Fulmens

1) When you're putting together a team, make sure everyone knows who's in charge of starting fights. If you have someone who runs off and starts fights? Make it his job. If you don't have anyone like that, give it to the best qualified person [tank, experienced player, whatever.]

2) IF you are pulling: Make sure everyone knows what pulling is, and how to do it.

Pulling correctly: where everyone hides around the corner * except the person who shoots or taunts one [or a few] enemies, and then runs around the corner. *

Then you wait. *

Then the pulled enemy comes around the corner and everyone piles on.

* this is where 1/3 of all screwups happen.

NOTE: Many people THINK they understand how to pull, and they're wrong. Don't take their word for it, explain anyway.

3) If someone screwed up, and nobody died [except maybe the screwup], that's good enough for hero work. Same with screwed-up builds. If it works well enough, let it go.

4) Walk before you run: don't try some complex NFL-style play with people who are still discovering what the "R" and "F" keys do. "Follow [person x]", "[person y] is in charge of starting the fight" and, for the advanced class, "[person z] is pulling" - if you can handle that, you're plenty good enough for me to team with.

5) Small controlled teams are best, when you're learning. The chance of finding seven other people and NONE of them are idiots is. . .well, small.

I did some VERY rough checking at one point of XP vs. level.

-2 enemy: 1/3 "standard" XP
-1 enemy: 2/3 standard
0 enemy: Standard
+1 enemy: 4/3 standard
+2 enemy: 5/3 standard

I keep meaning to get more precise measurements for these and extend the list [+3, etc.] but I haven't done it yet.

Anyone feel like doing the experiments? [NOTE: make sure to try the same type- not all "even con minions" give the same XP. BP husks give less than Green Ink Men, as an extreme example. ]

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actually my lvl 50 tank got'sa note on him sayin >do not invite unless there is a empath on team and NO STORM SUMONERZ<


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I'm torn.

do I point out that you brought a thread back from "50 days dead"?

Or do I go with the "Gee, Dr Anvil was standing up against +6es for a minute and a half the other day while I watched from the floor" angle? *

Either way, johnny, it's looking bad for you.

*OK, there _was_ a Defender involved. Force Fields, to be precise.

It occurs to me that I'm an idiot. [Find the greyscale colors, they go with anything, and pick one or two others, probably from the same row. . . ]

Again, good job.

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Example: Death Shamen = x2.6500, Storm Shamen = x3.9600
Given the Death Shamen summons two pals that can turn a three on one battle into a rathy nasty five on one struggle I can't believe he's considered less risk (since risk = reward) than a Storm Shamen who I've never had any real problems dealing with on any of my characters.


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Interesting.

I don't see "two extra zombies" as a threat, but "stun if squishy, hurricane if melee" is a major inconvenience. I mean, BP husks come in 12-packs.

Of course, I tend to be running lethal or fire damage. I went to DA with a ice/ice blaster duo'd with a dark/dark defender. Once.

Mary Moore: What server are you on? If "Infinity", I'll give you 200K just for getting rooked.

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Actually, Pilcrow, I am indeed saying that Offense = Defense. Blasters know this intuitively - defeating something before it has a chance to inflict damage is often better than defeating it more slowly without risk.

In case you need proof, compare pre-18 claws and broadsword scrappers. You know the rest.



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1) How does a "pre-18 claws vs. broadsword" argument help? I'm honestly mystified. Is this "Broadsword is throwing in Parry for safety?" Or "Claws has two of the worst attacks in the game, possibly in the world, before level 18 and is getting a complete restructure in I7?" Go ahead. Spell it out for me.

2) "Blasters know this intuitively"- have you READ the Blaster boards? They've been screaming for nearly two years that their secondaries provide no defense. They're not wrong.

You missed the real reason to make a Kin/Sonic:

So I can put one on the team with my Blaster and get all the bonuses with a 50% higher Brawl.

Part of my brain is going "Good work!" and part is going, "If they're color-blind, how will they know whether Dark Magenta goes with Steamed Broccoli?"

