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Posts
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I think my point is that I'm trying to illustrate that MA/AE farming and PL is not the devil that people are claiming it to be, nor is it the source of crappy play and bad behaviour despite the spin that some are trying to give it. It's merely another mechanism to accomplish somethign that many, many veteran players who really, actually know what they're doing can use to get by some of the more plodding, grinding and boring parts of character development (read; pre-20).
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I agree. The AE is an easy scapegoat of blame when it comes to players with PL'ed characters. There's this mindset that because these players avoid most of the official content, they automatically are bad players, or assume that they are just EXP door-sitters who let others do the levelling for them while they don't do or learn much.
On hindsight though, PL'ers participate mostly in boss farms and are faced with repetive threats, they become better players with their ATs dealing with these situations but may have yet to get better when dealing with others like mobs that emphasize on control effects. Still, I don't believe that this ultimately makes them as bad players in the outcome.
Though when it comes to these players who don't bother to explore the official content, I can see how it can become a bother since not having the knowledge of how to use the tram system to get to places, not knowing what Oroborous is, or how to get into Cimerora or RWZ can be a problem. But this doesn't have anything to do with personal player skill anyway, just a lack of knowledge of the environment outside the AE.
We are imperfect in our own ways and it reflects well when we play this game. I'm sure each and everyone of us have had their screw up moments. Whether or not we learn from mistakes or even accept them as our own is another matter. -
Yep, I definately came across this when I was new to the game and participated in Rikti invasions. Like Fulmen's had mentioned, they're untargettable when they're in the process of teleporting into the battlefield. I just spam my TAB key while hitting my blast powers in the hopes of actually firing at something.
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Punishing players for behavior, that was said to be punishable multiple times before they had a chance to do it, is to be expected.
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Sure, because the more players to pee-pee off, the better it is for the game.
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The DEVs have clearly stated repeatedly - the MA is not a farming or power-leveling tool. Players that use it as such will be punished by bans, account closures, etc.
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And you are clearly ignorant of the fact that not every player goes to the forums for these "clearly" stated declarations, nor are interested to visit the forums anyway since the 15 bucks they spend each month is primarily meant for playing the game.
Come to think of it, if it's such an issue for them, why hasn't an ingame announcement been implemented yet? Because you know, if I was the head-dev and I wanted to introduce a new rule regarding gameplay restrictions, I'd warn players ingame with a notice that tells them "DON'T DO THIS OR BAN!" upon joining a server. You see, that way if I want to ban some player for not following a rule, I have the excuse of saying "I've told you so already!", and not say "But I said so in the forums, specificaly in this section...and this post....go rummage for it."
That would be much more effective than the wonderful retroactive punishment idea.
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I know that some of you can still act like you are blind to the fact that exploiting the MA obviously what is being done. There will be a stop put to it.
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Yet another brilliant connection made between the terms "Farming" and "Exploits."
RCO farms were obvious exploits, so were using enemies with no air-attacks. Those issues have been addressed and fixed.
If the devs want to neuter farming from the AE completely, say hello to AE ghost towns. All the farmers can go back to traditional farming stuff. Budding storytellers can play with their toy that never loses its shine.
Oh and since the design flaw of the MA makes it so that recently newly joined players do nothing but use the MA for farming/PL runs and avoid regular content completely, I wonder if they'll have any incentive to try out regular content at all if farming is completely stamped out of the AE. Who knows if they'll just leave for other games? That's what we need; more decreases in subscriptions.
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Farmers are pretty full of themselves these days and think that they are the core of the game and the majority of players.
Neither are the case.
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Generalization much? Then again, when someone has a negative bias against the farming-style of gameplay, it's not entirely unexpected. -
If I'm doing massive damage while dishing out my KB attacks, I'm contributing alot already to the team's efforts. A KB'ed enemy also equals an enemy who can't fight back for that duration that he's down.
That being said, of course, KB has to be used smartly, not recklessly.
To the OP: Anyone complaining about Nova's KB effect when you managed to kill a majority of them or take out 3/4 of their health is an absolute moron, even if taking away 1/2 health if they are bosses. -
With regards to a fire/fire blapper, Combustion can be easily avoided and Fireball can takes its place. Combustion does have a annoyingly long activation time that can ruin the pacing of an AoE attack chain.
