game and heals aren't needed or are even useless.
To me, heals are a last-line of defense type of ability. If you're using your heals to keep people alive constantly, you're doing it wrong. There are much better ways to reduce and mitigate damage. Our game isn't designed around standing there spamming one heal power on one person over and over. That's a waste of just about everything (time, endurance, other powerset, fancy visuals, my eardrums).
But there ARE times when I want or would like a heal to go off. For instance, my team rules so we have tons of DEF and maybe even some RES. For the most part our team does fine. Except we get to the AV and his Foot Stomp hits me, doing most of my HP in damage. You know what'd be great at that point, would be if someone healed me.
Heals, for me, are for an emergency. Build your team as if heals don't exist, but take someone who can heal for when something goes wrong. -
Quote:Even if completely true:In a typical dogpile on the AV, my Stalkers have the whole team in the range of their +critical aura. The results are very noticeable to me, and I play very high DPS builds across melee ATs. I know how my high DPS Brutes and Scrappers contribute in those situations, and my Stalker is extremely competitive.
In short, I don't believe you.
Scrapper: 1.125 * 1.10 crits on AVs = 1.2375
Stalker 1.00 * 1.31 crits on AVs = 1.31
And Scrapper BU is 100% instead of 80%; they have Soul Drain and Follow Up. They have Fiery Embrace, and damage toggles, and AAO. They benefit more from every single +damage boost, like Fulcrum Shift, Assault, Accelerate Metabolism, Fortitude, and so on. And they still get more durability to boot.
Even with absolutely ideal conditions, a Stalker edges out a Scrapper by at most a mere 6%, while the Scrapper gets those conditions basically all the time. All it takes is a slight nudge and the Scrapper is doing as well or better than the Stalker again.
Not that impressive. -
Quote:Yes, let's start with the obvious.Lets start with the obvious and work through
The cap bonus for the ATs in question is the same.
Courtesy of the paragon wiki
Blaster, Corruptor,
Scrapper, Stalker 210% at level 1
500% at level 21+
500% of 0.75 = 3.75
500% of 1.125 = 5.625
0.75 doing double damage due to -RES = 1.5
1.125 doing double damage due to -RES = 2.25
There is not a situation where a Corruptor on the same team as a Blaster, with the same buffs or debuffs, would do more damage than the Blaster. In fact, even if the Corruptor has a very rare musculature and the Blaster does not, the Blaster is still doing more damage. Tossing damage on a significantly smaller damage scale means a significantly smaller return. So the Corruptor can waste his alpha slot on damage and still not do as much as the Blaster, while the Blaster can invest in spiritual or cardiac and get actual bonuses, all while still doing more than the Corruptor. Because that's his job. -
Quote:That really makes no sense. You start off by saying that if there's a kin there's no point in being a Blaster because everyone will be at the damage cap, then go on to say adding damage to something like a Corruptor will make Blasters less useful. Let me count the oversights with that:The problem is that blasters in general aren't the at with the highest damage potential. With the narrow exception of fire combinations they don't measure up. Toss in the fact that the other "Damage" ATs aren't joined at the hip to the buff debuff players and they are irrelevant.
Just taking your setup the kin negates a big chunk of the blasters relative advantage of having aim,buildup and defiance. At the damage cap is at the damage cap.
I haven't done a detailed analysis but just looking at my builds blasters got the least out of the alpha slot. Tossing extra damage into ATs with buff/debuff is just going to further marginalize blasters. Especially seeing as their primary role seems to be clearing out minions with burst AoE and dieing to provide vengeance.
1) Blasters have a higher damage cap and base damage anyway, so if everyone is at the damage cap they're still doing more damage than the Corruptor or whoever.
2) This applies to all buffs and debuffs; if you take along a Corr who can do -50% RES all the time, he does more damage. But so does the Blaster. And since we're comparing 0.75 scale to 1.125 scale, Blaster wins every time.
3) If the team is really damage buffed like you say, the Corr having musculature to do more damage is just as pointless as the BU, Aim, and defiance that you just got done citing.
4) Even if they aren't, a Corr still gets less out of a damage boost than a Blaster does, so if the Corr has musculature and the Blaster has musculature, guess who wins?