I'm going to stay with "Good work!"

Generally: good guide.
Now, of course, I'm going to pick on it.

1.
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8% per TO, 16% per DO, 33% per SO.

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I know, you're keeping this general.

But defensive enhancements (and a few others) are 5/10/20, and cost correspondingly less.

2. "There is a slight accuracy penalty for fighting with sprint on." As far as I know, there is not and never has been. Fly used to have an accuracy penalty. At one point very early you could fire out of Personal Force Field at a severe accuracy penalty.

At one point I think Super Speed had an accuracy penalty, but that was before my time [Jul '04.]

I've never noticed more misses with Sprint on. I've never seen anyone test Sprint. As far as I know, this is an obscure urban legend.

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Bah, Unearthed Arcana didn't come out til the '80s. Nor Fiend Folio.

...

Um. Really! I don't remember that! I'm young! YOUNG!

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I was gonna say that. . .

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The 14-16 in my sig is from the "Issue 4 sprint to 50." At some point around level 43 or so [I don't remember exactly] I started counting how many times Boltcutter, my Scrapper, died, vs how many times Aurora Forge [my wife; Fire/fire blaster] died. She died 1.14 times as much as I did.

(She did spend a WHOLE lot more time staring at her screen, mezzed, than I did. And I agree that that is a problem.)

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Was she soloing, or duoing with you? If she was duoing with you, it's a whole different ballgame than if she was soloing. I plan to get to 50 with Arc Salvo by teaming only. I really just don't like the vast amounts of mezz so many 40-50 villain groups have.

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We were grouping the whole way from 41-50. It was fun and social and we got really good at it.

I still own a Monster manual with the price list in the back. . .and it says, "Dungeon Master's Guide. . . upcoming release."

Doubleposting to discuss:

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He's correct about the difference though. The 40-50 game (as opposed to the 1-40 game) is a drastically different beast for blasters than it is for a number of other ATs. Many people who've run blasters through those levels have remarked on the difference as difficulty ramps up and ability to solo drops way down during that level range

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Actually, my experience has been that 41-50 is drastically different, and harder, for all AT's than 1-40 is. [I might even put the tipping point at level 38, when the Envoy of Shadows shows up.]

The 14-16 in my sig is from the "Issue 4 sprint to 50." At some point around level 43 or so [I don't remember exactly] I started counting how many times Boltcutter, my Scrapper, died, vs how many times Aurora Forge [my wife; Fire/fire blaster] died. She died 1.14 times as much as I did.

(She did spend a WHOLE lot more time staring at her screen, mezzed, than I did. And I agree that that is a problem.)

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In I5 Invuln scrappers went from 66% to 33% damage resistance [non-S/L] and Invincibility lost about half its defense. So twice as many hits got through and a lot of it hit twice as hard. (S/L is between 1/3 and 2/3 of damage taken; I've heard different numbers.)

In I6 that 33% went to 20.6% [S/L went from 75% to 56%] and Invincibility lost a little more.

So, yeah, about a factor of 5 or 6.

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I thought it was only a 46% loss? Because earlier in this very post, you brush aside somebody correcting you that the cap buff to blasters was a 25% increase in cap (or a factor of 25%), not a straight 100%. If 400+100=500, then 66-20=46%.

Or do you just choose whichever method suits you?

(and yes, I apologize for the misplaced decimal and poorly drawn conclusion that stemmed from my error earlier)

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That's a fair point. I haven't been using consistent terminology.

Any suggestions for how to properly refer to the difference between the 100% between 400 and 500%, vs. the 100% between "living 10 seconds" and "living 20 seconds" ?

I could use percentages for "straight percentages" [so 66% to 33% is 33%] and multipliers for "relative percentages" [so 66% to 33% is .5]. Does this seem like a reasonable solution?

I see. As I suspected, I was missing your point.

Arc_Salvo: I'm probably misinterpreting something in this post of yours, but I don't see this as proving what you wanted to prove.

