Pusher_Robot

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There was a Gun Kata set to go with it, but it'd sorta be like Super Reflexes for Blasters or some such. Silly idea... plus, I never finished the idea.

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The ninth power in that line is called Touch of Grammaton, right?


Any set, pistols or otherwise, involving cone or line-shaped (Really narrow cone?) AoEs that come from sides of your body other than the front would be very interesting. Front and back and left and right would be the most obvious, any direction plus down (I'd love to shoot someone while jumping over them) or asymmetric attacks would also be cool.

The other thing I'd really like is an attack that teleports you to the target, sort of Mortal Kombat like. Or at least a "Combat Teleporting" without the hover and with a much shorter animation.

We could argue point and counterpoint, but since I think we both recognize the same problem and want the same ultimate solution, and only have differing views of how to implement it, that would be kind of silly.

Balancing the players down while bringing the enemies down to an enjoyable level is effectively the same thing as balancing the players up while raising the enemies to a reasonably challenging level. Each strategy attempts to produce the same result, and if each were properly implemented the result would be the same.

We both agree that the parts of the game that are difficult to the point where they're unenjoyable need to be fixed, and the parts of the game that are easy to the point where they're boring need to be fixed. The game should be equally enjoyable and challenging for all ATs.

Where we disagree is in how big the numbers associated with the fixed game should be. I want them to be slightly larger, but it's really a non-issue.

Either way, blasters right now are unenjoyable in the late game and something needs to be done about that. I'd prefer balancing them up to where the good melee ATs are now and correctly compensating challenge myself, but if it can be shown that the other way has a better chance of being successfully implemented I'd be fine with that too because the end result is the same.

What I'm getting from Mieux, though, is that the game should be as hard as it is for late game blasters right now, which I disagree with entirely.

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We have plenty of reward in the 30's...just very little risk. The devs understand it. Do you?

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So when the interesting missions dry up, the exp slows down, and every enemy and its mother can beat my MAG resistance twice over I level faster and die less...

Soloing, the game right now is not challenging for blasters before thirty, controllers after thirty-four, and scrappers and tankers pretty much whenever. This I'll mostly admit to being true (And this may be why you're bored when playing a scrapper. They're not as invincible as tanks, but in most situations they come pretty close.)

However, the game is very challenging for early game controllers, late game blasters, and pretty much every defender that's not on a team (Not sure about you rad and dark guys, actually, but whatever.)

Say whatever you want about challenge, but my blaster gets two-shotted by bosses and stunned by minions, and that makes the game rather bloody hard in my opinion, especially since I don't have enough alphastrike potential to down an even level boss before they get their two to three shots off and kill me.

The issue, then, is whether to balance the entire game towards the harder areas, or balance the entire game towards the easier ones. Making it easier wins out for a couple important reasons.

1. Making the game harder for tanks effectively eliminates their ability to solo, since the nerf would have to affect their offense in order to preserve the tank's role on a team.

2. Making the game harder and encouraging play on Heroic slows it down. A lot. Not just the time it takes to reach 50, but the time it takes to finish a mission or solo a group of 3 minions. It slows the overall pace of combat and that makes the game a lot more boring than lower risk will.

3. People are lazy. Some of them even pay Cryptic money to not play the game while someone else herds freaks or wolves. These people outnumber the people looking for a challenge, and these people will quit if the game becomes harder and slows down.

4. The boredom associated with not dying is a) not always there and b) better than the boredom and frustration associated with dying repeatedly because the game is too challenging. When I3 bosses came out my blaster simply could not have fun soloing because I was defeated in a single shot by even con bosses, at range. So I made a tank. I still have him, and even though I have effectively zero risk it's still fun to round up a map full of baddies and watch them burn to death. Especially after hitting the debt cap with my blaster.

So although I agree that parts of the game are easy (too easy is a matter of personal opinion) there are also parts right now that are far too hard (Namely, the parts that involve blasters in the later levels), and the hard parts need to be balanced first because they're far more unfun, annoying, and harmful to the game than the easy ones.

EDIT: Not to say that the easier parts of the game don't need addressing as well, but right now I simply don't have fun playing with my blaster in the later levels, so equalizing everyone else to that point as a fix doesn't sound like a good idea. Fix the unfun parts first, then work on balancing whatever people find too easy or boring afterwards.