Jade_Dragon

I will say this, if you are mixing Veteran Attacks in your attack chain, or have your attacks inconsistently slotted, this can effect the streakbreaker code. The streakbreaker uses the worse to hit chance over your last several attacks to determine how many misses it will allow you to have in a row. So it's possible, though likely also due in part to bad luck, that bad slotting on your Assassin Strike or some other attack is making the next attack after you AS miss so much.

This should not be happening, though. Your next attack after an Assassin Strike has exactly the same chance to hit as every other attack, 75%, plus whatever Accuracy you have slotted. You are probably seeing the combination AS-miss because it calls attention to itself, and you had a run of bad rolls. Now you're coming to expect the miss and noticing when it happens. So it's likely perception.

As others in the thread have said, HeroStats is a good way to confirm everything's working normally, and if there is a pattern that reveals an issue, like an attack with low Accuracy, you can fix it.

The Blaster has three things going for it, burst damage, strong melee attacks that don't take much time to animate, and a large selection of very powerful AoEs. Scrappers I believe are justified in their challenge to Blasters as the primary damage dealer, but Corruptors and Dominators really can't compete. When it comes to range, the Blaster is definately the damage dealer, although it often has to get in melee to deal it.

If you can deal with the hit and run style of play, and that the odds can change on you in a second, then it's great. Of course, that makes your performance very erratic and inconsistent, and I think that's what a lot of people don't like.

I find it very hard to resist frankenslotting Repulsion Bomb. It is just SUCH a good damage power. If it were an attack on its own, it would be great, but it's a mitigation tool too.

I would NOT slot it for Knockback, say with a Kinetic Crash or whatever. While another proc might be nice, if you slot any knockback in it it will turn from knockdown to knockback. And the knockdown, more than the stun, is the main mitigation of the power.

I would go ahead and slot Positron's, and then if you can find the space, try and fit two of something that you can double up the Recharge a little bit. It's a useful power to have three slotted for both damage and recharge. But that's just me, if you'd rather complete the Set, that's better than trying to make it work without damage.

Yep, Tankerminding is awesome, and it's doubly awesome on a Bots/FF.

I Tankermind on a Ninjas/FF, which is probably not the best combo for it, but so far it works.

I just think it's too early to abandon the thought that these changes could themselves be tweaked. If the changes have problems that are THEMSELVES systemic; if the scaling Crit chance is not achieving as high a value as expected because the radius to the nearby teammates is too short; if the demoralize effect is not achieving the team support function that is expected because the foe dies and loses the buff instead of surviving the AS; then those are additional issues that can still be addressed.

It seems to me as if Castle's intentions are being inferred by the results, instead of his intentions inferred by his statements, and the results analyzed to see if they meet them.

I'll just point out that in cases where I actually did put off powers in order to achieve Stamina at level 20 (which is by no means every time) I usually chose the attacks and other slot-intensive powers first. So in going back and picking up powers, I pretty much ended up with those that only needed a single slot.

Since the powers are not opening up any earlier than they were previously, it's not like there are more than a handful of powers in your Primary or Secondary that you can choose from. And if you've already picked up the slot intensive powers, what's left is the ones that can get by on one slot. If you are picking up slot intensive powers, you're probably getting them out of the Pool.

Granted, I've been saying I wish the devs had added a new Pool of low slot cost, Auto powers, but that's only so I don't have to go looking for low slot cost, click or toggle powers that I can use sparingly. I like Auto powers. Especially for Primary/Secondary combos that don't have them.

Basically, the MM personal attacks are like the first three attacks you get for a Blaster or Defender. Then, for the rest of the attacks, you get henchmen that do those. So your nukes and burst damage attacks are being done by your henchmen. You're the foundation doing the little constant low damage attacks all the time.

It's possible that the devs could do to the personal attacks what they did with Blaster Melee attacks. Increase the damage, and then increase the recharge and End cost to compensate. In other words, turn the basic attacks into burst attacks. Unfortunately, this might result in Masterminds doing too much damage. A Mastermind's problem is that he can't fill out an attack chain with only three attacks, but give him a few Temp Powers, and some global recharge, and that changes. Add some burst attacks, and he's doing nearly the damage of a Defender.

Consider that if the Mastermind is doing exactly the same damage as all of his henchmen put together, either a) the Mastermind and his henchmen together are still doing only as much damage as another AT, meaning the pets are REALLY weak (this is where Controllers are) or b) the Mastermind + pets end up doing twice as much damage as any other AT in the game. That's really not going to work.

A Mastermind really CAN'T do more than about 25% of his overall damage. That's innate to the concept of an AT which does most of his damage with pets. The unfortunate thing is that when you spread that 25% across three attacks, you end up with very individually weak attacks. I think perhaps a better solution would be to simply lower the End cost, so the attacks are worth using, or to give the MM some sort of situational boost, like more damage as his henchmen start dying.

I've also said I'll like to see MMs be able to taunt with their attacks by slotting Taunt in them. It may be difficult to do this, though, while retaining the ability to have no Taunt by not slotting. (For instance, there may have to be a positive Taunt mag that can be slotted, and then a negative Taunt mag that is constant. That may very well be outside the limits of how status magnitude works )

You also CAN compensate for a Mastermind's lower damage mod by using Temp Powers, Pool Melee attacks, and slotting IOs and procs. (Thanks to Bodyguard, there should never be any problem with an MM using melee attacks) MM personal damage is NOT as low as most people believe it to be. The problem is not the damage, it is the investment required in order to get that damage, and that you must often sacrifice more efficient pet abilities in order to get it.

Okay, okay, lethal attacks from guns are definately common enough for Tough to be useful against them. However, in my experience it's not the lethal attacks from guns that were ever any threat to my Blaster, it's the exotic types like Fire and Electric. Those packed enough punch that I had to be concerned about them taking me out, AND they didn't come with a Smashing component.

It might make those *#$&%# Council Marksmen a bit less irritating, though.