Moonlighter

With Tip missions the game is too easy and too hard at the same time. Before tip missions the areas that were really hard were all in distinct arcs where I could turn down my difficulty. Now with tips I have to keep my difficulty down or constantly micromanage it because of "spoiler" mobs like the Carnival Bosses. I can defeat the entire mission at +2/x4 for Carnies, but the boss at +2 alone can defeat me with the Dark Servant whose aura floors my accuracy while throwing the mega debuff on me. Really you don't need 70 point debuff swings to make the end game challenging. More and more tip missions have spoiler mobs which means I either have to learn all the missions and micro manage difficulty settings, or I need to just run at low settings.

In addition, there is no incentive to run at higher difficulties. The best rewards in game come from finishing missions regardless of difficulty, and doing it on multiple characters. (That doesn't mean I want the best rewards moved to content where I am forced to group, thanks but no. I like grouping when I can, but I need meaningful solo content because the TFs are too long and I can't commit to them.)

The combination means that I am much better off leaving my difficulty at the default and running tip missions on multiple characters, which is ultra efficient and boring. I don't mind upping the difficulty for fun and being less efficient, but don't make it so every other tip mission there are spoiler mobs that force me to reduce difficulty and be bored the entire mission just to defeat the one boss or mob that throws the spoiler mega debuff.

So all my 50s are scrappers, and my blaster just hit 41 so I'm a blaster noob. Anyway I was led to believe that the Cold Mastery shield (like an ice tank) encases you in ice as a constant graphic and the scorpion shield doesn't.

When is i19 going live? Have they even announced a date yet? It seems very early to stop planning characters because of that.

Um, I am assuming the melee attacks are set mules for ranged defense. The nice thing about that is melee does more DPS than ranged so if a mob is controlled anyway, you might as well finished it off with melee attacks.

If you can fit it in, yeah the build up powers are the bread and butter of blasters.

Meh, with so much slow and capped ranged defense I doubt you'll see much use for a long animation second hold. Once you freeze the sapper/other problematic enemy you'll be too busy killing stuff and fending off return fire with capped ranged defense to worry about another single target hold. Any enemy group powerful enough to actually threaten you will either be too numerous for a single target hold to matter or too powerful to be affected.

Any bosses affected by the stacking holds of Freeze Ray/Bitter Freeze Ray can just be slow kited anyway.

If you are going to be a flying ranged blaster, Hover + Ranged cap is the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I love my S/L capped blasters if I feel like mixing ranged and melee. If you want a reliable strong strategy, however, there is no reason a Fire/ blaster *needs* to be in melee so capped Range + flight has better across the board performance than S/L.

That's fair.

That's fair too. I can see why from my post it sounds like I am pushing for a "fix" to redraw. I'm not. I am refuting the post way back when that says:

"I'm Pistols/Energy and I can assure you, redraw isn't an issue at all."

I feel that's a misleading statement.

My statements about performance of the set as a whole was just to further explain that I don't feel the set was balanced with redraw in mind, and I feel those redraw issues are exaggerated by long animations.

If I was going to suggest actual fixes to the set they would be:

~ Piercing Rounds always does the -Resist so people don't have to ammo dance.

~ Executioner's Shot has a shortened animation since most of it is standing still while aiming your gun.

I hate the throw-my-guns-in-the-air animation of Piercing and would like an alternate animation, but that's not a balance concern.

I agree with this.

This would work as well. A fix to Executioner's Shot and one other buff to the set (maybe in Piercing as you have suggested) would be all it would take in my opinion to bring the set up to par despite the redraw.

I think I am letting this discussion get off track here.

What I am refuting is the original statement that:

"I'm Pistols/Energy and I can assure you, redraw isn't an issue at all."

It is. It makes using a lot of secondaries more expensive.

The issue of balance comes up only because I am pointing out that overall DP doesn't have advantages that make it better than other sets like Elec or Fire to compensate for redraw. Archery, on the other hand, is a really good set and one could argue it is balanced with redraw in mind.

I am not talking about max DPS builds, grouping builds, or end game builds with extreme survivability. Those are actually affected less by redraw because they can concentrate on the DP primary in most of their job functions.

I am saying that the very builds you are championing, the middle level solo builds, are the builds most likely to need fast mitigating or extra DPS from using secondary powers and thus are affected most by redraw.

This issue is compounded by long animations for the later single target attack and Bullet Rain.

I am also not claiming the DP should do Fire level damage. Never said that. I am making comparisons to Elec and Archery however since those seem like sets that should provide comparible utility and damage. Archery is just better than DP, and Elec is comparible but doesn't have redraw. That's all I am saying.

I am also not particularly enticed with you claiming DP has so much more survivability than Fire and use as an example a Fire/Fire which is a damage heavy, mitigation light secondary. I like your comparisons to Elec much better.

As for mitigation, Dual Pistols with Fire ammo has only one single target mitigation power. To get the inconsistent knock down mitigation you are talking about (or to go to the less effective Toxic ammo) you are giving up you best damage option which itself isn't better than comparible sets.