However if you're like me and don't have fire as a primary, and uses the second build option for fire blapping, then you'll grab all the AoE attacks you can get in the secondary. -
I have a lvl 50 /fire blapper build. Alot of fun to play.
The critical powers to have (in my opinion) are Hot Feet, Blazing Aura, Fire Sword Circle, Combustion, and of course, Build Up + Aim (depending on what your primary is).
Hot Feet offers a form of mitigation as enemies caught in the aura will be scrambling, though at a very slowed pace while they're taking tick damage. Blazing Aura offers that extra tick burn. Fire Sword Circle and Combustion are your bread and butter AoE attacks. Follow up with Rain of Fire for even more tick damage goodness.
One thing great about tick damage is that even enemies with a high defense will still get affected as long as they're within the aura's range., like those pesky evasive Rikti drones.
You'll find yourself focusing on /fire secondary powers alot. Fire's strong point is its strong AoE powers so use them as much as you can. Fire primary powers that you can consider to take are of course Inferno, Rain of Fire and Fireball for AoEs. Blaze is a nice mid-range single-target finisher. Fire Sword makes a good single target finisher in melee.
A standard attack chain I like to do is to hit Build Up and Aim with Hot Feet and Blazing Aura toggled on prior, teleport into the mob and start dishing out the AoE attacks. It is devastating to watch.
As for APP choices, Force Mastery is the way to go for me. Force of Nature increases your durability in melee by a far stretch. Personal Force Field helps you survive a mass aggro toward you from survivors after hitting an Inferno (provided you have a blue insp. + Consume). Temp Invulnerability gives you some protection against Smashing + Lethal. -
I struggled alot solo'ing with my Grav/Kin troller in her early levels during i13 because I was too used to a Blaster playstyle. But eventually I began to appreciate the sort of fun array of strategies I can toy with playing a troller.
I find it highly unlikely that I will ever enjoy playing a Tanker, especially while solo'ing. I've tried it once, and it felt painful to me. -
Having gotten two Blasters to level 50 so far, here's my take on travel powers.
Flight
My favorite travel pool by far for my Blasters.
Flight is a very lucrative choice, not only for the absolute freedom of movement, but for two very useful powers as well: Hover and Air Superiority. Hover has a very low endurance cost rate when active and does not detoggle to holds, stuns and mind-affecting effects. Also, staying in the air away from melee-focused enemies and forcing them to use their range attacks that are significantly weaker will improve your surivability alot if you're playing a range build.
Air Superiority is a fast-recharge, single target mitigation attack with knockdown, and slamming flying enemies to the ground is always satisfying. Note that it works for non-flying enemies too, even if its name suggests otherwise.
EDIT: I just reread your post saying that you won't want to take Flight, so please disregard the above if you want to.
Teleport
Recall Friend is a always a useful transport power that can get things moving when teammates are straggling behind, and also for teleporting downed teammates a safe distance away for a revive opportunity. When doing a TF in the Shadow Shard, your teammates will love you for having this power too.
I found Teleport to be useful for my AoE Blaster (Blapper) build. I charge up my attacks with Build Up + Aim, Teleport into the mob, unleash my AoE attacks, then Teleport out if things don't go according to plan. As a travel power in general, it takes up alot of endurance at the start when travelling far distances, and the pattern of using the power may seem tedious since you have to repeatedly click on your next location after the previous. It's easy to get used to though.
Tip: Use a LSHIFT + LBUTTON "powexecname Teleport" bind so that you can instantly port to your next location by just pressing left shift + left mouse button to whereever your ingame cursor is pointing at.
Also, take note that if you have Fly enabled while Teleporting, it overcomes the lag you face before you can activate your next Teleport.
Speed
Hasten is the reason you'd want to go with this travel pool, though I find that Hasten isn't a crucial power to take. I rely on recharge enchancements and set IO bonuses to its place. Flurry is a nice mitigation melee attack if someone is harrassing you close up.