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His alpha strike capability used to allow him to handle up to +3's (including LT's) in large spawns with ease (with a couple inspirations), but now, medium (or even small) sized spawns of +2's could kill him if I made the slightest mistake, as could +1's if I got unlucky on top of making dumb mistakes. [snip]

As for my MA/SR main, he did fine as long as I stopped fighting reds and purples, and downgraded to yellows/oranges, and made sure I had plenty of insps for bosses (/SR's main weakness)


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So with your MA/SR you went from fighting +3s ["red/purple"] to +1s ["yellow/orange" - or bosses with lots of insps] and with your AR/DEV you went from +3s including Lieuts (ie red and purple) to +2s and +1s (ie yellow and orange).

What am I missing?

Slight sidetrack on "team build":

I don't usually build teams out of the blue, but two Blasters out of eight is seriously way too low.

Honestly, I usually build a team of "Aurora, and Elementary, and my other friends who are on, playing whatever they've got."

But for my hypothetical "4 am and nobody's on" dream team, it would be 6 people, and three of them would be blasters. [One would be a defender, and the other two could be anything, as long as they could play.]

Ohms: I've noticed that whenever you start to lose on a particular point, you change the subject.

Aracade: My numbers [as far as Scrapper-to-Blaster ratios] are defense, resistance, but not mez protection because I can't figure out how to value it. Getting mezzed, solo, is an "I lose" button. How do you put a multiplier on that?

Good Humor Man:
1) If you want to think of it as a "25% increase in cap" go ahead. I was going on the theory that if 400+100 =500, 400%+100%=500%.

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And here I thought everyone had their defenses deceased. And a 85% cut to your defense would mean a previously 40% was dropped to a 6%. Not sure anyone saw that kind of reduction.


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Actually, if you're taking 6 times as much damage, from whatever source, I figure your defenses have dropped by a factor of 6. And "everyone" did get their defenses decreased- or to put it another way, put much closer to Blaster level.

In I5 Invuln scrappers went from 66% to 33% damage resistance [non-S/L] and Invincibility lost about half its defense. So twice as many hits got through and a lot of it hit twice as hard. (S/L is between 1/3 and 2/3 of damage taken; I've heard different numbers.)

In I6 that 33% went to 20.6% [S/L went from 75% to 56%] and Invincibility lost a little more.

So, yeah, about a factor of 5 or 6.

Nobody in the rest of the Scrapper community feels that they're a LOT better than Invincibility- if something REALLY sucks, there's a consensus- so I figure that we all got knocked down to around the same place.

1) I lost track of Stealth- at one point it was lowered, then bumped back up because otherwise, it was useless. BuffyASummers's Scrapper guide lists it [as of 3/1/06] as 2.4% and constant (link)

2) "Fulmens, I think it's rather disingenuous to use a 65% chance to hit "

That's a +2 minion, or an even-con I6 boss, or [roughly] an even-con I4 lieutenant.

Nobody with SO's- not Blasters, not anyone, not in I4 nor in I6- was fighting even-con minions only. 65% seems like a reasonable place to put the line to me. 50% is a best-case condition.

Even if I accepted your 1.09 number (which ignores the 18% more hit points- would you describe that as "disingenuous"?), I fail to follow this math:
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1.09/2.17=5.02.


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.502, perhaps, as I6/I4 survivability. Still a long way from .2 , I'd say.

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we lost out an equal or greater percentage of our defense. THAT is what I was refering to.


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Let's look at survivability. Let's use ACTUAL NUMBERS . "Pitiful" is rhetoric, Concern. "You don't want to go down that road" is rhetoric. "Doesn't count" is rhetoric. (A buff that you needed is still a buff. A buff that you deserved is still a buff. You didn't have it and then you did.)

Assuming that "1" is someone with no Defense, no Damage Resistance, no nothing. [A Blaster "1" is lower than a Scrapper "1" but all my ratios are Blaster:Blaster and Scrapper:Scrapper.]

Assume that we're fighting something with 65% chance of hitting.