I'll listen to reasonable discussion. There is no need to try to proactively invalidate my response by assuming my inability to acknowledge good counter discussion.

It does more damage than Empty Clips, it has similar animation times taking into account ArcanaTime, and it has 20 more range to expand the cone. That's, what, double the AoE area?

In addition it's not S/L and provides a substantial recharge reduction.

It's an excellent AoE for a primary set; it's the *only* ranged AoE for a secondary set. It's value isn't in taking it instead of Empty Clips and Bullet Rain, it's value is taking it in addition.

Because you are willing to ignore it doesn't mean it's not an issue. Just play Dual Pistols after playing Fire or Elec.

Sorry, my bad use of language. By other sets I meant "other sets that don't have redraw."

Archery recently had its animation times decreased a lot to bring it up to par. Assault Rifle has a lot of advantages DP doesn't. One obvious thing is both of these sets have a nuke that can be launched at longer range.

But yes, redraw is an issue for these sets as well. They just aren't as... bad as DP in addition to having redraw. At least not anymore.

All your next comments aim to downplay each redraw instance individually. This does not address my point which is that in total redraw is an disadvantage that crops up constantly in small bits, and DP isn't a strong enough set to warrant it like Archery. I don't have as much experience with Assault Rifle, so if people claim it is as bad as DP then great I am on board with fixing that as well.

You are really equating Fire and DP because Fire has a 2.67 animation attack in it?

I don't really count the ability to purchase another crappy attack with a long animation an advantage.

No, you can do decent comparisons. The scrapper board has been doing it for years; figure the DPA of attacks, string together chains, compare AoE options, and look at utility. It's how MA got fixed as well as a variety of melee sets. I don't have my spreadsheets here, and I don't have blaster data loaded into any DPA spreadsheets but if I get a chance I'll start working on them and we can have a look.

Um, no. I am saying that claiming redraw is fine because you can accept less versatility in your secondary to minimize it isn't a good argument that it's not a factor in game play.

There are reasonable and quantifiable comparisons you can make to show that a set is weak. It happens on other boards all the time. Really, it's not rocket science. I am not a fan personally of adopting the "well don't play it" stance to game balance but if that's your real feeling why are you responding to balance posts?

This week is just bad for me as I am traveling this weekend, but next week if I get the chance I'll break out the spreadsheets and see what I find. After having done lots of melee spreadsheet analysis I can tell you that playing it side by side with Fire or Elec and eyeballing the DPA of DP compared to Fire or Elec or Archery the set looks pretty bad.

Now, to be fair DP has some advantages. Like other weapon sets the nuke has no crash. For Archery and Assault Rifle that is an awesome advantage. For Dual Pistols is pretty cool except for that whole PBAoE thing.

Also, because it has several effects on each attack, you can leverage other sets. I find this particularly useful for the Targeted AoE attacks which as a rule have bad sets available. Being able to slot 4 Slow IOs and 2 Damage is actually useful.

But beyond that? It's pretty bad.

While I agree, a good Blaster with high defenses should be able to manage this with Inspirations now that we can combine three into Break Frees. The mez time should remain relatively low assuming the Blaster is good at resource management. Yes, other ATs don't need to do that resource management but that doesn't mean the game does not provide the tools to deal with this.

The end game has a lot of passive mitigation. Once a blaster can really trick out their build and hit cap defense to S/L (or cap defense to Range and use Hover) they don't need to waste attack cycles throwing controls and debuffs/buff to bring their damage up to par. This gives them better burst and better overall damage.

This makes them simply better at damage output than Defenders and Corruptors over all except for extreme circumstances like Fulcrum Shift.

Doms, on the other hand, and to a lesser extent Controllers can leverage pets to do damage *while* they are using mitigation tools, and they can buff those pets as well. They also tend to have mitigation tools that also cause damage. This is really where Blasters fall behind, but I feel this is more that the pet mechanics of the game are really good end game rather than Blasters being broken.

Absolutely. Totally agree there.

Designing around a self rez is so outside my thinking that I can't really give you advice there. It sounds like it could be fun, but the gamester inside me still views defeat as "losing" and it would probably bug me.

~ If you don't need the Immobilization protection, Hurdle + CJ can be replaced when needed by Ninja Run. Sadly the end costs on Ninja Run means you will need to click it on and off as needed unless your build is ridiculously blessed with endurance management.

~ Focused Accuracy uses much more endurance.

~ On the other hand, Focused Accuracy's 70% resistance to Hit Debuff is better in the late game than what Tactics offers. Tactics is good, but you'll have lots of accuracy for most builds.

Without seeing your build, if you can manage to cap with CJ and FA I'd go that way just because I'd rather manage FA on and off as needed and keep on CJ all the time than manage Ninja Run.

My belief:

It's because mobs that are debuffed have a much higher chance of running. Your slow debuff in spines sends them running. You see the same thing with the -defense in the sword sets and the -to hit in dark. I have noticably fewer runners with MA.