5) You seem to be under the biased opinion that Blasters do nothing but suck and die. I could just as easily cite how often my Blaster doesn't die on TFs but the Controller, Defender, or Corruptor does, and use that to say Blasters are the best AT and support ATs are useless. Or ask what all the buffers/debuffers are doing if the Blaster keeps dying. Or at the very least suggest you play with more competent Blaster players. -
Domination does both. But Mids only reports one effect at a time on the summary screen. Technically while under Domination it will do mag 3 hold + mag 3 hold. This should be correctly reflected on the full details page.
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Quote:Given the single target buffs are portable (meaning it doesn't matter if they're in melee or not) and the only needed huddling is for Dispersion, Traps may have been a better choice. At least then you'd have debuffs.Not defense, no, but mercs don't need to be anywhere close to melee and FF has the tools to make that happen. It would be so nice if FF had debuffs though; at times it feels like taking down a rhino with a bb gun.
Speaking of Merc/Traps, I made one recently for a superteam concept thing I was doing. Assassin girls, or chicks with guns. So our whole team is made up of DP, AR, Mercs, and Huntsmen. All pretty much things that people consider sub-par. But sub-par in this game is relative. It's not like our team is suffering or incapable of handling things. I'm sure we could do it faster if we had Fire Blast or a Kin, but we're not having any problems running content. -
Stealth doesn't make them move slow anymore. But it still doesn't really do anything for them.
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Quote:That's a pretty old video. Was running on max difficulty for the time. I'm sure it was cool back then.That video isn't too impressive. ice/ice is pretty good for survivability of a blaster... not so great at damage (relatively speaking... it's a blaster so it's good, but you can do better).
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Quote:That's because Earth Assault is awesome.I just realized the other day that I have NO dominators. I've fixed that, but that's why I started asking. Very much enjoying my elec/earth assault dom
I recently got my Plant/Earth/Fire to permadom. It wasn't even intentional really. I like the sets enough that I didn't really care about hitting permadom. But after i19 I had a full five powers to throw LotGs in, and I started tweaking stuff until I had 96.25% recharge.
Domination, by the way, usually* doubles the magnitude of your mezzes. That means your mag 3 hold that normally only works on lieutenants will now work on bosses too. It also adds extra duration to the mezzes, refills your endurance bar to full, and gives you protection against all status effects and knockback. That means a permadom character doesn't get mezzed, and can mez bosses.
* = There are a few noteable exceptions; sadly most of them are in Earth Assault. -
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Quote:Don't forget how Fortunatas and Banes can get 100% ranged attack chains while having even higher RES and/or DEF than PBs, while still getting mez protection. Heck their damage buffs are even higher (PB BU is 72%, widows and banes get 80%). And they have team buffs. And pets. And dedicated mez powers. And passive recharge boosts.I've come back to this thread, this time to make a serious response.
Peacebringers.
They're supposed to be a "jack of all trades" AT that does a little bit of everything. The problem is that they do too little of everything.
Peacebringers have resistance and heals which weaker than a scrapper's and far weaker than tanker's. But that's because they have ranged AoE attacks. Is it? Because I see scrappers and tankers throwing fireballs, tanks with gloom and dark obliteration. Many of them have either a ranged single target or a ranged cone attack in their primary/secondary as well. Scrappers are doing more ranged damage from behind larger amounts of mitigation. Who's the tankmage now?
Peacebringers have ranged AoE attacks that pale in comparison to that of blasters. Even switching into nova form and forsaking mitigation still leaves you behind the curve. Then again, peacebringers have more survival tools than blasters. Do they? Because I see blasters with defense and resistance shields that are of greater value than the PBs. They can get +max health or even a god mode.
VEATs still have their downsides. They don't do as much damage as Scrappers or Blasters. Their mez isn't as potent as a real mezzer. Their pets aren't around all the time without permahasten levels of recharge. And their RES/DEF or at least DDR values are less than Scrappers could get. But compared to HEATs, they're gods.