I4 Blasters, with Hover, Stealth, and perma-Hasten [Note that this is different from CJ/Stealth/Hover- it actually makes your argument better]: 17.5% Defense unslotted, 21% single-slotted, and with four "extra" slots in Stealth, 27% Defense.

So they would go from getting hit 65% of the time to 38% of the time.

So they had survivability of 1.7 against this particular badguy.

I6 blasters now [with the same three powers] have 2.5+2.5 = 5% unslotted, 6% with one slot, and with four extra slots [evenly split] they have 8% Defense.

So that 65% badguy is now hitting 57% of the time. And the new Blaster has 18% more hit points.

The new Blaster survivability is (65/57)* 1.18 or 1.34 .

1.34/1.7 is 79%: the I6 Blaster will live 4/5 as long against those enemies as an I4 Blaster.

Now the Scrapper- I use Invulnerability because I know those numbers best- went from an I4 survivability of about 25 to an I6 number of about 5. [I used to say 18 and 3 but Arcanaville pointed out the effects of Dull Pain.]

A Scrapper now can survive 20% as long as a Scrapper then.

To rephrase: you kept about 80% of your defensive survivability and lost 20%.

We kept 20% and lost 80%.

So, Blastermaster, "lost out an equal or greater percentage of our defense" is just, plain, wrong. Even if my math is off by a lot, it's still wrong.

By the way, feel free to point out any flaws in my math. I'm willing to discuss my numbers and correct any errors. That's why I showed my work.

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Blasters have always been told that our ability to kill a enemy fast was our defense. (along with range wich is total BS) But basicly we are damage kings, we kill before being killed. Yet oddly enough scrapper damage has been boosted a couple times, along with for 5 issues a higher damage cap then blasters had. So riddle me this...

If the game was such that a AT that actually has defenses required a damage boost to be competitive, then why does the king of damage, no defense AT not also require a boost?


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Do you even listen to yourself?

You got an 18% boost in hit points.

You got a 100% boost in damage cap. Either the 500% happens or it doesn't. You can't claim it counts when Scrappers had it, but not when you got it.

And along with that 12.5% increase in Scrapper damage, we lost somewhere around 85% of our defenses.

How is that a boost for Scrappers, again?

It's a simple question.

I think we can all agree that Blaster Secondaries have horrible built-in gimpiness.

[I saw a lowbie with Lightning Field on the other day. It made me want to cry.]

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IIRC, Regen has mez RESIST not mez Defense, which greatly shortens the amount of time you spend mezzed. It's not comparable to a Blaster's plight, even before you note the difference in survivability between a mezzed regen (with a ton of auto and durational clicks protecting him) and a mezzed Blaster (whose protections are almost entirely toggles or instant clicks like controls and aid self).


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Nope. Integration is 6 mags of mezproofing [used to be 15] along with 400-600% healing. If they've got a "durational" it's either Instant Healing [which is as good as they say] or Moment of Glory [I don't know how good it is, personally]. Without a "durational" they've got about triple-strength Health and a little bit of mez resistance keeping them alive. And we know how Health saves your life when you're getting hammered by red-cons.

I personally consider Regen scrappers like canaries in a coal mine. They'll jump into the middle of anything, and if they faceplant I start taking purples and paying attention.

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Here's the thing, I don't have a problem with "the deal". I don't have a problem with riding into battle wearing nothing but a thin layer of gasoline-soaked tissuepaper for protection. I enjoy it, and not everyone can do it. If you want higher offensive capacity, you must sacrifice defensive capacity. If you want higher defensive capacity, you must sacrifice offensive capacity. That's "the deal". Unfortunately, the devs have a scattered approach to how this is applied.


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You're cutting and pasting phrases from old arguments about a game that no longer exists. You're refusing to take the protection that a team can offer, then claiming that your self-martyrdom entitles you (and all the less-stupid people in your AT) to some tremendous benefit. You're arguing about something [Scrapper defenses] that you don't know and won't learn about.

Honestly, do you even THINK about what you're typing anymore?