Super Speed is really a double-edged sword for me. The plus side of it is that it gives a stealth bonus that is good for stealth runner player types. On the other hand it's difficult to zip through tight, indoor maps like caves unless you've had alot of practice overcoming it.
Leaping
Combat Jumping and Acrobatics are the two toggles to give you nice little bonuses to defense, immobilization and hold protection. Jump Kick is an average mitigation knockdown attack. Super Jumping from rooftop to rooftop is immensely fun and never gets old.
In summary, each travel pool has brings their own advantages to the table. Personally I would say go with Flight, because you can never go wrong with it, and improves your survivability. Don't restrict yourself to taking just one travel pool either, consider taking two if you feel like it. Above all, listen to what your preference tells you and pick whichever feels most fun to you.
Cheers and have fun. -
A topic that's been discussed to death I'm sure. But here's my 2 cents.
Mission Architect was created to cater to those who are interested to make their own story arcs. However this only appeals to the portion of the player base who actually appreciate the intent of the MA, and not to everyone as whole. Not everyone plays an MMO finding the quality of its lore as the main appeal.
Alot of us primarily like the action, to blast and smash things without thinking too much, over sinking ourselves into the setting's story and seeing ourselves as part of it, in a roleplaying sense. That's where the draw factor of AE farms or PL arcs comes in.
Personally, I'm already close to being a 12-month veteran. I've played since i12, been in a enough TFs and some trials where I'm presented varying situations and with varying difficulty. Every mistake and faceplant I've been through equals a lesson learnt, and thus I improve in skill. AE boss farms/PLs present only one standard scenario of battle, and perhaps that's why players remain rigid in their playstyle and don't improve in other ways.
I won't dictate how they should be playing the game though. I've joined up with these teams before because right now, tickets are the best way to get rare/uncommon invention salvage for me to complete my IO sets. But I've been in enough of these arcs so far to see where the issue lies. -
Right now I have 13% ranged defense from IO set bonuses and Hover and it has helped to certain degree. Flechette pretty much nailed it by saying smart playing and a survivability mindset is more important.
There's always Force Mastery to consider. Not only do you get PFF when under critical fire, but two good resist powers that will help your surivivability alot. I find the epic pool the best option so far for my Blapper build. -
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There's a joke detector with faulty batteries here.
I cant determine if it's yours or mine...
To the OP, and Arcanaville :
LMAO...
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The darn thing has been going wonky on me for sometime now... -
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And characters don't need powers other than brawl. Powers are metered by Brawl Index -- stop the incessant power levelling, everyone has brawl, use that. This does away with 99% of enhancements too, and the salvage required for Brawl Sets cuts that down by 90%. Win-Win!
My "Brawl-Brawl" Brawler will be called 'Gimped', he'll be on Freedom server. I look forward to this change, and would like to sign up for your newsletter.
Angry of Mayfair.
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I think you've just solved the PvP balancing issue. Genius. -
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And alts make it hard for everyone else to have fun. I see somebody on and make a friend. Later they aren't on. Maybe they are - but on an alt. I don't know. It just looks like my new friend is missing. Alts kills friendships and community - and everyone knows that community is what keeps MMO's alive.
I call upon the devs to solve this problem that is driving away new players, giving existing players ennui and making them quit. Reduce all accounts to 1 character redside and 1 character blueside. Stop selfishness from ruining my game.
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I must have missed the notice saying that the game is ALL ABOUT what YOU want.
Hello Mr. Fun Police. Don't try to dictate how others play with your so called vision on how things should be. Restriction to just one character per account, are you sure you're reading what you're writing?
Also, if you want to make a suggestion to provide incentive for players to stay, please dont make one that will drive them to quit instead. And if you're so insecure as to suspect friends logging off on you, only to play an alt instead, then send a Global friends request. If they refuse the request, then ask yourself: Are they being worthwhile friends to begin with? -
Having played two lvl 50 Blasters so far, I would say that if you're up to the challenge, the results are satisfying in the long run.