Quote:That said, the Merc/FF is kinda bad, even with the synergy between the sets. Thankfully he's more of a concept/rp character, so effectiveness is a secondary concern. -
Quote:That makes you the sucker.Actually there are many ways to get rich on the market where that isn't true. Also overpaying is subjective. I don't think I am overpaying if it gets me back into the game faster even if I did pay 1 million for a common piece of salvage.
But I'm the sucker too. I list everything for 11 even if it's a purple, because I don't feel like researching and waiting, or paying market fees. I purchase everything at buy-it-now prices, even if that means 500k for common salvage. Even if I'm about to go to bed immediately following, I'll spend twice as much as the last listed value just so I can craft it and slot it. I have a limit of course. When every single salvage on the market is going for hundreds of thousands, or I can't buy any recipes because they're being flipped, I give up and bid low overnight. And lately I've been doing AE ticket farms so I can get rare salvage instead of paying 5m each on the market.
But I'm the sucker -- someone out there is making money off my impatience. -
Quote:Even if the things you say are true, this doesn't stop at Blasters.I'll say it again, because you chose to ignore it: It's just part and parcel of an AT that primarily does one thing. The more you give other ATs that potential, the less relevant that AT becomes, even if that AT also gains in that area. As everyone's proficiency in something increases, the need for specialization decreases.
NONE of the ATs are relevant or required. No matter that team makeup you make for 8 people, some of those people aren't going to be "required." Maybe your team makeup is pretty good and you think that 8th slot on a Blaster isn't very useful. But by that point it doesn't matter if he was a Tanker or a debuffer, as you already have everything covered. The true nature of CoH is that the majority of your team isn't required, because we aren't run on a strict heals/tank/DPS formula.
If, and think for a minute, you're at a point where your team has "enough" damage and that 8th slot would be wasted on a Blaster, what ELSE would you take? It's not like you'd take another buffer/debuffer, because if the enemies are already dying so fast that another damage dealer wouldn't help, then neither would another support character. And if enemies are dying that fast, you don't need a tanker either.
Almost all the teams I put together, I just grab enough for the team to survive, which is usually 2-3 slots. Everything past the third person is more or less irrelevant in role. Because everyone contributes in some way. And when single characters can solo +4/x8, it seriously doesn't matter what I take for my 8th slot.
The only way to force an AT to be useful is to do what Hamidon does. Other than that, if I look at my team and see it's mostly low damage dealers, I go look for a damage AT: Scrapper, Brute, Blaster, Dominator, Stalker. It doesn't matter to me which one.
And on that note, you'd think you'd be more worried about melee ATs being useless. After all, their advantage is not getting killed as easily. Their damage potential is limited to much smaller areas. And when the entire team is buffed (especially with later incarnate stuff), the fact that you come with your own defense is pretty pointless. This already happens to an extent. DEF buffs are everywhere, so you have to wonder why bother being SR, Ice, or Energy Aura when even the Blaster is soft-capped. But that doesn't mean I exclude SR Scrappers from my teams. -
Quote:Or to put it in layman's terms:Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. In this case je's point was correct. The market does not create either items or inf and as such there is a finite profit that could be withdrawn. As long as only a portion of the total population attempts to withdraw it then it is possible to make a profit from the market. If everyone did it then it would become impossible.
For every person getting rich off the market, there's a sucker on the other end overpaying for stuff. You need both. -
Quote:I dunno. If you're running around doing +0 content fighting your way through rikti on an LGTF to get shards, then yeah. You don't need much damage. You don't need much of anything really. It doesn't particularly matter what you take if you're going to bounce around on +0.Damage is already the aspect in this game that becomes the most irrelevant the fastest, because you only need enough to kill, and no more does any good. Blasters are already amongst the most irrelevant ATs at the top end, because everyone else does damage, too. Get on a team with a few debuffers, and they don't need the blaster, at all.
It's just part and parcel of an AT that primarily does one thing. The more you give other ATs that potential, the less relevant that AT becomes, even if that AT also gains in that area.
But for new incarnate content, +4 enemies and tough AVs with high resistance? Gimmicks where you need to inflict a certain amount of damage within a time limit? I can definitely see where you might want Blasters and why they won't be devalued.