If can overlook the fact that they have near to 0 defense from the start, they are a tremendous asset to teams, dishing out devastating damage that no other blue-side AT can dream to compare. I won't lie to you and say that you'll get faceplanted alot during your career as a Blaster. But that's just a minor setback in my opinion. Once you become familiar with the playstyle and manage your survivability then you'll be having lots of fun with this AT.
Blappers (Blasters who play like Scrappers, hence "Blappers". They play with close range AoE) on the other hand, are a whole different challenge and provides a different kind of fun -
I have a /fire blaster (blapper) who uses both Blazing Aura and Hot Feet. Each is slotted with 3 lvl 50 damage SOs and I'm getting (approx.) 23 and 54 damage respectively per tick. That's around 70-80 total every 2 seconds for every mob within vicinity. What's more Hot Feet has a mitigation fear effect and sends everyone affected scrambling while slowed. And this is without using Build Up and Aim.
But for my build, I rely on other AoE powers like Combustion and Fire Sword Circle to get that DPS going. It doesn't make sense (and it's pretty boring) just standing there and watching the mob scramble around in panic from the tick damage (though it's entertaining).
When I get the exact numbers I'll update this post.
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Also; if you get hit with -recharge, does it lower the damage tick rate ? If not, that's another advantage for the aura.
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If I'm not wrong it quickens (EDIT) down the recharge rate of the toggle power, that is, how long it takes to activate again it if it gets detoggled. -
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...I am probably not representative of the majority, but this is really the thing that makes it superior to all of the others. The times when you most need the resistance are the times when you've been incapacitated by a status effect. During those times, the the other epic pools' toggles provide no benefit, when they would be the most valuable. I'd rather have a def/res toggle that was *only* on when I was under a status effect versus the other way around.
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You make very valid points. To me Body Armor seems inferior in the sense that the base resistance it provides for Smashing and Lethal damage is lower than the resistance toggles found in the other pool. Also, Electric Armor gives not only Smashing and Lethal resist, but Energy as well. Fire Armor (accurate name?) is the same but instead of Energy it gives Fire resist.
Being mezzed and having your toggles deactivated is a problem. To get around that I have Hover (it stays active during mezzes) to avoid getting pounded by melee and IO sets that give stacked range defense when still under fire.
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I can't improve the power's performance without sacking the range, and I like having one attack for which the laughable claim that "Range is a Blaster's defense" is mostly true when range-boosted -- the base range as slotted is 234 feet, 373 feet with Range Boost, but there are some mobs that can still hit me at that range limit.
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Well range is definately a good defense, that is IF you can stay at range and out of reach of a strong melee'ers attack. That must be why alot of us blasters love HoverAnd getting hit by ranged attacks is not as severe as getting hit in melee, especially when those attacks have stuns. (which leads to a very quick and painful faceplant).
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LRM is great fun. In fact it's the one power that makes getting the epic pool worthwhile.
Compared to the other resist damage powers found in the rest of the epic pools, Body Armor seems to be slightly inferior. The only advantage I see is that it's always in effect and can never be deactivated.
Cryofreeze is a good single-target hold. Not much to be said about it.
Surveillance is a decent debuffer, and has a pretty nice effect to boot.
Sleep Grenade seems redundant since the point of playing a Blaster is to kill everything in sight in the quickest time possible. However if I'm not wrong it has some sort of minor AoE healing effect. -
Well concerning the three slots max policy, I guess the devs don't want the AE listing to get overloaded. A difference between a maximum of three and let's just say ten, is a huge one when assuming that hundreds of players have already maxed out their slots. But with farming banned and so many of those arcs sure to have been wiped out, I don't why see the limit can't be increased.
It's just fun speculation on my part.
However the most logical reason to me for the limit is so that purchasing for more slots wil provide another medium of cashflow. After the hammer having been slammed down on farmers and (I expect) with alot of them sure to have quit their subscriptions in anger, it might be something that's needed.
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6. Signal to noise ratio. Trying to get something played a lot without a large SG or Voting Cartel is like winning the lottery.
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That's why you have to be proactive in advertising your arc in the relevant board, and not relying on some random person to come across it and actually play it all the way through. And with the horrible rating system, some irresponsible rater might just contribute in making your arc just drop down the list further.